Here's hoping for DX12 future support - and why

[drkaii]

DX12 doesn't just give the game the ability to fully make use of all cores, there's so much more going on with it. Here's an interesting article.

Basically, one of the points is that DX12 is aiming to be a low level code, meaning it will move a lot more of what devs can debug and reason about to the devs, rather than put behind the API wall.

Things like stuttering, something we complain about a lot, could indeed be nothing to do with FD. It could be API or driver based, then there's nothing they can do.

So bring on DX12 and hope that it's possible to rewrite the code for ED to take full advantage of the benefits

And manual resource management, while complex, will allow game developers to fully understand all the data movement in their game. This insight should make it easier for them to craft a consistent experience and perhaps ultimately eliminate loading/streaming-related stutter completely.

Detailed, highly interactive open world games or large-scale strategy titles with lots of moving parts are commonly CPU-limited in at least some scenarios even on higher-end systems.

• High-framerate gaming is becoming more and more popular, and even if you have the requisite GPU power and monitor technology to push 144 FPS, in many games you will run into CPU overhead limitations long before that.
• An interesting and often overlooked case is emulation—particularly projects like Xenia which seek to emulate more recent systems should benefit greatly from lower-level access allowing them to more directly model the behavior of the emulated hardware.
• Somewhat similarly, it might benefit console porting efforts to have a target available on PC which is closer in terms of API abstraction to their original platform.
• Finally, rendering for virtual reality has extremely stringent frame latency and consistency requirements which will be better served by a low-level API.

And lastly, the most inspiring bit of the whole article:

Dan Baker of Oxide Games put it when we talked about DX12, “We also see huge benefits in frame consistency, to the point where we believe it is possible to ‘never hitch’ in D3D12 if we are appropriately mastering the API.”

 

[Darkmark07]

Thanks for the link - interesting article. It does beg the question as to when (whether?) FD will see the need to switch to DX12.

From my (somewhat limited) understanding of the linked article, the code-base needed for games on DX12 and DX11 is significantly different so unless

1, someone comes up with a neat trick with some 'emulation' (probably not the correct word, but close enough) for a DX12 game to run on DX11 (with significant performance hit one would suppose) or
2, the underlying engines can be engineered to expose the same interface to the developers and then the engines handle outputting to DX11 or DX12 as appropriate or
3, there is a MASSIVE wholesale switch of gamers to Windows 10 (and therefore DX12)

any developer putting out a game only for DX12 is severely limiting their market... and I can't see a benefit for FD to maintain a DX11 and a DX12 version of the game...

Whilst we (lucky few) VR users are chomping at the bit for ANY performance increase, we are a minority and you have to wonder whether DX12 with all it's glorious promise is even on the horizon for ED.

 

[Ancipital]

Really? You want FD to be responsible for more of the rendering pipeline? Good grief.

 

[drkaii]

Thanks for the link - interesting article. It does beg the question as to when (whether?) FD will see the need to switch to DX12.

From my (somewhat limited) understanding of the linked article, the code-base needed for games on DX12 and DX11 is significantly different so unless

1, someone comes up with a neat trick with some 'emulation' (probably not the correct word, but close enough) for a DX12 game to run on DX11 (with significant performance hit one would suppose) or
2, the underlying engines can be engineered to expose the same interface to the developers and then the engines handle outputting to DX11 or DX12 as appropriate or
3, there is a MASSIVE wholesale switch of gamers to Windows 10 (and therefore DX12)

any developer putting out a game only for DX12 is severely limiting their market... and I can't see a benefit for FD to maintain a DX11 and a DX12 version of the game...

Whilst we (lucky few) VR users are chomping at the bit for ANY performance increase, we are a minority and you have to wonder whether DX12 with all it's glorious promise is even on the horizon for ED.

Some of the code needs to be re-written but they may feel the benefits out-weigh the losses. But it's a while off because as you say, not worth it until there's a lot of win10 uptake. Which there will be seeing as DX12 is only for win10

Really? You want FD to be responsible for more of the rendering pipeline? Good grief.

Of course I do. They are incredible coders, and coming on their forum and claiming otherwise is just bad manners man. And if you think they aren't good then don't worry, it's all backwards compatible and there are plenty of optional handlers in DX12 anyway