Manage updates with the Download AppMarch 21, 2006 4:00 AM PST
An inside look at Windows Vista
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(continued from previous page)
Windows Vista and DirectX 10
It's been called DirectX 10, Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0, and most recently, Direct3D10. The naming situation will clear up as we get closer to the official Windows Vista release, but all you have to know is that DirectX 10 and Direct3D10 in particular will introduce a new era in PC gaming.
Microsoft's DirectX APIs are a collection of interfaces that standardize how game developers talk to PC system hardware. It's a lot easier for programmers to write for a single DirectSound or Direct3D API, instead of writing for every single video card and sound card in existence. Microsoft rebuilt its Direct3D API from scratch for Windows Vista, and Direct3D10 will serve as the base for all future Direct3D innovations throughout the life span of the Windows Vista operating system.
Because the Direct3D10 foundation has to serve game developers through the next decade, Windows Vista will streamline and open up Direct3D with several forward-looking features that will help programmers create better games and get more performance out of PC hardware.
All hail the graphics processing unit
Direct3D10 finally completes the break from the legacy fixed-function pipeline. Developers will use the programmable pipeline to emulate the older, fixed-function steps. Additionally, Microsoft had to rethink its display driver model now that the entire desktop is going 3D. The video card isn't just for games anymore. When you have a 3D desktop and give each application its own 3D window, the display driver has to be flexible and stable enough to handle the video card's increased role in the system. Microsoft split up the display driver to increase stability, to ensure that the 3D desktop stays up in the event that a game or another application crashes due to a graphics error. This change also means that Microsoft will not release DirectX 10 for Windows XP, because many of the Direct3D10 improvements will need the new Windows Vista Display Driver Model.
Opening up the video card to more applications will require Vista to give the GPU more system resources and allow applications to share the hardware. The biggest change for game developers will be virtualized memory for the GPU. The video card will now have its own space in system RAM to store information that can't fit on local video card memory. High-end video cards ship with 256MB or 512MB of memory, but games can still use the extra space in system memory to store large chunks of information, like textures.
Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney explains, "Virtual texturing eliminates the video memory bottleneck on texture size; whereas in DirectX 9 the size of textures we can use with full performance is limited by the amount of video memory, in DirectX 10 it is only limited by total system memory." Furthermore, Tim predicts that virtual memory will enable a "2X-4X increase in texture usage in games, which will be great for Unreal Engine 3 games, where textures are often authored at very high resolutions like 2048x2048, and then scaled down on lower-end systems to improve performance."
Setting standards and improving performance
Video cards will now have strict feature-set requirements for Direct3D10. A video card must have the full feature set to be DirectX 10 approved. This isn't a whole lot different from the existing model, in which a card has to have certain features to be DirectX 9.0c or Shader Model 2.0 compliant, but Microsoft has made the specification much more detailed to remove any chance of hardware variation. Differences in how Nvidia and ATI cards handled floating-point precision created extra work for developers in the past, but tighter Direct3D10 specifications will help remove ambiguous areas in hardware design. Having consistent hardware means programmers can avoid spending development time on customizing games for cards that don't have all the necessary features or have odd implementations.
Microsoft plans to accelerate its Direct3D release schedule to keep up as the graphics manufacturers release new GPUs with advanced features. If everything goes as planned, the game developer will have to learn only Direct3D11, instead of figuring out the quirks for two different GPUs when Nvidia and ATI release a new technology round. However, this change might not mean the end of writing code for specific GPUs. While developers can count on DX10 to define card features sets, the Microsoft DirectX team admits that "we may see [hardware vendors] putting in additional differentiating features, which developers may want to natively support."
DirectX 10 will increase game performance by as much as six to eight times. Much of that will be accomplished with smarter resource management, improving API and driver efficiencies, and moving more work from the CPU to the GPU. "The entire API and pipeline have been redesigned from the ground up to maximize performance and minimize CPU and bandwidth overhead," according to Microsoft. Furthermore, "the idea behind D3D10 is to maximize what the GPU can do without CPU interaction, and when the CPU is needed it's a fast, streamlined, pipeline-able operation." Giving the GPU more efficient ways to write and access data will reduce CPU overhead costs by keeping more of the work on the video card.
