What exactly is this Direct X 11 and what will it do?

I've absolutely no idea what this is lol

Google it?

DirectX is an API.
To put it in simple terms, DirectX is something like a toolbox for developers to use for making (in most cases) 3D programs on Windows systems.

Currently, FFXIV uses DX9, which is an old version of DX that remains popular largely because of Windows XP's longevity. (Windows XP can only use up to DX9)

DX11 is a newer version that provides developers with more/newer tools to use. With these newer capabilities, developers can do things ranging from making better graphics to making current graphic details run more efficiently.
It really remains to be seen what SE will choose to do with DX11.

DirectX is the graphics API by Microsoft that allows developers to do things like render 3d models. DirectX 11 adds features such as tessellation. What it means is that if you run the DirectX 11 version of the game, some things may look better. The difference will probably not be very noticeable, and the actual game-play will not change.

from whats been said dx11 will only affect the lighting and shadows in xiv and should improve performance for those with dx11 capable cards

The thing is, even if Windows XP onlys supports DirectX9, it's not supported anymore by Microsoft for one. It can only uses up to 3 GB of Ram for second.

For third, the main limiting factor to improve FF14, like chat bubbles or some UI limitations come from the old hardware the PS3 uses.

Once they stop caring about XP and PS3 AND have Direct X11 ready to use... Then we'll see great improvements.

I just want no more huge pixels... seriously that's all I've wanted since pre-release.

All DirectX11 will do is optimize the engine a little. That's it. People seem to want it to be this Swiss Army Knife of a fix, delivering higher fidelity graphics, more detailed textures and generally make the game look like it did in 1.#. It won't. All of what they want would require an engine overhaul, all new textures and alot of other changes that DirectX wouldn't even be able to provide no matter how many stars you wish on.

DirectX is basically the bridge between Windows and your multimedia hardware. Developers program to Direct X, and the hardware vendors program their hardware to interface with DirectX.

Years ago, we had real-mode drivers that developers had to be aware of and sometimes could program specifically to certain brands for enhanced performance. While it basically meant programs could interface more directly with the hardware (you could actually boot your system from a startup disk and run a game with no Windows at all), it also meant you had a much more rigid set of specific brands/levels of hardware for it to run well, and it sometimes led to some horrific support issues as a result. Some games would have both DOS and Windows environments available somewhat, but they tended to perform better when run without the extra layers injected by running in Windows because you could run it in a thinner, more specialized environment without all the Microsoft fluff in the way. Lots of pros and cons, depending on how you were set up.

Now, we have no choice in the matter. Windows runs everything through these API's now. Unfortunately, anything newer than Windows XP does not support DirectX 9 "natively", which is limiting us somewhat by our CPU's more so than our GPU's in some cases. It's basically because DX9 runs through an emulation layer, in a sense throwing us back into a bit of limbo with performance/reliability like we did during the real-mode/386Enh era (think Windows 95/98... we had pseudo-direct access to hardware back then, but some things still ran better from a DOS boot disk).

By moving to DirectX11, they will be stripping that DX9 emulation layer out of the mix and we will once again have more direct access to the hardware, which <should> improve stability and performance once again. As mentioned earlier, it will also provide better support for more advanced rendering techniques for lighting/shading and such, so the eye candy may look much better as well.

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This is all speculation as to what COULD be added, some are confirmed, others are just 'potential' additions

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Based on your original post, you don't seem to want to know what DX actually is (It's rather boring), you'd rather know what it's actually going to bring to the table, I'm guessing.

So, in less technical terms as to what DirectX 11 is, and more what it COULD do, here's a few things;


It runs faster!

As with anything, your previous version of work isn't going to be as good.

The same could be said for DirectX. The team at microsoft go back, look over their old code and simply face palm going "Well why didn't we use THIS, instead of THIS", or "Use this method, instead of that method...".
The learning, adjustment and testing over the years has adjusted it from DX9 > 11 to the point where the performance has significantly changed for the better.

DX12 so far (although not being used for ARR), coming in the future is doing the same thing, it's having a complete overall to yet again increase the performance (although more drastically this time).


Tesselation

They're not likely to use this, but essentially all 3D models are made of a 'wire-mesh', kind of like the net of a folding package or a box. Tesselation does a very simple trick where it adds more topology in between these points.

The nice part is, you can control HOW it tessenaltes (Flat/Bumpy/Rounded), and how many sub-divisions there are.

It is very very intensive on processing power, and generally avoided at the moment.

Why use that?

