Microsoft about to reveal dx12, yet we must wait a year for dx11

Does that seem right to you?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7835/d...ed-at-gdc-2014

You're speaking as if DX12 is going to be used right away, It's going to take years for most games to actually use DX12, especially mainstream ones.

Depends how much of a practical improvement DX12 is over DX11, and even then, how much effort it would take to port to DX12. New APIs are like new videogames: There's going to be issues at launch. If you want to have the least amount of issues, it's best to wait a few months or so until they're sorted.

So with that in mind, I'm not bothered by this at all.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. An API reveil is a far cry from full adoption. Even DirectX 11 hasn't really hit its stride yet in terms of ubiquity. DirectX 9 was quickly adopted because it represented a fundumental improvement in the way users interacted with hardware. DirectX 11, on the other hand, offered at best small preformance and quality of life improvements while greatly changing the function calls for preforming the common tasks. It only stands to reason that developers with a decade of experience on DirectX 9 prefered to stick with what they were used to in the face of relatively small gains.

If DirectX 12 provides a vast improvement in GPU utilization - something I honestly highly doubt - it will be adopted quickly and the world will forget DirectX 11 even existed, just like it did with DirectX 10. Funudamentally, APIs exist only to make the job of developing easier and present a uniform, convenient face on complex hardware (or software). DirectX 11, DirectX 12, OpenGL 3.0, Mantle, they all are only as powerful as the underlying hardware and the overlying application that utilize them. You can emulate DirectX 11 Tesselation as long as your hardware can support it. Meanwhile, DirectX 12 will be useless for years until the market is saturated with GPUs that implement the supported hardware.

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

Does that seem right to you?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7835/d...ed-at-gdc-2014

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Think of DirectX as a library of "things you can use". Square Enix are simply using that as the 'foundation' for a new client for the PC/PS4 in which they can have two clients;

DX9 - A standard client, runs smoothly with a decent look.
DX11 - An optional client, can run smoother, offers a higher graphics fidelity and extra options.

Don't focus on the "DirectX" side of things, focus on the client separation, they're simply using that as the base to work on a client that can offer what the developers want to be "A true Final Fantasy" game that can offer the best visuals it can.

Simply "adding DirectX" to your game won't make it look good, it's a resource of useful things you can use to enhance the experience, essentially a library of resources and information to pull from to get particular things done.

Dx11 offers quite a nice bundle of new things but nothing realm shattering to the point where "omg game iz ugly without dx11, y u no have dx11".

Dx12 would have to be offering something absolutley astounding to make it a 'quick standard', as it'll take a while for the average hardware base to catch up.
And seeing as (on average) most people are only catching up to DirectX 11 in terms of GPU's, it's going to be a very a long time before you hear-see anything about DX12 being used.

However I'll reitterate again, if DX12 offered something a true game-changer something absolutley amazing that "Wows" the world, THEN you'll see the DX11>12 hardware catchup being considerably faster.



"I still don't get it..."


Think of it like televisions. Whenever the transition from Standard Definition [SD] > High Definition [HD] televisions came around. How long did it take for this to happen?

It took years! The transition was slow, video-players, consoles, digital television>HD digital television all took a long time to catch on as a 'standard' for companies to produce HD content, as the average consumer only had a SD TV. (Hence why the Wii was an SD console).

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

Does that seem right to you?

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If you know anything about development you'd know it won't matter as DX12 won't become a standard anytime soon and ontop of that we already know DX11 won't do much for FFXIV ARR per Yoship - So does it seem right? Yes, DX10 and 11 are finally a standard but many programs/games are still built with some DX9 standards, DX12 won't become a standard for another 3 years at minimum.

Knowing Microsoft they will tie it to windows 9 or 8.X.

If DX12 is only for Windows 9 or 8.X it will be an extremely slow uptake and AMD won't have to worry about Mantle becoming obsolete.

