DirecxtX 12 for ArmA 3?

[Brisse 78]

Yes, the developer can take control of memory managment with DX12, but it's optional, so they don't have to.

DX12 is very similar to Mantle. AMD did not only share their source code for Mantle with Khronos Group, but also with Micro$oft, even before development of DX12 began, so both Vulkan and DX12 will be very similar to Mantle. They all build upon the same foundation.

[I give up 152]

Ok, then now I believe that DX12 can bring improvements to Arma 3 since memory management is the biggest issue, imo. We can see it clearly when our GPU exceeds Arma 3 needs.

[Brisse 78]

I would rather see them use Vulcan though, since DX12 is a Win10 exclusive. Sure, I have tried the tech preview, and Win10 does look promising, but still, it would be nice if it's multi-platform. Vulcan would also go nicely together with BI's plans to port the Arma3 client to MacOS and Linux.

[linuxmaster9 101]

I would rather see them use Vulcan though, since DX12 is a Win10 exclusive. Sure, I have tried the tech preview, and Win10 does look promising, but still, it would be nice if it's multi-platform. Vulcan would also go nicely together with BI's plans to port the Arma3 client to MacOS and Linux.

I agree and not just because my username is LinuxMaster9. DX12 is exciting.....for those who will use Windows 10. But, If you don't want to shut people out of the game based on the version of Windows they are using.......use Vulkan. After all, Microshaft is part of the Khronos Group or at least a supporter. That is why Vulkan ( the next gen OpenGL), will work on all platforms. It is very close to DX12 code base but in some ways may be better with less overhead. Vulkan also makes switching from DX11 to Vulkan easy with the code structure.

[calin_banc 19]

It depends how far in development is Vulkan compared to DX12.

[Brisse 78]

@LinuxMaster9; Haha, yes, your username is ironic in this situation :)

@calin_banc; Good point, but Mantle has been out for a year now and is working really well. I'm playing through Thief with Mantle right now and it doubles my framerate compared to DX11 with no bad side effects at all. It should not take that much development to get Vulkan out there, right? I guess it's more about getting developers on board and GPU manufacturers to release drivers compatible with Vulkan.

This is one awesome statement on the Khronos website: "Will work on any platform that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and up"

https://www.khronos.org/vulkan

[linuxmaster9 101]

https://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/overview/2015_vulkan_v1_Overview.pdf

This video shows an early version of Vulkan in Action

The specs are:

• High-quality, physically-based shading
  
• HDR (High dynamic range) rendering
  
• 20 unique 2K PVRTC textures
  
• 2 GiB of texture data compressed to 266 MiB using Imagination’s PVRTC texture compression standard
  
• 4 x MSAA (Multi-sample anti-aliasing)
  
• 16 x Anisotropic texture filtering
  
• Physically-correct material parameters
  
• Low CPU usage, very efficient GPU usage
  
• Correct specular reflections on reflective materials
  
• More than 250,000 triangles
  
• Post processing effects: saturation, exposure and tone mapping
  

Here is DOTA 2 Running on Vulkan

Here is a brief list of the Khronos Group members:

[h=3]Promoters[/h]

• AMD/ATI
  
• Apple Inc.
  
• ARM Holdings
  
• Epic Games
  
• Imagination Technologies
  
• Intel Corporation
  
• Nokia
  
• Nvidia
  
• Qualcomm
  
• Samsung Electronics
  
• Sony Computer Entertainment
  

[h=3]Contributors[/h]

• Adobe
  
• Amazon.com
  
• Blizzard Entertainment Inc.
  
• Codeplay
  
• Ericsson
  
• Google
  
• Huawei Technologies
  
• IBM
  
• LG Electronics
  
• Lucasfilm Ltd.
  
• Matrox Graphics
  
• Microsoft Corporation
  
• Mozilla
  
• Oculus VR
  
• Panasonic
  
• Pixar
  
• Renesas Electronics
  
• Synopsys
  
• Texas Instruments
  
• Unity Technologies
  
• Valve corporation
  
• VIA Alliance Semiconductor
  
• VMware
  

[h=3]Academic Contributors[/h]

• China Academy of Telecommunication Research of MIIT
  
• Columbia University
  
• ETRI
  
• Imperial College London
  
• Institute for Information Industry
  
• MIT Lincoln Laboratory
  
• Oregon State University
  
• Seoul National University
  
• Universita di Bologna
  
• University of Bristol
  

[h=3]Past Members[/h]

• Creative Technology
  
• id Software
  
• Motorola
  
• Oracle/Sun Microsystems
  

[calin_banc 19]

@calin_banc; Good point, but Mantle has been out for a year now and is working really well. I'm playing through Thief with Mantle right now and it doubles my framerate compared to DX11 with no bad side effects at all. It should not take that much development to get Vulkan out there, right? I guess it's more about getting developers on board and GPU manufacturers to release drivers compatible with Vulkan.

This is one awesome statement on the Khronos website: "Will work on any platform that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and up"

https://www.khronos.org/vulkan

Yes, but Mantle only worked for AMD in the past, so you have to adopt some of nvidia's architectures as well. It really depends on what documentation is out there and how easy to use is each. To be honest, I don't see much happening with OpenGL if Steam OS doesn't make it big time. Lot's of devs will chose DX12 also because will run on xbox, so one less platform to worry about by doing common optimizations.

[HeadPop 11]

I dont think DX12 will solve anything with Arma.

Do you know any other game (32 bit) using 4 GB of system memory (RAM) running on a single screen? I dont know.