It's very simple! You can use it for a rocky road, a rocky wall, dragon scales, armour bumps/corners or even water;

http://www.nvnews.net/articles/gefor...ssellation.jpg
http://www.3dcenter.org/dateien/abbi...9-11Nov-08.jpg



Shader Model

DX11 uses Shader Model 5 offers the ability to create more complex shader effects.

What are shader effects?

Shader effects are code-manipulated effects that can be applied to a texture-map surface, for example water on a road;

http://i.minus.com/ibvbeAB6KhU7LZ.gif

The code-applied manipulates how light affects the surface of the shader. You'll see this in-game alot when things get wet, the wall for the boss-entrance, certain battle-effects, on the water, on metalic surfaces, jeweled/refractive surfaces.
And more noticeably on the aetherytes, where they've applied a shader effect applied to a flat 3D object to give the illusion of reflective crystal fragments as it spins.


Shaders are VERY important in creating illusionary detail.

DX11 will expand upon this, and with the expanded texture memory allowance that the PC/PS4 DX11 client will be allowed to consume (the developers have set restrictions at the moment with the DX9/OpenGL Client for the PC/PS3), we'll see more shader effects and generally better looking textures.


Shadow Casting/Rendering

Although DX11 allows for better shadow/light casting and rendering, this won't change that much, it'll be significantly faster to render and they'll most likely toggle the rendering resolution for the casted shadows up a notch or two (or at least give the option to do so).

Basicly your shadows will look less pixelated and more smooth.


Improved Transparency Filtering

FFXIV doesn't suffer from this much, but DX9/10 had terrible layered transparency filtering.

Transparent edges on textures are used for things like clothing, flags, hair, foliage, grimoires, weapon edges.
All sorts of things, this will help allow the game to correct filter these when they stack onto of each other.

Currently when more than two/three transparent things stack ontop of each other it can bug out, clip through or have undesired effects.


Hardware Anti-Aliasing under Defered Rendering

This is a VERY big one. Anti-Aliasing defeats the pixelated look that 3D rendered scenes inherently suffer from.

As you can see below, Anti-Aliasing defeats that.

http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/up...3_12_16532.png


But we already have AA?

We do, we have software AA, this basicly does a pass over the ENTIRE screen, blurring it slightly in a fast attempt to do the same thing.

Hardware AA will detect the edge of geometry and textures ONLY. It'll ignore anything that doesn't have a rendered 'edge'. Sadly it doesn't work under DX9 with defferred rendering (what ARR uses for it's lighting/shadows), but under DX11 it works perfectly, therefore we should see this return soon.


It makes 3D models and texture appear much smoother and generally more realistic as a result, at a performance cost of course.


Uncompressed/High Resolution Textures

THIS IS NOT DIRECTX 11 BASED. They're using this as an opportunity to distingusih the DX9 client as a "Low Performance PC" option, and the DX11 client a as "High Performance" PC option.

Textures are what give a 3D model it's detail.

There's numerous types of textures, some that just apply the base colours, some that provide a fake "3D" depth, and some that provide a shin affect based on that 3D depth for metals/plastic/wet effects.

http://techreport.com/r.x/parhelia-preview/dm-alien.jpg

When you lower the resolution of these, you loose detail. ARR had lowered the resolution for most things in order to make the client smaller and to run more efficiently, however the PS4 and your average PC user has a ton more texture memory space on their GPU (as well as their HDD) to use up, therefore there's no reason to use only the lower resolution versions anymore.

Basicly, they're going to un-compress some of them completely and others they'll increase the resolution a bit.



Particle Systems

Particle systems are much easier and faster to run in DX11.

Particles are code-based manipulations a very large quantity of 'sprites', maniulating this with texture-sets and various other effects can have some amazing effects as a result.

It's often used for water, fire, magic effects, smoke, dust, snow, rain.

An extreme example would be this;

https://opengamingalliance.org/theme...cles_630px.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD9CPqSKjTU


Physics

Again, not really DX11 based, only partially.

However we're not likely to see this used more until the PS3 has been removed form the picture, (according to the development team).

Physics can be used to manipulate a lot of nice things, such as cloth, hair or even particle systems.

Image a large explosion going off in a boss-fight and the firey sparks bounced across the floor afterwards, that's essentially what a physical particle system can do, giving A LOT of room for some nice effects.

http://pxlbyte.com/wp-content/upload...sturbatory.gif
http://i.minus.com/iblOKR7QlYY63u.gif


Stronger/Higher Quality Ambient Occlusion

Ambient Occlusion is a post-rendering effect, and or baked texture effect in which natural shading takes place, as with anything that has light hitting it, there's naturally soft shading on it based on the light.