DX11 premiered in 2009 and most developers still coded in DX9 'till more recently (many still do); with the majority of easily affordable graphics cards and more importantly pre-builts now being DX11 compatible, I'd be willing to bet DX11 will become the next DX9 if anything. Like mentioned, we likely won't see DX12 used regularly for years to come, when developers know the majority of hardware out there can support it (and that may not even happen if we have another DX10 on our hands).

It really is a shame that we're still waiting for the directx11 client.

DX12 will be Win8 only anyways. Just as with DX10 when you tie the new DX to an unpopular version of Windows most devs will ignore it because most users will not own that version of Windows. I am completely unconcerned about DX12 at this point because Win8 is the new Vista.

I'm not concerned with this game not gettinng 12, I'm more concerned that we are forced to use an api that is so old, a large chunk of the playerbase wasn't even in kindergarten when it was released!

Keep the option there sure, but don't force me to look at 12 year old tech because a few can't handle it.

If the rumors of MS solving the cpu overhead with DX12 are legit, I wouldn't be too surprised if it picked up steam fairly quickly compared to DX11 did. As it stands, Nvidia has some goodies in store for later this year with Maxwell and they will be speaking at GDC this year when MS presents DX12. DX12 hardware most likely won't be far off. Considering the collaboration partners, I think DX12 will be off to a good start. If it really does solve cpu overhead, I could see more developers utilizing it as it could potentially allow gamers who don't have a $3000 pc play AAA with great fidelity.

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Originally Posted by Elazu

It really is a shame that we're still waiting for the directx11 client.

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I'm not sure why ARR didn't release with dx11.

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Originally Posted by Lurkios

I'm not sure why ARR didn't release with dx11.

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Honestly? Because Japan doesn't use win7. Majority of the country is on xp.

There's a lot of blame to go around why there are so many DX9 games.

I mostly blame Microsoft with trying to force gamers to upgrade by not allowing you to use a higher version of DirectX than 9.0c on Windows XP.

It hasn't worked very well from what I see from Steam survey. 20.62% of steam gamers are using a DX10/DX11 GPU with windows XP. 6% of steam gamers are using windows XP. This means for the developer if they make a DX10/11 only game they are losing 6% possible sales.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Reason why FFXIV is DX9 is that during the early beta they were still supporting Windows XP.

Edit: updated numbers based on survey details.

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

Keep the option there sure, but don't force me to look at 12 year old tech because a few can't handle it.

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Sadly it's not a 'few'.

Its a very very very large number of the people who subscribe and keep the game that you enjoy so much running.
Most computers have the capability of working in DX9 and 10, but for the most part it's a easier to just work with DX9 (as the leap from 9-10 wasn't substantial enough to merit it).


"But surely everyone can use DX10/11 by now???"

Nope.

Jimmy Johnson playing on the laptop his mother got him for Christmas with a mobile-chipset that runs the game decently but only supports Dx9 will want to play the game.

Sadly this is your average user-base. Low-Mid range hardware, making sure the game operated on launch for the average user-base was ciritical to the sucess we all witnessed in the first few months. Allowing the common denominator to access and play your game at a decent frame-rate on an average machine is imperative to your games survival.


Could they have dropped the PS3 and focused only on high-end gaming rigs again?
Yes, but they'd be cutting out a MASSIVE part of the market, which no-one in their right mind trying to turn a profit would even consider.


Thankfully however, most hardware is shifting now. DX10/11 is becoming the standard and most GPUs (even mobile chipsets) are sitting at around 512-1024MB of video memory.
Meaning that DX9 is filtering out (faster than you'd think), but there's still a large base of users stuck on DX9 ranged hardware.

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

Keep the option there sure, but don't force me to look at 12 year old tech because a few can't handle it.

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And ontop of all this they've already announced a Dx11 client SPECIFICALLY for people who can.

Why the hell are you whining that they're not giving it to you when it's RIGHT THERE that they're going to do it.

