Black Ops 2 to run on DX11, not supporting Windows XP

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Plague_Injected

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http://community.callofduty.com/com...-specifications-technology-enhancements-intel

What are the Minimum System Requirements?

OS: Windows Vista SP2 or Windows 7

CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E8200 2.66 GHz or AMD Phenom X3 8750 2.4 GHz

Memory: 2GB for 32-bit OS or 4GB for 64-bit OS

Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 3870 512 MB


Can I run the game on Windows XP?

No, sorry. Since we upgraded the engine to use DirectX11, Windows XP is no longer supported. It requires Windows Vista or later.


Will the game actually be playable on my minimum spec machine?

Absolutely. We have tested extensively on a variety of hardware and we are very confident in the performance even at the minimum specs.


What engine is used for Black Ops II?

The Black Ops II engine builds upon the Black Ops engine with a number of improvements including performance optimizations, enhanced graphics, and proprietary anti-cheat technology.


What performance optimizations have you introduced for Black Ops II?

Performance has been a top priority for Black Ops II PC from day one and we have achieved significant improvements. We’ve improved the way the engine handles multiple threads. Additionally, we moved the engine from DX9 to DX11. The DX11 API is leaner than DX9 and requires less CPU time to do the same amount of work. It is important to point out that this benefits the entire range of supported GPUs, not just DX11 hardware. We have also added more “quality vs performance” options than ever before so you can customize your experience to either run faster or to satisfy your taste in eye candy.


You mentioned enhanced graphics for the PC version. Can you tell us more about that?

Black Ops II PC features enhanced lighting, shadows, antialiasing, bloom, depth of field, ambient occlusion, and other enhanced effects that are still in the works. And the game can run at higher resolutions and higher framerates on the PC.


Will there be a framerate cap?

No. Unless you want one. We have included an adjustable FPS cap slider in the game options. The minimum setting is OFF (no cap).
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Good news for the three people here who may buy and play this game :D
 
Also worth noting this game will have ranked dedicated servers and a FoV slider :)
 
The future setting is rad and pc sounds (keyword: sounds) well supported. I'm conflicted.

I never want to buy another cod but this doesn't look horrendous.
 
wow, I'm impressed. it's good to see a developer actually listening to the PC community rather than just spoon-feeding the same stuff that's delivered to consoles
 
Treyarch has always been better than IW in both their community support and PC releases, and in my opinion at making games too.
 
Is it just me or does this not make sense?

If you have to have Vista or above why is 8800GT acceptable?

Almost feels like a Halo 2 scenario to me.
 
piscian18 said:
Is it just me or does this not make sense?

If you have to have Vista or above why is 8800GT acceptable?

Almost feels like a Halo 2 scenario to me.
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Battlefield 3 and Sleeping Dogs are exactly the same in this regard, and most XP-supporting games this year list the 8800GT as the minimum video card requirement. Guess it's the default minimum-spec card now.
 
If Vista and DX10 work with a DX11 game why couldn't you use XP or how are DX10 graphics cards and OS going to play the game if its DX11 only?

Shouldn't the minimum requirement be Windows 7 and a DX11 compatible GPU?
 
JoeUser said:
If Vista and DX10 work with a DX11 game why couldn't you use XP or how are DX10 graphics cards and OS going to play the game if its DX11 only?

Shouldn't the minimum requirement be Windows 7 and a DX11 compatible GPU?
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How does Battlefield 3 do the same thing now?
 
piscian18 said:
Is it just me or does this not make sense?

If you have to have Vista or above why is 8800GT acceptable?

Almost feels like a Halo 2 scenario to me.
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What don't you get? They dropped the DX9 path, they're setting the minimum entry at DX10 class hardware.

JoeUser said:
If Vista and DX10 work with a DX11 game why couldn't you use XP or how are DX10 graphics cards and OS going to play the game if its DX11 only?

Shouldn't the minimum requirement be Windows 7 and a DX11 compatible GPU?
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The DX11 API is backwards compatible, assuming you request the proper feature level and don't use newer hardware specific features that you're obviously missing on your more antiquated hardware. It's possible to support all the way down to DX9 class hardware through the DX11 API, though arguably pointless.

