No DX11?

[nodunit 397]

Oh neat..aren't that something...Oooh waves. ^ you mean grass as normal maps with clumpy effects to make it appear less flat?

[Innomadic 10]

Oh neat..aren't that something...Oooh waves. ^ you mean grass as normal maps with clumpy effects to make it appear less flat?

I guess thats it. Basically Arma grass is 3D, flattens out when you crawl through it etc.

Really the killer of frames in RV is the vegetation, which is why Outerra can run so magnificently on such low specs. Its not as complicated.

[nodunit 397]

Pretty much, it's been proven in Arma1 that if you remove normal maps from vegetation the game runs better, or reduce the normal texture size, the same rules may not apply to the RV engine but a person from crytek said that normal maps used twice the memory as diffuse maps so they made then half the size IE 2048x1024 diffuse and a 1024x512 normal map.

Edited May 23, 2011 by NodUnit

[Innomadic 10]

Pretty much, it's been proven in Arma1 that if you remove normal maps from vegetation the game runs better, or reduce the normal texture size.

Of course, i ran the low veg LOD mod when i ran Arma 2 on my BIIIIG screen before i knew i could downgrade slightly and pick up the details and frames on the way.

All i'm sayin is that Outerra may look like sex but you'll wanna kick it out of bed in the morning.

[max power 21]

"OpenGL is out of question even with consideration of its qualities.

It's huge amount of work/fixes/tweaks/optimization to rework engine from DX9 to DX11.

I can't imagine we'd make OpenGL in a real scope.

And yes, we are targeting DX11, hovewer DX10 should be supported.

Although... We are not in the end, things/ideas can be changed."

I'm somewhat confused by his phrasing here. Especially considering that dx10 appears as a 'requirement'. Is Damu saying that the engine is being designed around dx11, with support for dx10? Or that it has been designed for dx10, and that they are currently working on a dx11 version? I couldn't care less about opengl, but dx11 is certainly a better choice than dx10 in the way it distributes data across the hardware.

My interpretation of what he says is Dx10 for sure, and Dx11 is a goal they are working towards.

[bengie25 10]

Very true, DX is yet another proprietary API, limiting the developer capability.

There is more to OpenGL than MS would admit. Games can be played on Linux and OSX, as long as those are not on DX.

Back when development for DX11 emulation was being started for Galium and Wine, the Linux developers said that DX11 is well structured and nicer to work with than OpenGL.

Now, OpenGL does support multi-threading in the drivers to help speed driver thing up, but it does NOT support multi-threading from API calls. When you instantiate the OpenGL object, it may only be only called by a single thread at a time, which is different than the driver threading some of its own work in the background, which does nothing to speed up drawing calls from the user code. Calling OpenGL and OpenCL in the same program has large switching penalties, DirectX11 has no such penalty using DirectCompute.

To put multi-threading into context, Civ5 with pre-multi-threading nVidia drivers shows about ~5 of 12 cores being used, and switching to the newly released nVidia drivers that support Multi-threading shows all 12 cores running 100% and almost a double in FPS.

Yes, threading matters.

OpenGL and OpenCL are aimed towards being backwards compatible and professional rendering, not games. There are no current plans to merge GL/CL and properly threading GL. DirectX will be the better API where multi-threaded and where GGPU matters, which is nearly every big name game in the next few years.

OpenGL will eventually catch up, but it's going to first fall being over the next year or two before playing catch up. It took MS a few years to get DX11 setup to support threading properly, I would assume it won't be just a few month project for OpenGL and they haven't even started yet.

Edited May 23, 2011 by Bengie25

[vfn4i83 0]

As far as i'm aware, that grass is actually a 2D image laid across the landscape, and thus the grass is not actually there, just the lighting makes it appear to...ok i'm not explaining this well.

Basically, its not as good as the screenshots put it. I do personally love Outerra and the possibilities, however its not THAT good.....yet.

Yah I get it, like the old days where all tex were fotorealistic(o wait!). But you got remind that they are working with shadders that allow details down to centimeters, so that solution is quite interesting. Many games has grass, all look like cardboards, Outerra doesnt have(from what we have seem so far) and the terrain looks like nothing else (I let you put FlightSim X here).

[gammadust 12]

OpenGL is out of question even with consideration of its qualities.

