DirectX 10: The Future of PC Gaming

Our Thoughts...

I don’t think that there is much doubting the fact that Microsoft has made some significant steps in the right direction with DirectX 10. Although there are a lot of new ideas to get your head around, the impact it will have on the future of PC gaming could be phenomenal. However, the true potential will not be realised until we start to see games developed using DirectX 10.

There is the potential to up the ante on the visual front – from what we have seen so far, games are going to look amazing when developed using DirectX 10. However, that’s not to say that most of the features in DirectX 10 couldn’t be achieved using DirectX 9, but there would be outrageous performance consequences as a result of the large API overheads.

If we think back to the first batch of Shader Model 3.0 screenshots (that boasted massive image quality benefits over anything that Shader Model 2.0 was capable of at the time) and brush off the marketing attached to it, you’ll remember that Shader Model 3.0 was used to improve performance because it was a more efficient programming platform.

The same can be said about DirectX 10 in many ways. The sceptic in me thinks that we will see DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0 used to improve performance without providing all that much more in terms of visual quality in the early stages of development. However, once developers start to get a hang of how to make use of the new features like the Geometry Shader and Stream Output, the potential for visual improvements is almost boundless.

All of the developers we have spoken to about DirectX 10 have greeted it with open arms. Many of those developers are working towards either porting an existing game to DirectX 10 or are in the process of creating a new game using the new API and acknowledge that the lower overheads associated with many heavily used functions will allow them to create scenes with more visual complexity and richness. Both AMD’s and NVIDIA’s developer relations teams are working with games developers to ensure that they have the necessary tools to make efficient use of DirectX 10’s capabilities.

However, one of DirectX 10’s benefits for game developers turns out to be a problem for end users. With DirectX 10 only being available under Windows Vista, gamers will have to not only purchase a DirectX 10 capable video card, but also upgrade their operating system too. In the past, gamers have only needed to buy new hardware to experience the new features and benefits bought to the table in a DirectX update.

Given what we’ve seen from the likes of Crysis on its DirectX 9 code path, we’re confident that DirectX 9 will continue to progress until the developer’s audiences start to really migrate to DirectX 10 hardware and Windows Vista. However, Crytek has already told us that Crysis will ship with effects that are exclusive to DirectX 10, and that it plans to implement more advanced effects through patches.

I think most gamers are hoping that Crysis will live up to the hype, but Crysis isn’t the only game being developed for DirectX 10. Other games that have been confirmed for DirectX 10 include Age of Conan, Company of Heroes, Hellgate: London, Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X, Supreme Commander and all games based on Unreal Engine 3, including the eagerly anticipated Unreal Tournament 2007– all of the titles listed here are part of NVIDIA’s TWIMTBP programme, and we are expecting more to be announced in the run up to the Windows Vista launch at the end of January.

We can’t wait to sit down and play them all – there are some pretty exciting times ahead in the world of PC gaming!