AMD: No DirectX 12, Microsoft: Hold on a minute

[wand3r3r]

“There will be no DirectX 12. That was it. As far as we know there are no plans for DirectX 12,”

“DirectX is the world’s leading low-level interface for gaming and graphics. Microsoft is actively investing in DirectX as the unified graphics foundation for all of our platforms,” the company said in a statement. “DirectX is evolving and will continue to evolve. We have absolutely no intention of stopping innovation with DirectX.”

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/amd-roy-taylor-directx12/

 

[Silverforce11]

Lets hope no dx12 for a long time cos dx11 isnt even being fully used now.

 

[akugami]

I'll have to agree with Silverforce11.

Considering where we're at, I think any short term upgrades are more incremental in terms of graphics. Rather, I think it's about introducing new technologies to increase efficiency and also technologies that help game engines scale from low end to high end more easily.

 

[Arkadrel]

Microsoft’s statement seems to be as bland and perfunctory as any denial-of-rumour release. But as Mr. Taylor is far from an uninformed outsider (he stressed in e-mails that he wasn’t authorized to speak on Microsoft’s behalf), one has to wonder what he knows that brought him to make his claim that the end of DirectX was nigh.

“[AMD’s] investment in Open CL, and in pushing what’s possible with Direct X 11.1 – and our commitment to 4K resolutions and to gaming in general means that gamers can expect us to keep delivering new cutting edge gaming experiences,” he said. “What we did in supporting the team behind TressFX [an AMD-developed tessellation technology that makes hair look really nice], and let’s remember that it’s the fine team at Crystal Dynamics that delivered this, is just the beginning. There are abundant opportunities in pushing what we can do inside of the sandbox and between sandboxes.”

Sounds like they want to use more and more OpenCL technologies to enrich the graphics.

Lets hope no dx12 for a long time cos dx11 isnt even being fully used now.

^ this. Theres still lots of life left in DX11.

 

[Mem]

Sounds like they want to use more and more OpenCL technologies to enrich the graphics.




^ this. Theres still lots of life left in DX11.

I think we are like at the old WinXP stage where DX9 was around for a long time ie many years before DX10 came with Vista so think DX12 will come but not for quite awhile IMHO.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

It may be different, but it will be there all the same.

 

[Spjut]

Lets hope no dx12 for a long time cos dx11 isnt even being fully used now.

Nah, just bring it out and let the developers choose whether to use it or not. It's clear DX11/11.1 will stay for a long time though, with the next-gen consoles having DX11.1 feature sets, and Windows 7's huge userbase.


I''ve always been most interested in the possible performance increases with newer DirectX versions, and as long as I can get 20-30% better performance just by supporting DX12, that's all fine with me

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Honestly, that would be an unnecessary obstacle in the way btw next gen pcs and consoles.

 

[Pottuvoi]

DX12 or DX11 shader model 6 should come in 2014 with next gen GPUs.
Stopping evolution of hardware and API layer just because some developers do not use the previous iteration is just stupid.

Personally I cannot wait for new hardware stages and removal of some archaic limitations from hardware.

 

[Arkadrel]

“There will be no DirectX 12. That was it. As far as we know there are no plans for DirectX 12,”

Bold statement (in red). And he ll probably get miss quoted alot for useing it lmao.

It just sounds like he doesnt "know" of any DirectX 12 in development,
so He likely just means we ll be stuck with DirectX 11 for a few years.

 

[Eureka]

Microsoft doesnt make DirectX upgrades possible in windows.
You cant install DirectX 11 on windows XP or 95 ect ect.
You need it to play games, because of developers choices.
Your forced to upg windows.

ei. DirectX is a sales gimmick, in some sense.

Will there be a DirectX 12 anytime soon? maybe.
Will it have anything in it, that ll better the community at large? probably not.

Ofc there will be a new directX at some point, its just not right around the corner.




Research for research's sake is fine, I agree.

How is DX a sales gimmick? In fact, it's about as far from a sales gimmick as it allows coding across platforms.

WinXP is 12 years old, Win95 is 18 years old. Those are legacy platforms... they probably don't even carry the libraries required for newer coding. At some point you have to cut off old hardware, you can't just keep developing for platforms from two decades ago.

 

[Arkadrel]

they probably don't even carry the libraries required for newer coding.

Yes but is that intentional by Microsoft? it is possible to make a OS in such a way, you could potentially "upg" a directX version without haveing to go to a new OS?

I suspect its not a matter of "its not possible".
Its a matter of "this drives sales", so why bother trying any other way.

To me that makes it a sales gimmick.



My Point:

Mircosoft uses DirectX to force people to upg windows =
smart (for them) because it helps them profit wise.

THUS at some point there will be more DirectX versions.

