The People Behind DirectX 10 352
ThinSkin writes "In the first of a three-part series covering the people behind the new DirectX 10, ExtremeTech interviews Microsoft's David Blythe and Chris Donahue to discuss the development, decisions, and future of the new API. They answer several questions such as how different it will be than DX9, why it will only be for Vista (and not for XP), and when we might be able to see it."
What will their NEXT version be? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What will their NEXT version be? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What will their NEXT version be? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/13/1
Re:What will their NEXT version be? (Score:4, Insightful)
David Blythe used to be an architect in the advanced systems division of SGI. Very sharp guy. (If I recall, he even fixed a couple of gl bugs I found on the (now old) infinite reality engine.)
unless... (Score:2)
Unless they actually mean it...
Re:What will their NEXT version be? (Score:2)
Duh (Score:5, Funny)
Oh... I don't know... It couldn't be so people will buy vista.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
I was about to comment as well on how Microsoft just wanted to force people to upgrade, but read the article and you can see it was the driver model of the older systems that was the problem. Microsoft took the Apple approach of making things better instead of sticking to the broke, buggy design of Windows that all of you seem love(I am talking about the 97% of you). Honestly, this falls right in line with all the news about Vista(driver and kernel re-designs)
So, to re-cap... The designers chose to not be hindered by the older design decisions and to look towards the future.
Re:Duh (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Porting it to XP would means having support XP's driver model as well.
Supporting two different driver model means more complexity and less things added to DX10 in the same timeframe.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes but, I don't really consider time frame a "technical reason" as far as this goes. Thats more of an economical reason, wouldn't you agree?
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Adding the ability to support two driver models would have a dramatic influence on the design of the project and would likely force them to go in a totally different direction. It's not that it's not possible to do, it's just that it would likely be quite detrimental.
Personally speaking I give them a salute for finally doing something right. They're evil anyway so why does it matter? Just consisently do what's best for the software and eventually people will be okay with the decisions.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Because so many people here have tied their self esteem up in the success of Linux and the consequent failure of Microsoft that they have to bitch about everything.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a Windows users as such (I only use it to play games every now and then) but since for once they did seem to make a good decision in that specific area, it shouldn't be downplayed... regardless of how much fun it is to diss Microsoft in general...
And wouldn't DRM be safer in kernel mode anyway ?
Keep the bashing for when it's justified, it's not as if there aren't enough occasions to indulge, especially with Microsoft.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what you mean by "safer" but the DRM would work more effectively, which is why they're putting it there. The design goal is to have a "Trusted" kernel running on "Trusted" hardware, so that the system can disallow any software-based circumvention technique -- including device drivers that tried to save the framebuffer to a file. That's both the reason why most drivers are going to run in user mode, and why the rest have to be "certified" by Microsoft. Certification isn't about quality; it's about DRM enforcement.
DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hardware accellerated desktop, display drivers that can restart themselves if they crash, less reboots to install new drivers, multiple hardware accellerated windows, virtual memory for video cards.
Obviously those are all features intended to overshadow the main new feature... DRM!
Sorry... sarcasm doesn't translate well over the internet...
Re:Duh (Score:2)
This is slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Duh (Score:4, Funny)
There's so many different distributions available that fragmentation between them is inevitable.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
If your user-visible API dictates the structure of your drivers to the extent that you can't back-port it to another driver model, then you're doing something deeply wrong. Or you're using technical buzzwords to confuse people into thinking that a management decision is a technical one.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
HAHAHA! Best joke I've heard in a while. You obviously haven't been programming with D3D a lot.
It's absolutely vital that you check Vendor ID, Device ID, and Driver version in order to work around the countless bugs, quirks, and performance holes in all the well known broken systems out there (unless you absolutely want to slap a BIG 'only supported on Card X with (at least) Driver Y' STICKER on your packaging).
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the stuff of which dreams are made. i.e. it's not remotely plausible. Look at the stats on w3schools, for example. Today, June 2006, 89% of Windows users are on XP. XP has been out for 4 years and it doesn't even make that much sense today to ignore Windows 2000 users. There are still as many W2K users as Mac users and the "port" from XP to Win2K is easy enough to make it worthwhile. Not many people would make an XP-only program today.