It's huge amount of work/fixes/tweaks/optimization [already] to rework engine from DX9 to DX11.

I can't imagine we'd make OpenGL in a real scope. ;)

And yes, we are targeting DX11, hovewer DX10 should be supported.

Although... We are not in the end, things/ideas can be changed.

Bold and brackets are mine. I don't see much ambiguity here:

BIS is updating their engine straight to DX11, they will have DX10 compatibility in mind along the way. Something might force them to switch target to DX10 and have DX11 as an extra instead, OpenGL won't be a target no matter what.

This is how I interpret these words.

Yes I would like OpenGL, mostly from an ideological standing alone. In practice it makes sense for BIS to stay DX.

Tesselation as a solution to LOD switching is interesting, somehow I suppose we would have displacement texture switching instead. Is it? Maybe it allows for softer transitions (what about animating textures, procedural ones seams possible). And when in DX10 wouldn't we still need model LODS.

Anyway I am excited with the news! :bounce3:

[Cookieeater 10]

Back when development for DX11 emulation was being started for Galium and Wine, the Linux developers said that DX11 is well structured and nicer to work with than OpenGL.

Now, OpenGL does support multi-threading in the drivers to help speed driver thing up, but it does NOT support multi-threading from API calls. When you instantiate the OpenGL object, it may only be only called by a single thread at a time, which is different than the driver threading some of its own work in the background, which does nothing to speed up drawing calls from the user code. Calling OpenGL and OpenCL in the same program has large switching penalties, DirectX11 has no such penalty using DirectCompute.

To put multi-threading into context, Civ5 with pre-multi-threading nVidia drivers shows about ~5 of 12 cores being used, and switching to the newly released nVidia drivers that support Multi-threading shows all 12 cores running 100% and almost a double in FPS.

Yes, threading matters.

OpenGL and OpenCL are aimed towards being backwards compatible and professional rendering, not games. There are no current plans to merge GL/CL and properly threading GL. DirectX will be the better API where multi-threaded and where GGPU matters, which is nearly every big name game in the next few years.

OpenGL will eventually catch up, but it's going to first fall being over the next year or two before playing catch up. It took MS a few years to get DX11 setup to support threading properly, I would assume it won't be just a few month project for OpenGL and they haven't even started yet.

I'd still use OpenGL over DirectX purely over due to cross platform support and ideological reasons. OpenGL could possibly catch up very soon though due to mobile devices(Android, iPhone) that are becoming very popular recently, with many games being made with OpenGL ES. Same with WebGL. If DirectX opens itself up to mobile devices and then pretty much other OSes, it's a win-win situation for everyone.

Edited May 24, 2011 by Cookieeater

[Innomadic 10]

Yah I get it, like the old days where all tex were fotorealistic(o wait!). But you got remind that they are working with shadders that allow details down to centimeters, so that solution is quite interesting. Many games has grass, all look like cardboards, Outerra doesnt have(from what we have seem so far) and the terrain looks like nothing else (I let you put FlightSim X here).

Yes it doesn't look like 2D cutouts however what is it like when you get up nice and close to it? It looks good at distance yes, but up close, i'm doubtful.

[maddogx 13]

BIS is updating their engine straight to DX11, they will have DX10 compatibility in mind along the way. Something might force them to switch target to DX10 and have DX11 as an extra instead, OpenGL won't be a target no matter what.

This is how I interpret these words.

Yup, that's the most sensible interpretation of Damu's post that I've seen.

[Joshua the Grizzly 10]

DX10 and DX11 don't bring any visual improvements over DX9.

They don't magically speed up games by 50% either.

They may as well just double the polygons on their models and you will have the same sweet performance hit as with "hw tessellation".

Not entirely. There are some visual improvements,but the engine will have to be build around DX11 if you ever want to utilize those.

[carlostex 38]

Yesh. Unfortunatelly the best choice is not the optimal one always. Euphoria, OpenCL, Bullet, OpenGL... There are many many issues here. From technical over marketing up to licensing.

Interesting post... Would be Euphoria issues be regarded as licensing only or technical? Or maybe both?

[vfn4i83 0]

Yes it doesn't look like 2D cutouts however what is it like when you get up nice and close to it? It looks good at distance yes, but up close, i'm doubtful.