The nice thing about Ambient Occlusion, is that it affects the texture maps mentioned before aswell, NOT just the 3D models themselves (see below).

ARR already has this, but in a very very weak form, with the DX11 client, there's a change that we'll see a stronger or higher quality version or adjustment of this.



http://hothardware.com/articleimages...oDx11-SSAO.jpg
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPU...clusion_01.jpg

Last I heard (which was I think the most recent live letter) they're going to be showing a side by side demonstration of the current [PC] version of the game up against what should be the nearly complete DX11 client at the upcoming Tokyo Fan Fest. People can then finally see how much (or little) the upgrade will encompass. At this point it's mostly speculation. Moving from DX9 to DX11 essentially just adds to the potential of what they can do. It could technically just be a stability improvement -- something that I'm not sure this game really needs badly as I've heard fairly little about client side problems.

More likely, it will include performance benefits to most systems built this decade, and provide slight to moderate graphics tweaks. I'd say graphics improvements, and they probably will be, but some of the stuff might be a bit subjective. They've said specifically that they intend to improve shading and lighting, which could be a more substantial improvement than people imagine, or it could just be some barely noticeable tweaks. v 1.x had some very nice ambient occlusion that I'd like to see return (it was nothing like the pale substitute we have now) and obviously the shadows in this (or any) game could be improved upon.

That they've specifically said they want to show off the new client side by side with the old could mean one of two things. Either they're really excited to show you just how much better it looks, or the difference isn't readily observable without the old client right there for reference. I'm hoping for the former.

If the updated client includes features that are process-intensive then GOOD, finally my monster PC will be able to flex its muslces a bit in this game, at the moment it's just sitting here reading a book.

Basically, the implementation of DX11 decides on how much of an improvement there is. If it's true that we're currently on DX9, then a good amount of us will probably notice a slight jump. It'll be little improvements here and there, for enthusiasts. It likely won't matter much to most people.

In 2 weeks we will know how DX11 client will look like. There will be graphic improvements for sure but to what degree nobody knows. They will also release a benchmark with the DX11 client (probably Heavensward content glimpse) before Heavensward release so you will know how DX11 runs on your pc and how it looks like cause YouTube compresses everything and graphics cannot show their potential from a YouTube video so don't expect to impressed from a YouTube video taken by a camera inside the fan festival except if SE uploads an official one on their channel. The benchmark is what I'm waiting to see more but a video will help too ofc. With DX11 they can improve a lot of things but do not expect it will be "lighter" than DX9 version. They usually add more effects so it always ends up heavier than 9.
I also wish for a 64bit client beside DX11.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

Basically, the implementation of DX11 decides on how much of an improvement there is. If it's true that we're currently on DX9, then a good amount of us will probably notice a slight jump. It'll be little improvements here and there, for enthusiasts. It likely won't matter much to most people.

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It really depends on what they do with it. They could change a lot or they could change next to nothing. Either way, DX11 is a good thing.

*in before PS3 limitations of DX11*

It has support for multi-core. DirectX 9 doesn't (And if it does, it's a hack, much like PAE was for 32-Bit OSes that can see more than 4 GB of Memory.)

Should improve performance on newer graphics cards. As dx11 is more efficient than dx9 taking the same conditions. so most pc users should see at least slight framerate increase. The actual increase of the looks of the game is up to SE. If they just boost everything to dx11 and actually not put any effort into it it will look pretty much the same. if they actually do put some effort into it it will looks slightly better. I doubt that they will actually change textures etc looking at the updates that they are doing/releasing up to this point. It will def not be a "game changer" type of thing.

Mileage will vary on the visual improvements... depends on whether we will be dealing with the same textures or not I guess. But even with the same texture maps, things like the better shading/bumpmapping, AA and filtering should make some visual improvements. But we should be seeing performance improvements on the quad cores systems and DX11 compliant cards. Here's some side-by-side comparisons to help demonstrate the potential:

Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rPtdnmib8A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSfN7OTUOTA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9qho5P-cWY

Pics:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E9qho5P-cWY/maxresdefault.jpg

http://www.nowgamer.com/wp-content/u.../09/279024.png

http://www.nowgamer.com/wp-content/u.../09/279033.png

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Originally Posted by Raist

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Don't know about the use of tessellation. Looks tacky in most cases - not to mention the performance hit.

Probably OK if they use it to do Q3A style LoD on curved surfaces. But the bricks and mud tracks look kind of ugly.

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

Don't know about the use of tessellation. Looks tacky in most cases - not to mention the performance hit.