 

[Eureka]

Yes but is that intentional by Microsoft? it is possible to make a OS in such a way, you could potentially "upg" a directX version without haveing to go to a new OS?

I suspect its not a matter of "its not possible".
Its a matter of "this drives sales", so why bother trying any other way.

To me that makes it a sales gimmick.

It's possible. But you also have to weigh in carrying older libraries. At some point you have to trade compatibility for efficiency. When you try to keep everything, it becomes bloatware.

I am not privy to the design of Windows, but I'd suspect it's more for keeping the environment lean. It has less to do with sales, I think, just because Microsoft has a good history of keeping their legacy products relevant and that they will sell copies of systems regardless of the OS revision (they make sales on new PCs, not new Windows). But at some point you just get tired of coding for old systems.

 

[Arkadrel]

...but I'd suspect it's more for keeping the environment lean.

If theres one thing windows is not its lean

Remember Vista? takeing up like 20gigs after a fresh install?
All the useless services and weird programs that mircosoft makes you run for no reason.

To me Microsoft is about compatability and ease of use, not about being lean.

I believe directX is about sales.
As long as there arnt alternatives used by developers.... everyone will be useing Windows.

 

[Pottuvoi]

Bold statement (in red). And he ll probably get miss quoted alot for useing it lmao.

It just sounds like he doesnt "know" of any DirectX 12 in development,
so He likely just means we ll be stuck with DirectX 11 for a few years.

If he has any idea what AMD is doing, he should know that they have product aimed for DX12 or DX11 SM6.. (what ever it will be called.)

If he doesn't know..
Well it would pretty much what I expect from marketing, just fanfare what you have and others will tell when to start to talk on new product.

History shows that new shader model comes every 3-4 years, this is something that GPU manufacturers pressure to happen.
It's not just something that MS says would be nice to have and manufacturers follow..

 

[-Slacker-]

“DirectX is the world’s leading low-level interface for gaming and graphics.[...]"

So DX is a low-level API now? Is that why PCs need like 100% overhead compared to consoles?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

When is ray tracing coming?

 

[NTMBK]

When is ray tracing coming?

How long is a piece of string?

 

[FalseChristian]

Ray tracing is already here and is supported on NVidia GPUs from the GTX 4xx series and up.

There has to be a DirectX 12. Microshit can't allow OpenGL to have more of a foothold in gaming or nobody will 'upgrade' from Windows 7 to Windows 8 where, I imagine, DirectX 12
will only be supported.

 

[Elixer]

It's possible. But you also have to weigh in carrying older libraries. At some point you have to trade compatibility for efficiency. When you try to keep everything, it becomes bloatware.

I am not privy to the design of Windows, but I'd suspect it's more for keeping the environment lean. It has less to do with sales, I think, just because Microsoft has a good history of keeping their legacy products relevant and that they will sell copies of systems regardless of the OS revision (they make sales on new PCs, not new Windows). But at some point you just get tired of coding for old systems.

Not at all, there really was no technical reason why MS's old OSes couldn't be upgraded to use the newer DX stuff.
If the devs used openGL instead, they could enable the exact same feature set that DX 11+ has, and it still would work fine on XP or higher.

It really is just a way to force people to upgrade.
For each version of DX, there is a library(dll) that takes care of the calls, there really is no upkeep involved besides shipping the OS with those dlls. Sure, you can code those libs to take some advantage of the newer kernel, but, it really isn't required. That is MS's choice.

 

[Arkadrel]

When is ray tracing coming?

When they can have it running demo's that look as impressive as current non Ray traceing ones, in real time, at decent FPS.

That however still looks far off.

Unless someone has some secret sauce hidden away somewhere with a much better way of doing it (ray traceing), its gonna take along time, before it becomes mainstream.

Ei. a paradigme shift like when 3Dfx came out with 3D acceleration, and Voodoo cards.

 

[Jaydip]

It will evolve but slowly, it is nothing new http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-to-retire-xna-tools-no-plans-to-abandon-directx

 

[magomago]

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing; there is always a back/forth with anything that is mature.

Direct X is at the point where I'd go "WTF" if it was never updated, but where I'd also go "WTF" if it was updated too frequently....a manageable software life cycle is probably the best development path moving forward for DX to grow.

 

[-Slacker-]

It could also be a matter of the diminishing returns of improving visuals. The better a game looks, the harder it is to make it look even better, even if the poly count and texture size increases steadily. There is probably nothing you could add to dx 11 right now that would make games look noticeably better.

 

[cmdrdredd]

What we need is higher polygon counts and the hardware to push them. You could take a super high poly count model on 1080p and it would look tons better than playing Far Cry 3 for example on 4k resolutions.

I don't think we necessarily need a new DX at all at this point in time. Just need better ways of using current tech. Most games probably don't even use every available feature because of hardware constraints.