Bits Interview: TWIMTBP, DX10 and beyond

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2007/06...twimtbp_dx10/1

Last week, we had the chance to sit down with Roy Taylor, Nvidia's Vice President of Content Relations. We talked about the The Way It's Meant To Be Played developer relations programme, DirectX 10 and some of the games coming out very soon.

[Ramble]

Sounds like a rather exciting time to be a PC gamer.
What a lucky *******.

[Hells_Bliss]

[drool] 9million pixels [/drool]

nice article! I guess i'm going to have to buy vista sooner than I thought.

[trig]

so basically tying in to the dismal performance of the 8800 gts on the dx10 version of CoH, he is saying that gameplay will be less affected fps-wise on a game built for dx10 from the ground up?

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by trig

so basically tying in to the dismal performance of the 8800 gts on the dx10 version of CoH, he is saying that gameplay will be less affected fps-wise on a game built for dx10 from the ground up?

I think that's basically what he is saying yes.

Based on what I've seen of CoH and some of the other 'early' DX10 games, porting DX9 games to DX10 looks more like a case of ticking check box features, than actually providing much benefit to the end users. The real benefit will come where developers have decided very early on (relatively speaking - these games have all been in development for years) in the development cycle that they're going to jump to DX10 and create a version that takes advantage of a hell of a lot of the DX10 features.

There are some things that I unfortunately cannot discuss at the moment, but the reason outlined above looks like it is why GPG opted not to port SupCom to DX10. This isn't me having a go at developers that have gone down the porting route as I applaud them for trying to push boundaries.

I think there is also a bit of driver optimisation in the mix too (how much, I don't know), but Nvidia isn't really going to say that its DX10 drivers aren't performing at maximum potential. AMD might say that its drivers aren't performing as well as they could be, but that's because the hardware is still very new.

[Redbeaver]

"there's some life left in PC games"???

OF COURSE THERE IS!!

i want crysis so bad i can taste it...

[Spaceraver]

Did you ask about power consumption??

[[USRF]Obiwan]

loved the buildup of the article towards the "crysis". lol almost made me cry of joy

[Tim S]

Originally Posted by [USRF]Obiwan

loved the buildup of the article towards the "crysis". lol almost made me cry of joy

I think Roy was actually worried that I wasn't going to ask about Crysis and you could definitely tell from the tone of his voice that he is really excited about both Crysis and World in Conflict. I was talking with the Nvidia PR representative that was also on the call afterwards and he said exactly the same to me too.

[Mankz]

He seems like the kind of guy that cares about a game and how well it plays just as much as he cares about selling his hardware.

Then again he does basically get free GPU's.

[trig]

well good. thanks tim...now if i could just sell my pc so i can afford to upgrade to dx10, ill be crysis ready...

[devdevil85]

Crysis!, Crysis!, Crysis!
Those graphics are seriously sick! I can't wait to get a new rig that can play that! especially WiC.....

[pendragon]

thanks for the article, folks! good read

[Woodstock]

kidney for sale. offers

[samkiller42]

Cheers Tim and Roy.
Crysis demo soon
I think im going to have to break my game demo rule, which is not to play the demo of a game that im eager to play, mind you i broke it for C&C 3

Sam

[EQC]

Originally Posted by the article

He briefly touched on where monitor technology was going, stating that the next step would be WQUXGA, 3840x2400, or nine million pixels. To put that into perspective, the current 30” monitors have a resolution of 2560x1600 or four million pixels. “We’re currently working with monitor manufacturers to get refresh rates down to respectable levels so that this can be the next step in gaming resolutions,” he said.

We asked Roy what size monitors we’d see with this kind of resolution, but he didn’t really give any specifics: “I think you can already buy 22” monitors with this resolution, but they’re not designed for gaming because the refresh rates are too high. They also cost too much, too.” I guess from that, we might see 30” monitors at 3840x2400, or we may see even bigger monitors...

I'm going to ramble on a bit below...but for the short version of my point: I am wondering how long we'll be waiting for a 3840x2400 gaming-capable monitor to be readily available (for, say, the ~$2500 price that consumer 30" monitors came out at)?? I'm guessing that it'll be 2011 at least before we see such a monitor, primarily because of the cabling issue. Further explanations below...

