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[NEWS] The End Of DirectX As We Know It

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Mr.Guvernment

Member
Joined
Feb 26, 2003
This cant be good - or can it?

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The End Of DirectX As We Know It |
| from the and-i-feel-fine dept. |
| posted by Hemos on Monday September 06, @09:46 (GUI) |
| http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/06/136222 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

socram writes "Speaking with ATI and NVIDIA at ECTS allowed us to confirm
that after DX9.0, DirectX Graphics is no more. In name only. Microsoft's
next set of core presentation and 3D APIs are now under the umbrella of
Windows Graphics Foundation and Avalon. Microsoft will still rely on
DirectX in name for the rest of the core components, but the graphics API
is now under a new name. Look out for WGF 1.0 compatibility on the back
of that next generation graphics card's box. [0]Some WGF 1.0 Info!"
Update: 09/06 22:27 GMT by [1]T: David Ross of [2]hexus.net points out
that this text comes straight from hexus, and should have been credited
as such.

Discuss this story at:
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=04/09/06/136222

Links:
0. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1629331,00.asp
1. http://www.monkey.org/~timothy/
2. http://www.HEXUS.net
 
Yeah I saw that earlier...

I'd say it's definetely good! The way they've been updating the Directx platform is by adding more and more functions to it rather than just updating the existing functions to dowhat they want them to do. I'm trying to work with directx now for my GPGPU program (I'm doing the same thing with opengl too, althoughI don't know which will work better) and although I've only been working on it for a few hours, I've notticed that the whole directx system is bogged down by te fact that you have to call an old function to call a new functionto call the even newer function that you wanted to call in the first place. Maybe I'm just learning,and please do correct me if I'm wrong, but it just seems like it's time to start over.

Opengl will be getting just a bit more than a face lift soon a well, which I'm fairly excited about too...

Also, microsoft may be switching to the whole WGF thing because directx isn't very suitable for profesional rendering and animation. Maybe they are going to release some rendering software to go with their new graphics platform and try to make a profit off of it (theyu could easily make millions if the hardware is there to support it).
 
I never even knew of WGF until a few minutes ago reading that link. Looks like the playing field will be even soon.
 
I view it overall as a good thing as what it provides and will force nVidia and ATi to at least say, "hey, this is priority number one." It brings in some good features, not to mention will be insuring an upgrade after a rather stagnant period so manufacturer's don't mind. Nvidia, ATi, and their board partners couldn't be happier with WGL being a base for Longhorn since most will make the IGP boards as well.

It doesn't signal the end of Open GL so there still could be some disparity. While hardly used in gaming, it is highly used in the professional field, so nvidia may keep the same approach, just it will have to play with it's architecture a bit more to accomodate WGL 1.0 than previous additions to MS Direct X if it sticks to pushing the envelope like it has the past two generations while ATi has focused on polishing the current one. Both ways work, so I'm not knocking either of them.
 
Guys all they are doing is changing the name for marketing purposes...

thats pretty much it, you know... kinda like how Madonion went back to Futuremark.

DirectX 10 sounds too fumbly... so they will rename it and startover at 1.0.

But I heavily doubt the current progression in the graphics industry will change at all.
 
This is great news. Now, we can assume most games will go to OpenGL which means more games can be played easier on Linux :)
 
Er, as i read it it isnt combining DX and OpenGL, its a rebranding to make a more optimized coding... sounds very microsoft to me. If i were them i would re-write all of windows so we wont need 1gig of ram for longhorn.

~t0m
 
Open GL will still be seperate as it is now. All this does is require you to have a card that is WGF compatible. It is just marketting, and the professionalism of the wording instead of something catchy almost makes me think they want to overthrow OGL (as it's strongest in the workplace). But they get little to no money from the D3D API from how I understand it to warrant it so that makes little to no sense I'll admit. Maybe it is good graces on MS part to finally get a solid core foundation for card makers and let them go from there instead of just letting them go as we kinda have now.
 
It has already rolled out code wise IIRC, though I don't know of any programs that make use of it as of yet. Don't do much if any rendering anymore, so I really haven't been keeping up on OGL for quite awhile.
 
I'm not too familiar with the theories behind DirectX, OpenGl, and Direct3D. The only think I know is that Direct3D and OpenGl are different engines software companies use to design their 3D games. But can someone please explain in details what is the relation between OpenGL and Direct3D with DirectX? Thanks.
 
Interesting, this could really be bad for ATi cards. Especially since the new system requires PS3.0 and VS3.0. Im not sure how they plan to integrate these cards and old ones without a major performance hit.
 
backwards compatibility im sure. directx 9 requires sm 2.0, but as well know GF 4 series cards run dx 9 games.
 
snyper1982 said:
backwards compatibility im sure. directx 9 requires sm 2.0, but as well know GF 4 series cards run dx 9 games.
Agreed, but they may be forced to emulate it which would steal a crap load of CPU cycles. No doubt they will get it to work, but I think it might be at huge cost of performance.... since they arent taloring it to old cards but the current gens and next.
 
Kenshiro said:
I'm not too familiar with the theories behind DirectX, OpenGl, and Direct3D. The only think I know is that Direct3D and OpenGl are different engines software companies use to design their 3D games. But can someone please explain in details what is the relation between OpenGL and Direct3D with DirectX? Thanks.


Can anyone explain this??? or at least reference an article........
 
i highly doubt they are going to use emulation, from the article it says BY NAME ONLY. sounds like they are just chaging the D3D name to WGF. No Biggie.
 
Directx and opengl are just two different methods of programing a graphics engine...

Directx was created by microsoft and so naturally only microsoft products or products designed to run on microsoft products can use directx, but opengl (OPEN Graphics Library) is open source and can be used on nearly any platform (Windows, linux, unix, etc.)

Directx is a little more advanced and is a lot more suited for games and real-time rendering, while opengl (1.1 & 1.2) is being pushed to its absolute limits (although opengl 2.0 is a lot more powerful) and is a little better suited for rendering pre-designed scenes and animations. In terms of ease of use, I only have a little experience with both platforms, and each has its advantages and disadvantages.
 
Kenshiro said:
Can anyone explain this??? or at least reference an article........
OpenGL and Direct3D are two different "API"s. An API (application program interface) is basically a set of functions and other things that can be called on to build programs easier. Instead of writing out all the C++ (or whatever language) code by hand, you can call functions that the API provides to do your work for you.

For example, if you want to draw a triangle on the screen, you would have two choices. You could design your own function that will make the video card display a trangle, OR you could use an existing OpenGL or Direct3D function to do the same thing with less work (since you don't have to "reinvent the wheel" ;))


DirectX is yet another API. Direct3D is a subset of the DirectX API, which allows you to not only control video (using DirectDraw and Direct3D), but also sound (DirectSound), MIDI (DirectMusic), and networking (DirectPlay).

JigPu
 
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