Vista DX10 a bad idea...Gabe - Valve Software

[SUBMAN1]

Like we all didn't know this already, but there ya go...

-S

Untie, rewind

By Wily Ferret (javascript:__doPostBack('article_body$lnkEmailFor m','')): Monday 27 August 2007, 09:52

GABE NEWELL, the popular director of Valve Software, has berated Microsoft for limiting the uptake of DirectX 10 to Windows Vista owners.

Speaking to Heise (http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/94869), he said that the Vole had made "a terrible mistake" in excluding Windows XP owners from next generation content.


The latest Steam survey, which prompted Newell's comments, show that only two per cent of Steam gamers have a DX10 graphics card and Vista.


Newell also highlighted the cross-platform problem - the fact that neither the Xbox 360 nor the Playstation 3 use DirectX 10 features. This would limit DX10 support given the financial requirement for console versions of games, he explained.


At this point, it's fair to say that nobody except for Microsoft thinks that bundling DX10 solely with Vista has been a good thing for the PC gaming industry - the general consensus amongst both developers and hardware manufacturers seem to be that it fractures an already-diverse PC gaming market even more, making consoles look even more attractive. One only has to look at Bioshock - the PC version has staggering requirements, barely any image quality upgrade under DX10/Vista, as well as installation issues - whereas the Xbox 360 version plugs in and works. Food for thought. µ




http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=41937

[GlobalExplorer]

Yeah it looks like MS would like to kill PC gaming.

Good thing is, they wont succeed. As long as one of those things sits on every desk there will always be people who make games for them. All this recent crap about the industry abandoning the PC means great news for indy companies, I tell ya. And THAT is a good thing.

[micky1up]

when you see bio shock you will understand why PC gaming will never die its DX10 rocks best graphics ive ever seen

[GlobalExplorer]

when you see bio shock you will understand why PC gaming will never die its DX10 rocks best graphics ive ever seen

Read my comments on this thread to see why I think your statement makes no sense:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=99576

It's things like Bioshocks copy protection that are going to bring PC gaming down, and only small companies will thrive.

And DX10 exclusive for Vista thanks MS I'm considering OpenGL.

[SUBMAN1]

when you see bio shock you will understand why PC gaming will never die its DX10 rocks best graphics ive ever seen
If you read the above article, there is no real graphics advantage on DX10 in Bioshock. Todays current hardware can't even use the DX10 add ons without a severe drop in FPS, so don't hold your breath for outstanding game play over DX9. Couple that to consoles using DX9, and the PC ports will all be DX9 for the foreseeable future. I haven't seen a single thing on DX10 yet that impressed me over what DX9 can already do without suffering to unplayable frame rates on the best of hardware.

-S

[antikristuseke]

Then you havent looked at DX10 hard ennough, it has great potential for better visuals and framerates combined, but there are both driver, software and hardware issues yet to be solved.

Anyway as for PC gaming dieing off, it will never hapen. As long as there are people like me, who arent happy unless they cant tinker arround with thier rig, pc gaming and gaming pc's will allways be there. Sure copy protection bull**** like starforce might drive some people off but the real hardcore backbone will stay.

Now as for DX 10 being limited to vista only, that was possibly the stupidest thing MS has done in the near past, because i have found no reason why they couldnt have it in XP aswell. Nor do i see any reason to upgrade my OS only because of gaming unless its price drops to reasonable levels.

[SUBMAN1]

Then you havent looked at DX10 hard ennough, it has great potential for better visuals and framerates combined, but there are both driver, software and hardware issues yet to be solved...

I have looked at it, and can't see much difference between what is being released in both formats - not much is lost at all. Also, the memory architechture is what made it impossible to back port to XP (Probably by design), but since NVIdia's 8800 series is broken and wouldn't work on DX10 using the new memory archetechture, Microsoft threw NVIdia a bone and made it "optional", and in effect, removed the last restriction holding it back from not being XP compatible.

I quote Gabe from above -

One only has to look at Bioshock - the PC version has staggering requirements, barely any image quality upgrade under DX10/Vista, as well as installation issues

and I have a few more articles on the visual upgrade and FPS downgrade of DX10 if you use its added features if you would like to read. Its pretty ugly, requiring staggering improvements in hardware performance that is completely out of reach of any hardware now, or in the near future for an only lackluster, or barely marginal improvement in visual quality.

And you wonder why XBox-360 is a DX9 only platform - MS already knew this. 98% of everything you can do on DX10 can be done in DX9 anyway. Give me a bit and I'll re-post an article on that subject.

