A Win? Or A Draw?

[StealthHawk]

ok, what do you guys think about this, assuming it is correctAs we have noted several times already, Microsoft used RADEON 9700 as a target platform for the DirectX 9. However, when they have seen what we have seen, the specifications and capabilities of the NV30, they were impressed not less than we were. After that, the software giant decided to implement som additional features in the DirectX 9 so that developers were able to use them without being limited to their target platform.

DirectX 9 will also support branching in static and dynamic forms, long pixel and vertex shaders "beyond RADEON 9700 DirectX 9", 128-bit color precision and maybe also loops and calls & returns. As a result, when the NV30 will be available, developers will have an API that is able to utilise its features and capabilities. Keeping in mind that NV30 and DirectX 9 schedules are now aligned according to NVidia, we can expect them to appear in the very close timeframe.

will this be just like DX 8.1 and its unused 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 Pixel Shaders?

[Matthyahuw]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
will this be just like DX 8.1 and its unused 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 Pixel Shaders? Only time will tell...but they are mainly unused because DX is developing faster than the game developers can...I mean can you name a game that requires and actually USES DX8 goodies (well)?
I can probably count them on one hand...

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Matthyahuw
Only time will tell...but they are mainly unused because DX is developing faster than the game developers can...I mean can you name a game that requires and actually USES DX8 goodies (well)?
I can probably count them on one hand...

exactly. cg is supposed to alleviate that, but many people seem to think it won't be used at all. so no hope there. and of course i doubt we'll be seeing any DX9 games for quite some time as a whole.

[netviper13]

I really hope to see Cg take off, it would do amazing things for the difficulty of using advanced DX 8+ effects.

[Megatron]

This sounds like Deja Vu for ATI all over again. They went through this with the original Radeon as well. It was a DX8 card..until Microsoft changed the specs again...
Thats gotta burn up ATI.:(

[Philibob]

Does this now mean that the Radeon 9700 is no longer full DX9 card?

[Megatron]

Not sure. It sounds like this may be a DX9.1 kind of situation, where 9700 would be DX9...but not support some of the extra features who knows. Have to watch this develop.

[jbirney]

cg is supposed to alleviate that


No No No No No!!!!!!!


People for the 1000th time the reason we dont have these effects now is NOT because they are too hard to code for. Cg will make life easier for a software developer as it will make the Software developers job much eaiser.

CG CAN NOT MAKE DX8 functions run on DX7 hardware!!!!!!Thats why we have not seen these effects yet. Thats why for a large part the Beyond DX9 stuff of the NV30 will not get use. Thats why harldy any of the DX8.1 effects are used.


And yes I feel that MS once again will break up DX9 ala DX8 and DX8.1 What will be interesting is to see all of the fan boys switch sided. ATI fan boys will say that its not need or will not be used even though a few months ago they were aurging the oppsite. NV fans will say that it will be better than the R300 for this alone even though they were aurging a few months ago that the beyond DX8 stuff the 8500 did not mean a thing.... Let me grab a bowl of popcorn cuz this will be fun to watch :rolleyes:

[StealthHawk]

come on, they can't be that easy. if they were that easy to implement, and didn't take much time/effort, i'm sure we would see more games making use of at least SOME Pixel Shader effects. i mean, WC3 could have benefitted nicely from PS water at the very least.

[Bigus Dickus]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
ok, what do you guys think about this, assuming it is correct

will this be just like DX 8.1 and its unused 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 Pixel Shaders? I think that's exactly what it will be like. ATI has alread made a public statement that the R350 would be DX9.1 compliant. This, and the NV30's "Beyone DX9" hype, would lead me to conclude that the 9700 is fully DX9 compliant, the NV30 is (at least partially) DX9.1 compliant, and the R350 will be DX9.1 compliant.

M$ will simply release an updated DX9 sometime late Q2 or Q3 of next year as DX9.1.

I'm glad NVIDIA is pushing the specs and features of its card. I always thought it was a good thing for ATI to do the same, simply because it means the competition is under pressure to advance. If the two companies get into a "gentleman's agreement" that features won't be advanced so rapidly, then we as consumers lose.