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Originally Posted by Lurkios

I'm not sure why ARR didn't release with dx11.

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The original game required a beastly PC and most players dicovered this very quickly in the Alpha/Beta and release. Even a decent gaming computer for that time could barely run FFXIV smoothyl. (Although 1.23 used Dx9, it still has a valid point)

DirectX11 would cut out a very large portion of people who are still stuck on Dx9/10/10.1 hardware, which is a very very large amount of players. Seeing as Square Enix wanted to nail the casual market and draw them into FFXIV (as well as old Final Fantasy fans), to do so the game had to run as smoothly as possible on the 'average computer' that most people would have in their homes for games (or even not originally intended for games).

They wanted accessibility over a luxury niche market.

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Originally Posted by Pseudopsia

There's a lot of blame to go around why there are so many DX9 games.

I mostly blame Microsoft with trying to force gamers to upgrade by not allowing you to use a higher version of DirectX than 9.0c on Windows XP.

It hasn't worked very well from what I see from Steam survey. 20.62% of steam gamers are using a DX10/DX11 GPU with windows XP. This means for the developer if they make a DX10/11 only game they are losing 20% possible sales.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Reason why FFXIV is DX9 is that during the early beta they were still supporting Windows XP.

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Sadly the Steam hardware survey is optional and most people simply ignore it completley.
(As well as the average user not even owning/using steam).
It's a good idea to use for a roughly estimate, but for MMOs is becomes difficult as quite a good chunk of people only installed FFXIV on their PC because "I like Final Fantasy", even if they've never played a PC game before.

It'll be a little longer before Dx11 is the standard.

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Originally Posted by Shioban

And ontop of all this they've already announced a Dx11 client SPECIFICALLY for people who can.

Why the hell are you whining that they're not giving it to you when it's RIGHT THERE that they're going to do it.

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Because its so low on Yohi's priority that theres a very likely chance it wont even happen untill the second
expansion pack, and in a time where free to play games support dx11 and a top of the line mmo doesnt is staggering.

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Originally Posted by Shioban

DirectX11 would cut out a very large portion....They wanted accessibility over a luxury niche market.

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because dx11 support totally killed the playerbase WoW and EVE right?

Oh wait...no..because DX11 is an OPTION like im asking for.

Its understandable why, the game failed before. They weren't sure if the game would be a success, it was easier to have the game at a stage where it would run on the PS3 and average users computer as compared to;
"Let's make this MMO look better than [othergamehere]"

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

Oh wait...no..because DX11 is an OPTION like im asking for.

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You've clearly not read up on it correctly. Please go have a closer look on the details.
The DirectX11 client IS COMING OUT. But not until after the release of the first expansion, not the second one.

Have a degree of patient and maturity, it's something they clearly want to dedicate the time into doing properly (hence why its after the first expansion) which would afford them the time to do such a venture correctly.

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

and in a time where free to play games support dx11 and a top of the line mmo doesnt is staggering..

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Not really. Most MMOs suffer from performance issues due to over-reaching their capabilities, it was quite a sensible option to go with a lower denominator (the game doesn't look as good as it could, but the game doesn't look THAT bad).

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

because dx11 support totally killed the playerbase WoW and EVE right?

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lolwut.

World of Warcrafts """upgrade"" to DirectX was simply to increase performance and add in enhanced water (and possibility sligthly better shadow casting) it was nothing major or ground breaking. And this happened 8-9 years after the games release as far as I recall, and it didn't even substantially affect the game.

EVE online has an established basebase, and didn't start off with DirectX11 support either.
It was something they added in over TEN YEARS after the game was released. So using both WoW/Eve online as examples here is silly as both games started off with DirectX9 and stuck with it until recently.

Final Fantasy XIV has been out for barely half a year now and they're trying to push out enough content to merit the time to pursue a visual update now that the userbase has been established safely. Maintaining enough content and interest for the game is much more important a task currently than a DirectX11 client.

