Why does this game not use DirectX 12?

TheWetDolphin

TheWetDolphin
Hello!

I'm not that great with topics like this but from what I have herd, if this game supported DirectX 12 it would help a lot with performance. And seeing as there are so many complaints about it on the forums, why can't this be implemented? Probably something I'm missing so could someone please explain it to me? Cheers! [happy]
 

shaneturner12

S
There's one reason I can think of and that's operating system compatibility. From memory only Windows 10 supports DirectX 12 so users with lower operating systems would end up having problems as a result (as these only go up to DirectX 11).

There's also possible hardware issues as well as some older graphics cards may not support DirectX 12 either.

Shane
 

tyczj

T
Plain and simple, DX12 limits the number of potential customers (windows 10 users only) where as DX11 you have a lot more you can go after
 

Joël

Volunteer Moderator
Joël
shaneturner12 said:
There's one reason I can think of and that's operating system compatibility. From memory only Windows 10 supports DirectX 12 so users with lower operating systems would end up having problems as a result (as these only go up to DirectX 11).

There's also possible hardware issues as well as some older graphics cards may not support DirectX 12 either.

Shane
Click to expand...

tyczj said:
Plain and simple, DX12 limits the number of potential customers (windows 10 users only) where as DX11 you have a lot more you can go after
Click to expand...

Those are indeed the reasons why Planet Coaster is built with DirectX 11. A lot of players are using Windows 7 for various and legitimate reasons, and wouldn't be able to play Planet Coaster if the game was to require DirectX 12 as minimum.
 

TheWetDolphin

TheWetDolphin
Joël said:
Those are indeed the reasons why Planet Coaster is built with DirectX 11. A lot of players are using Windows 7 for various and legitimate reasons, and wouldn't be able to play Planet Coaster if the game was to require DirectX 12 as minimum.
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Thanks for confirming Joel [happy] But would there be much of a performance difference if it was ever introduced?
 

Joël

Volunteer Moderator
Joël
TheWetDolphin said:
Thanks for confirming Joel [happy] But would there be much of a performance difference if it was ever introduced?
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I don't have the technical knowledge to answer that question in detail. What I have understood from others is that DirectX 11 is bound by a single thread to execute the draw tasks. This can be the limiting factor with high end computers. For as far as I know, DirectX 12 draw tasks are multithreaded and not bound by a single thread. This enables DirectX 12 to execute more draw tasks per given amount of time, which in theory could result in higher performance.
 

VACkillers

VACkillers
Joël said:
Those are indeed the reasons why Planet Coaster is built with DirectX 11. A lot of players are using Windows 7 for various and legitimate reasons, and wouldn't be able to play Planet Coaster if the game was to require DirectX 12 as minimum.
Click to expand...

To me that still sounds really off... Why not just have a DX12 mode tick box option on the menu options like other games do? A lot of games are able to run both DX11 and DX12 for several years now, heck there are few games that even have two completely different exe's to launch the game in the respected modes. Thus you would have still had the performance that comes with DX12, but not restricting the entire playerbase at the same time. Too late now of course, but really should have thought it through a bit more properly considering how bad the game lags when folks start to have a half full to full park with even the most expensive hardware on the market.

I do however, hope you integrate something in a update/patch one day, wether thats DX12 or Vulkan.... It's a terribly hard task to do... as has been explained in the past but really I dunno how the decision to leave a better API out instead of adopting both wasn't talked more before just sticking to one... I just simply will never understand that.... but thats just my opinion.... because you just simply ended up alienating a lot players because of performance issues in the end anyway. Unless you're on a VERY good PC and a VERY expensive one, 30FPS on a full park is just not possible which alienated anyone on lower spec hardware which counter products what Frontier tried to avoid in the first place.
 
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DistortAMG

D
vackillers said:
To me that still sounds really off... Why not just have a DX12 mode tick box option on the menu options like other games do? A lot of games are able to run both DX11 and DX12 for several years now, heck there are few games that even have two completely different exe's to launch the game in the respected modes. Thus you would have still had the performance that comes with DX12, but not restricting the entire playerbase at the same time. Too late now of course, but really should have thought it through a bit more properly considering how bad the game lags when folks start to have a half full to full park with even the most expensive hardware on the market.

I do however, hope you integrate something in a update/patch one day, wether thats DX12 or Vulkan.... It's a terribly hard task to do... as has been explained in the past but really I dunno how the decision to leave a better API out instead of adopting both wasn't talked more before just sticking to one... I just simply will never understand that.... but thats just my opinion.... because you just simply ended up alienating a lot players because of performance issues in the end anyway. Unless you're on a VERY good PC and a VERY expensive one, 30FPS on a full park is just not possible which alienated anyone on lower spec hardware which counter products what Frontier tried to avoid in the first place.
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You can't just retro fit something as important as DirectX onto a game engine with ease. EVERY SINGLE game that has been released thus far with DX12 support (except Ashes of the singularity) does not fully implement the API or it's full feature. The Cobra engine would need to be build from the ground up to make full use of DX12 as would every single other engine.

No doubt Frontier are looking into this, but it really is not a simple solution, or something that can just be bolted on. I would argue that this is the main reason for DX 12 not being supported. Limited their customer base has nothing to do with it, at all. If they have a fully implemented DX12 API, it will have backwards support to an extent, allowing people with DX11 to run the game in DX 11 mode without having to write much extra code. The main issue is the amount of work needed from the ground up to put DX12 in.
 

