Driver request : DirectX 10 support

Darktib · Post by **Darktib** » Sun May 11, 2008 1:46 pm

Actually Irrlicht support only DX9 and 8 (and ogl^^) but when Irrlicht will support DX10? Is it planned for v1.5 or not planned?

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Sun May 11, 2008 10:43 pm

No, it's not planned for the next years, nor does it seem necessary. Most today's commercial games run much better in dx9 mode than in dx10. If you need some of the advanced features from dx10, better use the extensions for OpenGL. Otherwise wait for DX10.5, which might work as expected.

Zeuss · Post by **Zeuss** » Mon May 12, 2008 2:06 am

TBH the only reason most games run worse in DX10 vs DX9 is that they are pushing more effects in DX10 than DX9 (probably MS's doing, look at the pretties DX10 does).

I'll see if I can dig it up, but some game does the same in effects in both (i.e the DX10 version looks the same) and it did get a significant fps boost. DX10 has a lot less overhead on most of the draw calls, but then they just push the card to do more. Gah a quick google has just desproved me. So scrap that argument

In theory

DX10 is faster than DX9 draw call to draw call but that isn't being seen.

The main probably with DX10 is Vista, which is still being avoided like the plague, even MS knows that it is a lemon and is bringing forwards Windows 7 (which is looking good).

Thinking about it, Vista is meant to be a lemon:

Win 95 - Lemon
Win 98 - Good
Win ME - Lemon
Win XP - Good
Win Vista - Lemon
Win 7 - Better be good

I was going to put Win2K in there as good, but it wasnt meant to be a consumer OS, WinME was the consumer/home OS Win2k was the NT4 replacement, but anyone who was anyone knew Win2k was the OS to have.

This is kinda off topic and pointless, I was thinking about writing a DX10 driver, but then that meant having Vista installed. The other thing is to get full power from DX10 would probably make API breaking changes in the order that nodes are rendered, otherwise there would not be much improvement, apart from getting shader model 4.0.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Mon May 12, 2008 3:02 am

I really doubt a dying need for a DX10 driver, but if one is needed then check out 3Demon.

The only thing that I can honestly say is pretty cool is the geometry shaders that you can utilize with DX10. Besides that there is nothing that can't be done in OpenGL/DX9.

Virion · Post by **Virion** » Mon May 12, 2008 4:49 am

off topic a bit. what happened to opengl 3? why isn't it release yet?

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Mon May 12, 2008 1:48 pm

Virion wrote:off topic a bit. what happened to opengl 3? why isn't it release yet?

No one knows. There's been some article link about that a few days on reddit: http://scriptionary.com/blog/2008/05/08 ... opengl-30/

DX 10 sucks for the simple reason that it's not available for any system but for Vista. That's a new low in portability even compared to the usual low MS efforts to be portable. Add to that the 10.1 joke which makes already the first consumer cards incompatible and it starts to be a nightmare. They try so hard to abuse DX10 as a selling point for Vista that they give a sh*t for the users. I would be relucant to offer any support to DX10 simply for those reasons (but I have no Vista so I couldn't do so anyway).

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Mon May 12, 2008 9:01 pm

Virion wrote:off topic a bit. what happened to opengl 3? why isn't it release yet?

IIRC I assumed an official release near then end of this year in a thread last summer. I'm not sure if the ARB will make it until then, but I hope for some clarifications at least so we can arrange for the upcoming changes.
Anyway, neither the OGL3 driver will make it into Irrlicht before Irrlicht 2.0 or so - it's also simply not necessary.

BlindSide · Post by **BlindSide** » Tue May 13, 2008 6:10 am

Yeah we barely support most of the DX 9 / OGL 2.0 features, so lets focus on getting those implemented first. I hear that texture formats in DX10 are a pain in the ass, and that all the meshes have to be implemented as VBOs.

