Thursday, September 15, 2005

DirectX 10: More Harm Than Good For Graphics?

There will be no need for developers to poll graphics hardware for specific capabilities in the next version of Direct3D, as Microsoft and Vista will be doing all the work for them - essentially putting a stop to the fast pace of feature introduction in graphics hardware.This was just one of many relevations about the new revision of the graphics API made by Rudolph Balaz, product manager for Microsoft, at this year's Professional Developers Conference on Wednesday.

As of DirectX 10, to be introduced in Windows Vista, 3D features will be bound to version numbers of Direct3D. What this means is that all 3D vendors will support the same features, guaranteeing compatibility across the board. Although this may sound great, allowing for a more standardised games development environment, the reality is that Microsoft will soon be regulating the introduction of 3D features, leaving companies such as NVIDIA and ATI at the mercy of the software giant.Vista and DirectX 10 aren't all doom and gloom for the games industry, According to Balaz, they will in fact do much for both the performance and versatility of graphics hardware. For instance, graphics processors, known as GPUs, will have scheduling and sharing capabilities under Vista, much like CPUs have now. Users will be able to run multiple 3D applications that will be able to share memory, GPU cycles and other resources, something that is currently impossible under previous Windows versions.

There's also backward-support for DirectX 6, 7 and DirectDraw, and Vista will feature and extended version of Direct3D 9, known as D3D9Ex, that developers can play around with now. D3D9Ex offers functionality including frame statistics; the ability to render a frame multiple times instead of reprocessing it in hardware and more specific error and state checking, to the point where the software can inform a developer if their code is crashing the hardware.None of these features however compare to the resource sharing in D3D9Ex/D3D10. Thanks to the new, shared architecture in the APIs, it will be possible to install new drivers without rebooting; perform 'video card-only' reboots and isolate the display driver from the rest of the system. With Vista, it will be almost impossible for the display driver to bring the rest of the system down with it - something that is a serious problem and common occurence in current versions of Windows. This reliability and stability is also thanks to the Vista Display Driver Model (VDDM), which will eventually replace the current display driver model in Windows XP.

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