-- -- -- -- --

Hmm...rather than wonder about the size of the monitor, I'm wondering about the cable to support this resolution -- I believe single link DVI officially maxes out at 1600x1200x60Hz, and dual-link DVI can only go up to 2560x1600x60Hz. I'm guessing there's another technology around the corner, but I'm also guessing we must be several years away from actually using it to such high resolutions. This last guess is based on how long it took us to switch from VGA to DVI, and then to eventually have DVI monitors capable of higher resolutions than VGA's max (ie: above 2048x1536)

When DVI first came out, it was single-link only (IIRC), and that resolution is actually SMALLER than what can be passed through a VGA cable (2048x1536). At the time, IIRC, LCD's were available at 20" 1600x1200 maximum -- so, putting a VGA port and a DVI port on a monitor meant either cable could be used to support the monitor's full resolution. Later, we saw widescreen 1920x1200, which is fine for VGA, and I think some single-link DVI video cards support it too. Even later than that, we saw the debut of 30" 2560x1600 monitors -- these can only be accessed by dual-link DVI (and don't generally come with any other cable connections). So, I'm thinking it was at least 3-4 years between when DVI first became visible on the market, and when a consumer-grade monitor came out that finally reached beyond the limits of VGA. And even today, 5 years or so after I remember first hearing about DVI, the $1200+ 30" monitors are well beyond what most people would be willing to spend...

So, if some new cable capable of supporting 3840x2400 isn't even on the market yet...how long will it be before we see a monitor in this resolution? Are we going to go through another phase of dual-cables, with monitors still maxing out at 2560x1600 but featuring a dual-link DVI cable in combination with some new technology? How long will that phase last before we see the first monitor that gets rid of DVI and goes beyond 2560x1600? How long before we move from there to the much greater 3840x2400 -- that has more than twice the pixel count!!! And finally, how long after that before we see 3840x2400 monitors becoming "affordable" and "common" among gamers?

-- -- -- -- --

One last note: 3840x2400 is sortof an "ideal" resolution for HDTV's (or, really, for an HDTV, we'd leave thin black bars at the top and bottom and use 3840 x 2160 pixels) -- it allows perfect integer scaling of 1920x1080p/i content using a factor of 2, and 1280x720p content using a factor of 3. So you wouldn't need a "great" video scaler, just a "decent" one to provide a good picture in either case. Even if the scaler just "blew up" the picture without any interpolation, you'd still have a true, large-pixel version of 1080 or 720 video (much simpler than those strange 1366x768 HDTV's, and also simpler than scaling 720 lines up to 1080 (factor of 1.5) or scaling 1080 down to 720).

[mardukph]

nice read, keep it up
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hmmm 3840x2400 = 4 (2x2) 1920x1200 monitor setup on the interim before having single panel monitors (and affordable) at that insane res =D

[mattthegamer463]

Originally Posted by Hells_Bliss

[drool] 9million pixels [/drool]

Will you be drooling when you get 2fps in any game at that resolution?

I'm worried that all this stuff is being developed almost exclusively for people with $4000+ rigs, and not for even people like me, who dropped a more than modest $2500 on mine just 3 months ago. All I want is good FPS at medium-high settings. Thats all I ask. Is it too much? Thank god I'm only on a 17' LCD for the time being, anything bigger would get terrible FPS at high settings.

[Joeymac]

Originally Posted by EQC

So, if some new cable capable of supporting 3840x2400 isn't even on the market yet...how long will it be before we see a monitor in this resolution? Are we going to go through another phase of dual-cables, with monitors still maxing out at 2560x1600 but featuring a dual-link DVI cable in combination with some new technology? How long will that phase last before we see the first monitor that gets rid of DVI and goes beyond 2560x1600? How long before we move from there to the much greater 3840x2400 -- that has more than twice the pixel count!!! And finally, how long after that before we see 3840x2400 monitors becoming "affordable" and "common" among gamers?

HDMI 1.3 can do 1440p and 48bit deep colour in a single link. So a dual link (Type B connector, wider than the usual ones) would have no problem with these resolutions and still be able to carry 8 channels of audio. They aren't much in the wild yet but are compatible with dual link DVI so if someone started adding HDMI 1.3 (type b) output to GPU cards, with a converter, there wouldn't be a problem running existing monitors off them... even the 30inchers.
The competing "cable standard" to HDMI is
"Display Port". Which Dell has shown off on some displays. That is also capable of these resolutions and can do daisy chaining of displays. But it has zero backwards compatibility with DVI monitors or HDMI tv sets whilst not really offering higher data rates than HDMI 1.3 (plus it has it's own copy protection in addition to HDCP)... so there is not much point in it. As you mentioned a PC would need to carry both technologies for output... that's expensive etc. So hopefully it will die.
Wide HDMI cables might be the quickest way forward.

[Hells_Bliss]

well a lot of this technology won't be out for at least a year, so yes they might be focused at the 4k+ market at the moment, but prices drop quickly. Everything is getting bigger for cheaper, so I dont see why a 30" screen, when it is mass produced and with market saturation with higher screen sizes, will be extremely expensive compared to now.

also, it'll get better than 2fps, they wouldn't sell it if it was that poor.