Unfortunately, like nearly every leading graphics card of a DX generation, most of the new features and capabilities of the card will go unused. In other words, not only will the NV30's "Beyond DX9" features be completely untapped for a couple of years to come, but all of the 9700's "DX9" features as well. At least this pushing of features brings us more capable (and faster) hardware.

[Phyre]

Who uses DirectX anyway? OpenGL is much better IMHO.

Phyre

[SnakeEyes]

Originally posted by jbirney



No No No No No!!!!!!!


People for the 1000th time the reason we dont have these effects now is NOT because they are too hard to code for. Cg will make life easier for a software developer as it will make the Software developers job much eaiser.

CG CAN NOT MAKE DX8 functions run on DX7 hardware!!!!!!Thats why we have not seen these effects yet. Thats why for a large part the Beyond DX9 stuff of the NV30 will not get use. Thats why harldy any of the DX8.1 effects are used.


And yes I feel that MS once again will break up DX9 ala DX8 and DX8.1 What will be interesting is to see all of the fan boys switch sided. ATI fan boys will say that its not need or will not be used even though a few months ago they were aurging the oppsite. NV fans will say that it will be better than the R300 for this alone even though they were aurging a few months ago that the beyond DX8 stuff the 8500 did not mean a thing.... Let me grab a bowl of popcorn cuz this will be fun to watch :rolleyes:

:D Agreed.

There's 2 things about all these new features with each generations, the first is jb's point about the hardware currently out, and that's simply that developers want their games to sell to as many people as possible, so they code for the lowest common denominator. Only in special cases do we see otherwise (usually special versions of games released WITH the hardware).

The second is simply my observation that while, for example, my GF3 supports pixel and vertex shaders, any program that I've tried that truly takes advantage of them in any meaningful way usually shows very low performance. The first generation of hardware with the new features serves to get the feature out, but usually doesn't run very well with it in use. Later versions start to optimize and tweak the hardware, and performance can be decent, but I doubt if I was a developer I'd support full DX9 functionality in my games even IF everyone owned 9700's and nV30's. I'd instead wait until most people were using the R350 / nV35, as a minimum, when I expect that those features will actually be usable with decent performance.

Just my $.02. :)

[jbirney]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
come on, they can't be that easy. if they were that easy to implement, and didn't take much time/effort, i'm sure we would see more games making use of at least SOME Pixel Shader effects. i mean, WC3 could have benefitted nicely from PS water at the very least.

In order to properly do pixel and vertex shaders they need to be implemented into the core of the graphics render part of the game engine. And with some of the new idology this is something that usally can not be cut and pasted in. You might have to design your render around these new effects which implies writing the thing from the ground up. This take time. A long time. The game engine has to be somewhat steady before you can work on the maps, code, sound, AI, ect Note you can do some developement in parallel but for the most part you have to have something working well first. Add this up and it takes a long time. UT2003 which will be out soon does not scratch the sufface of DX8(ok it does but I am under an NDA to explain and like Mark said its small amount). It wont be until Epics next big thing until they really use DX8 features and by that time we will have DX9.1 or DX10. Writing shaders is not that hard. Using Cg or Rendermonkey helps cut the time down which is a good thing!

[-=DVS=-]

As we have noted several times already, Microsoft used RADEON 9700 as a target platform for the DirectX 9. However, when they have seen what we have seen, the specifications and capabilities of the NV30, they were impressed not less than we were. After that, the software giant decided to implement som additional features in the DirectX 9 so that developers were able to use them without being limited to their target platform.