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

.because dx11 support totally killed the playerbase WoW and EVE right?

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You also missed my point in saying that's why there's going to be TWO clients available after the first expansion is done.

A DX9 client - For those who want to run the standard game.
A DX11 client - For those who want the higher fidelity and enhanced visuals that this optional client
will offer.

By offering two clients no-one gets left in the dust. Stop making it out as if Square Enix are victimising you simply because "OMG these other games did this, I want what they have RIGHT NOW!".
There's a bigger picture than graphics going on here, be more considerate.

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Originally Posted by Moheeheeko

Because its so low on Yohi's priority that theres a very likely chance it wont even happen untill the second
expansion pack, and in a time where free to play games support dx11 and a top of the line mmo doesnt is staggering.

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Exaggerate much? In case you were wondering, putting the game on DX11 costs money. Putting FFXIV on PS4 and launching in China costs even more money, but at least it will pay for itself over time. DX11 not so much.

Right? No. It was straight up lie from the devs as far as timetable goes. Money comes first to them. We already bought the game they got their $ out of us. Same with nvidia. No SLI with surround due to bad drivers and instead of fixing the drivers for current hArdware, they're main focus is releasing new hardware to make more $ while the old hardware still doesn't function properly with 10 year old tech.

Case in point - 25fps with 4 titans. Awesome! (Hoping a dx11 client would rectify this but naturally it went from right after launch to right around ps4 launch to sometime a year down the road after an expansion)

Sorry gents, by then I'll be peeking at other mmos. Too little too late. (I know this is ultimately nvidias fault but SE has the clout to apply pressure to the proper areas)

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Originally Posted by Icarian

You're speaking as if DX12 is going to be used right away, It's going to take years for most games to actually use DX12, especially mainstream ones.

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Years? Really? Lol. Without wasting anymore effort than it took to write this much... I wouldn't doubt the first dx12 games will be announced the same day if not alrwady/already in development.

Besides - this doesn't stand up as reasoning for the dx11 delay. It was around years before the game even went live! They simply chose to prioritize other things and continue to do so. Can you say echo buff? Ugh

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Originally Posted by Hulan

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Even DirectX 11 hasn't really hit its stride yet in terms of ubiquity. DirectX 9 was quickly adopted because it represented a fundumental improvement in the way users interacted with hardware. DirectX 11, on the other hand, offered at best small preformance and quality of life improvements while greatly changing the function calls for preforming the common tasks. It only stands to reason that developers with a decade of experience on DirectX 9 prefered to stick with what they were used to in the face of relatively small gains.

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Problem is - dx11 is vastly superior to dx9. The API change alone will afford not only better visuals but better visuals AND a performance improvement. An easy test is to toggle dx9 to dx11 in wow. Even with a dx9 card you'll gain a healthy 10fps. (To be fair you may crash if the card doesn't support dx11) if it does, their is no reason to be using dx9.

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Originally Posted by klepp0906

Years? Really? Lol. Without wasting anymore effort than it took to write this much... I wouldn't doubt the first dx12 games will be announced the same day if not alrwady/already in development.

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hindsight is 20/20. Icarian post was before it with announced that DX12 will work on most current video cards and will be available on windows 8. Possibly available on windows 7 because MS didn't deny it when the question was asked.

And 7: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/9-004

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Originally Posted by Pseudopsia

hindsight is 20/20. Icarian post was before it with announced that DX12 will work on most current video cards and will be available on windows 8. Possibly available on windows 7 because MS didn't deny it when the question was asked.

And 7: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/9-004

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Add the fact that XP is no longer supported by Microsoft.

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Originally Posted by Illya

DX12 will be Win8 only anyways. Just as with DX10 when you tie the new DX to an unpopular version of Windows most devs will ignore it because most users will not own that version of Windows. I am completely unconcerned about DX12 at this point because Win8 is the new Vista.