Two years ago, XP was on 57% of Windows machines - i.e. after 2 years it achieved 60% market share. No-one, two years ago, made XP-only software for end users.
Which OS to put DX10 onto is not a technical decision. The commercial realities forbid a Vista-only API unless MS want to wait five years for DX10 to be widely accepted by end-users.
In other words, they will put DX10 onto XP or DX9 is all we will get from most publishers until 2010. Few developers have the resources to target two versions of DX at once.
Re:Duh (Score:2)
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
So instead they chose to hinder application developers, especially game developers, with two choices:
A. Design for DirectX 9 and not use any DirectX 10 specific feature
B. Adopt DirectX 10 and abandon any potential customer not running Vista which will be more than half of their target market for a LOOOONGGGG time
If they opt for B, and I wager a future version of HALO will opt for B, then we can switch to hindering consumers. When the game they want to buy runs best
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
That somehow ties into virtualizing access to the graphics hardware.
You can read the specifics on this page
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,198203
P.S. The Printer Friendly page on extremetech leaves out pictures & perhaps more importantly, leaves out their captions.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would a program using an interface be affected by what mode the code behind the interface runs in ?
Re:Duh (Score:2, Interesting)
What's keeping MS from backporting some of the new Longhorn kernel/driver niftiness to XP? Oh, right. Money. There's no money in adding new things to an already-sold product. It's all about selling the new hotness.
Give me a break! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, one of the first complains I read over here about Windows is how they have been carrying a legacy of compatibility from Win 3.11 days. Now, they try to simplify the platform (didnt Mac did that when going from OS9 to OSX?, and from PPC to Intel?) and everybody starts whining.
What is keeping Microsoft from backporting is the complexity it would yield, Windows XP is a mess, thats why they had to restart the development of Longhorn to a new model. They decided to throw away the compatilibity and improve the technology.
I do not know how good or bad will vista be, I use Fedora anyways, but I think there is just so much bullshit people can throw at Microsoft, IMHO they are *trying* to do something fine, for a change.
Welcome to Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
The slashdot paradigm with respect to MS is that we(the FOSS geek community) are right, they are wrong. In the most extreme of cases (such as when MS does something correct) we are right, they are *trying*, but they are still ultimately evil.
Please don't get any hopes up just because you have been modded insightful. This is only a gesture, after which you are pretty much screwed. Kiss your karma goodbye.
Regards,
-F
Re:Welcome to Slashdot (Score:2)
Kids these days!
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is it? Do you want Vista tech backported to XP or do you want Microsoft to keep Vista tech exclusive to Vista?
Re:Duh (Score:2)
I want to be able to play the newest games without buying and installing a new OS. Easy enough.
Re:Duh (Score:2)
Re:Duh (Score:2)
Re:Duh (Score:2)
Re:Duh (Score:2)
Re:Duh (Score:2)
Oh, that's fresh, a Slashdotter accusing other Slashdotters of groupthink. Yet for all your snide accusations, most of the highly rated posts at this time of writing seem to support their decision, as backporting would be difficult a
False Dichotomy (Score:2)
Other wants new feature because they want the new shiny toys, or search for any excuse to bash MS, or simply try to see if upgrading is interresting.
Re:Duh (Score:2)
The problem is that this will force people to upgrade, and Vista is a pretty huge upgrade for most people. So they will either miss out on the new games, or new games won't be able to utilise the new functionality of dx10.
And I haven't really seen anyone bitch a
Re:Duh (Score:2)
I also think that many people want Microsoft to backport things that can reasonable be backported, instead of arbitarily making things "Vista Only" to force upgrades, but would also like Microsoft to bring some innovation to Vista that means features can be added that werent possible in XP for example.
Personally, I don't really care that
Re:Duh (Score:2)
Re:Duh (Score:2)
2 Possibilities: (Score:2)
I know it's a shocking idea, that people may have differing opinions rather than following dogma; in a proper, well-organised society, such people would of course be 're-educated'.
2) We like bitching about things.
-Chris
Re:Duh (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft: "You must upgrade to Vista because DirectX 10 will not work with Windows XP, due to a new driver architecture." Me: "I see... but surely that means you're just attempting to pull more money out of me and other Windows users by our eyeballs. After all, I wouldn't upgrade to Vista otherwise because I
Re:Duh (Score:2)
That's an interview? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people are complaining, "Oh, why won't we have DirectX 10 for Windows XP." There's a good technical explanation for that, where it's really not possible to do what DX10 does in the Windows XP driver model."