-S

[micky1up]

i think you morons really have to look at what your talking about all repeat all modern console's get there games designed on pc's that fact the graphic's on dx10 bioshock are clearly in advance of the dx9 version if you cant see that then specsavers for you pc's are the king of gaming by a clear country mile to argue this point is clearly futile and pointless and why would MS or anyother company threaten there consumer base and the panic about the activation programe o ffs grow up

[SUBMAN1]

SOme info on NVIdia borking it's vid card, and how it made DX10 XP compatible:

DX10 is do-able on Windows XP

Microsoft backpedals for Nvidia, you lose

By Charlie Demerjian (javascript:__doPostBack('article_body$lnkEmailFor m','')): Wednesday 11 July 2007, 08:56



EVER WONDER WHY MS refuses to release DX10 for XP, forcing users to Linux, and barring that, Vista - also known as Me II? It is easy, there was a technical reason, but it shot that down when Nvidia couldn't cut it. Now it is simply arm twisting. The original reason was that DX10 required graphics memory to be virtualisable, a laudable goal. You can see hints of it here (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1941407,00.asp) and here (http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/directx_10_graphics_preview/page8.asp) among other places. This was a good thing, perhaps a really good thing, and Microsoft was clamping down on requirements with the usual subtlety of a convicted monopolist.


This would not work with XP, and that was fine and dandy. It was an honest technical reason why you could not backport DX10 to XP without a major rip and replace operation. Microsoft wasn't going to bend on this one at all.


Then something odd happened. Nvidia had about as much success implementing this required feature as it did with it Me II drivers, that is to say, none. It couldn't do it, but it was required for DX10. What's an arm twisting Vole to do? Backpedal obviously.


So, MS threw NV a life preserver and made GPU memory virtualisation completely optional. ATI, which had implemented a dandy memory virtualisation scheme got screwed, or at least got what everyone who partners with MS got. Oh wait, I said that.


In any case, in doing this, MS removed the only impediment to backporting DX10 to XP, it is now, and has been for quite a while, completely possible. MS is screwing its customers to force an upgrade and you are a pawn in their revenue generation scheme.


Sadly, I will admit that I did upgrade. I went from XP to Ubuntu and bought a Wii. Life could not be better now, gaming is fun again, and spyware is a distant memory. µ

[SUBMAN1]

i think you morons really have to look at what your talking about all repeat all modern console's get there games designed on pc's that fact the graphic's on dx10 bioshock are clearly in advance of the dx9 version if you cant see that then specsavers for you pc's are the king of gaming by a clear country mile to argue this point is clearly futile and pointless and why would MS or anyother company threaten there consumer base and the panic about the activation programe o ffs grow up

Huh? I couldn't make heads or tails of that one long run on sentence.

[SUBMAN1]

Here is an example of what I am talking about for increased FPS on DX9:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2174223,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

Want a serious performance boost in BioShock? Play it on DirectX 9. Sad, but true. As DirectX 9/10 hybrid games have trickled to market, we've been testing them to see whether the newer, Vista-only API library is worth its salt. We've done it with Company of Heroes (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2143672,00.asp), Lost Planet (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2134582,00.asp), and more. In every case, DirectX 9 performance was far better than that of DirectX 10.

DX9 vs DX10 on Bioshock. Can you tell the difference? I can't! Someone was talking about being a moron? :p I'd have to think someone else here is a moron! Here are the comparrison screenshots:

http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/16/0,1425,sz=1&i=167789,00.jpg

http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/16/0,1425,sz=1&i=167790,00.jpg


http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/16/0,1425,sz=1&i=167791,00.jpg




Anyway, this is the point I was trying to make. Not only will you get increased FPS playing games on DX9 - I CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO!!!! :D

-S

[HunterICX]

most of the screenshots online and videos are pure fakes.
you can see in the movies that the effects added to the so called DX10 enchantmens can easily be reproduced by anyone with some Movie edditing skills.

[SUBMAN1]

most of the screenshots online and videos are pure fakes.
you can see in the movies that the effects added to the so called DX10 enchantmens can easily be reproduced by anyone with some Movie edditing skills.
Maybe, but that is why I like reviews like the ExtemeTech ones. They tell it like it is! :up: It's not a manufacturer DX10 movie job!

By the way, that game looks pretty slick. I think I will have to pick that up, except I will be gone all weekend! :-? I guess I can play it next week.

