DirectX 9 is released

Crazy_Vasey · Post by **Crazy_Vasey** » 2003-01-01 03:43pm

Interesting. I know the 1.4 update added another 13 or so extensions, most of them being ARB, and the others were mostly ATi-specific.

Heh, I remember the days when Direct3D was the laughing stock of 3D API's. Oh well. Carmack uses OpenGL exclusively because he can modify it to suit his needs, so that's a plus.

OpenGL 1.4 is pretty irrelevant anyway because the windows ICD is stalled at 1.1 and MS ain't showing any signs of updating it. Thankfully you can load all of the functionality as extensions (bare OpenGL 1.1 is kinda crap now). Other platforms probably have it but windows is where the people and the money are for the most important thing: games

I tried D3D9 it's still a pain in the ass compared to OpenGL. Everything's tied together so closely. I have to admit the D3DX helper library is pretty cool though. There's a lot of very complex functionality ready made in there. You could use it with OpenGL (just have to transpose your matrices) but it would kindof make the cross platform bit a joke. The managed DX wrapper is quite nice as well compared to the COM interfaces you have to use in C++.

Crazy_Vasey · Post by **Crazy_Vasey** » 2003-01-01 03:48pm

His Divine Shadow wrote:Wouldn't Direct X's only real competitor OpenGL be in serious trouble if MS made Direct X "open" to the public like OpenGL?

Ofcourse it's just an idea, doubt MS would do such a thing.

I doubt it. There are a lot of people who simply don't like the way Direct3D works and the people who have been working with OpenGL for years are unlikely to switch, it would be foolish to discard all the little tricks you learn for an API like that.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-01-01 03:57pm

MKSheppard wrote:
Crayz9000 wrote: Hell, I can get 1000+ frames/sec in Unreal Tournament when I'm running OpenGL; I'm hard-pressed for 100 with DirectX. Hell of a difference, huh?
1,000 F/sec? WTF are you smoking? System specs please.

Athlon XP 1800+, 512MB RAM, GeForce3 Ti200, Windows 2000.

At least, I used to be able to get that. With Windows acting up lately, I can't get the game to run at all.

The main reason for those insane framerates was because I knocked all the details down in both the video card settings and the UT settings, installed the newest UT OpenGL driver, and basically tweaked the hell out of it. Don't expect to get those kinds of framerates with a default install.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-01-01 04:00pm

Enlightenment wrote:Frame rates over 60fps are just dick size measurements. Frame rates over 120fps are utterly pointless as consumer-grade monitors can't refresh at that rate anyway; the extra frames just get bitbucketed.

Yes, I'm aware of it. I usually run my monitor at 75-80Hz, so I know that it's useless. However, knowing that the game can run at that speed is comforting when getting into a heavy fragfest, with plenty of system-slowing things such as rockets and blood flying about. I used to hate those, because my framerates would drop to about 20-30; now it never dips under 100 at most.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-01-01 04:03pm

Crazy_Vasey wrote:The UT engine isn't a very good way to measure performance on hardware that's even close to modern. The engine is very, very old by computer standards and is not optimal for modern graphics cards to say the least. It's from the days when 3DFX ruled the roost (it's optimised for glide) and when CPU's were MUCH faster than graphics cards. It uses very exact culling which was good for slow graphics cards but is pointless now as graphics cards can handle monstrous amounts of polygons no hassle, it just drains the CPU.

True. Even so, they updated the OpenGL driver for UT less than a year ago, so it's now up to par with the UT2k3 renderer. I've heard that UT2k3 runs like shit on most computer systems, but with the same tweaks applied to it as to UT, it runs almost perfectly smooth.

I oughtta break out Q3 and benchmark my system...

Crazy_Vasey · Post by **Crazy_Vasey** » 2003-01-01 04:09pm

Crayz9000 wrote:
True. Even so, they updated the OpenGL driver for UT less than a year ago, so it's now up to par with the UT2k3 renderer. I've heard that UT2k3 runs like shit on most computer systems, but with the same tweaks applied to it as to UT, it runs almost perfectly smooth.

I oughtta break out Q3 and benchmark my system...

I played the demo of UT2K3 on my Duron 750 with a geforce2mx with more than adequate speed as well as a P4 2.6ghz with an onboard gfx card which also ran fast. On a duron 1200 with a Radeon 9500 it was stupidly fast. I think they ust have some type of hardware conflict bugs.

Quake3 is a pointless benchmark. It's stupidly fast on any modern system. Something more recent like Mafia would be better, that game puts a fair amount of strain on your machine in some levels.

Slartibartfast · Post by **Slartibartfast** » 2003-01-02 08:51pm

Hm just wondering, I'm running Windows XP (which supposedly uses OpenGL 1.1) and I have a GeForce2 MX. I installed the latest nVidia drivers, do these include the latest (1.3 or 1.4) opengl drivers?

Crazy_Vasey · Post by **Crazy_Vasey** » 2003-01-02 08:53pm

Slartibartfast wrote:Hm just wondering, I'm running Windows XP (which supposedly uses OpenGL 1.1) and I have a GeForce2 MX. I installed the latest nVidia drivers, do these include the latest (1.3 or 1.4) opengl drivers?

The card and drivers combo will support all OpenGL 1.4 features but they have to be loaded as extensions by the application because of the outdated ICD.

If you query the driver it will report 1.4 as the OpenGL version IIRC.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2003-01-02 09:58pm

Crazy_Vasey wrote:
Interesting. I know the 1.4 update added another 13 or so extensions, most of them being ARB, and the others were mostly ATi-specific.

Heh, I remember the days when Direct3D was the laughing stock of 3D API's. Oh well. Carmack uses OpenGL exclusively because he can modify it to suit his needs, so that's a plus.
OpenGL 1.4 is pretty irrelevant anyway because the windows ICD is stalled at 1.1 and MS ain't showing any signs of updating it. Thankfully you can load all of the functionality as extensions (bare OpenGL 1.1 is kinda crap now). Other platforms probably have it but windows is where the people and the money are for the most important thing: games

There has to be a download for it somewhere, even if it doesn't have the Microsoft Seal of Approval. Aren't they on the OpenGL committee? Gee, I wonder if Microsoft is doing stuff to stall the ratification of the 2.0 spec so they can have Direct3D leapfrog OpenGL ...

I doubt it. There are a lot of people who simply don't like the way Direct3D works and the people who have been working with OpenGL for years are unlikely to switch, it would be foolish to discard all the little tricks you learn for an API like that.

I was under the impression that pretty much everyone in the gaming industry but Carmack wanted to make love to DirectX and bear its children. Hell, nVidia and ATi are marketing their new cards as being "fully compliant with DirectX 9."