Conclusion

With its new features, DirectX 10 has the potential to be a nice improvement over DirectX 9. Is DX10 as significant an update as going from DX7 to DX8? Definitely not. But the changes and new additions Microsoft has integrated into DirectX 10 will allow for a substantial increase in visual fidelity. This is due in large part thanks to the efficiency gains gleaned from the new API. As a result of these efficiency gains, game developers will essentially be given the green light to push many more objects and goodies onto the screen, which will in turn increase realism.

Meanwhile, the new geometry shader can be used to offload functions that previously were done on the CPU to the GPU, freeing the CPU up for other tasks, or the geometry shader can be used to output more geometry into a game’s scene (Microsoft refers to this as limited amplification) or for other applications such as shadow volumes. As game developers gain more experience with the geometry shader, its usage will no doubt increase.

All these new additions to DirectX 10 will allow for games that look much better than today’s latest titles, with richer, more detailed worlds that are filled with more objects and eye candy effects such as HDR lighting, volumetric fog, and depth of field, as well as more detailed characters.

This brings us to this pair of screenshots:

The screenshots above come from Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X, one of the first titles that has been designed to take advantage of DirectX 10. The screenshot on the left comes from the game’s DirectX 9 mode, while the screenshot on the right is running DX10. It doesn’t take 20/20 vision to see the difference in the two screenshots, the water in the DX10 screenshot looks photorealistic, with many more waves, while the sky is filled with thick clouds and rays from the sun striking the side of the mountain. In comparison the DX9 shot looks rather pathetic.

However, the DX10 screenshot is a little misleading, as technically DX9 is fully capable of rendering everything seen in the DX10 shot with a few extra passes. Basically the frame rate would be slower under DX9 (by how much is unknown at this point), but that’s about it. In a lot of ways, this reminds us of the first batch of shader model 3.0 screenshots that went out a few years back with Far Cry. We all saw how that one played out – early on shader model 3.0 was mainly used for performance gains, not improving graphics.

Epic’s Tim Sweeney basically said as much on the previous page: “But, despite the marketing hype, DirectX 10 isn't all that different from DirectX 9, so you'll mainly see performance benefits on DirectX 10 rather than striking visual differences.”

Don’t get us wrong, we’re not saying DirectX 10 won’t be a significant improvement over DirectX 9, as clearly Microsoft has implemented lots of improvements that will significantly enhance the gaming experience visually, just don’t expect to see a sweeping change overnight. Most likely the first wave of titles will use DX10 enhancements liberally, and these enhancements will be subtle, focusing on improving performance rather than image quality. After all, there will only be so many gamers out there with DX10 hardware and a copy of Windows Vista 6-12 months from now, so many game developers will probably spend the bulk of their time tweaking their games towards their much larger DX9 audience.

As DX10 hardware becomes more popular (and more powerful), it’s likely that game developers will then focus more on delivering the graphical enhancements everyone’s wanting.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, as clearly DX9 titles look good today. Those Crysis screenshots and gameplay footage from E3 for instance were all running on DX9 hardware. The same applies to the Unreal Engine 3 content that’s been released to date.

The next-generation of gaming is coming though. And by all accounts, it’s looking quite good. Now we’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of next-gen hardware. If the rumors about NVIDIA’s G80 GPU are true, we won’t have to wait too much longer. We certainly can’t wait to see what both ATI and NVIDIA have in store for their upcoming DX10 parts. If history is any indication, we should be seeing some substantial increases in graphics performance once these next-gen GPUs arrive…

Find this article helpful? If you enjoyed this article, please digg it to share with others!