Here's a list of several new Direct3D 10 performance improvements GameSpot was able to wrestle out of the DirectX 10 team:
• New constant buffers maximize efficiency of sending shader constant data (light positions, material information, etc.) to the GPU by eliminating redundancy and massively reducing the number of calls to the runtime and driver.
• New state objects significantly reduce the amount of API calls and bandwidth, tracking, mapping, and validation overhead needed in the runtime and driver to change GPU device state.
• Texture arrays enable the GPU to swap materials on-the-fly without having to swap those textures from the CPU.
• Resource views enable super-fast binding of resources to the pipeline by informing the system early-on about its intended use. This also vastly reduces the cost of hazard-tracking and validation.
• Predicated rendering allows draw calls to be automatically deactivated based on the results of previous rendering--without any CPU interaction. This enables rapid occlusion culling to avoid rendering objects that aren't visible. Shader Model 4.0 provides a more robust instruction set with capabilities like integer and bitwise instructions, enabling more work to be transferred to the GPU.
• The D3D runtime itself has been completely refactored to maximize performance and configurability by the application.
It remains to be seen just how well actual DX10 graphics hardware will be able to handle the additional work, but we've seen in the past that ATI and Nvidia have been able to deliver whenever games have shifted work from the CPU to the GPU.
Sarju Shah and James Yu report for GameSpot.
See more CNET content tagged:
Direct3D, DirectX, game company, video memory, API
61 comments
Join the conversation! Add your comment
Does anyone want to be having a heart attack, only to find the MS powered heart monitor is being rebooted...give it a minute...
No Mr Jones, you can't withdrawl money from your account while the main systems are down with today's MS virus...
You're angry. We get it.
Does anyone want to be having a heart attack, only to find the MS powered heart monitor is being rebooted...give it a minute...
No Mr Jones, you can't withdrawl money from your account while the main systems are down with today's MS virus...
You're angry. We get it.
it mentioned that it would talk about Vista in relation to heavy
gaming, but it seemed more like a paid article from M$. It didn't
mention at -all- the fact that having DirectX as a primary backbone
for the system is going to further decrease the usage of OGL,
making it harder and less cost effective for any devs to try to write
for OSX at the same time. I think I'll keep my XP box.... I'd go back
to 2k if I could.
it mentioned that it would talk about Vista in relation to heavy
gaming, but it seemed more like a paid article from M$. It didn't
mention at -all- the fact that having DirectX as a primary backbone
for the system is going to further decrease the usage of OGL,
making it harder and less cost effective for any devs to try to write
for OSX at the same time. I think I'll keep my XP box.... I'd go back
to 2k if I could.
Sure it looks neat the first couple of times but gets old rather fast.
In my opinion they should spent less time working on those visual effects but instead on Windows Vista SP1
Sure it looks neat the first couple of times but gets old rather fast.
In my opinion they should spent less time working on those visual effects but instead on Windows Vista SP1
I don't know, if it is heavy handed like I am sure Hollywood and the Recording Industry would like it may be a junk OS right out of the gate.
Time will tell. I also like that the article noted that it was supposed to ship at the end of the year when everything else they have done said middle of 2006. It seems things keep slipping. I just don't understand why 6 years wasn't enough to get it out on time and with ALL of the features Microsoft promised.
Robert
I don't know, if it is heavy handed like I am sure Hollywood and the Recording Industry would like it may be a junk OS right out of the gate.
Time will tell. I also like that the article noted that it was supposed to ship at the end of the year when everything else they have done said middle of 2006. It seems things keep slipping. I just don't understand why 6 years wasn't enough to get it out on time and with ALL of the features Microsoft promised.
Robert
How bad is the DRM in this OS going to be? I know this has been asked in previous comments, but I'm just as curious to know, and it seems like all these articles about it either completely skip the issue or dodge around it. What about the obvious *and not so obvious* problems I see possibly arising from Vista's "security" features? Again, all the articles I've read about Vista glorify and detail the security of it, without even beginning to explore the ways it could be compromised. How about those of us that DON'T want our OS to use much of our system resources? This article mentioned that with the Aero theme turned off, the OS didn't seem as snappy - which gives me reason to suspect that the Aero theme never gets turned off, just skinned over. What about system stability? I'm sure I'm not the only one to experience an application crashing in XP only to take the entire system down with it, requiring a cold shut down.
