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Hardware Farewell to DirectX?

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by arcticstoat, 16 Mar 2011.

  1. Anakha

    Anakha Minimodder

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    The original XBox, and the 360, both use DirectX. I don't know what the PS3 uses, but I believe that it's based on OpenGL.

    As for the whole "Hitting the metal is better", it's a great idea in thoery, but you'd have to write different renderers for every family of graphics card out there. Take a look at the Radeon driver in Linux - it's a huge mess because it has to harmonise and handle the vast array of differences between each and every card. So then you'd have to use some kind of standardised method of talking to graphics cards cross-platform, let's call it an "Application-Peripheral Interface", and as it's hitting the hardware, let's call it "Direct"... Oh wait...
     
  2. Snips

    Snips I can do dat, giz a job

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    It's naive to think that anything coming from Elma Fuddy to be of any substance, since it's his job is to drum up business from game developers.

    This is a nothing topic from a PR man fighting his own corner since hes finding it difficult to do his job.

    Nothing to see here, move along.
     
  3. Narishma

    Narishma What's a Dremel?

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    The PS3 uses a low level library called LibGCM that has nothing to do with OpenGL. They also provide an OpenGL ES implementation but nobody is using it.

    Also FYI, API stands for Application Programming Interface and has nothing to do with hardware. In the case of graphics APIs like Direct3D and OpenGL, they sit between the graphics drivers and your application.
     
  4. ut66

    ut66 What's a Dremel?

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    this is why i never buy h-end video-cards. even my 4770 is underutilized. fk consoles - except the wii-
     
  5. Fizzban

    Fizzban Man of Many Typos

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    Very interesting read. Thanks Ben.
     
  6. Ayrto

    Ayrto What's a Dremel?

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    Ye, I think Ben has hit a raw nerve here, great article. People don't like hearing that their fancy expensive GPU is only performing at a fraction of its capability due to what is essentially, unnecessary DX bloatware.

    It would be good if this becomes a big issue and Studios and their Devs somehow get a viable option to choose between competing alternatives again. But as we know MS ain't too fond of competition.
     
  7. frontline

    frontline Punish Your Machine

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    You do realise that Huddy has years of experience in coding, including working for games developers in the past, working in driver development teams (including 4 years at Nvidia). He has a Technical background and a lot of respect in the industry. Your attempt at humour (second attempt in one thread i see) is just embarrassing.

    Interesting article btw.
     
  8. Flibblebot

    Flibblebot Smile with me

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    It is an interesting article, but I don't think a return to direct-to-metal coding is on the cards any time soon. As so many others have mentioned, it would herald a return to the bad old days of DOS games where you had to choose just the right configuration before your games would work - at least with DirectX, your game is guaranteed to work. It many not work well out of the box, but it will work.

    I think probably what we'll see is some slimming down of an API (whether that's DirectX, OpenGL or any other 3D graphics API) allowing developers to use direct-to-metal coding on those functions that are common to all graphics cards, or perhaps only available on a small subset of cards.

    What people forget is that DirectX has put PC gaming where it is today - where a game is guaranteed to work out of the box (as long as it meets the minimum specs). Yes, it has become bloated, but that's primarily because of backward compatibility (just take a look at how many versions of the same method exist in DirectX) - perhaps it's time for MS to sit back and say, "Right. Any card over 3 years old is not suitable for the latest iteration of DirectX" - that way, they can remove a lot of the bloat and have more optimised code because it's not having to cater for such a wide range of GPUs.
     
  9. Turbotab

    Turbotab I don't touch type, I tard type

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    Hopefully down the line, artificial intelligence will take care of recompiling software to best utilise the given hardware.....Probably will happen when the first flying car is launched;)
     
  10. Snips

    Snips I can do dat, giz a job

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    No he's a PR man and please don't let your bias embarras you.

    Move along.
     
  11. Farting Bob

    Farting Bob What's a Dremel?

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    I would be happy if DX12 introduced almost nothing new, but just speed things up, cleared out alot of the cobwebs. The problem with Ms being in a monopoly is it has a huge tendency to bloat up with adding new things but leaving old stuff untouched. A rewrite would make things much easier for devs and probably better performance.

