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Captain Slow    Registered Member #3 Joined: Fri Dec 19 2003Location: Scotland Posts: 4651 | I have been reading about microsofts Direct x 10, which will come out with Vista. Direct x 10 game play movie Below are a few articles i hae found. Microsoft speaks DirectX 10 Games Developers Conference Europe WGF is dead, please welcome DX10 By Fuad Abazovic in Londinium: Friday 02 September 2005, 16:01 MICROSOFT finally saw sense and decided to drop Windows Graphic Foundation (WGF) and replace it with the more easier and logical DirectX 10 name for its nexgen API. It gave some details to the developers officially about its upcoming API and we know that it plans to release this API together with Longhorn. Or Visa, as we must learn to call it. The DirectX 10 API will have completely new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and is supposed to run much faster. The company decided to cut the backward compatibility with DirectX 9, 8, 7 and lower in this API but there will be a way to use games programmed for those APIs. Microsoft will enable support for DX 9 or lower games through a software layer, meaning it might run slower. The company did this to make the next API faster, it said, and at the same time will take some burden of the CPU runtime. At the same time we learned that DirectX 10 will have support for Shaders beyond Shaders, model 4.0. It's coming with Longhorn but we learned that Shader Model 4.0 might come even before Vista. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Logan Booker | September 15, 2005 There will be no need for developers to poll graphics hardware for specific capabilities in the next version of Direct3D, as Microsoft and Vista will be doing all the work for them -- essentially putting a stop to the fast pace of feature introduction in graphics hardware. This was just one of many relevations about the new revision of the graphics API made by Rudolph Balaz, product manager for Microsoft, at this year's Professional Developers Conference on Wednesday. Direct3D is a special interface designed by Microsoft that allows developers to abstract 3D graphics programming from the underlying hardware. First introduced with Windows 95 11 years ago, Direct3D and its parent API, DirectX, have been a mainstay in the 3D games development industry. As of DirectX 10, to be introduced in Windows Vista, 3D features will be bound to version numbers of Direct3D. What this means is that all 3D vendors will support the same features, guaranteeing compatibility across the board. Although this may sound great, allowing for a more standardised games development environment, the reality is that Microsoft will soon be regulating the introduction of 3D features, leaving companies such as NVIDIA and ATI at the mercy of the software giant. Vista and DirectX 10 aren't all doom and gloom for the games industry, According to Balaz, they will in fact do much for both the performance and versatility of graphics hardware. For instance, graphics processors, known as GPUs, will have scheduling and sharing capabilities under Vista, much like CPUs have now. Users will be able to run multiple 3D applications that will be able to share memory, GPU cycles and other resources, something that is currently impossible under previous Windows versions. There's also backward-support for DirectX 6, 7 and DirectDraw, and Vista will feature and extended version of Direct3D 9, known as D3D9Ex, that developers can play around with now. D3D9Ex offers functionality including frame statistics; the ability to render a frame multiple times instead of reprocessing it in hardware and more specific error and state checking, to the point where the software can inform a developer if their code is crashing the hardware. None of these features however compare to the resource sharing in D3D9Ex/D3D10. Thanks to the new, shared architecture in the APIs, it will be possible to install new drivers without rebooting; perform 'video card-only' reboots and isolate the display driver from the rest of the system. With Vista, it will be almost impossible for the display driver to bring the rest of the system down with it -- something that is a serious problem and common occurence in current versions of Windows. This reliability and stability is also thanks to the Vista Display Driver Model (VDDM), which will eventually replace the current display driver model in Windows XP. Direct3D 10 means quite a lot to both developers and gamers. In his PDC presentation, Balaz explained some of the internals of the new API, which departs significantly enough from DirectX 9 that all future versions of the programming interface will be based on D3D 10. And D3D 10 does have some interesting changes. While the D3D 10 rendering pipeline is similar to D3D 9, it introduces a new shader, known as the Geometry Shader. This shader allows developers to perform functions on whole polygons (and series of polygons), instead just pixels or just verticies. This new shader promises to dramatically increase the performance of many 3D functions such as cube-mapping. Another part of the Geometry Shader is the Stream Out functionality that allows the GPU to recycle graphics data without needing the CPU. Not only is this a boon to performance, it will also allow for particle systems completely independant of the CPU. The presentation, in all its completeness, failed to touch on the implementation of OpenGL in Windows Vista. When questioned, Balaz explained that OpenGL would be in Vista in three forms: straight software, 'wrapped' around Direct3D and finally run through an installable client driver. D3D 10 will require VDDM to work, so we won't be seeing it before Vista. D3D 10 has been developed in collaboration with Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) such as NVIDIA and ATI, but obviously only to a degree seeing as feature sets from these vendors will now be locked to (what will apparently be yearly) DirectX versioning. Balaz admitted that this course of feature introduction would require Microsoft to work more closely with IHVs and would result in faster revisions and releases of DirectX. