Not talking about dev kits. Talking about the consumer versions.
DirectX 12 support, any news?
- Thread starter Sanderson
- Start date
Not talking about dev kits. Talking about the consumer versions.
You do have a point, though even 20% in todays market will likely drop considerably to neglegable numbers in the next 2 years.
The biggest downside of PC gaming is the massive variety of not just hardware but OS mixtures out in the real world. There's a reason why only the very top AAA titles, e.g. Watchdogs, insist upon 64-bit Windows, and even Watchdogs is DX10 based so that Vista x64 users can run it. As of April 2015 only around 25 games insist on 64-bit Windows for example. Part of this is due to the fact that Microsoft have a very long support lifetime for their OSes. Windows XP ran for almost 14 years, and we're only seeing the real impact of a non-XP universe over the past 12 months despite it being discontinued for retail 7 years ago. Windows Vista still has two years of support lifetime left, and Vista was predominantly 32-bit. Core technologies like new .NET Frameworks and DirectX take a LONG time to be de facto for software unfortunately for the same reason.. DX12 is not a "now" technology, it's a "what next" technology which will be adopted more in 2020 than in 2015 once Windows 7/8 reach their end-of-life. It's highly likely that the only place DX12 will be used exclusively in the interim will be for AAA titles on the Xbox One from later this year.
Yeah but even the games that supported Mantle needed to be rewritten to support it, which is why not many developers took it up. Now Directx is another story altogether as it is supported by all manufacturers ot to mention that Microsoft have more influence on this type of thing than AMD will ever have.
What I'm getting at is that developers are seeing great improvements on existing hardware with DirectX 12. So don't think we all have to buy new gear. Xbox One will be using it too remember
It's all down to whether FDev deem the increae in performance as enough of an advantage to sales to justify the huge work to implement it. As I have said earlier in this thread; I think they will do it because they hope to keep this game alive for the next 4+ years with payed expansions, but I don't see it happening until they release a payed expansion that needs it such as maybe planetary landings.
With as well as it runs now I imagine DX12 support is low on their list of priorities. It's something I dearly want, since it would allow for advanced physics on the cheap, some truly dazzling remodels of the asteroid fields, touch-ups to the stations, etc.... but given that the game runs on the 5 year old hardware that a lot of players seem to be using Frontier is going to be afraid to touch it.
That's what option settings are for. Heck there could even be an option to run in DX12 or fall back to 11 if not supported. At any rate, 64 bit should havee higher priority, so that the game runs natively on the players' systems. No matter if people use Windows 7, 8 or 10, 90% are using 64 bit. And the adoption rate of Windows 10 is high. On Steam Win 10 64 bit is already at whopping 25%. Roughly a year from now we'll see another surge, when the free upgrade offer runs out. By that time the users who are waiting for the OS to mature will jump on.
FWIW I know someone with knowledge of Direct X 12 and they said it's a bit of a quantum leap forward for gaming.
And then you have to update, bug test and provide support for two different clients.
Maybe if Frontier was going to someday in the future label the base game as complete and then focus everything on expansions, one of which could then be the official DX12 update while they leave the base game DX11, but right now they have no reason at all to go through the hassle and expense of updating to DX12.
That is one of the selling points right now for trying to be competitive with the PS4. It might be sooner than later purely to try and keep the XBONE afloat. There is incentive to work towards it from that standpoint where PCs might be a little slower since commercially it wont have a huge impact like it would with the XBONE.
I've already been testing it, it's a huge leap especially for games like Elite: Dangerous. Problem is ED is already very well optimized and does extremely well with multithreading. Frontier will not feel any pressure to make the jump, user data is going to indicate that they're better off supporting legacy versions of windows.
Wanna run a fun little experiment? Start a poll thread about which OS people are using, and see how many players are still on XP.
Eh, after 7, I'm done with Windows, thank goodness. You guys can keep playing in your spoonfed, kid pool OS world all you like. Except for some enterprise solutions, Windows is in the past where it belongs. My new laptop that came with Windows 8.1 is running Debian "Jessie"/KDE instead just fine with Steam and some games installed on it as well. My main computer which I also use for gaming will be on 7 for the long haul.
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What are you talking about? Elite bairly even touches my rig as it is.
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What are you talking about? Elite bairly even touches my rig as it is.
Well, in all fairness, your system is a far cry from average, as is mine. But we are a tiny minority in the playerbase.
Fair enough. But then again, how much of the player base is using DirextX 12? Only point I'm trying to make is that FD already have the opportunity to up the game's quality for those of us that can take advantage of it, but for whatever reason they haven't. The pop-in and limited number of visible local stars on the galactic map would be nice starting points.
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