Scriptionary Blog

Hot off the press, get it now: DirectX SDK August 2008

Following is a list of the major features that have been announced to be included in Direct3D 11, the next generation Graphics API included in the DirectX SDK. In my opinion, the changes (rather, additions) brought into this API are excellent so far. It seems as if the API has finally grown up and is in no way, shape or form comparable with older DX versions and deprecates OpenGL 3.0 at this point.

Major Direct3D 11 Features:

1. Compatibility: Ability to run on previous generation hardware (9, 10, 10.1)
2. Multithreading: Resources may be created asynchronously on separate threads.
3. Tesselation: Allows for subdivision surface operations (Fixed Function, not programmable)
4. Compute Shaders: Allows for general programming on the CPU, much like NVIDIA’s CUDA.
5. No Overhaul: Direct3D 11 is a superset of Direct3D 10, no learning curve as with 9 → 10.

A DX11 preview should appear in your November 2008 DirectX SDK. Keep your eyes on this page for GDC 2008 DirectX 11 papers.

Notes
1. Although you may use the Direct3D 11 SDK on older hardware features will naturally be limited to the hardware itself.

DirectX 11 is to be presented at NVISION 08, click here for details.

Looking at the few mentioned features on the page (tessellation, multithreaded rendering, compute shaders, Shader Model 5), I’d say OpenGL is in big trouble if they want to catch up.

This weekend I took some time out to reformat my development computer in preparation for Windows Vista. I used Vista before but switched back to XP x64 in less than a week’s time. But heck, after a year and a Service Pack, I was willing to take the chance with Vista.

I wanted to take advantage of the DirectX 10 features Vista exposes since they’re not available on XP but was kind of disappointed with the performance of the API in Vista. It seems to me that the samples provided in the DirectX SDK simply run much slower than on XP.

Granted, I bought the most budget oriented GPU that supports DX10 (Geforce 8500GT 512VRAM) but that was simply because of the reason that I want my projects to be able to run on the lowest budget hardware possible while still being able to access DX10-like features. Dell, in fact, offers the 8400 on their laptops and budget desktop PCs, which is a fair share of the market and should be targeted.

Vista itself seems pretty solid so far; it certainly responds better than a year ago and supports all of my hardware and development tools (VS 2008, AQTime, Intel C++ compiler, etc). The big test will be OpenGL: Will it also have performance drops or stay the same? I’ll see tonight.

Some questions have come up in regards to my last post, The Ghost of OpenGL 3.0, and one of them keeps popping out on top: Why do we need OpenGL 3.0 and What’s wrong with OpenGL 2.1? This post will attempt to take you through the pre-published materials on the OpenGL API, version 3.0 and show you the major changes and differences. Or you could simple jump to the answer and conclusion without reading the features provided by OpenGL 3.0, if you don’t feel like getting informed.
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OpenGL 3.0 seems to become more and more of a promise that’s bound to be broken; like a friend who promises you to give back the money you loaned him, always tomorrow.
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I’m happy to announce that the “Direct3D, OpenGL and XNA Fieldguide” is back and improved. The article outlines the pros and cons of the major graphics APIs available and should be a useful reference in the back of every beginner graphics programmer’s mind.

A new article has been added to the Wiki, encouraging user-input: Is Direct3D 10 on Windows XP Possible?