And no, it won't work on XP. The driver model is completely different.


The API in use is DX11, you do not need DX11 class hardware to actually use it. You can target a lower class of hardware and everything will work fine as long as you stick to those guidelines. BF3 / Sleeping Dogs / Whatever else will poll as 'D3D11' in MSI Afterburner even on DX10 hardware.
 
A DX11 only game that still looks like it was developed on DX9, yeah that will definitely change my mind about buying another reskinned CoD turd :rolleyes:
 
Nice to see that Treyarch is actually catering the PC crowd unlike IW who decided to abandon the PC community, but still, CoD has not been innovative for a long time.
 
It looks like the engine was shifted to the DX11 path mainly for the performance benefits of DX11 rather than the additional feature set, I doubt this is going to look much better, in fact the Blops2 Advert in the cinema on the IMAX screen was laughably bad.
 
defiant007 said:
A DX11 only game that still looks like it was developed on DX9, yeah that will definitely change my mind about buying another reskinned CoD turd :rolleyes:
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With 3 hours of total game play but with 2.5 hours of unskippable cut scenes. :)
 
defiant007 said:
A DX11 only game that still looks like it was developed on DX9, yeah that will definitely change my mind about buying another reskinned CoD turd :rolleyes:
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The API it uses is nearly irrelevant at this point as to what it looks like, but it does enable developers to make additional optimizations, which is what they claim to have done. It's still a multiplatform game in the end running on pieces of shit, so if they did they best they could hope to for PC, what's the problem again?

It's no doubt going to look better, but the content itself is still unlikely to change much.
 
Good. Move on and move forward out of the Stone Age. No reason for anyone to still be using XP at this point.

7 is well worth the cost otherwise wait for 8 and see what that does for prices across the boards.
 
Seems they are just using marketing terms the fans like. Doesn't seem like there is any new content.

JoeUser said:
If Vista and DX10 work with a DX11 game why couldn't you use XP or how are DX10 graphics cards and OS going to play the game if its DX11 only?

Shouldn't the minimum requirement be Windows 7 and a DX11 compatible GPU?
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Vista got DX11 too.

All OSes seem to get 2 versions of DX, XP got 8(.1) and 9, Vista got 10 and 11, 7 will hopefully get 12 (11.1 isn't really a proper release).
 
socK said:
The API it uses is nearly irrelevant at this point as to what it looks like, but it does enable developers to make additional optimizations, which is what they claim to have done. It's still a multiplatform game in the end running on pieces of shit, so if they did they best they could hope to for PC, what's the problem again?

It's no doubt going to look better, but the content itself is still unlikely to change much.
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Its not as if those optimizations are going to have a noticeable impact on the game play experience seeing as every CoD since MW4 can be run at 100+ fps on most hardware without breaking a sweat, which of course is sympomatic of the lack of innovation in visuals, physics, AI and scale. If they genuinely wanted to deliver the best experience possible on PC then the least I would expect would be an HD texture pack ala sleeping dogs, but given Activision's contempt for the PC platform you have a better chance of seeing pigs fly.
 
defiant007 said:
Its not as if those optimizations are going to have a noticeable impact on the game play experience seeing as every CoD since MW4 can be run at 100+ fps on most hardware without breaking a sweat, which of course is sympomatic of the lack of innovation in visuals, physics, AI and scale. If they genuinely wanted to deliver the best experience possible on PC then the least I would expect would be an HD texture pack ala sleeping dogs, but given Activision's contempt for the PC platform you have a better chance of seeing pigs fly.
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So it's pointless to have it run better yet? There's no harm in it, people should be getting with it already and getting on a modern os. It's just pure benefit for those who fit the criteria.

And do you really think they redid all the artwork for sleeping dogs or something? That was no doubt existing content that didn't work given the console restraints. It really wasn't some amazing favor. A nice move but probably completely trivial for them. The big gift was that it was actually very well optimized, that alone could of been a large effort depending on how the engine worked.
 
