NVIDIA: DirectX 12 Is A Major Stride for Gaming

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Microsoft today introduced DirectX 12 at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. DX12 is Microsoft’s latest version of the graphics API that is the dominant standard in the growing, $25 billion PC gaming industry. Developers have been asking for a thinner, more efficient API that allows them to control hardware resources more directly. Despite significant efficiency improvements delivered by continuous advancement of existing API implementations, next-generation applications want to extract all possible performance from multi-core systems. Developers also want to take direct advantage of advanced GPU hardware features, from which developers are currently insulated to provide fool-proof usage. DirectX 12 was designed from scratch to provide the infrastructure for these advanced applications.
 
So, it's a significant rewrite. Does installing DX12 help games written for earlier versions of DX?
 
and will it be availble to windows 7? i have a feeling that that windows 8 is going to be required for dx12..
 
and this magical 12 (which we have yet to see anything of) all would have come to fruition just like currently planned had AMD *NOT* pushed mantle out the door and got it off the ground and running.

Competition.... it's a good thing.
 
Wasn't 11.2 an 8.1 exclusive release? That would almost force 12 to be the same.

I'm for it, either way. Despite the fact that I am fairly disappointed in Mantle, at least it's pushing the envelope and making MS do something "new".
 
Kudos to AMD for inspiring DX 12. Mantle nearly doubled my fps in Thief.
 
Panned out pretty much how I thought, no new rendering features in 12 so 11.2 parts should be fully 12 compatible.
 
coolpurplefan said:
"NVIDIA will support the DX12 API on all the DX11-class GPUs it has shipped; these belong to the Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell architectural families"
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/20/directx-12/
"4th-gen Core processors will be ready for DirectX 12"
http://ca.ign.com/articles/2014/03/20/gdc-microsoft-reveals-directx-12-xbox-one-improvements
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Not surprised by the possibility, but nvidia doing this? That's new. Still wouldn't hope for potential benefits, though. I don't trust them with this stuff.
 
Kor said:
no new rendering features
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What features do we really need nowadays? Seems like we're just trying to squeeze as much high-res mesh/textures as possible until something like Voxels become more applicable. I mean, we got sub-surface scattering, tessellation, dynamic lighting, etc... are there things big rendering companies are doing (for CGI in films) that the gaming industry does not have a solution for?
 
I really don't think mantle itself had much to do with 12 being announced, I think it more or less had to do with developers demanding for more specific api's like mantle.
 
Of course NVIDIA is behind DX12, cause there was no way they would get behind Mantle. and DX12 is essentially trying to do the same API / Hardware level stuff isn't it?
 
Youn said:
What features do we really need nowadays? Seems like we're just trying to squeeze as much high-res mesh/textures as possible until something like Voxels become more applicable. I mean, we got sub-surface scattering, tessellation, dynamic lighting, etc... are there things big rendering companies are doing (for CGI in films) that the gaming industry does not have a solution for?
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Yup, and the problem now is getting developers to stop developing games on older APIs (DirectX 9) and utilizing newer APIs more effectively and efficiently (DirectX 11 and higher). It sucks that all games have to be developed using the lowest common denominator because of consoles.

There are already enough features in current ones that the next thing to be done are voxels and ray-tracing. Unfortunately, our graphics hardware isn't there yet but maybe in 10 more years (?).

Trimlock said:
I really don't think mantle itself had much to do with 12 being announced, I think it more or less had to do with developers demanding for more specific api's like mantle.
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It's pretty much why AMD made Mantle. Developers have been asking for a lower level API for years and to be as easy to code for as gaming consoles. They know that developing for a PC is ludicrous due to the fact there is so much overhead between the game and the graphics hardware. Look at the Starswarm demo from Oxide.

If we can get that level of performance and detail at high framerates with lesser overhead on DirectX 12, then this is going to be a game changer in the years to come. Everyone is going to benefit from this, and hopefully that after 4 years of working on it Microsoft has got it right after 12 iterations of the DirectX API.
 
Youn said:
What features do we really need nowadays? Seems like we're just trying to squeeze as much high-res mesh/textures as possible until something like Voxels become more applicable. I mean, we got sub-surface scattering, tessellation, dynamic lighting, etc... are there things big rendering companies are doing (for CGI in films) that the gaming industry does not have a solution for?
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I wasn't trying to portray it as a negative, in fact the no new rendering features was something I figured would be the case simply because DX11.2 was already so redonkulously flexible. I can't think of anything that would really be beneficially added, developers seem to be able to make pretty much anything happen on SM5.0 (PCSS/Contact Hardening, various forms of AO, Subsurface Scattering, Global Illumination etc.).
 
This is probably going to sound dumb, but will DiretctX12 require a new video card to use?
 
HFBallad said:
This is probably going to sound dumb, but will DiretctX12 require a new video card to use?
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No, provided you're using a GPU from the family that the vendors are currently iterating on. It's a rework of how Direct3D operates, not an upgrade to the actual rendering feature support.
 
Kor said:
Late next year.
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Source please. Windows 9 is dropping before "late next year." Some people say as earlier as this holiday season. My intuition is you are making it up as you go.
 
bexamous said:
Because the one thing worse than people not upgrading from Win7 to Win8/9 for DX12, is dev's increasing interest in OGL.
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Ding ding ding. Look no further than CryEngine having just been ported to Linux in anticipation of SteamOS, as well as Unreal Engine 4 working on SteamOS support - apparently its already there to be seen in the source code.

It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft will try to place DX12 behind the Windows upgrade paywall again, or they'll magically make it available for Windows 7 as well. And if it is the latter then it can only be attributable to SteamOS lighting an "oh shit" fire under Microsoft, because I just can't imagine them all of a sudden being interested in DirectX again otherwise, improvements had become kind of sclerotic.
 
Everyone but MS uses OpenGL. Things would be simpler if everyone just abandoned DirectX.
 
BladeVenom said:
Everyone but MS uses OpenGL. Things would be simpler if everyone just abandoned DirectX.
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This is where things are headed. It's already happening, and not just for the sake of Linux support but because of mobile. Hardly going to matter that "Windows Phone will support DirectX12" when 99% of mobile devices in the world will be running OpenGL.
 
Holiday 2015 is absolutely ridiculous. What could they possibly be thinking? OpenGL 4.4 is available now, and has been for nine months already.
 
jwcalla said:
Holiday 2015 is absolutely ridiculous. What could they possibly be thinking? OpenGL 4.4 is available now, and has been for nine months already.
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11.2 only came out a short time ago. You can't expect them to have a complete overhaul of the underlying API ready to go and out the door in the next few months.
 
octoberasian said:
If we can get that level of performance and detail at high framerates with lesser overhead on DirectX 12, then this is going to be a game changer in the years to come. Everyone is going to benefit from this, and hopefully that after 4 years of working on it Microsoft has got it right after 12 iterations of the DirectX API.
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Not to sound overly pessimistic. But if Microsoft hasn't fixed the overhead issue after 12 iterations why should we think they would finally solve it this time around? Isn't it more likely that history would repeat itself?
 
The entire nature of direct x is going to have over head, some posters here expect a middle man api like direct x or open gl to have zero over head..
 
great. does that mean we will get games that use dx11? aren't we still pretty much stuck at dx9?
 
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