DirectX 12 transition is most needed thing for Elite now.

What's the point of interiors if you cant enjoy them with Ray Tracing and all that stuff?
Oh are we at the stage now where ray tracing is the most important thing?
Don't be silly!!!

That is NEXT month's rant...

We can assume the OP upgraded their PC so they dont have the performance issues they were hoping to resolve with DLSS and now they moved to the next level.

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They probably still have:

i5 9400F 16Gb 3200Mhz DDR4 Samsung 970EVO plus NVMe SSD RTX 2060 SUPER from a 2021 post (the 9400f doesn't clock the memory at 3200Mhz of course, it's only running at 2666Mhz - look up the specs OP), one that was pretty much all the same as all the other ones they have posted. In fact, i'm still wondering why they are still here their most wanted feature DLSS still isn't & they promised they'd leave if it didn't appear.

They now want DX 12, though without a complete engine rewrite ED won't be able to take advantage of it, performance will literally be unchanged (Vulkan is in the same boat).
 
There are still MMOs running on just DX9, or under, so I highly doubt they’ll DX12. FDev have been resisting the bare metal API requests and demands since 2013, when most of these APIs were being hyped. So I say let’s see how long we can keep this DX9 turned DX11 title running 😂 at this point, and keep brute forcing the graphics… Screw efficiency gains! Just buy high end and OC to the moon and you’ll be fine: I run an overwatted and overlcocked 6900 XT, at about 400 watts and 2.7 GHZ and can run the game at 75FPS, 1620p, ultra-wide and SMAA 1.25x lol. I’ll tell ya, this PC is blowing out some serious heat—makes my legs hot.

Also, Star Citizen isn’t even on bare metal yet. This is felt when you enter the atmosphere on Crusader LOL. Instant CPU bog down. Going there is actually a really good way to re-experience what it’s like to play on console titles over ten years ago, when they were commonly running sub-30FPS lol. Hopefully that’s been changed with 3.18.
 
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Thr other major issue is the last engine update made it all much darker, if they rewrite it will be a black screen 🤣
That won't be the graphic engine that did that. It will be the code and data that uses the graphics engine that did that. They probably reduced the number of light sources to make the graphics run faster. Too many light sources, with associated reflections and shadows, absolutely kills graphics systems. Too many calculations, particularly at higher resolutions. That's why stars are a single light source and not multiple sources that allows some to be obscured and not others.

What's the point of interiors if you cant enjoy them with Ray Tracing and all that stuff?
Oooh ray tracing, that will be good. Cobra is inefficient as it is. Let's add a few more million calculations a second and bring the frame rate down to 30% of its current speed. Nice shiny reflective surfaces that hardly move.

They now want DX 12, though without a complete engine rewrite ED won't be able to take advantage of it, performance will literally be unchanged (Vulkan is in the same boat).
Absolutely right. You don't just plug in an API and everything runs faster. It will be incompatible for a start and require a large number of changes to the Cobra graphics engine. Its a bit like your boss telling you to speak French because it will make you more efficient. Unless you can utilise the French language to do things faster, it will be a large expense will very little benefit (except that you will sound extremely sophisticated and you can get jobs easier in France, Canada and a host of other countries).
 
Honestly I don’t know that the Cobra engine is all that bad. I don’t think even Unreal 5 can do what this engine does, globally. That’s probably why FDev had to go completely custom
In the first place, and Starfield is using an even older engine. Which is why in the trailers everything looks all wet and shiny, which is basically the issue graphics engines had back in the Skyrim days, where things that shouldn’t look wet/ plastic looked wet/ plastic. Kind of like Witcher 3 with the frequent shiny faces.
 
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Mmm but to stop using cruddy FSR 1.0.

DX12 would add support for FSR 2.1 and 3.0.

Which could help out players on actual 1440p /4k setups.

Dying Light 2 has both DX11 and 12 settings available and FSR 2.1 looks spiffy on VKD3D on my 1440p ultrawide (I play on Linux).


 
DX12 right now is still just a gimmick. Guild Wars 2 got huge performance improvements when Anet went from DX 9 to 11. They get similar DX12 requests and ignore them as well.
It also took them ages to get the DX11 version up to parity with the DX9 one. For the longest time while the DX11 branch was in beta, DX9 was basically "Epilepsy-safe" mode. You had the technicolour flashes any time the camera intersected a water plane, various crashes, other graphical corruptions like solid black textures and luminous outlines, it wasn't until the very last minute before it came out of beta that they even re-added environmental animations like foliage reaction to player collision. It was a long and very troubled process.

And they went with DX11, because they had done a ton of research in advance and had concluded that porting it to DX12 would be HARDER, and result in far more issues, for little gain over what they would already get with the move to DX11.
 
Personally I would vote for Vulcan support and a port to Linux, where cpu utilization is already better using proton/Vulcan.

I know very little about graphics engines, but I have come to the conclusion that basically the same cobra engine can be adapted to either dx11 or dx12, and that dx12 can’t paper over anything but the smallest of cracks in the implementation of when to do background tasks for example.
That being said I was also surprised that other frontier games with the cobra engine support dx12: my layman’s comment would also be ‘what’s the problem in getting dx12 on ED then’, especially if that is a pre-condition for FSR2 support.
 
Personally I would vote for Vulcan support and a port to Linux, where cpu utilization is already better using proton/Vulcan.