So if the decision had been made, "Yes, we're going to try to make all this work on XP," you'd really have to sort of hamstring DirectX 10. You'd have to say, "Then we can't do this, we can't do that..."
You could even see the graphics card having a big hand in doing some of the stuff that was traditionally done on the CPU. Things like collision detection, or calculating obscured geometry so you don't have to render it. You start to see a lot of flexibility in how developers can use both the geometry shader and the stream-out-to-memory function together.
Video is another area where you're starting to see the graphics card manufacturers doing a lot of fun stuff with their video processing using the power of the GPU. And you could see DX10, especially with the reduced overhead, enabling more powerful video processing on the graphics unit.
Re:That's an interview? (Score:2)
Of course it's PR. Microsoft always has the "behind the scenes" interviews before a major release. It's all a part of the marketing campaign for Vista.
Microsoft knows they have major perception problems with Vista, and they are trying to build up a positive "buzz" to counter all of the negative issues surrounding Vista.
I misread this as Direct X10 (Score:2)
Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should Microsoft make DirectX 10 available for old versions of Windows? How many new video drivers released for Linux in 2006 support early 2.4.x kernels?
Sometimes making progress means saying "sorry, we don't support that; you'll have to upgrade to something newer".
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Linux kernel can be freely downloaded at http://kernel.org/ [kernel.org] I don't think upgrading to Vista will be a zero-cost venture, especially since the hardware requirements are excessive.
What obligation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on.
How many programs only run on Mac OSX and don't run on OS9?
I hardly see how a finger is being given at all here... and it's not like you haven't had fair warning that Vista is coming out.. hell it's late, late, late... so there's no big 'whoops I bought XP because I didn't know Vista was coming out'.
The main deal is that Vista will still run all the XP stuff, so you haven't had the 'finger' given to you for buying XP, because when you do upgrade to Vista down the track you won't have to upgrade all your software as well if you don't want to... that would be giving the finger... kinda like how Apple did with OSX not really supporting old OS9 programs.
Man, Microsoft can do no right by some people, no matter how hard they actually do try.
Re:What obligation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Since MS will not fix issues with older versions of DirectX after they start distributing a new version, game developers are pushed into developing their games to the latest DirectX version.
So via this mechanism, MS makes sure that game developers use MS' chosen DirectX version.
By making DirectX 10 to be Vista only, and since they have locked-in game developers
Re:What obligation? (Score:2)
By your logic they should backport the whole OS and upgrade XP users for free. Legacy happy goes in the other direction... and it sounds like they're going to be doing a whole lot of that this time too.
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, so they still have?
Where is the formula to decide how much service depending on product cost a company should give to their consumers?
Because Microsoft has already supported their XP users for years in non-essential software to use the OS. For how much longer should they do so? Many here seem to know the answer because they seem to say Microsoft is doing something wrong here. Please don't leave out the details for me and give me the date.
If this was essential updates and about security, stability, and so on, the answer would be simple: during the product lifetime that Microsoft sets up for all their operating systems. But this is glitz to play some new games.
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:2)
Are you ripped off or owed anything if the new ford focus next year comes with satellite nav, and the one you bought this year doesn't?
Say what? (Score:2)
How about those poor souls with NT 4.0? Stuck at DirectX 3, I hear. Damn.
Microsoft is a company out to make money. You're lucky they even give out software updates for free; their EULAs certainly go out of its way to specify that you have no guarantees that what you bou
Re:Say what? (Score:2)
I wonder how much this will hurt DirectX 10 adoption. If I develop for DirectX 9 (or OpenGL) then I have a much larger target audience than if I develop for DirectX 10, and this will probably be true for some years after the release of
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:2)
Wow, one of the most stupid comments I have read in some time. First, Microsoft has no obligation in giving you anything after you bought a LICENSE to use their software (XP). However, they will SURELY give an upgrade discount to acquire the license to use their new Operating system (Vista) which will be cheaper t
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:3, Interesting)
First, compatability. Let's say you're a desktop user with a 2.4 kernel. Why would you not switch to a 2.6 kernel. Hmmm, well maybe you have some legacy hardware that only works on 2.4. But hold on a second, if your machine is using such legacy hardware, then what are the chances that it's going to have/need a new skookum video card. Hmmm.... not very
So in most cases, your newer kernel is going to work with the hardware. Cue in Vista... well it might work with your hardware, bu
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why should Microsoft make DirectX 10 available for old versions of Windows?