    Or better yet, the next version of DX only has the features to run a DX12 game. Make windows able to install multiple versions so that DX9 games can run on the old software, new games can take advantage of the new stuff without having to carry around decade old baggage.
     
  12. Ayrto

    Ayrto What's a Dremel?

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    I 'm all for a good conspiracy theory , but just what,may I ask, do you think Huddy gains or Ati gains for that matter, from revealing the information here? He quotes factual information on underperforming PC GPU HW vis -a-vis Consoles and explains how things could be different - and it's totally HW vendor neutral. The demands are coming from game developers. So why attack him? We need more people to speak out with new ideas not less.

    I for one would be willing to sacrifice some initial stability for a massive potential jump in quality, hell there's enough bugs with current DXs and drivers and conflicts, doing away with them may end up bringing more stability . Besides, anyone who has ever overclocked anything takes the chance already, often for tiny gains.
     
    Last edited: 16 Mar 2011
  13. bobwya

    bobwya Custom PC Migrant

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    This article prompted me to have a brilliant idea - why not get rid of that pesky operating systems as well and go back to writing programs in assembly. Ah... I used to love hand coding assembly for the Z80 - some 30 years ago or so. What goes around comes around!
     
  14. leveller

    leveller Yeti Sports 2 - 2011 Champion!

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    :duh:
     
  15. urobulos

    urobulos Minimodder

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    Well, they do that from time to time. IE9 is the most recent example as it has no support for Windows XP and is actually a really, really good browser (I'm shocked I wrote that).


    Honestly this whole issue of getting less eye candy than we should considering that a 570 alone can cost as much as a PS3 and being uhm 5 years younger, does not really bother me. Honestly if we never got to see a major upgrade compared to graphics in, say BC2 I wouldn't feel crap about that. What does make me feel annoyed though is the limitations it puts on game design. I remember in the days of the PS2 you would have one version of Call of Duty for the PC and another for the console with stripped down levels due to hardware limitations. Linearity can be a design choice in order to have control over the player experience, but I feel like recent games follow the trend of small, linear levels because they were originally designed for a system with a limited memory and processing power. Even a good developer making a multiplatform game will be limited at the game design level by hardware limitations of the weakest unit. Devs can throw in better shaders, more polygons, tesselation etc. but very few will be able to justify completely redesigning the game invorenment to take advantage of the GPU/CPU power and the control scheme. Honestly I can't wait to see the PS4 and it's Xbox equivalent because until then I don't think we will see much progress in terms of game design on PC in AAA titles. At least not in the multiplatform ones which are the majority anyway.
     
  16. hardstylerz

    hardstylerz What's a Dremel?

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    I knew it! It's been a scam all along! I think I'll save my money on a next generation console rather than a PC. My PC is still working to this day after 3 years, I don't want to upgrade unless there is a dire need to. I think I'll spend my money on xbox 720 instead.
     
  17. ssj12

    ssj12 Minimodder

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    If DX is the major issue, I think devs should just use OpenGL. Didn't Carmack just state that he is using OpenGL because it prefers it? More devs that support OpenGL the faster it will evolve.
     
  18. thogil

    thogil What's a Dremel?

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    That's because it is not true. The article is referring to the overhead of issuing a draw call, which is lower if you can access the hardware at a lower level. This is entirely a CPU side cost and has nothing to do with the number of polygons you can push, but the number of batches of polygons. If you merge model vertices together (or use instancing) you can draw them all with one draw call. The way it is put in the article is misleading.
     
  19. Maxily

    Maxily What's a Dremel?

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    This article said that when a new console comes out game developers will want to use an API to get games out fast. I guess this works for consoles which only get upgraded every 5 or so years. Video cards come around much quicker.

    This would mean that every time a new video card comes out, all the games have to be remade with this specific card in mind just to get it working. Seeing how "fast" games get patches I'd say anyone with an Nvidia 5xx or an AMD 6xxx video card would be unable to play almost any game with directx or something similar.

    DirectX adds forward and backward compatibility. Whether I'm using an gtx 580, gtx 580 with 3Gb RAM (more ram, requires a new build of the game), a 6950, 6950 flashed to a 6970, with 1 or 2 Gb etc. it all works.
     
  20. Bakes

    Bakes What's a Dremel?

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    I'm not by any means an expert, but how would it work if you were trying to draw many different objects (think explosion) simultaneously?
     
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