Farewell to DirectX?

[fineupgrades]

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Despite what delusional forum chimps might tell you, we all know that the graphics hardware inside today's consoles looks like a meek albino gerbil compared with the healthy tiger you can get in a PC. Compare the GeForce GTX 580's count of 512 stream processors with the weedy 48 units found in the Xbox 360's Xenos GPU, not to mention the ageing GeForce 7-series architecture found inside the PS3.

It seems pretty amazing, then, that while PC games often look better than their console equivalents, they still don't beat console graphics into the ground. A part of this is undoubtedly down to the fact that many games are primarily developed for consoles and then ported over to the PC. However, according to AMD, this could potentially change if PC games developers were able to program PC hardware directly at a low-level, rather than having to go through an API, such as DirectX.


The Xbox 360's Xenos GPU has a less then a tenth of the processing power of a top-end PC GPU, so why don't PC games look ten times better?



'It's funny,' says AMD's worldwide developer relations manager of its GPU division, Richard Huddy. 'We often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look ten times as good. To a significant extent, that's because, one way or another, for good reasons and bad - mostly good, DirectX is getting in the way.' Huddy says that one of the most common requests he gets from game developers is: 'Make the API go away.'

'I certainly hear this in my conversations with games developers,' he says, 'and I guess it was actually the primary appeal of Larrabee to developers – not the hardware, which was hot and slow and unimpressive, but the software – being able to have total control over the machine, which is what the very best games developers want. By giving you access to the hardware at the very low level, you give games developers a chance to innovate, and that's going to put pressure on Microsoft – no doubt at all.'

Please check the link for the whole story..
Farewell to DirectX? | bit-tech.net

[EarlZ]

Doesnt the 360 also use an API that is based on DirectX ?

For me consoles run the games better because of the single specification, developers can optimize their game engines to the specific console because theres only 1 set of hardware to work with in comparison to the PC they need to make universal engine for all possible configurations.

I believe say if Crysis 2 is built purely around a i7 2600K @ 4.5Ghz with a GTX580, the visuals will look more than 10 times better and frame rates will run higher but this is not happening.

But yeah the API does a LOT of processing overhead but also provides a lot of compatibility benefits, if developers did have direct low level hardware access then they need to code their engines specific to the CPU and GPU, that would be a nightmare!

Im about to read the posted information, so take the above with a grain of salt.

[siopao1984]

bacin mapildi ani ang mga video card manufacturers... hehehe

[elrond333]

Since the hardware on a gaming console is running on a controlled environment, its hardware is fully optimized to run console written games on such efficiency and parallelism. as compared to a pc wherein soo much factors are involved such as the OS, hardware specs, different programs. think of a open system and a closed system. the consoles being a closed system.

[personalmgt]

@EarlZ - X360 uses the DX API. I believe you can use the same SDK to port them to X360 or run it at Windows.

Kill DirectX, start developing OpenGL.

DX has been a pain to develop since the 90s up to now that only a few developers develop game engines off DX API. Heroics like DICE really did a good job on working on it especially with Battlefield 3 but they could have done it easier OpenGL. OpenGL, although might be a bit weaker than DX in features, will continue to grow and will topple DX any soon.

[siopao1984]

d ni cguro mahitabo oi.
unsaon na lang pag manufacture new hardware kung controlled na ang environment sa pc...
hehehe

[EarlZ]

Kill DirectX, start developing OpenGL.

John Carmack: Direct3D is better than OpenGL

Carmack: Direct3D is now better than OpenGL | bit-gamer.net

Despite always being a big OpenGL supporter, John Carmack in new interview said that Direct3D is better API than OpenGL is, mostly thanks to the jump Microsoft did with D3D10, rendering it completely incompatible with D3D9 and earlier.

He also mentions, though, that they at iD will continue to use OpenGL for their games.

[personalmgt]

Pwede man ni mahitabo siop.

Maka-manufacture gihapon because some may opt to go to OpenGL. There, the manufacturers will have a challenge on optimizing the cards for OpenGL. AFAIK, OpenGL and DX drivers are different.

[EarlZ]

d ni cguro mahitabo oi.
unsaon na lang pag manufacture new hardware kung controlled na ang environment sa pc...
hehehe

If maabot ta ani nga time I think its possible to perform a low level hardware call for bigger developers and indies might still stay with using the API/Driver calls. Im not an expert in this matter.. I dont even know if having drivers and DX API can still allow low level hardware functions.

[EarlZ]

Pwede man ni mahitabo siop.

Maka-manufacture gihapon because some may opt to go to OpenGL. There, the manufacturers will have a challenge on optimizing the cards for OpenGL. AFAIK, OpenGL and DX drivers are different.

If mahitabo man, I dont think its about optimizing for which API, remember since this is about direct low level hardware DX or OpenGL should not even be there.

I would think ATI/Nvidia would optimize their hardware to be more of a GP-GPU rather than fixed rendering units and which is already the case now.