jimmysmitty :
I think the reasoning why DX10 has yet to become a standard is because the GPU vendore (ATI/nVidia) are iffy in going to a unified AA system like DX10.1 will have.
I like some of the effects from DX10 but its not always about graphics. If the graphics are great but the game play sucks (ahem, Crysis) then whats the point?
Well, according to John Carmack, Owner and CTO of Id, it was simply because DX10 didnt offer them anything significant. IRT game play, DX10 really doesnt do anything for it. The following interview with Carmack is from CES 2007, over a year old, but at that time the DX 9 Tech 5 was still early in its developement.
Below the interview, find a link to a youtube video of a tech 5 demo from 2007. It is stunning, and on DX9.
Here is a 2008 update on Tech 5 and screen shot from you tube demo. Mind blowing detail
The actual video of Carmack answering direct questions about DX 10 and Ids intent to not adopt it is located
here , at gametrailers.com. This video is pt 3. I dont recall if the comments were in the other parts and its late so Im not going to search -- youll have to do that yourself, but Carmack, while politcally correct, was clearly not impressed.
DX 10 was really little more than a Vistagimick, designed to suck the unwary into purchasing the next gen M$ crapware. MS's claims that you would need Vista for DX10, were much like the Creative/Daniel K scandel. Just as Creatives claims that its older hardware could not run with full functionality on Vista, and that you would have to buy new hardware proved to be false (as proven by the modder Daniel K,) the DX 10 claims were proven false when it was hacked for XP quite sometime ago. Unfortunately, it appears MS got to the individuals who cracked the code and sadly had the hacks pulled from the net. No suprise there.
As far as the death of XP forcing the shift to Vista/DX 10, the saying goes "Reports of my untimely demise have been greatly exaggerated!" While M$ deliberatly attempted to exagerate the numbers of users adopting Vista by including the number of license sales to OEMs, that little trick was caught and exposed for the ruse it was. Now, over a year after its introduction, the reality of Vista sales has long been exposed by the media as not being what M$ claimed. And while MS is offically ending support for XP, the federal govenemt via DoN/NMCI has only recently switched from 2000 to XP. They will not be switching to Vista anytime soon. Here, MS has 2 options; Continue to support XP for the US govenment on the sly, or stop support altogether and force the govenments hand. Should MS choose the latter course, they will most likely find themselve faced with the same regulation as the automotive manufacturing industry IRTs to support: Auto manufacturers must continue making parts for cars for ten years after the model is superceded, meaning if you buy a brandnew 2008 whatever, and the car is completely redesigned for 2009, you, the consumer, are assured parts availability until 2018. I doubt this is a game anyone in the industry wants MS to play, because if they do try it, the entire industry will likely feel the aftershock and they all very well may be federally mandated to support their products for X years after EOL, meaning MS will have to support XP for everyone, not just DoD. And they will have to do so for quite some time, which would put an even bigger damper on Vista and future OS sales.
Whats that got to do with this? Simple DX 9 is not dead, and DX 10 was a development whose time really never came. As for DX 11, I wouldnt worry about that in the least little bit as only a few people know what schemes will revolve around that.
As always, skip anything crap-i-pedia has to say on the subject, or any subject for that fact of the matter.
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John Carmack on DX 10
GI: Since you’re moving ahead with the new technology within the Doom 3 engine, you’re not worried about adopting that for DX10?
Carmack: No, because the DX9 stuff—actually, DX9 is really quite a good API [application programming interface] level. Even with the D3D [Direct3D] side of things, where I know I have a long history of people thinking I’m antagonistic against it. Microsoft has done a very, very good job of sensibly evolving it at each step--they’re not worried about breaking backwards compatibility--and it’s a pretty clean API. I especially like the work I’m doing on the 360, and it’s probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I’ve worked with.
GI: A lot of gamers are in the boat right now--and I’m in the boat as well--where they’re saving money to buy a new rig. I was at QuakeCon two years ago with my computer, and I was just slow. So I’ve been saving cash to buy a new rig to handle the next-gen of PC games. Quake Wars, Spore and Crysis are all coming out on the horizon, and there’s a big push for PC games this year. Do you think gamers should take the plunge now for DX10, or do you think they should wait and stick with DX9.
Carmack: I don’t think that there’s any huge need for people to jump right now. All the high-end video cards right now—video cards across the board—are great nowadays. This is not like it was years ago, where they’d say, “This one’s poison, stay away from this. You really need to go for this.” Both ATI and Nvidia are going a great job on the high end. Internally, we’re still using more Nvidia cards, but it’s not necessarily because we’ve done a careful analysis and we decided that they’re superior in some way. They have better OpenGL support, but they’re all good cards right now. Personally, I wouldn’t jump at something like DX10 right now. I would let things settle out a little bit and wait until there’s a really strong need for it. I doubt there’s going to be any radical, obvious sweet spot where it’s like, “Now is the time to go get things.” It’s fairly mature, the pace that things are going on, and I don’t expect there’s going to be any huge sea changes in the way things are moving.
John Carmack on DX 10
Youtube of John Carmack on the ID tech 5 engine
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