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are troubled times ahead. Through one bold move, Microsoft has decided that it will not support, the already too “old” DirectX 9, not to mention DirectX 8 or any of the previous versions. But... it appears to be some logic hidden somewhere. The new DirectX will not be named Windows Graphic Foundation (WGF) as it was planned and will remain at the old name, as in DirectX 10. It will be released with their brand new operating system Vista. This news API will be composed of new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and will run much faster (so they say). Microsoft has decided that backward compatibly with DirectX 9,8,7 isn't really necessary as there will probably will be even less compatible with Vista. Even so, dear Microsoft hasn't totally forgotten us. Some sort of “compatibility” will be available through a software layer (probably some emulation) which will have its price in system resources, as it will run much slower. The good news is that DirectX 10 will relieve some of the burden on the CPU. And of course it will have support for the next generation of Pixel Shaders 4.0, although it will probably surface before even Vista's release due to the rapid development of graphic cards. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DirectX 10 & the Future of Gaming How is DirectX 10 and its Unified Architecture going to benefit gamers? What is the gamer going to need to take and advantage of it? We recently sat down with ATI and talked about DirectX 10 and how their next generation desktop GPU will benefit. Introduction DirectX and Shader Models; if you have been following PC gaming in the last few years you have been exposed to a lot of hoopla over both of these. There have been promises of “cinematic” gaming consisting of graphics like those seen in CG (Computer Generated) movies such as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Here we are in 2006, four years since DirectX 9 has been released and two years the introduction of Shader Model 3.0 hardware. Yet, we haven’t even scratched the surface of the full ability of DirectX 9 and “cinematic” gaming. Even with that being so the industry is gearing up for another major DirectX release. The release of DirectX 10 has huge potential for gamers, but carries with it a hefty price in order to achieve the total graphical experience that will be possible. Brief DirectX History Way back in the “dark ages” of computer gaming there were few choices to achieve hardware acceleration for 3D. The two most notable methods were OpenGL and 3dfx’ proprietary “Glide.” Glide required the use of specific 3dfx hardware while OpenGL is an open platform that is supported by the community and can also run under a Linux operating environment. With Windows, Microsoft decided to capitalize on what they saw becoming the multimedia experience. Microsoft developed a suite of APIs (Application Program Interfaces) that allowed software and driver programmers to access hardware components for specific functions. “DirectX” indicated the umbrella and underneath were the specific components, Direct Sound, Direct Input, Direct 3D and others. DirectX has evolved; DirectX 3, DirectX 5 (there was no DirectX 4 they skipped right to 5), DirectX 6, 7, 8 and now 9. Each version offered new features and more flexibility. DirectX 8 is considered the start of programmable shaders. Before DirectX 8, all its programming functions were “fixed” functions which means the game content developer could only utilize 3D effects that the video chipset specifically supported. For example if the graphics chipset (we don’t call fixed function graphics processors GPUs because they aren’t programmable) didn’t support dot3 product bump mapping then there is no way the developer could use that effect in their game. With the programmable graphics processor everything changed. The game content developer could now make any effect they wanted. However, in younger DirectX versions there were limitations to the number of constants, registers and program lengths they could use. DirectX 8 and 8.1 introduced us to “GPUs” (Graphics Processing Units) and contained Shader Model 1.1-1.3 (DX8.1 had SM 1.4). Shader Model simply referred to the features and flexibility of the programmable nature of the API. DirectX 9 brought the GPU into its own. At its introduction, DirectX 9 included Shader Model 2.0. Shader Model 2.0 was a very large leap ahead of Shader Model 1.4. Still, DirectX 9 had even more wiggle room. With DirectX 9.0c came the enablement of Shader Model 3.0. This newer version meant virtually unlimited program lengths and possibilities only imagined before on a GPU. However we haven’t exactly seen this utilized to its maximum potential in games due to graphics hardware performance limitations. The API is still more capable than the hardware it supports. While there is still a lot of capability left in DirectX 9 and Shader Model 3.0 yet to be realized in real world gaming, it is time to start talking about he next DirectX version, DirectX 10. