“DirectX 10 is likely to see a number of point revisions during its lifespan and the first of these, imaginatively titled DirectX 10.1, will be the first of these. It may surprise some of you reading this, but the features which will be added by DirectX 10.1 have already been decided upon and information made available about them, so in this article we’ll be taking a look through what we can expect to see in DirectX 10.1 compliant hardware.”
Beyond DirectX 10 – A Glance at DirectX 10.1
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
“and the first of these, imaginatively titled DirectX 10.1, will be the first of these.”
ARE YOU SURE?? 😛
(site is inaccessible, due to slashdotting)
– Simon
“ARE YOU SURE?? :-P”
No… 10.1 is just the code name. The real name will be ‘Microsoft DirectX World Domination Editon’ … in short, MS DirectX WDE
😛
More likely MS DirectX WMD – Microsoft DirectX Wepon of Mass Destruction
i believe this version will include DirectMind ™ that can connect to human brain implants.
of course its already very secure and there have never been any sideeffects!
DirectOrifice, the final frontier.
Neat. So you buy a DX10 compatible card, just for Vista. Then a few months down the line, oop, it’s out of date, and you’re not getting the new features.
Isn’t it so rewarding to be a PC gamer?
Or you could just buy a console and keep it quiet for 5 years.
Not defending M $ here, but if you want to be a hardcore PC gamer, you better be prepared to upgrade your stuff regularly.
Edited 2006-08-14 10:38
Don’t buy all the marketing blah about “DX 9 card” “DX 10 card” … the vendor’s drivers can catch up with the new API also on old hardware.
It was just easier to feed gamers with “dx 9 card” than with “this card supports vertex & fragment shaders, …. and so on”.
I don’t think buying a DX10 card will give you only a few months of support and then be out of date. More than likely, a fully supporting DX10 (How about DXX for short?) cards will support 10.1 and forward. There may be some minor features that will be added but for the most part, you won’t be missing anything.
Look at todays games. Very few use a lot of the DX9 (DX Classic anyone?) features. Many games have DX9C as a requirement but with the exception of a few shaders, work fine on a DX7 class card. They just require the newer API, not the newer hardware.
Let’s take Half-Life 2 as an example. HL2 will take the best video cards out there and use them to their full potential but still degrade gracefully and work well on DX7 class hardware.
PC game developers obviosly have to pick a minimum level of support when writing their game engines. Not everyone is going to choose to have any sort of support for older hardware but more than likely they will try to support fairly old hardware so they don’t cut too much of their potential market.
It takes years for new tech to be used in most games. So you really don’t end up out of date very quickly. I personally skip hardware generations with video cards. I have a Nvida 6800 and a 6600. Sure a 7900 or ATIs latest would give me a performnance booste but they really don’t offer much in the way of new technology. The DX10 class cards probably won’t be any different.
Wow .. this is why i dont come to osnews anymore… from the first post and every post after it are always in some way a bash on microsoft give it a f*cking rest already…
and no DX10 and DX9 cards are NOT the same, if it wasnt for the dx standards we wouldnt have any consistency… we would have each model of card different than the other missing features that the card next to it have and never any consistence… theirs a reason that volumetric clouds are only truely being done with dx10 cards lately (not world orbs actual true skys)
the reason they didnt say “this card supports vertex and fragment shaders” is because thats difficult to track…
what if i have a game that needs both, but Card A does vertex but not fragment and the other does fragment but not vertex oh and the third card does both but its really slow at both, no they make standards, DX9 DX10 etc that have a standard featureset…
when other groups implement standard featuresets and append a name to it people are fine but because the graphics industry follows the DX naming convention its a front for jokes on osnews… give me a break!
As for buying a card for vista and having it obsoleted in a few months, that has nothing to do with this vista or directx it has to do with PC’s in general… theres always something new and better on the horizion… the pc development isnt stagnant sorry… and sorry to say a point release on directx doesnt make the hardware from the previous point release obsolete.
Even Crysis will work on DirectX 9 cards, but there are certain features of dx10 cards that it can take advantage of to make the game even better looking … but it by far doesnt mean that the dx9 card is obsolete.
and no DX10 and DX9 cards are NOT the same, if it wasnt for the dx standards we wouldnt have any consistency…
OpenGL? Or some other similar third-party standard?
Edited 2006-08-15 17:45
yeah, I agree. I don’t mind poking fun at Microsoft or going off on them when they do something stupid, but enough is enough.
If you like Linux and you are anti-social fine.
Just do your thing.
Direct3D 10 looks great and Microsoft has done a great job thus far.
> If you like Linux and you are anti-social fine.
> Just do your thing.
That’s funny, since Microsoft is the most anti-social of companies, not to mention that they’ve been convicted of illegal monopolistic practices.
Why is enough enough? They aren’t done screwing over their users, so why should we be done complaining about their monopolistic practices?
THIS STUFF HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR 20 YEARS!
“That’s funny, since Microsoft is the most anti-social of companies, not to mention that they’ve been convicted of illegal monopolistic practices.”
LOL! Are you a joke character?
I sure hope you are joking. Being successful is being an illegal monopoly if you are a liberal and a democrat.
Some of you high school and college kids have no idea what the world is about. Grow up a bit and then come back.
Standard Oil didn’t get away with it. AT&T didn’t get away with it. Even IBM didn’t get away with it — even though they weren’t convicted, federal action impacted them enough to let little companies like Microsoft and Compaq get in through the seams.
If it weren’t for government action stomping on abusive monopolies in the past, we’d still all be using IBM green screens and writing this using CICS forms or something.
Learn about history first, then complain about our comments.
“Being successful is being an illegal monopoly if you are a liberal and a democrat.”
Who’s the joke character again?
“Some of you high school and college kids have no idea what the world is about. Grow up a bit and then come back.”
Some of us have more interesting and important things to do than make up for insufficient genitalia and persona with money.