So I'm just going to wait and see what the users have to say about it when Vista comes out, the hype has died down, and the nasties have had their time to play.
How bad is the DRM in this OS going to be? I know this has been asked in previous comments, but I'm just as curious to know, and it seems like all these articles about it either completely skip the issue or dodge around it. What about the obvious *and not so obvious* problems I see possibly arising from Vista's "security" features? Again, all the articles I've read about Vista glorify and detail the security of it, without even beginning to explore the ways it could be compromised. How about those of us that DON'T want our OS to use much of our system resources? This article mentioned that with the Aero theme turned off, the OS didn't seem as snappy - which gives me reason to suspect that the Aero theme never gets turned off, just skinned over. What about system stability? I'm sure I'm not the only one to experience an application crashing in XP only to take the entire system down with it, requiring a cold shut down.
So I'm just going to wait and see what the users have to say about it when Vista comes out, the hype has died down, and the nasties have had their time to play.
avaliable for a few years now, without all of the security headaches
in OS X. How can you write a story like this and not put it into the
context of other operating systems?
Just so you know Apple is just as bad a monopoly as Microsoft. The difference is Apple doesn't have enough users for the government to fool with. You can only buy Mac's from Apple. They are constantly comeing out with programs that cause other companies to stop developing similar ones (Adobe is one such company). iTunes only works on iPods. So can the bull we don't give a flying flip.
Robert
for a long time ,
g4 dualcore will finally give a comparison (with bootcamp) and
show this hopefully
rok on mac
avaliable for a few years now, without all of the security headaches
in OS X. How can you write a story like this and not put it into the
context of other operating systems?
Just so you know Apple is just as bad a monopoly as Microsoft. The difference is Apple doesn't have enough users for the government to fool with. You can only buy Mac's from Apple. They are constantly comeing out with programs that cause other companies to stop developing similar ones (Adobe is one such company). iTunes only works on iPods. So can the bull we don't give a flying flip.
Robert
for a long time ,
g4 dualcore will finally give a comparison (with bootcamp) and
show this hopefully
rok on mac
oh and if "the Aero interface is a piece of s--t" then why is vista
trying to copy it
hmmmmmm
oh and if "the Aero interface is a piece of s--t" then why is vista
trying to copy it
hmmmmmm
My, such hatred and vitriol! It never ceases to amaze me how
much some of the most rabid Windoze fanbois (yes, YOU,
George) despise those Mac users. Please explain why you have
such hatred for them.
I know that some of them-- sometimes-- can be a little
annoying with their smugness, etc. But have you ever
considered that they are mostly being defensive. The reason
they are defensive is that they consider the Mac OS to be vastly
superior to any Windoze version and yet that fact is not
recognized by the general computer-buying public (both
corporate and consumer.) The reasons for this include a highly
effective marketing strategy by MS, a lack of that from Apple,
corporate commodity buying habits, and many more. Ah, but I
digress...
Yet, even given the above-- is that a cause for such bitterness?
Gee, maybe it's Windoze that has made you bitter...
the same silliness on a six-month-old Mac, but you'd have to
get the owner to reset it to its defaults. My mother - she'll be 90
in July - saw all that genie-effect stuff and the rotating cubes
and things and asked me if I couldn't make it go away ...
PLEASE???
There's been a lot of restraint in Windows upgrades these past
few years. Which is too bad because I understand the newer stuff
is worth the pain and cost of the upgrade. Much less of the
traditional BSoD and such. If there weren't a gazillion script
kiddies all looking for ways to zombie your systems for a DoS
attack on Fox News or to flood the nation with more spam, we
Mac types wouldn't have much to feel smug about these days.
It really is a big step forward, just a shame that it has taken this long. Cheers and congrats on a great feature set.
It really is a big step forward, just a shame that it has taken this long. Cheers and congrats on a great feature set.