NS 2 DX9 only?
RebellionElite
Join Date: 2011-07-27 Member: 112530Members
Join Date: 2011-07-27 Member: 112530Members
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While I generally agree, I've encountered problems while trying to run old programs that worked on XP, but not in Win7. I get the impression that they dropped supporting compatibility for some older 16bit/Win95/Win98 programs that I personally still have to use in my work.
@op, DX9 is fine imo. Personally, I care much more about the gameplay/modibility of NS2/spark then having cutting engine graphics/graphical tools.
@op, DX9 is fine imo. Personally, I care much more about the gameplay/modibility of NS2/spark then having cutting engine graphics/graphical tools.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's the only issue I have had with win 7 is compatibility with some older programs and games(unfortunately even including oblivion), but to me it's still worth it due to the improvements over XP(built-in search function, higher DX support, and the 64bit xp issues). You can still run those old games on windows 7 as well if you have dosbox however.
The DX version however doesn't matter much to me anyways, and with NS2's performance I would say definitely hold off on DX11 until that is fixed if it's planned obviously.
Though the current infestation is using decals so may not work the best ATM, i was always surprised they use decals as opposed to a blend material controlled by vertex colour, or could have rigged something up by using the world position of different pixels in material and comparing there distance to a vector that would represent the center of the infestation.
ya but you lack dx 10, and 11 which will leave you behind with modern games, and you will not be able to run some new applications, and your not going to be able to take advantage of all your ram, since 64bit XP is ######.
if you need to run a few old applications, which im sure aren't very resource hungry set up a virtual machine with XP in it, or duel boot.
EDIT:
Seriously the forums censored a works i didn't even think was considered a swear and is part of daily language for most.
I don't need DX10+, now if there were actual games coming out that are actually worth my time and somehow have some stupidly bad design decisions to not include DX9 and shader3.0. I'd still be hard to convince to actually upgrade. DX10 and DX11 don't bring anything useful to the table for me at least. Sure new rending options are nice for the developers and people who actually care for that stuff. But the sad thing is that most games in this day and age seem to go the route of bling bling and no or bad content... Indie games is where it's at man, they have to be innovative and create good quality gameplay/content, due to their small market share!
And my rig happens to be configured for windows XP, ergo I have 2Gb of dual channel memory (also the reason why I'm not on Win7 yet). Now if I were to upgrade, which I'm not forced to do in terms of gaming, what with the consoles dragging the actual requirements down to PS3. I don't see myself upgrading in the next one or two years (maybe not even then) with this already 3 year old rig, unless some shader type is needed for some game I want to play. Had to upgrade my Ati850XT for this very reason, due to lack of support for shader 3.0 (2.0b max for the 850XT)
<b>I play games first and foremost for content and gameplay, graphics are nothing more the icing on the cake.</b>
Dead Island for instance, looks nice and runs VERY smooth on max settings. Fact is with my rig being more powerful than the PS3, I am not worried at all. And PC games were always designed to be highly configurable in terms of adjusting the graphics options...
As I said, DX10 or DX11 should certainly not be mandatory in my opinion, just optional...
Either way D3D11 support as an optional would be nice though I don't know of how difficult at this point that would be to tack on to the engine.
So yeah, it's over-taking.
As I said, DX10 or DX11 should certainly not be mandatory in my opinion, just optional...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I hope that behind that statement it doesn't mean that you or anyone else has come to implicitly expect some games to be crappily ported versions of console games. lord knows we have enough of those suffering from consolitis already from companies looking to cash in, thinking that we are stupid enough to just accept an inferior product that caters to the lowest common denominator & doesn't take advantage of the PC's capabilities
Not saying all games that come out are bad, there are some good ones in development, PC only titles even, but still PC means highly configurable (lower GPU settings are possible, hence no need for a mandatory DX10+, sure those features can go ingame for people who can handle it)... It's just the big players in town tend to be quite counter innovative :(
And of course support for winXP will eventually die out (MS already halted official support apart from occasional patching), but that doesn't mean winXP is now completely useless :P
Again! Indie devs FTW (innovative ones that is :D)
By "(sort of)" for 10 I mean: 1. it wasn't as stable as 9, and 2. any performance gains were lost to the large resource footprint that was the vista OS. So I'm glad 10 is dead and we're on to 11.
D3D11 comparatively to D3D9 runs better for the same fidelity, though most games use D3D11 to push the fidelity further with all that extra breathing room and new features. So it's hard to see the gains beyond "it'd look prettier in DX11" granted that's what you'd likely reinvest the extra performance back into.
Making finished effects for D3D9 and D3D11 would likely be more work than they want to do though I realize and they probably wont adopt D3D11 for that reason. Most games even bothering to use 11 will be a long way off likely since it's not profitable to do just one or the other with the near split market share between Pre and post Vista Operating systems. Doing work to support both makes your game more expensive to develop. Probably not something they can really afford to invest into.