DirectX 9 will also support branching in static and dynamic forms, long pixel and vertex shaders "beyond RADEON 9700 DirectX 9", 128-bit color precision and maybe also loops and calls & returns. As a result, when the NV30 will be available, developers will have an API that is able to utilise its features and capabilities. Keeping in mind that NV30 and DirectX 9 schedules are now aligned according to NVidia, we can expect them to appear in the very close timeframe. [/B]

One more proof that Microcrack is full of BS :o



But seriosly i think they are talking about DX9.1 to support extra features of NV30 ,
DX 9.0 and Radeon 9700 aka r300 will be full DX9 card , however there is rumor at Rage3d that r350 is suppose to be DX 9.1 card :rolleyes:


When you look at it this way its all makes sense no more confusion :p

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by jbirney


In order to properly do pixel and vertex shaders they need to be implemented into the core of the graphics render part of the game engine.

this is the explanation i have been looking for, thanks :)

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Phyre
Who uses DirectX anyway? OpenGL is much better IMHO.

Phyre

at least 95% of all games are written for DirectX :rolleyes:


what if NV35 is "beyond DX9.1" and 9.1 specs get changed :p

[-=DVS=-]

DirectX is more advance right now but OpenGl 2 is comeing so no problem ;)

[lunix]

DX is a toy GL is the real thing, IMHO. Not to be elitist or anything but I want what is beyond common, what is beyond easy.
The community waits with baited breath for 2 products right now: UT2003 and DoomIII. DX and GL.
So which one is pushing the envelope? Please reply cause I would love to hear, my humble opinion counts for 1, there is much more.

[-=DVS=-]

Originally posted by lunix
DX is a toy GL is the real thing, IMHO. Not to be elitist or anything but I want what is beyond common, what is beyond easy.
The community waits with baited breath for 2 products right now: UT2003 and DoomIII. DX and GL.
So which one is pushing the envelope? Please reply cause I would love to hear, my humble opinion counts for 1, there is much more.

Doom III is pushing things , UT2003 is a joke IMHO

Unreal II is better bet :rolleyes:

[StealthHawk]

hmm, but what game looked better, UT or Quake 3? OGL vs. DX.

it's safe to say that UT with Detail Textures and/or the 2nd cd of compressed textures looked much better than Q3 did. of course the UT engine was a clunker.

[nutball]

Umm, it's not clear to me you can draw too many valid conclusions about the superiority (or otherwise) of one API over another by making such comparisons.

Personally I found the OpenGL renderer in UT looked worse than the DX renderer. However this could be down to anything, for example: depth of experience of the developers with each API, the quality of the drivers, the time available to duplicate work.

Drivers were a big issue until a few years ago; OpenGL drivers were an after thought for the commodity graphics card boys.

[jbirney]

UT2003 is a joke IMHO

Why do you say that? The UT2003 engine blows anything today out of the water. When Doom3 comes out it will look better. But Doom3 engine still is lacking in some areas ATM.

[-=DVS=-]

Originally posted by jbirney


Why do you say that? The UT2003 engine blows anything today out of the water. When Doom3 comes out it will look better. But Doom3 engine still is lacking in some areas ATM.

Sure engine is good , but i was talking about game , characters look ugly , everyone is cyborg look alike - me thinks make game to futuristic aka Tribes 2 and its gonna suck :rolleyes: :p Original Unreal Tournamen was fun you fight vs other peeps human lookeing people , not cyborgs lame lookeing :rolleyes:


Games that fun to play

HalfLife and all other CounterStrike ect ect
Soldier Of Fortune ect ect
RT Wolfenstein
Red Faction
Unreal Tournamen

Games that suck

Tribes 2 worst ever lol clone of Halo possibly
UT2k3 ugly character looks to futuristic

Offcourse that only my opinion i like more realistic games like HalfLife Counterstrike , SOF2 , Rainbow maybe :rolleyes:

[Philibob]

Games that fun to play

HalfLife and all other CounterStrike ect ect
Soldier Of Fortune ect ect
RT Wolfenstein
Red Faction
Unreal Tournamen

Games that suck

Tribes 2 worst ever lol clone of Halo possibly
UT2k3 ugly character looks to futuristic
Good list of games. Never played Tribes 2 and I'll probably still buy UT2k3 but I agree with you that they should put more human looking people in the game.

[StealthHawk]

isn't Halo a clone of Tribes? both Tribes games were out long before Halo was.

as a side comment, i always liked the fact that Quake 3 had such a variety of player models, whereas in UT they were all human.