Post

 Resources 

Console

Comments



Return to tutorial


4/7/2006 | Posted by: M!N!0N

It is probably a good thing that they are cleaning up DirectX... Saw an article the previous day on the Size of Vista alone... and does anyone know this figure

50 MILLION LINES OF CODE!!!
40% TIMES LARGER THAN XP

This will be killer, as computers will have to be faster just to cope with the larger environment. In my opinion, Microsoft need to start windows again. Otherwise this user is going to Mac...


4/13/2006 | Posted by: Athiril

Your old games will play through DirectX 9.

My gripe is hardware with "digital rights management" which should be called "we're going to decrease the performance of your computer and dictate what you can and cant with the equipment you own".

Only allowed to use a "DRM" monitor" wtf?

I'm not getting -anything- with DRM, ever.


3/6/2006 | Posted by: Eric Coleman

Actually, I didn't miss that. I guess I wasn't clear in my concerns.

Vista will have a new driver interface, thus the abandonment of the legacy DirectX code base. As the article mentions, for a company to obtain DirectX 10 approval from Microsoft it will have to support the full list of DirectX 10 features. This is different from past versions. A DirectX 8 card might support pixel shader 1.0 but not 1.1, 1.2, or 1.4, etc. A manufacturer only needed to support a small subset to be classified as DirectX "n" compliant. Microsoft has changed the requirements for DirectX 10 compliance to be more strict. This is a very good thing for developers because we won't have to worry if a DirectX 10 feature is present or not. If the card is DirectX 10 compliant then it will, by definition, support everything. Features will no longer seperate video card, the only difference between models will be performance.

Here are 2 possible problems as I see it:

1. Your current video card will not be able to play DirectX 10 or higher games because cards won't be able to support the full list of DirectX 10 features. Your video card is obsolete by definition. In the past and present, a slightly older designed for DirectX 8 could play a DirectX 9 game, minus a few features of course, as long as new drivers for the DirectX 9 interfaces were written. Since DirectX 9 and below relied on CAPS to determine the cards capabilities, this is possible to gracefully downgrade. DirectX 10 will not have the ability to query the capabilities of the card, at least according to the article. The result is that your current video card will never be able to run a DirectX 10 game.

2. You have a DirectX 10 card but it only has Microsoft's new DirectX 10 drivers, which do not expose DirectX 9 and below interfaces. A game that needes those interfaces will not detect hardware acceleration. The end result is that your new card can't play old games.

Of course, the only solution as I see it is to get a DirectX 10 card and hope that ATI or nVidia will release legacy drivers.


3/6/2006 | Posted by: ZMan

By the end of 2006 your article will actual still be correct. However you missed one important point out. DirectX9 will continue to be shipped with Vista and writing an application targetting Directx9 (and all of the previous interfaces supported within DX9) will be totally supported throughout Vista's lifetime.

So the DX10 backwards compatibility story is to continue using DX9


2/6/2007 | Posted by: hasson

hey, i had oblivion and doom 3 wroking perfectly, but then i had the vista ultimate windows.. and now they are not working.. is it because the DirectX 10 or is it something else? i really need help with that if i can downgrade dirextX to the DirectX 9.0... i can't waste obilivion for nothing.. thank you..





Name
Email (optional)
Comment





Copyright © 2002 - 2004 Eric Coleman, Peter Kuchnio , et. al.
There have been 30 visitors within the last 20 minutes
RSS News Feed