Take a look at pic, with 3 GPUs in triple CrossfireX with only Steam and Arma 3 running, the system ram usage was around 1.1 GB.

http://i.imgur.com/C11j5V6.jpg

This was with all settings in Ultra with a 3000 view distance and the funny thing is if we increase view distance become obvious that it needs even more RAM and since is a 32 bit app it cant, at this point the game engine starts to struggle and the outcome is a lousy performance.

Such thing in a 32 bit app almost it seems memory leak.

Do you think DX12 will give a solution for this?

why are you using 3 gpu? Its only a question...

[kklownboy 43]

Neat; VPAndRTArrayIndexFromAnyShaderFeedingRasterizerSupportedWithoutGSEmulation

With this DX12 feature you can directly send triangles to different render targets from the vertex shader, skipping the geometry shader entirely.

[linuxmaster9 101]

Yes, but Mantle only worked for AMD in the past, so you have to adopt some of nvidia's architectures as well. It really depends on what documentation is out there and how easy to use is each. To be honest, I don't see much happening with OpenGL if Steam OS doesn't make it big time. Lot's of devs will chose DX12 also because will run on xbox, so one less platform to worry about by doing common optimizations.

The thing about that is this: Vulkan API is Multi-plat. Meaning it will work on damn near any platform. With BI devs hinting about possibly releasing a Mac and Linux client, would it not be more beneficial to use Vulkan? Or at least go DX12 with Vulkan added as an option so that the platforms that DX12 does not work on (any OS below Windows 10) can still use it? Plus, if they do release a Linux client, would it not be better for them to release the Linux client as OpenSource while keeping the content proprietary/closed? Release the client under GPLv2 or v3 and let the Linux community devs build the client so the load it taken off BI? BI devs mentioned that the Linux/Mac client would most likely be running on DX9 at this point which would really really suck.

[Brisse 78]

Did anyone watch the E3 PC gamer conference? Jay Crowe confirmed Dx12 for the expansion! Woho :)

[PuFu 4600]

Did anyone watch the E3 PC gamer conference? Jay Crowe confirmed Dx12 for the expansion! Woho :)

ahhh...he actually didn't....i read that as a target, but just like with java for A3, things can go sideways..

Edited June 17, 2015 by PuFu

[peral 268]

ahhh...he actually didn't....

Jay Crowe mentioned Directx 12 kicking up performance, and that they want to nail it down for the expansion. So yes and no on confirmed, but I think at this point it's safe to say yes it will be though.

Reference:

Edited June 17, 2015 by Peral

[Brisse 78]

"dx12 is going to be something that will really kick on the performance which is a really important part of the Arma 3 experience, like we wanna really nail that down for the expansion"

Jay Crowe

02:44:40 @ http://www.twitch.tv/pcgamer/v/6256130

So yes, not a definitive confirmation, but I don't think he would mention it if it wasn't likely that it will make it into the game.

[PuFu 4600]

So yes, not a definitive confirmation, but I don't think he would mention it if it wasn't likely that it will make it into the game.

likely doesn't mean it is confirmed, as per your first post that i've replied to. I am not nitpicking here, just making sure thing that have been talked about doesn't go under "confirmed", especially since there has been cases before (java for instance) that were later considered by people things that were removed or scraped although those were "just as confirmed" as the dx12.

And btw, dx11, hell, even dx9 supports RT reflection shaders - the water in this case)

[nomisum 129]

"dx12 is going to be something that will really kick on the performance which is a really important part of the Arma 3 experience, like we wanna really nail that down for the expansion"

Jay Crowe

sounds like a confirmation to me too. makes me wonder whether they already have an idea about the actual performance gains in reality.

[DancZer 65]

I think it's a confirmation too. It's E3. Probably it wasn't a slip of the tongue. I bet some OPREP about DX12 benefits + some fancy charts and measurements in the future will hype the hole community.

Edited June 17, 2015 by danczer

[brightcandle 114]

Based on the actual profiling data I have presented I am surprised people still buy the garbage of fixing performance when we know this just wont help. Its not like we don't know what the issue is, we know on a grand level where all the CPU time goes, why the GPU usage is low. We can't fix it but we can see that DX12 will have only a minor effect on this particular game unless they drastically change the way they render.

The amount of times we have been lied to about performance fixes and people still believe these guys when they tell you that the next fix will bring what you want, even though you have information, genuine actual science showing its not the case. I will never understand.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Yeah DX12 likely brings that we can just have bit more things for the same fps. So no actual big fps improvement, just more stuff in that old performance.

Likely a minor improvement.

Edited June 17, 2015 by St. Jimmy

[jumpinghubert 49]

And btw, dx11, hell, even dx9 supports RT reflection shaders - the water in this case)

Kegetys DXDLL for good old Operation Flashpoint :D

[sniper pilot 36]

likely doesn't mean it is confirmed, as per your first post that i've replied to. I am not nitpicking here, just making sure thing that have been talked about doesn't go under "confirmed", especially since there has been cases before (java for instance) that were later considered by people things that were removed or scraped although those were "just as confirmed" as the dx12.

And btw, dx11, hell, even dx9 supports RT reflection shaders - the water in this case)

This. Yeah we had reflective water in OFP (as a mod but still.).

[dmarkwick 261]

It doesn't sound like confirmation of implementation, only confirmation that they're working on it.

[calin_banc 19]

If DX12 won't be ready by then ,when it will be? It was confirmed is coming to ArmA 3 and Day Z, that's the best window to debut!

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

If DX12 won't be ready by then ,when it will be? It was confirmed is coming to ArmA 3 and Day Z, that's the best window to debut!

I'm fairly certain it's confirmed at least for Arma 3. Otherwise, they wouldn't have mentioned it the way they did. Nailing it down means getting it seemlessly integrated, which would be great. They have plenty of time to do that, as the Expansion, which their main focus for DX12 is centered on, is scheduled for next year first half.