Probably OK if they use it to do Q3A style LoD on curved surfaces. But the bricks and mud tracks look kind of ugly.

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When it's used properly it works great.

But a lot of designers simply don't take enough time to adjust the bias, factors and limitations to actually suit the item they've shoved it onto. Or just crank it up and say "Here you go! 8X TESSELLATION! LOOK ITS SMOOTHER!"
As the frame-rate plummets by a 1/4, and the testers cry.


We tested it on a VERY low factor along-side the use of displacement maps, displacement maps were easier to control than a straight up tesselation modifier.
The nice subtle change is noticeable but not 'in your face', whilst maintaining a decent frame-rate. But generally it's not worth it. (FFXIV was far too low poly to do this, from experience)

I figure it's mostly going to be like when WoW got a DX11 client. The graphical improvements were minimal at best, but the performance improvements on newer PCs was noticeable.

If I recall, DX11 also handles multithreading better than older versions of DirectX, meaning better performance, especially on quad/hex/octo-core processors and up.

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Originally Posted by Shioban

We tested it on a VERY low factor along-side the use of displacement maps, displacement maps were easier to control than a straight up tesselation modifier.
The nice subtle change is noticeable but not 'in your face', whilst maintaining a decent frame-rate. But generally it's not worth it. (FFXIV was far too low poly to do this, from experience)

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All XIV models are done in really high detail, so they could use normal mapping or tesselation...sometime in the future :)
DX11 client seems like a good time to add an option for it...

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Originally Posted by Radacci

All XIV models are done in really high detail, so they could use normal mapping or tesselation...sometime in the future :)
DX11 client seems like a good time to add an option for it...

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Correct! All the character models are zone in Z-Brush then retopologised onto lower polygon models.

However the retopologised models are very low poly, tessellation wouldn't do much to improve the overall look of the models themselves, other than maybe slightly reducing the sharp edges;
http://puu.sh/dl0BX/f6e988a8b8.jpg

The problem with this, is with a maximum character rendering count of...100 characters? At approximately a few thousand polygons each (currently) to double/quadruple that would cause significant performance issues.

Higher resolution diffuse, normal and specular mapping would do fine for an MMO.

Most models themselves aren't too bad it's just the poor texture quallity that really needs to go. IMHO at least.

Yes, textures need to be improved on. Many pieces of gear look very pixliated when zoomed in on.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Yes, textures need to be improved on. Many pieces of gear look very pixliated when zoomed in on.

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Environmental textures too.

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Originally Posted by Jynx

Most models themselves aren't too bad it's just the poor texture quallity that really needs to go. IMHO at least.

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I think Yoshida is smoking some good crack when he said textures don't matter. Either that or I just didn't quite get his emphasis (imo it came across as "don't matter", maybe I misread).

I notice low res textures all the time in ARR, best strategy to avoid that is to keep your camera away from objects but.. that solution makes sense (don't look closely lol).

Its not the worst thing ever though, in battle or far camera scene shots I doubt you'd ever notice lol.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I think Yoshida is smoking some good crack when he said textures don't matter. Either that or I just didn't quite get his emphasis (imo it came across as "don't matter", maybe I misread).

I notice low res textures all the time in ARR, best strategy to avoid that is to keep your camera away from objects but.. that solution makes sense (don't look closely lol).

Its not the worst thing ever though, in battle or far camera scene shots I doubt you'd ever notice lol.

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There will be a cost though, loading textures from main memory (or even hard disk) isn't free. You pay for it with longer load times.

Is it worth it for the few moments where your camera does end up close to a surface?

I'm not saying blurry textures are good, they aren't. Just that there is a price to pay for good textures.

Because the camera cannot clip through solid objects, it forcefully gets close to the player and that's when we can see the low res textures. You can also see how low res some gear looks when you zoom in on yourself to take snapshots.

Heck, you don't even have to be zoomed in; sometimes you can see certain objects having bad quality textures even from a set distance.

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

There will be a cost though, loading textures from main memory (or even hard disk) isn't free. You pay for it with longer load times.

Is it worth it for the few moments where your camera does end up close to a surface?

I'm not saying blurry textures are good, they aren't. Just that there is a price to pay for good textures.

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Oh yeah definitely there is always a cost to quality (and some qualities are too expensive), I wouldn't include a super highres in the default package but to say they don't matter. . . ?

