I rarely play games of the type that use the performance boosts of the DirectX routines, yet I keep up with the improvements as my son is quite the game player, and I need to keep up with changes as they apply to working on other’s computers.
There was a marked difference when DirectX 9 was released, and after it was released no one ever looked back. On the other hand, DirectX 10 really never gave any of the same performance boosts that were shown by the DX8 to DX9 transition. Next we were told that DX 10.1 would do the trick, and bring the magic. Ho–hum.
Now a piece on slashdot gives a sneak peek at the benefits of DX11, and it’s not all roses –
MojoKid writes “The PC demo for Codemasters’ upcoming DirectX 11 racing title, Dirt 2, has just hit the web and is available for download. Dirt 2 is a highly-anticipated racing sim that also happens to feature leading-edge graphic effects. In addition to a DirectX 9 code path, Dirt 2 also utilizes a number of DirectX 11 features, like hardware-tessellated dynamic water, an animated crowd and dynamic cloth effects, in addition to DirectCompute 11-accelerated high-definition ambient occlusion (HADO), full floating-point high dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and full-screen resolution post processing. Performance-wise, DX11 didn’t take its toll as much as you’d expect this early on in its adoption cycle.” Bit-tech also took a look at the graphical differences, arriving at this conclusion: “You’d need a seriously keen eye and brown paper envelope full of cash from one of the creators of Dirt 2 to notice any real difference between textures in the two versions of DirectX.”
What does this mean? Are we being sold a bill of goods with each new iteration of DirectX? Though there probably static differences in the rendering, who cares if you have to stop playing to inspect the changes on most screens at resolutions regular people play with?
I sense we are being put through the 24 vs. 32 bit color debate again. The only reason we find ourselves using 32 bit color is because it is easier to program, not because the human eye can differentiate in most circumstances. Is that what each new revision of DirectX promises?
It does seem that the only people benefitting from the DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 ‘improvements’ are the hardware and software vendors, when clearly the users should be benefitting at least as much as either of those.
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Quote of the day:
Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it’s in Hamburger Technology.
– Clive James
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