I know very little about graphics engines, but I have come to the conclusion that basically the same cobra engine can be adapted to either dx11 or dx12, and that dx12 can’t paper over anything but the smallest of cracks in the implementation of when to do background tasks for example.
That being said I was also surprised that other frontier games with the cobra engine support dx12: my layman’s comment would also be ‘what’s the problem in getting dx12 on ED then’, especially if that is a pre-condition for FSR2 support.
Ah, another naïve "all you need to do is change the graphics technology and the game will run better and look better". OK this is best explained with an analogy, changing the manufacturer of you TV won't make a bad film any better. The problem does not lie in the graphics technology used (DirectX, Vulkan etc), it how you use it and how you code your shaders. If your software does not cull the surfaces properly then it will still be inefficient drawing complex scenery. If you have too many lighting sources and too many reflective surfaces then you will overload the graphics engine, whether it is DX11, DX12 or Vulkan.

As for why ED does not use the same Cobra engine as other Frontier games. The answer is simple .... compatibility / cost. I can guarantee you it is not a simple matter of plug in the new technology and bingo it all works. It a bit like why you cannot just plug in the latest CPU into your ten year old PC. They both run Windows and your favourite program will run on both CPUs. The problem is the interfacing to the motherboard. You would need to upgrade that, then the memory and then you would need a new PSU. It a bit like that with software. The new Cobra engine may use DX12, but that does not mean its interfaces are 100% compatible with ED's version of Cobra. The two Cobra engines have probably diverged and will never be merged again.

And don't get me started on the Linux bit. We have had FDev drop support for Mac and now consoles. Why would they branch the code for Linux? The market for Linux must be smaller than consoles. Why waste money on developing a Linux version of ED? The returns would not be commercially viable. Fdev is in the business of making money, not capturing niche markets.
 
Ah, another naïve "all you need to do is change the graphics technology and the game will run better and look better".
Not at all, I never said it would be easy, but I can understand why people would wonder why frontier didn’t opt for dx12, when they already had a game on the market with dx12

And don't get me started on the Linux bit. We have had FDev drop support for Mac and now consoles. Why would they branch the code for Linux?
One can but ask ;-)
I have no idea how much it would cost of course, and nowhere did I say it would be easy. Linux has gradually gained popularity over the last few years for gaming, and ED already works on the steam dec.k
 
Not at all, I never said it would be easy, but I can understand why people would wonder why frontier didn’t opt for dx12, when they already had a game on the market with dx12
If it were easy or cheap then they would have done it. They have not, so there must be a reason. There are people there, that have more knowledge than you and I on the subject. They are not migrating just to spite customers. The most likely factor is the cost/benefit ration. If you are only going to get a minimal increase in performance then why bother. Having the latest technology does not guarantee massive gain in performance. I'm just thinking of the testing involved alone and the possibility of introducing bugs into the system. We don't want to give Fdev any more excuses or reasons to muff it up. If after all that, you get a 1% or 2% increase in speed, because most of the inefficiencies are in Cobra, then why bother? The DX12 Cobra may be good at rendering buildings during daytime, with a single light source, but you don't get that with ED. It is lit with multiple light sources and lots of flashes and bangs.

The only benefit I have heard of is FSR 2. A form of AI smudging of low res images. It gives the appearance of higher resolutions, but will never add detail. The best you will get is rock or wall surfaces that appear to be more textured. It won't make Cobra run faster and eliminate all its inefficiencies. It will just allow you to run at lower resolutions (which is faster) and upscale the texture to give the appearance of higher resolution. Your walls will not have extra things on them and the NPC's hair will not appear more lush and flowing. Your low texture will just look less naff, but not as good as the higher res models.

One can but ask ;-)
I have no idea how much it would cost of course, and nowhere did I say it would be easy. Linux has gradually gained popularity over the last few years for gaming, and ED already works on the steam dec.k
You can ask for anything you like, but it about as likely as asking to win the lottery and someone saying "Yes, OK". Again the answer is cost against benefit. If it a 5% increase in revenues, but cost 25% of current revenues then it's a no brainer.
I thought there were people running ED under Linux with Wine. Not sure how well that runs. Would not expect it to be great.
 
They are not migrating just to spite customers.
Who said they were?
If you are only going to get a minimal increase in performance then why bother.
Agreed, and in my first post I said that dx12 wouldn’t paper of the cracks of a bad design, so ..

You can ask for anything you like, but it about as likely as asking to win the lottery and someone saying "Yes, OK".
I thought it was clear that it was a “it would be nice if” desire more than anything else, apparently not ..

I thought there were people running ED under Linux with Wine. Not sure how well that runs. Would not expect it to be great.
As I said in my original post, it runs better than windows on my old but still decent i7 haswell with gtx 1080. That’s using proton with steam, which is equivalent to WINE.
Valve has helped push Linux for gaming quite a bit with the steam deck (which as I said runs ED quite well), so you never know, maybe my wish will be granted one day.
 
That being said I was also surprised that other frontier games with the cobra engine support dx12: my layman’s comment would also be ‘what’s the problem in getting dx12 on ED then’, especially if that is a pre-condition for FSR2 support.

It's over. They are cutting the cost and putting Elite Dangerous in to maintenance mode.
 
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Because they are done with the game.
You can see it in their level of videos quality they release for their current Thargoid invasion plot.
You can see it, when they, briefly mentioned that Q1/2023 Reworked Feature Update, is now turned in to " We will look in to something at the end of 2023"
You can see it when a known CM left ED, to work on some other Frontier project.
You can see it when they reduce number of Stream pr month to just 1.
Console is done.
It's over. They are cutting the cost and putting Elite Dangerous in to maintenance mode.

And why shouldn't they? It's been almost 9 years. They have done their best with the game, and moved on now.

The only thing that you should be worried about, if they will keep the lights on past 10 year mark. Because that's what they promised 10 years.
I’ve actually even lost hope now that we’ll ever get a decent AA engine ( which by the way would have come with FSR2 if I’m not mistaken)
 
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