DirectX 10 POWWWWWWWAAH!

[deepfried]

Yes, in case you didn't catch it, the title of my thread is positively weeping sarcasm from open sores.

Why?

Let me start at, well, the start (It's a VERY good place to start.)

A few weeks ago, after purchasing my yummy little new 'puter, I thought I'd sit back and engage in the sweet, sweet eye candy of Far cry 2.

Installation? fine? performance check? "Well done, your system is totally ready to kick ass son!", which is groovy.

Hell, I played it on mostly high/est settings and still got playable framerates,

So why the long face?

Directx10, that's why.

Now, Even though the game is patched to the newest version, my graphics drivers are blazing edge and my system brand spanking new, this game, for some unknown reason, HATES DX10.

So why not run in DX9c? A good question, and for obvious reasons I reverted the game to engine engine number 9, bringing me back to the hectic world of malaria and molotovs I love so dearly, and all was well.

The thing that DOES bug me however, is that games developers seem to be pushing us towards DX10 hardware with chants of "ZOMG YOU GET REALISTIC SMOKE AND SHINY THINGZZZ." Nice. On the other hand, I like more than 12 FPS, thank you very much.

So even though I'm on DX10 hardware, with new drivers, a brand new game with a brand new patch, as mentioned, I still get an unplayable experience.

Here's a tip Nvidia/Ubisoft. Don't lie to me please. You can scream "REALISTIC SMOKE AND GLASS" all you like, but at the end of the day if my game resembles a jerky 1800's sepia motion picture then I'm not going to be a happy bunny, no matter how oily the smoke.

On a parting note, I've tried DX10 Far cry on different systems VS dx9 with the same result. Maybe I'm unlucky, or maybe, just maybe, we're not all quite so version 10 ready as they'd like us to believe.

Your thoughts? Any other major offenders? feedback is welcome.

[Rastalovich]

Dx10, great ideas, poor implementation and support for it. Perhaps a botch and patch too far.

Hoping for better with Dx11. (unlikely)

(oh and the realistic smoke effects I can live without too tbh, not fps related or anything, just know myself that the game engines can do this just as well)

[deepfried]

Very true, I actually noticed no real difference in image quality, although perhaps that was due to me being busy shouting "WTF IS THIS SH*T, I SPEND £300 for THIS? :O"

I hope for better with DX11 as well, Im frankly appalled by the general...well, badness of 10, I'm amazed it ever made it past the drawing board.

[Rastalovich]

I do honestly think, as a general sweeping remark for the whole industry not just m$/Dx, that they've reached a level where they are either only interested in producing small steps of improvements instead of anything breathetaking or the best way to make cash.

It`s not good for progress, but it's all either cash related (my opinion) or competancy related (which I used to believe, but now I think they're more holding back on purpose).

[Jaster]

mmmm....one thing overlooked is that DX10 engines are only used by PC's...most consoles are using development tools for DX9...one of my mates who works at infrogrammes has already stated on more then one occasion that until the consoles catch up with PC's (which lets face it is gonna be some time) that were not going to see a vast number of developers utilizing, correctly may I add, the DX10 SDK, and it predominantly used as an after thought. It sucks. He was saying that the SDK for the Cell Engine heavily utilises DX9 components to make it easier to develop games for the PS3, after the jump ship attitude of alot of the game developers after the PS3 was delayed, and delayed again. He also stated that even though it getting easier to develop for multiple consoles and pc, its harder to optimise for each accordingly.

Sucks hard I know, but the moneys with the consoles guys. And the consoles choice is DX9, although rumour has it that Xbox 360 is in for a major overhaul and the SDK's in beta are utilising, some, and I say that loosely, dx10 extensions. But as we all know, dx9 + god rays does not equal dx10...

[Hyper]

I totally agree with you here,

Its one of the reasons I bought an Xbox 360 since you would never know if your computer is going to run the next new game or not,

GTA IV on the pc is a great example of this, it runs fine on the Xbox 360 which is of a much lower spec than my computer but runs terrible on my PC,

I am not the only either, only people with the very latest graphics cards running in SLI get a good framerate with the settings turned upto a decent level (I would say the same standard as 360 but I know I would get flamed),

But yes anyway back to the point,

Why cant more devolopers be like Valve and produce an engine that actually runs smooth on semi decent hardware.

[deepfried]

You made a good point there,. I just got left 4 dead, and it'll happily run ony dads pc (I was bored lol) and that doesn't technically meet the minimum requirements. It also looks very pretty, now Granted it doesn't have the massive sandbox feel of other shoot em ups these days, but it hits heavy in all the right areas.

Maybe it's just too much too soon, even for pc's?

Far cry 2 has about 50 kilometers square of land, which is impressive enough, but it seems that trying to apply DX10 to all that is a step too far.

I'm just a little sore about the fact I shelled out for a DX10 card and got nothing from it (other than a Gpu core currently clocked at just under 700mhz )

[Rastalovich]

It`s the age old story of "why bother allocating memory properly - when we can assume everyone has atleast 2g in their machine anyway".

[Jaster]

lol Rast...but at current DDR2 pricing everyone should have at least 2GB..:P

One other thing though that Ive noticed alot especially with vista users is that the ammount of times I'm turning off super fetch and altering the page file for people to enhance performance (and I'm talking about users who are quite technically adept as well) is frankly quite astonishing. If you plan on gaming these 2 things are a must to free up RAM in Vista. Obviously turning off indexing and a few other things helps but super fetch is a biggie as it chews up resources no end.

[Rastalovich]

Yeah, it`s assumptions and doing the job properly that separates the proper programmer from some1 who just learnt it in school/college.