A hope to see D3D10 in WinXP through OGL ?

[jim1976]

Direct3D10, which will ship with Windows Vista in a few months, doesn't seem to be a large cause for concern. At first glance it appears to be more of an evolutionary change rather than revolutionary. New shader support will be needed, but extending ours once OpenGL supports it should be pretty easy. Stefan mentioned Microsoft is currently offering a lot of incentives for Windows developers who develop D3D10-only games since they'll only be usable on Vista - there's no plan to backport D3D10 to XP. Dan Kegel asked if that means we should port Wine's forthcoming D3D10 implementation to Windows, which would be relatively easy when we switch to WGL.

To wrap things up, Stefan presented some of the obstacles they've run into. Most games ship with a set of Microsoft helper libraries named D3DX_##.dll. There are approximately 30 different versions of those right now. They contain higher-level functions, such as a shader compiler. There's no problem using the native ones, but they must be installed by the game. Some games don't ship with them and that's a problem. Another big issue is copy protection; but as we noted above there's work being done on that area.

Full article here..

Significant problems on the way, but worth mentioning possibilities to succeed as well..

Discuss

 

[BFG10K]

OpenGL is already exposing DirectX10 functionality on XP (e.g. nVidia's tech demos).

 

[Pryde]

Alot of what direct 10 is about is not improving graphic qaulity but improving the way the GPU works to increase preformance.

As can seen the the unified Shaders, and the new Geometry Shader (which is hardware based as well). Also allows the direct link between the GPU and Memory bypassing the CPU (which the CPU adds more time for the data getting to the GPU and adds more work to the CPU). The changes will let the GPU accelerate particle effects like smoke and explosions, which are usually done on the CPU.

" Games use cube maps to make an object reflect the world around it. To make an object like a stainless steel teapot reflect its surroundings, you have to determine the teapot's surroundings and map it onto the teapot. Normally, this can take six passes, but a game can use the geometry shader and a render target array to create a cube map in one pass. "

"DirectX 10 will increase game performance by as much as six to eight times. Much of that will be accomplished with smarter resource management, improving API and driver efficiencies, and moving more work from the CPU to the GPU. "The entire API and pipeline have been redesigned from the ground-up to maximize performance, and minimize CPU and bandwidth overhead," according to Microsoft. Furthermore, "The idea behind D3D10 is to maximize what the GPU can do without CPU interaction, and when the CPU is needed it?s a fast, streamlined, pipeline-able operation." Giving the GPU more efficient ways to write and access data will reduce CPU overhead costs by keeping more of the work on the video card."





Basically same graphics as DX9 but makes the whole computer more efficent at doing it, in future upgrades to DX10 we are likely to see drastic improvements to the graphics using up all the extra preformance.

**Note, Microsoft claim that the Direct X 10 is up to 8 more efficent that DX9

 

[Assimilator1]

Interesting ,I hope they manage to get DX10 features to XP as I have no intention of upgrading to Vista for years! ,I only just switched from Win2k in May
XP does what I want it to

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
OpenGL is already exposing DirectX10 functionality on XP (e.g. nVidia's tech demos).

I'm aware of that since OGL2.x is capable of reproducing partial if not full functionality of D3D10 through its instructions..
The question is whether this effort has expedient ground to become a reality, since D3D10 is designed with Vista in mind and XP has serious limitations AFAIK from developers statements. According to their words a whole part of XP should be rewritten in order for D3D10 API to be applied, and that was not something they were really excited about..

I don't want to question such claims, but clearly such an effort gives us hope that we might be able to see D3D10 emulation in XP some day in the near future..

 

[Assimilator1]

Hmm ,doesn't sound good!

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Hmm ,doesn't sound good!

actually it does

there is definitely *hope* that we will see DX10 on XP ... in some fashion

MS doesn't want it ... they want you to buy Vista


in a way i think they are shooting themselves ... i see Vista as less important - and certainly the impact of DX 10 --on games -- is still years off.

you gotta love the M$ hype:

"DirectX 10 will increase game performance by as much as six to eight times.

sure ... as much as

:roll:

eventually

when we 1000 shader instuctions and then 65,000 shader instructions ... a bit of a "jump" over today's 100 in the latest games
:Q

 

[xtknight]

I doubt that the wine team will try and replace Windows components to implement like Microsoft has in Vista. Hell, that would require new drivers too, and it's simply impossible that NVIDIA/ATI would support wine in that effort.

Right now wine just consists of open-source equivalents to Windows components. They're files with the same names but with a completely open implementation (there are still plenty of 'stubs' (non-implemented functions)). It can also run native Windows binaries and use them as libraries, but again, with limited support.

What Cededa/TransGaming does is to translate all the Direct3D 9 calls into OpenGL. So far that has worked great, and I can't see that changing. They should be able to translate Direct3D 10 into OpenGL 2.x with all its extensions. But the performance will suffer because it is not a native implementation, that is they probably won't be able to put in all that GPU time-slicing stuff that was planned for DX10.

If Google Earth wants to use DX10, we may seem them hiring the TransGaming team yet again to implement DX10 stuff. They've already done that for the Picasa Linux port, and it has given back to the open-source community. Picasa runs great on wine platforms now.