In one swoop, they've condemned people to upgrading if you want to play games on the dominant PC gaming platform. Do you see why that might irritate a few people? Vista sure isn't going to be free.
What's going to cost more? Vista or an Xbox 360?
On the other hand, that'd remove my main reason for not saying screw it all and moving to an x86 mac for everything. My existing PC plays all the games I'm going to have time for for the next
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:2)
And in one swoop, Nintendo have condemned people to upgrading to the wee if they want to play games on a dominant console.
You've also not realised that most major developers will not use DirectX 10 if it only works on Vista, as they'd be cutting off most of their customer base. They'll only switch once most people have Vista, in which case it's the right time to cut off the stragglers.
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:2)
When DirectX 10 is released with Vista, developers will have the option of using it, or sticking with DirectX 9. If they stick with DirectX 9, then anyone with Windows 98, ME
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:2, Funny)
XP is the latest version of Windows
Re:Why should DirectX 10 support Windows XP? (Score:4, Informative)
Because they're not a nasty vicious monopolistic corporation hell-bent on extorting every last cent from their customer base, and who would never stoop so low as to refuse to release a key product for a mature platform still well within its support cycle, purely to force an upgrade cycle upon a market that feels no particular need to switch to an unproven product that offers debateable advantages and which will require expenditure on new hardware in most cases?
Opps, sorry. Wrong parallel universe.
DirectX & Antitrust (Score:4, Insightful)
In short: authorities were concerned about Microsoft dominance in the web-browser market. And they have been worried about Mcirosoft dominance in the media-playback market. Yet they are not concerned about DirectX and the dominance it gives to Microsoft? How come?
Re:DirectX & Antitrust (Score:2)
Re:DirectX & Antitrust (Score:2)
Re:DirectX & Antitrust (Score:2)
Re:DirectX & Antitrust (Score:2)
Yes, but Windows is hardly a gaming platform monopoly. Consoles seem to be holding their ground pretty well, and many game developers these days simply give Windows the finger and makes pretty big profits.
Re:DirectX & Antitrust (Score:2)
Re:DirectX & Antitrust (Score:4, Insightful)
Because nobody's being forced or tricked into using DX to play games - the people who made the game made the choice and that choice is entirely up to them.
If MS locked down Windows so that only DX API's could be used (no OpenGL, etc) then there'd be cause for argument.
Re:DirectX & Antitrust (Score:2)
And that is what they are doing with Vista, basically. In Vista, OpenGL is just a wrapper around Direct3D, and it takes about 50% performance-hit. Sure, vendors (NVIDIA etc.) could provide their own OpenGL-implementation, but that means that the spiffy 3D-desktop Vista has would not work anymore. In other words: Microsoft is making sure that OpenGL is as undesireable as possible in Vista.
Re:DirectX & Antitrust (Score:2)
Re:DirectX & Antitrust (Score:2)
And through the dominance of Windows, Microsoft is also pushing DirectX. Why can they push DirectX, but they can't push Media Player or IE?
"In this case I'd say games are free to go with either DirectX or OpenGL on Windows - the games ship with the latest redistributable anyway so there's no particular "preinstall" advantage"
Except that
The OS is the glue between HW and apps/games (Score:2)
Yeah, stupid metaphor. I tried, at least.
Re:The OS is the glue between HW and apps/games (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The OS is the glue between HW and apps/games (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhuh. What's your point? In the case of DX, the designers are also acting as the ARB. So? Heck, that just further disputes the idea that "[the] glue is (ultimately) dictating to the materials what properties they must possess", since clearly they are dictating nothing, but rather working with hardware/software vendors to design an API which fits the needs of the game developers.
Historical retrospective? :) (Score:2, Interesting)
Finally ate their own words... (Score:5, Informative)
Sad truth, although it was easily demonstrated that DIVE was faster than DirectX on the same hardware, practically no games were ever written for OS/2 with people citing the critics.
