DirectX 11

#1 Yet again...
Why don't you search for the forum for response from GG on this?
They have answered this a million gazillion times.

#2 Nice to see that the forums really have gone down hill lately in terms of manners...

It's actually a valid topic to bring up as I myself was looking a few days ago and the most recent discussion on the matter was about 9 months ago (which isn't exactly recent at all).

#3 I have to say I really like the idea of Unreal's kismet editor. I'd love Torque to have a similar visual scripting system.

www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/06/29/epics-tim-sweeney-on-how-unreal-engin...

#4 Seeing there has been no news/blog on t3d development since the 1.2 release over 6 months ago, it's not surprising people are starting to wonder.

#5 What features from DirectX 11 are you interested in?

#6 I'm not sure. I don't even know the full extent as to what DX11 has to offer. I'm just going by what I read about in the press releases.

#7 It's two better than DX9 ;)

The primary features include:

Multi-threaded rendering, which helps with performance, but from what I've been told, it's not a huge deal because there's still a bottleneck on the driver level. It's a major rewrite for us to support multi-threaded rendering.

Vertex Tessellation - Which helps give nice visual outlines on profile shots and some performance boost on terrain (if you implemented it..it's not free).

Direct Compute - Which allows you to write custom programs on the GPU without using OpenCL or CUDA. Which is cool, but GPU programming is fairly difficult since you are basically writing callback functions that run on hundreds of threads at a time. It's great for some things(massively parallizable things like graphics)...not so good for general processing (like anything with more than one if statement).

The features of DX11 probably isn't that important to an indie developer...does sound good on a press release though ;)

If you build a game, you are probably going to be more interested in sharing it with lots of people. Right now, only 40% of people on Steam would be able to play your game.

#8 So what you're saying is that they're all "nice to have" features, but only one actually makes a visual impact?

#9 I've always liked the idea of having Tessellation, and it is a clear move in the right direction :-).

I think bringing the OpenGL GFX Layer up to par (or above to OpenGL 4.1) would be more beneficial so we can support Linux/MacOS at the same level again.

For an indie developer I think having access to those 3 markets is more important.

#10 I think that you guys should add dx11 support. Because the coming Windows 8 just supports dx11 in metro style, and if indie developer wants to make a game for tablet based on Windows 8, they have no choice.

#11 +1

for the tesselation

#12 Here are some docs about this:

(DX9 -> Dx10)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb205073(v=vs.85).aspx

and this:

(DX9/DX10 -> DX11)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476190(v=vs.85).aspx

... So it's a bit complicated.

I honestly think it would be better to get OpenGL up and running. Because you can get DX11 features that way too. And.. it helps in avoiding to break everything just because Microsoft keep changing their minds. Then there is the portability bonus to consider as well.

#13 If you are waiting for DX11 for using graphics cards as a computing platform you would have to be on crack. OpenCL drivers from AMD support every CPU that supports SSE3 instructions. The Intel driver supports chips that have SSE3 and AVX instructions. ATI(AMD) and NVidia support OpenCL already. I think even Via might be on board with this. So who would want yet another generic computing library?

@Eric,
I wrote an OpenCL program that has a for loop and math functions that is 250 times faster than my Numpy implementation. Does that qualify as being more than an 'if' statement in complexity? :)

Question: Does written for DX9 and still works with DX11 drivers qualify as DX11 compatible? Aren't most DX drivers backward compatible?

Quote:I think that you guys should add dx11 support. Because the coming Windows 8 just supports dx11 in metro style, and if indie developer wants to make a game for tablet based on Windows 8, they have no choice.

@Alfred,
Are you sure this applies to programs? Or is this going to be a requirement of hardware vendors which provide graphics cards to provide a DX11 driver or not be certified for Windows 8?

#14 @Frank - Yes, work that good for a GPU tends to be really good for a GPU.

I worked on a welding simulator where we used the GPU to process all the particles, displacement mapping, and normal generation. It was pretty cool. We wrote it using CUDA. www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5OpjLctr-w&feature=watch_response. Actually, the other guys who managed and worked on it are part of this community.

#15 @Eric,
That is nice graphics work! So is that supposed to be simulating a wire feed?

I did some work in Blender using it to create g-code paths for a plasma table my friend and I built. It sure is fun watching a torch cut through 1/2 inch of steel like butter following arcs you created by drawing them in a cad program. I always thought it would be cool to combine the CNC part with a real time image showing the progress the machine is supposed to be making.

The OpenCL code was highly iterative. So it is a good fit for the cores on a graphics card. It was also very fast on the AMD processor I have to add. It was 191 faster on the 8 core AMD I have. I don't know what kind of speedup it would get if the GPU is busy rendering a game though. I will have to try it when T3D is running.

#16 Keep in mind that I am not a programmer... Only an Artist for the time being.

With that said

I think OpenGL 4 should be a bigger priority over Direct X11.

Reasons being -

1. The Ability to port T3D to Linux and Mac OSX. As well as Android and iOS.
2. Runs Faster ( At-least according to VALVe Linux)

BTW - Sorry for the thread necro...

#17 Except that OS X doesn't have OpenGL 4.

#18 OSX doesn't have DirectX anyway.

And yeah linux is remaining very... untapped.
Personally, I buy every single indie bundles that have linux binaries.

#19 @Kyrah: Yeah, so? I was commenting on Benjamin's suggestion to chase OpenGL 4 to port to OS X, when there is no OpenGL 4 to port to on OS X. Not even in the developer betas.

#20 Let's try to stay on topic folks. No sense in going off on an OpenGL tangent in a thread about updating the renderer to support DX11.