Then there is SDL, which is a cross-platform graphics library that can translate calls to either DirectX or OpenGL. The thing is, you can use the exact same code across multiple platforms, yet you can use DirectX or OpenGL to actually get stuff done. I believe UT2003 has an SDL implementation. Maybe we'll see more developers using it, but I doubt that.

 

[enz660hp]

I'll probably buy vista anyways...

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: enz660hp
I'll probably buy vista anyways...

the "choice" is Linux ... a Mac system ... or to hold out on XP

i will also buy Vista ... but after the unpaid early adopter bug-testers work it out for MS.
... probably ~SP2 ... until then Win2K and my current rig will do fine.

 

[Assimilator1]

I think the only reason I moved on from Win2k was for multi session DVDs
I might get vista in 3-4yrs

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Pryde
Alot of what direct 10 is about is not improving graphic qaulity but improving the way the GPU works to increase preformance.

As can seen the the unified Shaders, and the new Geometry Shader (which is hardware based as well). Also allows the direct link between the GPU and Memory bypassing the CPU (which the CPU adds more time for the data getting to the GPU and adds more work to the CPU). The changes will let the GPU accelerate particle effects like smoke and explosions, which are usually done on the CPU.

" Games use cube maps to make an object reflect the world around it. To make an object like a stainless steel teapot reflect its surroundings, you have to determine the teapot's surroundings and map it onto the teapot. Normally, this can take six passes, but a game can use the geometry shader and a render target array to create a cube map in one pass. "

"DirectX 10 will increase game performance by as much as six to eight times. Much of that will be accomplished with smarter resource management, improving API and driver efficiencies, and moving more work from the CPU to the GPU. "The entire API and pipeline have been redesigned from the ground-up to maximize performance, and minimize CPU and bandwidth overhead," according to Microsoft. Furthermore, "The idea behind D3D10 is to maximize what the GPU can do without CPU interaction, and when the CPU is needed it?s a fast, streamlined, pipeline-able operation." Giving the GPU more efficient ways to write and access data will reduce CPU overhead costs by keeping more of the work on the video card."





Basically same graphics as DX9 but makes the whole computer more efficent at doing it, in future upgrades to DX10 we are likely to see drastic improvements to the graphics using up all the extra preformance.

**Note, Microsoft claim that the Direct X 10 is up to 8 more efficent that DX9

Yeah is true, DX9 is infinitely scalable, but the performance overhead incurred is just too great, that's why DX10 is created. Since DX10 offers better performance, more effects and better graphics will be created taking advantage of resources.

 

[flexy]

i dont really see the point...guys...XP is old now already...really..its' time for a change. I dont like the PRICE of vista...and for sure many will still be w/ XP for some time....but its kind of pointeless to focus too long on old stuff is new OSes are coming out, new D3D apis etc. Give it 6+ months, one year...XP will be forgotten

 

[slash196]

Vista is never touching my computer. Draconian DRM that hamstrings my computer and kills performance? Uh, no thanks. I don't care how pretty your games are, MS, I'll switch to Linux before I "upgrade" to Vista.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

Originally posted by: slash196
Vista is never touching my computer. Draconian DRM that hamstrings my computer and kills performance? Uh, no thanks. I don't care how pretty your games are, MS, I'll switch to Linux before I "upgrade" to Vista.

you'll upgrade. or you'll go to consoles. i intend to stay with xp/linux and move my gaming over to consoles. its the only way.

 

[Assimilator1]

Originally posted by: flexy
i dont really see the point...guys...XP is old now already...really..its' time for a change. I dont like the PRICE of vista...and for sure many will still be w/ XP for some time....but its kind of pointeless to focus too long on old stuff is new OSes are coming out, new D3D apis etc. Give it 6+ months, one year...XP will be forgotten

lol ,no chance ,what planet are you from? XP will be used for years to come ,sure maybe in 2-3+yrs support will fall away but it won't be completely forgotten for a long time.
It's old ,so what? as long it does the job I & many others couldn't careless how old it is ,I only switched from Win2k last May ,& that was for just 1 minor thing.
Though if future games are only DX10 then yes that would be a good reason to switch ,though I'd be really pi**ed if I'm forced down that route!

I'm hoping that somehow XP will end up with DX10

 

[VirtualLarry]

Chances are MS has some top-secret build of DX10 for XP waiting somewhere. Kind of like the DX5 for NT4 files that ended up floating around for a while. MS wanted to force people to W2K for newer DX versions, remember? Same story here I bet.

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Hmm ,doesn't sound good!

actually it does

there is definitely *hope* that we will see DX10 on XP ... in some fashion

MS doesn't want it ... they want you to buy Vista


in a way i think they are shooting themselves ... i see Vista as less important - and certainly the impact of DX 10 --on games -- is still years off.

you gotta love the M$ hype:

"DirectX 10 will increase game performance by as much as six to eight times.

sure ... as much as

:roll:

eventually

when we 1000 shader instuctions and then 65,000 shader instructions ... a bit of a "jump" over today's 100 in the latest games
:Q

I'm quietly hoping that between the DX10 lockout, Office 2003 crackdown, draconian licensing, support for DCMA etc microsoft will finally succeed in cooking its own goose.

 

[MotF Bane]

Would it be possible to emulate the facets of Vista necessary for DX10 gaming on XP? Maybe after all the hackers have their fun with Vista?

Is Linux going to start having DX10 support?