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I'm really liking the win 8.1 update that came out this month. If people tried it I think they would like it too.

ITT: People who don't know what APIs are.

Upgrading from DX10 to DX11 doesn't mean the game will all of a sudden look better. Direct3D 11 (the actual API that deals with 3D graphics, DirectX is a suite of many game related APIs) gives programmers new resources to create more complex shaders and also improve the client (CPU) side of the program. It's how SE uses these tools to update their renderer that is important. This also means SE has to redesign the current renderer to take advantage of new optimization tools, and implement new rendering techniques such as tessellation. This is why it's taking so long.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...=vs.85%29.aspx Direct3D 10

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...=vs.85%29.aspx Direct3D 11

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Originally Posted by klepp0906

Right? No. It was straight up lie from the devs as far as timetable goes. Money comes first to them. We already bought the game they got their $ out of us. Same with nvidia. No SLI with surround due to bad drivers and instead of fixing the drivers for current hArdware, they're main focus is releasing new hardware to make more $ while the old hardware still doesn't function properly with 10 year old tech.

Case in point - 25fps with 4 titans. Awesome! (Hoping a dx11 client would rectify this but naturally it went from right after launch to right around ps4 launch to sometime a year down the road after an expansion)

Sorry gents, by then I'll be peeking at other mmos. Too little too late. (I know this is ultimately nvidias fault but SE has the clout to apply pressure to the proper areas)

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Throwing more GPUs at a CPU dependent game isn't going to bring out huge performance numbers. Sure it helps, but it isn't going to help where your system needs it the most. For example, I went from a reference EVGA 680 2GB to an EVGA 780 TI Classified running at 1080p with a 2600k oc'd to 4.6. Was able to barely get an extra 10 fps in Mor Dhona. But go to BF4 and I go from 50-60 fps in MP to over 120 fps. Just a thought to keep in mind. Not saying your CPU is garbage, but using a jackhammer when you need a paint brush doesn't help.

In regards to the timetable though, yeah, it keeps getting pushed back. However, considering DX 12 is also like an upgraded 11 with Mantle, hopefully an easy upgrade to 12 is possible in the future as well. Obviously there will be differences and changes from 11, but hopefully, it will be similar enough to move. Considering all Fermi based cards forward, currently DX11, will be DX12 compatible in the future, I don't see this as an impossibility.

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Originally Posted by Magis

ITT: People who don't know what APIs are.

Upgrading from DX10 to DX11 doesn't mean the game will all of a sudden look better. Direct3D 11 (the actual API that deals with 3D graphics, DirectX is a suite of many game related APIs) gives programmers new resources to create more complex shaders and also improve the client (CPU) side of the program. It's how SE uses these tools to update their renderer that is important. This also means SE has to redesign the current renderer to take advantage of new optimization tools, and implement new rendering techniques such as tessellation. This is why it's taking so long.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...=vs.85%29.aspx Direct3D 10

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...=vs.85%29.aspx Direct3D 11

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^ This.

It's just a library till you do something with it.

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Originally Posted by klepp0906

Problem is - dx11 is vastly superior to dx9.

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Not vastly by any means, but it is significant.

Faster draw-calls
Better transparency sorting
Hardware AA with Deffered Rendering
Improved Lighting Casting
Better Shader Support

Lot's of quality of life improvements, but nothing ground-breaking.
DX9 still works fine for the most part as a 'base' to work from, especially with an MMO dealing with hundreds upon thousands of hardware combinations, always better to aim low then work your way up.

(Hence the delay on the DX11 client and the initial design decisions for 2.0 to be less fussy/focus on graphics and more about acessibility)


However on an additional note, I can't wait for the DX11 client SIMPLY for the hardware anti-aliasing.
As fantastic a decision as it was to go with deffered rendering, loosing the hardware anti-aliasing crippled the visual appeal of the game.

Forget DirectX.

Where is the OpenGL version!