So most of my talk is just for argument's sake and wishing vista hadn't been such garbage, setting back D3D progression and adoption by years.
In short: It'd be nice to have and holds some merit adopting, but is unlikely from a business standpoint.
DX11 is better from a performance perspective but since ns2 is mostly CPU bound ATM it wouldn't help a great deal.
DX11 offers superior performance over DX9, if you properly implement it, and better graphic fidelity. It is multi-threaded.
Didnt you read the posts just above yours?
but yea and the minimum is dx 9d or i think 9b i for get
DX11 offers superior performance over DX9, if you properly implement it, and better graphic fidelity. It is <u>multi-threaded.</u><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
couldn't agree more. But the engine still being built, so I guess it will support dx11 much later but i hope sooner then later. I just hope dx20 won't come out when we update to dx11 :P
DX11 offers superior performance over DX9, if you properly implement it, and better graphic fidelity. It is multi-threaded.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
>.<
Um, you do realize ALL GPUs and ALL rendering systems are multi-threaded?
If you're referring to support for multi-core processing then sure DX11 improved that, but adding threads != better performance. It takes time to do it properly to get those performance gains, time they don't really have at this point.
Also, Re: OpenGL, no, NS2 is currently using DX9, but they have previously stated all of those mechanics in the engine are modularized so they can be swapped out for OpenGL calls instead at a future date for Mac/Linux support.
Oh, that makes much more sense now. Mistook you for someone slinging techy words without knowing what they meant.
My second point about taking the time to add this in though still stand I believe.
Even the article states it can help with the performance of CPU limited games.
Right now, NS2, maxed out @ 1920 x 1200, is barely using 50% of my GTX470. Now if we could thrust more of the load to my GPU, we could help ease the CPU bottleneck. Of course, my CPU is a Q6600 @ 3.3GHZ, so it's old and not even that high of an OC, but regardless, it would help considerably.
No offense to the devs either, I mean, they're Indie, they don't have a huge staff or budget, but regardless of this fact, I dislike how state of the art they claim their engine to be, even with all the spiffy tricks turned on, it's still small corridor based, with decent texture work, a great lighting system for sure, and once the new animation system is in, it'll be nice.
But to have a state of the art Engine, with the latest stuff, as their FAQ says about SPARK, and then to not have DX11, or many of the other improvements made. I get that it's half-way done, though, so in time, sure. Spark can look impressive at times. I realize they have to get rid of all the flash and implement more optimized lua and whatnot, but still. They claim to be working on a cutting edge engine, which graphic wise, can stack against F.E.A.R from 2005 at current. That's the Jupiter EX Engine.
whatever man, i had to put away RAGE because of the 2001 blurry textures (thank you console design) and wait for a texture pack..
and thats a AAA game made by THEE originators of FPS games, id software!! (doom, quake etc) half the games i play today i am scoffing at the textures but in my book, UWE is doing just fine in the graphics department. its beautiful and will only get more so with atmospherics that have been hinted at. maybe if they included a detail layer for textures? but even then its still so low priority. (onos!)
i do agree with dx11 being superior and gpu parallel dispatching being needed though. but that could be post 1.0, maybe when they work on opengl implementation for linux etc? the engine will have to play nice with properly using GPUs before dx11 is even considered, so that the dx9 crowd can play smoothly.
nice documentation from GDC, btw. DICE are geniuses. EA is their evil master.
Right now, NS2, maxed out @ 1920 x 1200, is barely using 50% of my GTX470. Now if we could thrust more of the load to my GPU, we could help ease the CPU bottleneck. Of course, my CPU is a Q6600 @ 3.3GHZ, so it's old and not even that high of an OC, but regardless, it would help considerably.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Anandtech forums are down, so I can't read what you're referencing, but how could DX11 contribute to a solution to the on-going issue of Lua's performance? GPU usage is this low because the game simply doesn't use a lot of graphic-intensive material at this point, and of course the massive CPU-bottleneck imposed prevents the GPU from ever really flexing it's muscles. Fact of the matter is that Lua's design-paradigm is very much single-threading and there aren't really any acceptable methods of offloading that to other cores or indeed the GPU via GPGPU computing.
I agree Rage PC release was a ###### up, so does Carmack, and he'll release a texture pack, and there are ways to fix the other issues, but look @ Rage here, when it works right:
<img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6173/6233330495_31ebd8ce13_b.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
The problem is the way the Engine automatically degrades to keep a constant 60FPS, this can be disabled, and better graphical effects can be tweaked in. It's a beautiful game, if setup right, and has proper textures. Really nice.