I don't know about the average PC setup, but I'm pretty sure my PC could handle another GB or two and not care (GPU, not referring HDD/SSD). Would take a lot of work to repackage an enthusiast texture pack, a lot (unless already ready, for some reason), but I still don't think it is fair to say textures are not important anymore. Which again could be my misinterpretation of what he said. Lighting and mappings (technically comes in a resolution) are obviously important too.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Oh yeah definitely there is always a cost to quality (and some qualities are too expensive), I wouldn't include a super highres in the default package but to say they don't matter. . . ?
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Well ... given that the camera is at a distant most of the time ...does it really matter that much?

Also I wonder with DX11 coming, how much VRAM they really have to spare. DX11 effects might end up using even more memory (more and higher quality render targets).

Increase texture resolution also means you have to add more mipmaps to prevent texture aliasing - that obviously cost memory too. (To be blunt, FFXIV could use a few more mipmaps, or maybe it's just the LoD bias set wrong, as texture aliasing is quite severe as it is.)

FFXIV to my knowledge uses about 600-900MiB of VRAM at the moment. I have a 2GiB card. How much of an improvement will we see if they double the number of pixels in the textures ... it's hard to tell - might even be barely noticeable.:eek:

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

Well ... given that the camera is at a distant most of the time ...does it really matter that much?
Also I wonder with DX11 coming, how much VRAM they really have to spare. DX11 effects might end up using even more memory (more and higher quality render targets).
Increase texture resolution also means you have to add more mipmaps to prevent texture aliasing - that obviously cost memory too. (To be blunt, FFXIV could use a few more mipmaps, or maybe it's just the LoD bias set wrong, as texture aliasing is quite severe as it is.)
FFXIV to my knowledge uses about 600-900MiB of VRAM at the moment. I have a 2GiB card. How much of an improvement will we see if they double the number of pixels in the textures ... it's hard to tell - might even be barely noticeable.:eek:

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My Camera isn't at a distance all the time though XD. I'm tight on the shoulder or for the fun of it FPS'ing it up, when not in combat. Maybe I'm playing the game wrong lol.

Also Bethesda mods have taught me when it doesn't look pretty throw bigger numbers* at it, 4096x4096 everything! Candle? 4096. Cloud? 4096! Whats that, you can see the pixels on your flora? Redo the model and 4096! Ok well maybe not that far.. but.. I've seen the power of the numbers XD (also that is a srpg game designed for fps/tight shoulder, so again maybe I just play FFXIV wrong lol).

*And an ENB

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Originally Posted by Shioban

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This was a really good read! :D I do hope we get a lot of this with the new client!

Either translation failed from Japanese or Yoshida tried to justify their actions with the graphic quality with some exaggerated little lies. I think this happened because they year in a tight time limit to release ARR after the fail of 1.0 so they had to decide and cut down some things to release it faster. (smaller areas, loads of cutscenes without audio, low res textures and missing features from 1.0) and ofc console limitations. As for PC it's a different client and you can always customize your graphic settings depending on your GPU. I would like to see higher quality textures and effects even though many ppl don't have the pc specs to run it. But PC is all about freedom of choice. Tweak your settings and get the quality/performance ratio you want.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

*And an ENB

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Good thing FFXIV can use ENBs right now. Though doing so may cause Carbuncles and summons to become 1000W Bulbs.

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Originally Posted by Riardon

Either translation failed from Japanese or Yoshida tried to justify their actions with the graphic quality with some exaggerated little lies. I think this happened because they year in a tight time limit to release ARR after the fail of 1.0 so they had to decide and cut down some things to release it faster. (smaller areas, loads of cutscenes without audio, low res textures and missing features from 1.0) and ofc console limitations. As for PC it's a different client and you can always customize your graphic settings depending on your GPU. I would like to see higher quality textures and effects even though many ppl don't have the pc specs to run it. But PC is all about freedom of choice. Tweak your settings and get the quality/performance ratio you want.

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The cuts to fidelity were for 2 reasons

1. They killed most pc's performance wise
2. The ps3 doesn't have the ram to load such high res textures and zone data.

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Originally Posted by Squa11_Leonhart

The cuts to fidelity were for 2 reasons

1. They killed most pc's performance wise
2. The ps3 doesn't have the ram to load such high res textures and zone data.

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A lot of PC games have texture quality settings that can be changed. FFXIV has it strangely absent.

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Originally Posted by CGMidlander

A lot of PC games have texture quality settings that can be changed. FFXIV has it strangely absent.

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now that you mention it I think XI has limited texture quality settings in it, I wonder why XIV doesn't....hmm

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There will be a cost though, loading textures from main memory (or even hard disk) isn't free. You pay for it with longer load times.

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loading would probably be faster because it takes far longer to read small files from a HDD than it does bigger files.