MrBob101

MrBob101
The real question should be, how would DX12 help. There have been countless threads where people talk about their GPUS for Planet Coaster and they are never the problem. FPS is really not the graphics card's fault in Planet Coaster unless it is really low end. It is the cpu's fault. So if you have a DX12 card, then it is clearly not lo end and you shouldn't need to worry about it. DX12 really would not benefit the users of this game at all
 

Chems

Chems
MrBob101 said:
The real question should be, how would DX12 help. There have been countless threads where people talk about their GPUS for Planet Coaster and they are never the problem. FPS is really not the graphics card's fault in Planet Coaster unless it is really low end. It is the cpu's fault. So if you have a DX12 card, then it is clearly not lo end and you shouldn't need to worry about it. DX12 really would not benefit the users of this game at all
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Currently the game is being held back my single core performance because draw calls are limited to a single core, so at some point multiple cpu cores will not really increase the game's performance. With DX12, draw calls could be spread over multiple cores which could give better performance.
 

Ramm

Ramm
I dont think the switch can be easily made, I remember them saying something like that in a thread a while ago. But if planet coaster would run way smoother on dx12, I would upgrade from win7 to win10 in a heartbeat [big grin]
 

DistortAMG

D
MrBob101 said:
The real question should be, how would DX12 help. There have been countless threads where people talk about their GPUS for Planet Coaster and they are never the problem. FPS is really not the graphics card's fault in Planet Coaster unless it is really low end. It is the cpu's fault. So if you have a DX12 card, then it is clearly not lo end and you shouldn't need to worry about it. DX12 really would not benefit the users of this game at all
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This is not true at all. Planet Coaster is still very very graphically intense and does get held back by people's GPUs a lot.

Also just because the card supports DirectX 12 is in no way an indication that it is powerful or high end.

Take the Nvidia GT 1030, fully supports DirectX 12 but a card that's not really powerful, very very slow by today's standards.
 

LN

LN
DistortAMG said:
LOL, just because I know and have an understanding of computers and computer programming does not mean I want to be a game developer, you should not assume.
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Sorry, wasn't reacting on your posts (yours was the last one so I understand you think I did that). It was just a reaction in general (not only this topic)

But it's just the general feeling I get when seeing all those reactions about how stupid it is that some decisions are made while building a game.

I don't know ❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎ about game making so I don't dare to go to deep into it and some people should just play and not be bothered by any technical things like Dx11 vs Dx12.

I know you know what you are talking about but others don't know what they are talking about.

Discussions about it? fine. But it's not always a discussion, it's pointing fingers at the developers and judge them for their decisions.
Obviously this applies not only to this topic but a lot of others as well.
 
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xyphic

X
vackillers said:
To me that still sounds really off... Why not just have a DX12 mode tick box option on the menu options like other games do? A lot of games are able to run both DX11 and DX12 for several years now, heck there are few games that even have two completely different exe's to launch the game in the respected modes. Thus you would have still had the performance that comes with DX12, but not restricting the entire playerbase at the same time. Too late now of course, but really should have thought it through a bit more properly considering how bad the game lags when folks start to have a half full to full park with even the most expensive hardware on the market.

I do however, hope you integrate something in a update/patch one day, wether thats DX12 or Vulkan.... It's a terribly hard task to do... as has been explained in the past but really I dunno how the decision to leave a better API out instead of adopting both wasn't talked more before just sticking to one... I just simply will never understand that.... but thats just my opinion.... because you just simply ended up alienating a lot players because of performance issues in the end anyway. Unless you're on a VERY good PC and a VERY expensive one, 30FPS on a full park is just not possible which alienated anyone on lower spec hardware which counter products what Frontier tried to avoid in the first place.
Click to expand...
It's not as simple as just ticking a box. It's not just as simple as taking the DX11 DLLs and switching them for the DX12 ones. For Frontier to take advantage of the features of DX12 that might improve performance, they'll have to make fundamental changes to the way that their engine works, and on top of that would have to maintain both. That means potentially double the work whenever they add features, double the testing, etc. Ideally if they were to switch graphics API they'd choose one that's supported on all operating systems. Vulkan sticks out as the obvious choice there, but that would likely be even more work than supporting DX12.

I'd love for Frontier to pull a rabbit out of the hat on this one, but I can't see it happening. I think that for future games they'll make the move to a modern API but it would surprise me if they try to backport it to a game that's already been released like Planet Coaster.
 

DistortAMG

D
Sorry, wasn't reacting on your posts (yours was the last one so I understand you think I did that). It was just a reaction in general (not only this topic)

But it's just the general feeling I get when seeing all those reactions about how stupid it is that some decisions are made while building a game.

I don't know ❤︎❤︎❤︎❤︎ about game making so I don't dare to go to deep into it and some people should just play and not be bothered by any technical things like Dx11 vs Dx12.

I know you know what you are talking about but others don't know what they are talking about.

Discussions about it? fine. But it's not always a discussion, it's pointing fingers at the developers and judge them for their decisions.
Obviously this applies not only to this topic but a lot of others as well.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, I digress and take back my sarcstic comment :D
 

Chems

Chems
Well, you don't have to be a game developer to see that Frontier made some very strange decisions in Planet Coaster. [tongue]
 
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