On another note, I think OpenGL ES 2.0 support is well underway and some of the changes being made to accommodate this may make Irrlicht more flexible when it comes to stuff like adding new texture formats and shader material renderers. (Both essential for DX 10)

Cheers

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Tue May 13, 2008 12:11 pm

Yes BlindSide that stuff is true. And also, if I heard correctly, everything needs to be implemented as a shader since there is no fixed functionality.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Tue May 13, 2008 3:42 pm

Yeah, but the very same holds for ogl-es 2, so we'll see when OpenGL 3 comes out for real

Darktib · Post by **Darktib** » Wed May 14, 2008 7:34 pm

After a long search on the web on think i agree with BlindSide...

rogerborg · Post by **rogerborg** » Mon May 19, 2008 12:38 pm

Zeuss wrote:anyone who was anyone knew Win2k was the OS to have.

"was"? I'm still gamely hanging on to 2K as my main development and gaming environment, although it's getting a little trickier now.

XP seems like a pointless "upgrade" (since the first thing I do on any XP box is to disable as much of it as possible), and Vista is clearly a downgrade, so I guess I'll have to eke a few more years out of 2K until Windows 7 comes along.

lostclimategames · Post by **lostclimategames** » Mon May 19, 2008 9:15 pm

DX 10 sucks for the simple reason that it's not available for any system but for Vista. That's a new low in portability even compared to the usual low MS efforts to be portable. Add to that the 10.1 joke which makes already the first consumer cards incompatible and it starts to be a nightmare. They try so hard to abuse DX10 as a selling point for Vista that they give a sh*t for the users. I would be relucant to offer any support to DX10 simply for those reasons (but I have no Vista so I couldn't do so anyway).

so i suppose all games should support software rendering too for those without hardware acceleration, and of course pixel shaders should not be a must.

come one, technology evolves, way back since quake, people get left behind temporarily. I dont have vista, but im not going to complain, its my fault for not wanting to shell out money for a new operating system quite yet, but thats my choice... cant stand complaining about evolving tech, and how it sometimes puts restraints on people.

Dorth · Post by **Dorth** » Mon May 19, 2008 10:53 pm

It's not paying money the problem. I have a legit Vista, doesn't mean I have it installed. Vista is simply crap. It loses at all levels and most devs just plain don't want to have to deal with it if they can avoid it.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Tue May 20, 2008 12:42 am

lostclimategames wrote: cant stand complaining about evolving tech, and how it sometimes puts restraints on people.

I didn't complain about evolving tech, but that MS this time does not even try to care anymore about anyone - not about users, not about developers. Evolving tech is fine, but most companies (let's say all but MS) care about the transition whenever they put out some new technology. And even Microsoft did that mostly so far. Until Vista that is. They wrote some stupid excuse for not releasing DX 10 to XP, which was basically telling "it would have been hard and more work for us". Therefore now every single game developer on the world who wants to support DX 10 must additionally support DX9 because there is simply *no way* to ignore that so far. MS did nothing - everybody else has now double amount of work. Great! So yeah, MS saves a little work, they may have another marketing argument for Vista - and everybody else is f*cked. Name me a single(!) other company which decides to stop caring about XP currently and started releasing API's for Vista only. And don't tell me it's easier for other companies - I guess MS still has one or the other developer which maybe could have known enough about XP programming to port this lib. And seeing how they run around and try to shop for companies I also don't think that they couldn't afford it.

So no - this is not about evolving tech. It's possible to advance tech without hurting everybody else in the process. They did go too far this time - they not just stopped completely caring about anyone else but they actively starting hurting people in the process and for *that* reason - and not because of tech-update-trouble - I don't want to support DX10. Btw. I'm developing for MS systems since around Dos 3.11 - so I supported already a lot of the stuff they produced so far - even if it was crap sometimes. DX 10 isn't - it actually contains a lot of good ideas. But that's not the point here. I want to put pressure on them - I want to make clear that there are developers not supporting DX10 until they port it back to XP. And yeah, I realize that they probably won't care, but it's all I can do. And who knows - maybe I even reach enough other developers that MS hears about it.