If anyone wants the URL to the image quality comparrisons, here it is:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2174758,00.asp

-S

PS. I especially like this part:

After searching through the game for literally a couple of hours, playing alternately in DX9 and DX10, we took a battery of screenshots. We were looking for any place, any surface, any object, any effect in the game that showed a discernable difference between DX9 and DX10. We used a Vista machine with an AMD ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card, an Intel QX6700 CPU overclocked to 3.19 GHz, and 4GB of memory. We used the pertinent beta drivers (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2173761,00.asp) released expressly for the game.


We were disappointed.


For instance, look at the screens labeled BioShock 1. They show a room filled with water from a kneeling position—a great shot across a soggy landscape. Can you tell which is which? The "2" pair of screens is in the same room, with a view through the warped glass of Rapture into the ocean. No major differences there, either. For the "3" screens, we looked at a different transparency, this time through a sliding glass door. Then, for "4" and "5", we focused on splashing water and on fog, two particle-heavy graphics effects.

[Skybird]

Wading through this thread I must conclude that GobalExplorer is wrong when he said that the good news is that MS won't succeed. Because the real good news for me is that I am not caring too much anymore for new games and games in general. Not needing to be affected by all this business pervertions is the best thing that can happen to you! :) I've seen the emerging of computer games from the very first beginnings on, when there was Pong and Nightracer and Galaxians, and from there i went to the present. Truth is - it starts to bore me. Innovations have become very rare, it always seems to be the same old stuff in just new and slightly better clothing - and these differences become more narrow with each develoepment cycle. 15 years ago, you eventually could see very big differences in visual presentation of games separated by let's say two years in design. Today, these differences are such that games three years of age evtnually still could look extremely well. Beyond a certain treshhold level, improvements in graphics become less and lesser important (and cannot compensate for lacking innovation anyway). Like you can take a square for a circle, but 8 corners look seriously more like a circle than a square with 4 cornbers only. However, if you compare 16 corners to 32 corners, the visual differences is no more that obvious than it was when jumping from 4 to 8 corners. It seems that today we have reached a level where we think about jumping from let's say 64 to 128 corners to built a circle. Like when you read a book, and your imagination and fantasy brings the evnts in the book to life, visual apperance also is only one ingredient in a game that makes it worthwhile for you. the real great games and sims I use(d) I kepot alive by imagination and immersion only, and often despite the fact that graphically they were/are outdated. It does not make them less enjoyable, and immersive. I have seen the video of Crysis, and compared it with Far Cry. Yes, it looks better. And no, the difference i do not see to be as important. some slighty adjusted game elemnts, maybe, even more violence in fact - to me it is not much more than just Far Cry.

No question that at release they nevertheless will try to make a revolution and a hype out of it.

[antikristuseke]

Then you havent looked at DX10 hard ennough, it has great potential for better visuals and framerates combined, but there are both driver, software and hardware issues yet to be solved...

I have looked at it, and can't see much difference between what is being released in both formats - not much is lost at all. Also, the memory architechture is what made it impossible to back port to XP (Probably by design), but since NVIdia's 8800 series is broken and wouldn't work on DX10 using the new memory archetechture, Microsoft threw NVIdia a bone and made it "optional", and in effect, removed the last restriction holding it back from not being XP compatible.


Im not sure if i misunderstood what you were saying at first but you seem to have misunderstood me. I said that DX10 has great potential for great visuals compared to DX9, I didnt say this potential was being used right now, at all. Right now DX10 functionality is barely being implemented in the available titles runing in DX10 mode which is allso the reason for significant performance loss with no real eye candy gain.

[SUBMAN1]

Im not sure if i misunderstood what you were saying at first but you seem to have misunderstood me. I said that DX10 has great potential for great visuals compared to DX9, I didnt say this potential was being used right now, at all. Right now DX10 functionality is barely being implemented in the available titles runing in DX10 mode which is allso the reason for significant performance loss with no real eye candy gain.

Ahh. Got it. At least we created a pretty good thread on DX10 in the meantime.