I still buy it

And guys. Get over it. They are targeting Dx10 but using Dx11 api simple as that, I personally dont want to see those stupid shadder model 5 in use till the full 64bit thing really kicks in, the hardware is been squeezed at present time. All that I ask, is that BIA devs close they ears to those Battlefielders consolishers and dont hear they're claims for another dumbed down shooter, to fill the gap till the next cod comes out.

Edited May 25, 2011 by vfn4i83

[gnear 0]

I'd rather grass like in that demo than the stuff thats around now in arma/arma2 to be in arma3 >.> maybe i'm just old school / upclose detail is all fine if it doesnt affect the gameplay, but currently it does, which is a shame.

[jonneymendoza 10]

DX11 brings a lot to the table and i belioeve battlefield 3 is ditching dx9 altogether and going straight for dx10/dx11 which appears Arma 3 is doing.

About time we ditch dx9 IMO.

[maddogx 13]

DX11 brings a lot to the table and i belioeve battlefield 3 is ditching dx9 altogether and going straight for dx10/dx11 which appears Arma 3 is doing.

About time we ditch dx9 IMO.

Windows XP is also ten years old already. I don't blame devs for ditching that bitch.

[ScratcH1 10]

DX11 brings a lot to the table and i belioeve battlefield 3 is ditching dx9 altogether and going straight for dx10/dx11 which appears Arma 3 is doing.

About time we ditch dx9 IMO.

It was only a matter of time until games will be developed for DX10/11

[sickboy 13]

Windows XP is also ten years old already. I don't blame devs for ditching that bitch.

Absolutely, XP was great but you can't keep living in the past forever.

[Joshua the Grizzly 10]

Considering how beautifull Crysis 2 and The Witcher 2 look whilst using only DX9, and the fact that both games have excellent performance, whilst quite a few DX10 and DX11 games do not (Such as Clear Sky, and Crysis 1...) I'd rather hope that Bohemia would stick to DX9.

[PuFu 4599]

Considering how beautifull Crysis 2 and The Witcher 2 look whilst using only DX9, and the fact that both games have excellent performance, whilst quite a few DX10 and DX11 games do not (Such as Clear Sky, and Crysis 1...) I'd rather hope that Bohemia would stick to DX9.

1. you are comparing different things, from scope to size.

2. DX9 is already out of the question.

System requirements

Operating system: Windows 7 / Vista

Processor: Intel Core i5 or AMD Athlon Phenom X4 or faster

Memory: 2 GB

Video card: Nvidia Geforce GTX 260 or ATI Radeon HD 5770 with Shader Model 3 and 896 MB VRAM, or faster

DVD: Dual Layer compatible

Hard disk: 15 GB free space

Other: DirectX® 10

[nodunit 397]

Crysis 2 performed better due to a multitude a reasons the most of which being that it was designed for consoles first as opposed to Crysis 1.

The community found that many of the textures even the ones reused from the first, were half their original size. It was also very corridor by comparison and by the nature of the map I imagine they used vision blockers any way they could (originally they lined hills and certain areas, basicly makes absolutely sure that nothing beyond gets rendered from X viewpoint)

Edited May 25, 2011 by NodUnit

[Pyronick 21]

Crysis 2 is anything but beautiful compared to Crysis. I'm not really talking about visuals in general but graphics relative to map size.

First of all it's way too foggy, you notice the engine makes heavy use of culling when your PC barely makes 20 FPS and you turn around quickly. Which is logical, considering the fact it has to run on memory-poor consoles.

Also various displacement mapping techniques were dropped.

The fact that an engine uses Direct3D 11 doesn't make it automatically nicer to look at. You need good artwork aswell, that's what Crytek is also very good at.

It just gives developer the option to make a certain shader effect easier to implement, with less overhead (better performance) for the user. And it makes sure the developer can access new tricks on your (graphics) hardware.

[Innomadic 10]

Absolutely, XP was great but you can't keep living in the past forever.

Until i get the money to build a new machine, i'll stick with XP

[jonneymendoza 10]

Until i get the money to build a new machine, i'll stick with XP

xp is a software not a hardware.

If you are playing arma 2 already on medium settings at least then you are already gaming on dx10 or dx11 hdd