Hopefully with the new driver model, they can address one of DirectX's big shortcomings which has existed since its beginnings - blitting graphics with an obscuring window intersecting it. With DIVE, the fps increases as there is less pixels to blit. DirectX the performance goes down as it makes heavy work with many more kernel-mode/user-mode transitions. Of course, to solve this, Windows games opted for full-screen mode so that there will be no obscuring frames above the window
When I used to play games, I rather enjoyed having the game run in a window next to my wordprocessor... Excellent for turn based games like Civilization.
Re:Finally ate their own words... (Score:2)
It's an INTERFACE goddammit (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically, DirectX is meant as an Interface between Windows and (Video) hardware. It says "if you call my function xxx, I will translate that to a certain call to the hardware". It is terribly easy to make DirectX 10 compatible with XP. You just take DirectX 9, add the new calls, and let them return "sorry, I cannot do that". Then game developers will simply add an option "activate advanced DirectX 10 features" to show off the cool stuff, but any XP user will still be able to play the game. So there is no good reason to exclude XP from the new games market, as Microsoft is trying to do.
Even better, they could (and IMHO should) open up the source code of DirectX. I am dead certain that an XP version of DirectX 10 would be created in days.
But of course, they have great MARKETING reasons why they will not do that. Yes, it is all marketing. The rest of the argumentation is blah.
Re:It's an INTERFACE goddammit (Score:2)
The bottom line is.. (Score:2, Informative)
Will share the same fate with RDRAM, then (Score:2)
DDR was on the go, they said. RDRAM was the hype, they said. Yet in 6 months time all mobo manufacturers resumed ddr models.
Re:Will share the same fate with RDRAM, then (Score:2)
The gaming crowd would be unwilling to go out and get a new os for just a few new effects to go with games. As they wont, the card manufacturers will oblige with them, as well as game studios. You cant risk your customers for the sake of microsoft after a level of risk, as much money microsoft may give you to comply with new standards. Also soon emulators, peripherals, add on cards etc would pop up if dx10 includes that much goodies to go with, and still
Simple Opinion.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The printing on game boxes that read "Requires Windows 95" "Requires Windows 98" and "Requires Windows XP" will soon have a brother. Big shock guys, there is going to be a "Requires Windows Vista"
The real reason. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
They need a compelling reason for people to buy the upgrade.
Re:OpenGL (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OpenGL (Score:4, Insightful)
Why *should* they? And don't answer with some ideological doctrine, give a *practical* reason why Microsoft should do what you propose. DirectX has been wildly successful without any submissions to extend OpenGL.
Exactly (Score:2)
While they're at it, why don't they convert everything over to OpenOffice and hey, just give up on Windows and switch to Linux?
Re:OpenGL (Score:2)
Really, people please read more or do not comment. You only show that you are stupid.
Re:OpenGL (Score:3, Informative)
I've used them both, and while OpenGL isn't a slouch, DX is a lot easier to use (especially in the shader department). Supposedly OpenGL has even that under control nowadays, so it's just a matter of taste, really (and performance, Ati's OpenGL drivers are still buggy).
Re:OpenGL (Score:3, Interesting)
Many on Slashdot would say its to tighten M$'es dominance - true, but they are probably fed up with standards body bloat too - why let an idea slip due to bureaucracy at some working group when you can implement it now yourself and do the standards thing later when your customers FORCE you to.
Interestingly DirectX adoption seemed to accelerate after NVIDIA tightene
Re:Drivers running in user mode (Score:2)
Re:Drivers running in user mode (Score:3, Informative)
Else I find it hard to explain that it is over 4MB in size...
(the typical driver module is typically a few tens of KB in size, up to a few hundred for very complex drivers)
Re:MS says no to openGL (Score:5, Informative)
Not true; see Kam VedBrat's comments on Vista and OpenGL support [msdn.com]. To summarize, Microsoft will provide an OpenGL 1.4 implementation that sits on top of Direct3D, legacy (XP-era) OpenGL ICDs are supported but will disable Aero, and new OpenGL ICDs may be written that works with Aero.
Re:MS says no to openGL (Score:3, Informative)
new OpenGL ICDs may be written that works with Aero.
That's the exact same situation that is in XP at the moment, graphics card manufacturers have an OpenGL ICD included in their drivers.