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DirectX 10 If you play games (and maybe even if you don't), you care about the next big version of DirectX. DX10 is going to be Vista-only. It relies on the new driver model, so don't expect some sort of eventual back-port to Windows XP. So what's new in DX10? A lot. In fact, DX10 changes so much that it's well beyond the scope of this article. Here are a few of the big-ticket items. DX10 will use much faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs), and won't incorporate older versions of DirectX, as is done today. DirectX 9 will be supported side-by-side, through DirectX 9.L (basically, that's DX9 for the Vista driver model). So right there, without using any new features, DX10 should be more efficient and faster. The DX10 graphics API will usher in unified vertex and pixel shaders, and introduce the concept of "geometry shaders" that can act on not just single vertices, but whole triangles and their adjacent vertices. Developers will be able to stream out data from the GPU and reuse it without needing the CPU to do a single thing, so a lot of the CPU load seen in current graphics drivers and games should be reduced. DX10 should allow for more flexible and granular graphics memory access, and in general allow GPUs to be far more flexible and powerful than before. Perhaps one of the best features of DX10 is the removal of capability bits, or "cap bits." Today, graphics cards don't have to support everything in DirectX 9 to be a "DX9 graphics card." There are lots of optional features, and the drivers have to report to the OS exactly what it can and can't do with a set of cap bits. This has been a huge headache for developers, as different cards all support different features, or perform the same operations in different ways. In DX10, either you meet the spec or you don't—no more supporting only these or those texture formats, and this or that shader model but only with this level of precision. Graphics cards will have to produce results within a very small margin of error to be considered DX10 compliant, so developers shouldn't have to worry about the same operation producing different visuals on different cards. As far as developers are concerned, they should finally be able to simply write to the API and know that any DX10 compliant card will produce the correct result. Naturally, there will still be differences in performance between different graphics cards to consider. Why should you care? DirectX 9 should, when the drivers are well optimized, run faster under the Vista driver model than Windows XP. But DX10 will do more to reduce CPU utilization, increase graphics card power and flexibility, and enforce hardware standards that should make life a lot easier on developers. Upon release, there will probably be some Windows XP games that will have enhanced DX10 modes when run under Vista (like Crysis and Flight Simulator X), and maybe even a few "gotta have it" Vista-only games that require DX10. Microsoft has already announced Halo 2, but others should follow (and hopefully, they won't be ports of two year old Xbox games). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Microsoft Will Not Release DirectX 10 for Windows XP – ATI. DirectX 10 Hardware Will Fully Utilize Itself Only Under Windows Vista by Anton Shilov [ 05/25/2006 | 10:40 AM ] Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest maker of software, will not release next-generation graphics application programming interface (API) called DirectX 10 for the currently shipping Windows XP operating system (OS), instead, the company will keep the new API strictly for the forthcoming Windows Vista OS, despite earlier assumptions about DirectX 10 for the XP. During a DirectX 10-related event in London, UK, Richard Huddy, ATI Technologies’ software developers relations chief, said that Microsoft’s Vista will integrate DirectX 10 and DirectX 9 APIs for different types of hardware, but the current Windows XP will not get DirectX 10 support, as suggested some rumours earlier. For end users this means that to get the most advantages of the new-generation graphics processing units (GPUs), the new OS will be required. Both ATI Technologies and Nvidia Corp. planned to release hardware that supports DirectX 10 capabilities as early as in the second half 2006, however, if there will be no API, which unveils the features of the hardware, the companies may reconsider their plans. Microsoft Windows Vista is expected to be available in very early 2007. DirectX 10 API, which is also referred to as Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0, solves numerous performance-related problems, particularly, it shrinks overhead time spent by API and driver on execution. Additionally, ATI says its first DirectX 10 graphics processor – code-named R600 – will have unified shader micro-architecture, which will allow to boost performance even further compared to currently existing micro-architectures and . The performance improvements are conditioned by a special built-in arbiter processor, which will “tailor” rendering of every frame across the 64 unified shader pipelines. Such an approach, according to ATI, allows to utilize all execution engines within the chip, while in traditional architectures – where pixel shaders and vertex shaders are calculated by dedicated units – some of the arithmetic processors may stand idle waiting for others to complete their tasks. Microsoft Corp., who develops DirectX API collaboratively with companies like ATI and Nvidia, did not comment on the news-story. [ Edited Mon Sep 11 2006 ] | ||
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| Life is like a box of chocolates... Registered Member #14 Joined: Sat Dec 20 2003Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 2646 | In other words, Microsoft says "Change to this new version because, just because - and by the way - we won't support any previous versions because, er just because, which means all your old games, graphics programs won't work because, um, well we are Microsoft and are more powerful than everyone else so do what your told...." Incidentally, I think Mac has had total integrated video and standardization since, well, since forever. | ||
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