DX10 Vista Buzz

[zoombapup]

Anyone else feeling quite buzzed about the possibilities in DX10?

The whole unified shader pipeline has been a long time coming (its not really unified as an api yet sadly), but there are so many things I'm reading about that I want to play with. Like:

Instancing
Geometry Shaders
Loads of shader constants (i.e. decent character skinning in hardware)

There's so much for me to play with!!!

Am I alone I wonder. Perhaps :)

[Bad Sector]

I wonder how these translate to OpenGL...

[bjgil2]

Bad Sector:

Have a look here (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_opengl_specs.html) at the GeForce 8 Series (G8X) OpenGL Extensions pdf. It looks like most (if not all) of the new DX10 functionality will be available in OpenGL.

And for all those HLSL snippets that will be popping up all over the place... HLSL2GLSL (http://sourceforge.net/projects/hlsl2glsl)

Cheers,
Brett

[Coyote]

I'm still targeting older machines. So I don't think I'm going to be able to play with anything that would prevent me from being backwards-compatible.

[Anthony Flack]

Is it not the case that DX10 will only run on Vista? Or have I got that wrong? Because if it's true, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to use it.

[Dan MacDonald]

If your intersted you can play with XNA now, it has a fully programmable pipepline just like DX10.

[vjvj]

Is it not the case that DX10 will only run on Vista? Or have I got that wrong? Because if it's true, it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to use it.

DX10 is Vista-only.

Which is sad, because the API is a LOT nicer.

[impossible]

I'm really excited about DX10. I've been getting back into shader programming on PS 2.0 hardware and really want to make some sort of graphics intensive 3D game. It is kind of ridiculous for indies to target such highend hardware, but I'm on the verge of just saying "fuck it", buying some DX10 hardware and working on a DX10 only (well maybe DX10\DX9 ps 2.0) game :D.

If your intersted you can play with XNA now, it has a fully programmable pipepline just like DX10.
Huh? DX10 is DX10, geometry shaders, and a variety of other concepts, only exist in D3D10. XNA game framework targets DX9 (ps 2.0) hardware. XNA game framework's primary target is hobbyist developing for the XBox 360, and the XBox 360 GPU is not DX10 hardware.

DX10 will only run on Vista but I imagine there won't be any DX10 only games for another 3-5 years. Most games will support DX9 for people still running XP and using DX9 hardware on Vista, and DX10 for people with Vista and DX10 hardware.

[wazoo]

I'm really excited about DX10. I've been getting back into shader programming on PS 2.0 hardware and really want to make some sort of graphics intensive 3D game. It is kind of ridiculous for indies to target such highend hardware, but I'm on the verge of just saying "fuck it", buying some DX10 hardware and working on a DX10 only (well maybe DX10\DX9 ps 2.0) game :D.


Heh. I understand that sentiment completely.

I figure that the windows customers who are running Win95/98/2000 on ancient hardware will realize that they really do need a new machine, and are pretty much waiting until Vista is out to "treat themselves". While I don't think they'll be the "early adopters", I think they will go for it within a year or so of its release.

Also given how more and more people are regularly updating their machines (via Windows Update) because of how prominent "security" and "viruses" are to outlets like CNN, I'm fairly confident that even a project targeting the 9.0c runtime will be sorta ok by now.

But do I have numbers to back that up? *grins* Nope.

[zoombapup]

Well, I wouldnt recommend it for most indies. There ARE opportunities opened up by a new playform/os/hardware combo that only happens every few years for PC owners.

This one being a particularly big leap forward in terms of specific enabling technology (what I mean is, just "faster shaders" wouldnt be exciting, but GS shaders, a decent instancing mechanism and a few other things really DO make this a leap rather than a slide).

For instance, indie developed graphics demo's are quite common (hell, Crytek was formed off the back of a reasonably simple demo).

Anyway, given I've got a research year, I've got to at least try it!

So vista and dx10 all the way baby! (quad core of course).

[DGuy]

As a game player: Yes, very interested/excited!

As an casual game developer: Not really.

[Applewood]

We might finally be at the point where you can send up one vertex and have the video card draw an acre of procedural grass. Said grass actually having "length" and possibly even simple wind movement.

I can't wait to play on it!

But, I've never even looked at the DX10 docs for PC yet. We target consoles which means OGL and DX9, and will be that way for another 5 years. We're too small to develop mainstream pc titles and indie games don't sell.

So no, despite the fact that I'm chomping at the bit to play in the new sandbox, in reality it's just a distraction and I won't let myself get sidetracked by features none of my punters will ever see.

[Dan MacDonald]

Huh? DX10 is DX10, geometry shaders, and a variety of other concepts, only exist in D3D10. XNA game framework targets DX9 (ps 2.0) hardware. XNA game framework's primary target is hobbyist developing for the XBox 360, and the XBox 360 GPU is not DX10 hardware.


You must have a shader model 2.0 card to develop and run XNA games, they moved away from the fixed pipeline DX9 model and now are fully driven by geometry and pixel shaders in XNA Beta 2.0 (simmilar to DX10). So while it's not completely DX10 compatible, if you would like to play around with something simmilar to a DX10 pipeline in the mean time, XNA is a nice place to start.

[zoombapup]

I think your missing the point a bit here Dan. Basically DX10 is NOT the same as DX9 in terms of feature set.

Finally we have a card that does things differently and fast enough that we can actually start considering different games that the technology enables.

And its not just the visual frippery that Paul mentioned (procedural grass etc).

I'm really excited and will be getting one as soon as the buzz of my new dual core work machine wears off :)

Besides, with a quad core CPU and two of the 8800's it will be a rendering beast (which is good, because I've got some rendering to do).

[Dan MacDonald]

Sorry when i see DX9 i think fixed pipeline, the Hardware Transform and Lighting Model. Where you feed triangles to the pipeline and it renders it. When I think of DX10 I think of a fully programmable pipeline, where you supply geometry, vertex shaders, and pixel shaders that allow you to control the rendering of the mesh at a pixel level.

In XNA you must specify a vertex and pixel shader to render a mesh, there's no concept of just sending triangles and texture coordinates. Sure they have some default shaders that emulate fixed pipeline operation but you still have to use them in order to render something.

There may be other differences between DX9 and DX10, but moving from a fixed graphics pipeline to a fully programmable shader driven graphics pipeline is the core of the paradigm shift between DX9 and DX10.

[Applewood]

The FFP still exists in DX9. It's been removed from the XBox stuff though, but I refer to the 360 version as DX 9.5

They should've removed it from the pc version too imo. Nobody should be using the FFP on DX9 as its all just hacked into shaders in the background anyway. DX9 is fully shadered up - everything else is legacy for user friendliness