Direct X 10 AND direct x 9? Explained.

I have created this thread to clear a few things up.

1. Vista says I have DX10 and DX9, is this right?

Yes, vista includes a FULL version of both.

2. What do I have to do to use DX10?

To use directX 10 you MUST have a direct X 10 graphics chip, see my list for those that are.

3. I have a direct X 10 graphics chip, can I get rid of DX9?

No, these chips use DX9 for running games that are pre DX10 such as halflife since DX10 has no backwards compatability.

4. Do I have to worry about this situation at all?

As long as you install all DX updates by microsoft it will sort out what is needed, you dont have to do anything.
For now all DX10 games will have DX9 and DX10 modes, your card will use the highest possible.
If you somehow upgrade your GFX to a DX10 chip it will not require any modification to the DX options, it is all automatic.

 

Though you should add a reference to the AlkyProject.They are trying to implement the DX10 using DX9 and their first alpha DLL's are out.seems that they managed to run the DX10 samples using them.

 

Yeah but this has to do the new stuff in software and therefore sucks ass. Don't bother following this project, there will never be any drivers from Nvidia or ATI for this so it's pointless.
Nor does this prove anything because getting the hardware to run this new stuff would be the hard part anyway.

 

In the future, there's no reason why it couldn't do everything in hardware. The new features are already available in OpenGL, so a bit of hackery could expose them to DX too.

But yeah, it's not really worth mentioning that stuff yet. Going to be ages before they get any worthwhile results.

 

OpenGL still has no standardize support for Geometry Shaders. nVidia has only provided custom extensions for the G80 series for OpenGL 2.1. ATI will no doubt also provide their own custom extensions for the R600. Geometry Shaders won't be standardized until the Mt. Evans revision of OpenGL which comes after the Long Peaks extension. I doubt Microsoft will be very supportive of people trying to modify DX9 to support Geometry Shaders and you would still need driver support. I could see them trying to convert DX10 calls to OpenGL calls but that won't likely happen until Mt. Evans. Even then, that would assume GPU makers continue to release full featured Mt. Evans OpenGL drivers for XP, which may be subject to Microsoft pressure, and that games install the DX10 version on XP. If the installer is set to only install the DX9 version on XP, which seems likely, then you would have to crack the installer for every game, which opens up a whole new list of issues.

 

It doesn't have to be standardized. The functionality is available for the cards that support it. True, at some point in the future, it *will* be standardized, which will make it easier to use, but it's not a requirement.

Microsoft doesn't have to be supportive, and no modifications of DX9 would be required. All that's needed is implementing a library that follows the DX10 interface, and which internally translates the calls and forwards them to DX9 or OpenGL (whichever is most convenient)

Why would it do that? That means Vista users would have to reinstall if they wanted to switch between DX9 and DX10 modes. Would make much more sense to have one executable that supports both and allows the user to switch from inside the game.

 

I was just thinking the install process might be different for XP and Vista. Vista would likely install both versions, but in XP they might only install DX9 to save space since the DX10 version isn't needed anyways.

 

But that would require them to build and maintain two versions instead of one. That would be a pain for developers to deal with. Much easier to make one version, which supports DX9 as well as DX10 if it's available.

 

It's not hard to get the CPU to do stuff it was already doing, the whole point of geometry shaders is that the work gets offloaded to the GPU which does not have to communicate with the CPU so much, they have not even tackled the crunch part yet.

 

yeah, but as I said, there's no reason why that couldn't be done under XP. OpenGL already offers access to geometry shaders through NVidia's extensions.
It's an ambitious project, but I don't see why it shouldn't be possible. For now though, it's fairly irrelevant.