So, who rushed out and....

[Quixoticish]

....spent a fortune on a DirectX 10 graphics card to play FSX?

Hopefully none of you as these cards are now obsolete due to the forthcoming DirectX 10.1 which will require new hardware.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl ... 11/0524250

I've been telling people to avoid DirectX 10 cards a lot for the time being although admittedly I didn't have a genuine reason, I just felt it was sensible to allow the technology to bed down before rushing out and forking out premium prices for something that will probably be out of date in a few months time. Now it appears that the 8800 and 2900 won't support DirectX 10.1 at all.

DirectX 10.1 doesn't add anything major over DirectX 10, in fact the average user probably won't see any difference between the versions however this does set a rather worrying precedent. I imagine there are a lot of peeved gamers who forked out top dollar for the most up to date graphics cards not too long ago.

I felt this was quite relevant to Flight Sim given how there was a lot of talk about the FSX/VISTA/DirectX 10 combo, I'm sure many of us on here know people who already have or were planning on rushing out and picking up a DirectX 10 card and VISTA for the forthcoming FSX SP1.

[Sl4yer]

There will be a lot of upset people, assuming that report is true! Actually, reading it again, most (or even all) of those features could probably be supported by driver upgrades.

Phil Taylor (of FSX developer ACES) has always stated that decent DX10 performance would only come with the second generation DX10 hardware. That was good enough for me, and has actually always been the case when new DirectX features have been launched. (That is, the new cards can support it, but often not at a workable rate). It remains to be seen to what extent this will be the case for DX10 (or 10.1), but it seems likely to be around for a few years yet, so I'm in no rush!

James

[DaveB]

An article in PC Plus reckons that DX10 currently has more bloat attached that it won't be properly optimised for Vista.. either that or M$ have realised it's so poo, they want DX11 out ready for Vienna (2009 or thereabouts) :o The software PCP ran it on for comparison was Company of Heroes where they saw over 100fps under DX9 to 30fps when run on a top-of-the-range DX10 card :roll:

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[jonesey2k]

Would be awesome if more game Devs used OpenGL. I mean just look at the Doom3 engine!

[TSR2]

I did, but my reasoning was that I had money at the time to buy a system which will last me 3 years... and this one will, even though DX10.1 will be allong shortly and will not be supported on my card. Its worth mentioning that the DX dev cycle did mention this back in Jan 2006. They stated 3 incarnations of what has become DX10... the first would have a limited lifespan, the second, will also have a limited lifespan and the third will be the daddy... and probably not called DX10... i.e. it may be DX11. They were working on an advanced graphics front end for Vista which had to be trimmed back (infact one of the reason for Vista being late) which may well be introduced via Vista SP2 (if there is demand and hardware for it)

My guess is DX11 (or 10.2) will be trimed back to be less ground braking than originally invisaged.... I guess we'll all wait and see... seems to be a theme

[jonesey2k]

Its all in the master plan to keep you buying new expensive graphics cards!
Hasn't worked on me since I'm still using a 6800U that I bought when it first came out years ago

[Chris Sykes]

I spose they will call it DX11 to get away from the "Its DX10 compatable but it doesnt work" Well therell be loads of DX10 cards on the cheep soon then

[basys]

Hi Folks

There is no precedent here,
it's just as it ever was.

The report in itself may be entirely true,
however it has no relevance in the context of FSX.



Talking DX in general, (only as I understand it), -

Just as a DX8 card will quite happily run on DX9,
albeit not displaying the DX9 hardware specific features.

A DX10 card will also quite happily run on DX10.1
again not displaying the DX10.1 hardware specific features.



Now talking specifically about FSX -
RTM & SP1 are DX9 based,
whereas SP2 will take FSX to being a DX10 featured game.

However, as I understand it,
FSX will not be coded to implement the DX10.1 feature set.



It's also pointless comparing platform games,
which only utilise very small localised planar "environments",
against FSX which is modelling approx 100,000 sq km at a time,
and additionally doing this on a spherical surface.

Whether you use these capabilities in FS
to view multiple locations concurrently is another matter.



HTH
ATB
Paul