Is Doom 3 a Directx9 game?

[Dark1]

When I say this I mean is Doom 3 a game that was made specifically for DirectX 9.
I was under the impression that Doom 3 was meant to take full advantage of DirectX 8 but now I hear it takes full advantage of DirectX 9. Is that correct?

 

[DaveSimmons]

No. It is an OpenGL game that uses low-precision shaders. which means the shader-challenged nVidia cards run it quite well.

There are several threads on this in Video and General Hardware if you want more details (and lots of bickering ). Look for threads with D3, Doom3, HL2, Half-Life, Dx9, or shader in the title.

 

[crapito]

to get all the benefits of the game engine, DX9 is needed, but it should play fine on lower hardware.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: crapito
to get all the benefits of the game engine, DX9 is needed, but it should play fine on lower hardware.

That's Half-Life 2. Carmack Has Spoken and stated that the D3 engine did not need the 24-bit shaders the HL2 engine needs for best quality, that the fast 12- & 16-bit shaders of nV cards did not compromise quality. Also D3 is an OpenGL game not Direct3D.

 

[BenSkywalker]

From a technical standpoint, it is what most people would consider a DX7 calss game(it is OpenGL, but it uses DX7 style technology for the most part however DX8 boards will increase the IQ a decent amount due to greater then 32bit precission on an internal basis) however it will use the features of DX8 and DX9 level hardware to reduce the number of passes the game requires. What takes seven passes on a GeForce2 may take four on a GF3/GF4/R2xx or one on a FX/R3xx(just as a general example, don't quote me on the exacts ).

Pretty much, Doom3 will take advantage of whatever hardware you have to improve the graphics up to a point and then to improve performance(not just because a board is faster, but also because it reduces the amount of work it has to do). No game we have heard about takes full advantage of DX9(luckily) as there isn't any full DX9 class hardware out there(that would require PS/VS 3.0).