Isn't the the "Black Ops II" Engine just a heavily modified Id Tech 3 engine? Given it's age, I'm curios to see how it stacks up to more modern engines such as Frostbyt 2 with its DX11 features. I'm not expecting anything ground breaking.
 
jorojr said:
Isn't the the "Black Ops II" Engine just a heavily modified Id Tech 3 engine? Given it's age, I'm curios to see how it stacks up to more modern engines such as Frostbyt 2 with its DX11 features. I'm not expecting anything ground breaking.
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At its core, yes, probably. I don't know how much code remains, but engine bugs from quake 3 were still present in recent cod titles, like fps dependent physics.

Tons of shit is completely rewritten, but there's still aspects of it. If you see a curved surface like a pipe or arch than that's probably a quake 3 engine thing, id added Bezier curves to the engine then.

Frostbite is still far ahead in tech, it's considerably more modern. But Cod isn't looking to make 746 mile wide maps.
 
I'm actually much more interested in BLOPS2 now. DX11, the multiplayer tweaks, etc. It sounds pretty fun. And I never thought I'd say that about COD again.
 
jorojr said:
Isn't the the "Black Ops II" Engine just a heavily modified Id Tech 3 engine? Given it's age, I'm curios to see how it stacks up to more modern engines such as Frostbyt 2 with its DX11 features. I'm not expecting anything ground breaking.
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You're likely to see more features in Frostbite 2, but what's more consequential to the quality of the visuals you'll see is how willing each developer is to push the quality/detail envelope. DICE is very willing; Treyarch is going to be less willing, as they're going to be looking for broader adoption across a wider array of hardware configurations. Thus, the visuals aren't going to be as compelling as BF3's.

As far as engine technology is concerned, id Tech 3 is still viable technology. Suffienciently modified, it's fine for the types of scenes typical in CoD games. They're getting good performance out of it, so it seems as though they generally know what they're doing on a technical level.
 
Rizen said:
I'm actually much more interested in BLOPS2 now. DX11, the multiplayer tweaks, etc. It sounds pretty fun. And I never thought I'd say that about COD again.
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Since DICE has all but abandoned 2142 and Homefront fell apart I'm just sort of mildly keeping an eye on this.

Activision has a habit of accidently funding gold without even realizing what they have. If miracles do come true they make think this is just another inbetween COD they're shelling out when the Devs are secretly trying to do something worthwhile.
 
piscian18 said:
Since DICE has all but abandoned 2142 and Homefront fell apart I'm just sort of mildly keeping an eye on this.

Activision has a habit of accidently funding gold without even realizing what they have. If miracles do come true they make think this is just another inbetween COD they're shelling out when the Devs are secretly trying to do something worthwhile.
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It does look like the single player stuff might be somewhat interesting.
 
kuyaglen said:
Tell me about offline LAN play then we'll talk.
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I honestly haven't played in a LAN gaming center since like 2005. The last time I dragged my computer to a friends house, we played SC2, Bad Company 2, etc just fine using the in-game and Steam friends services. I can see where it would be cool to have LAN play, but I don't think that is a high priority at all for the developers and I can understand why.
 
Rizen said:
I can see where it would be cool to have LAN play, but I don't think that is a high priority at all for the developers and I can understand why.
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It shouldn't be a "priority" it should be just as standard as mouse and keyboard support.
 
kuyaglen said:
It shouldn't be a "priority" it should be just as standard as mouse and keyboard support.
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Unfortunately, in reality game studios are businesses, and these are cross-platform games. Spending whatever man-hours of labor to code an off-line LAN system, when you can still play the game perfectly fine on LAN through the normal systems? It's nowhere near as critical as mouse and keyboard support. The amount of people who are going to demand LAN support versus the standard input system for every computer on the world? That's not even remotely the same thing. I want developers to spend extra time polishing games for PCs, but that's not even on my list.
 
kuyaglen said:
Tell me about offline LAN play then we'll talk.
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seriously.. This is so 1995. Go to a major lan event.. They all have Internet. And there isn't really much different between internet and lan. Just a bunch of IP numbers.
 
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