-S

[SUBMAN1]

Wading through this thread I must conclude that GobalExplorer is wrong when he said that the good news is that MS won't succeed. Because the real good news for me is that I am not caring too much anymore for new games and games in general. Not needing to be affected by all this business pervertions is the best thing that can happen to you! :) I've seen the emerging of computer games from the very first beginnings on, when there was Pong and Nightracer and Galaxians, and from there i went to the present. Truth is - it starts to bore me. Innovations have become very rare, it always seems to be the same old stuff in just new and slightly better clothing - and these differences become more narrow with each develoepment cycle. 15 years ago, you eventually could see very big differences in visual presentation of games separated by let's say two years in design. Today, these differences are such that games three years of age evtnually still could look extremely well. Beyond a certain treshhold level, improvements in graphics become less and lesser important (and cannot compensate for lacking innovation anyway). Like you can take a square for a circle, but 8 corners look seriously more like a circle than a square with 4 cornbers only. However, if you compare 16 corners to 32 corners, the visual differences is no more that obvious than it was when jumping from 4 to 8 corners. It seems that today we have reached a level where we think about jumping from let's say 64 to 128 corners to built a circle. Like when you read a book, and your imagination and fantasy brings the evnts in the book to life, visual apperance also is only one ingredient in a game that makes it worthwhile for you. the real great games and sims I use(d) I kepot alive by imagination and immersion only, and often despite the fact that graphically they were/are outdated. It does not make them less enjoyable, and immersive. I have seen the video of Crysis, and compared it with Far Cry. Yes, it looks better. And no, the difference i do not see to be as important. some slighty adjusted game elemnts, maybe, even more violence in fact - to me it is not much more than just Far Cry.

No question that at release they nevertheless will try to make a revolution and a hype out of it.

I hear ya on that. Not much excites me in gaming anymore either. BioShock is probably the first game I feel I might want to go out and get. THis is simply becuase I was a big fan of the System SHock series and still I'd probably play through another round of System Shock 2 before I'd pick up on some brand new game.

In the past, I always had the best hardware, but now one of my friends went out and bought better hardware than me, has over 10K or 11K 3DMark 2006 score the other day, and quite frankly, I seem to have more fun playing with video editing than playing any current gen game, so I really didn't care. In the past, I'd pull $2K to $3K out to upgrade the main components just to be on top! :p

These days I don't care anymore. Is this what happens when you become so jaded as I / we are? I dunno. I've lost interest in gaming generally across the board. I still like it, but I don't wait with baited breath for each new release anymore. I get the feeling been there done that - exactly like you describe. The reason? Exactly like you describe - lack of innovation.

Armed Assault kind of brought things back a little, but I still don't have flashes from it like really great gameplay that sticks out in my mind from the past. Some examples that stick out in my mind are Falcon 4, System Shock 2 (1 was good too, but I recall SS 2 much more), Thief (the original - Thief 3 had its moments, as did Thief 2, but it wasn't as good as the original), Star Control, Starflight, Indepedence War II (and 1, but 2 was better), Battlezone (and 2 - the story was great, and it used my 3dfx board!), Wizardry (the original), Mech Warrior (the original - the music captivated me more than anything), EF2000, M1 Tank Platoon, Populace, 688i, Fleet Command, Ticonderoga, Doom 1 & 2, Wolfenstein 3D and RTCW, among others, but the list mainly of older ground breaking games. Not a whole lot new stands out - SHIII does comes to this list too, but you get the point.

BioSHock I have high hopes for one more time, but I'm not holding my breath. Story is important for lasting memories, and I think this game may be one of the handful to deliver a lasting memory. Now I'm rambling, but you get the point, and I think you are where I am at this point.

-S

PS. I never did like pong.

[Wim Libaers]

Also, as OpenGL drivers are mostly developed by the video card makers, with very little input from MS, they could easily make all the DX10 functionality available to OpenGL programs on any operating system they want.

[SUBMAN1]

Also, as OpenGL drivers are mostly developed by the video card makers, with very little input from MS, they could easily make all the DX10 functionality available to OpenGL programs on any operating system they want.
Considering Microsoft owns OpenGL and its patents.... They bought it from SGI.

-S

[kiwi_2005]

Yeah it looks like MS would like to kill PC gaming.

I suggest to everyone install a dual OS, this is what i did, XP & Vista running on same drive. You might totally hate vista but its their if you need it. Come to think of it, last time i logged into vista was a week ago, i seem to go straight to XP.

[SUBMAN1]

Yeah it looks like MS would like to kill PC gaming.
I suggest to everyone install a dual OS, this is what i did, XP & Vista running on same drive. You might totally hate vista but its their if you need it. Come to think of it, last time i logged into vista was a week ago, i seem to go straight to XP.

I think a better choice would be XP MCE 2005 and Gentoo

-S

[GlobalExplorer]

More evidence that Vista is not such a great gaming platform:

http://www.simhq.com/_technology2/technology_110a.html