Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => FS2 Open Coding - The Source Code Project (SCP) => Topic started by: Nuke on August 24, 2003, 02:40:47 pm
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will it ever get used?
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8
We're using DX8... not 9!!! But since 9 supports 8, you'll be ok.
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if there was a good reason, we might upgrade but it seems as though there realy wasn't anything important added so, we'll just stick with 8
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DX9 mostly just addds support for programmable pixel shaders. Something we can't even do. DX9 was a modest upgrade from 8...its not worth the upgrade at this point.
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Actually, DirectX 9 was the first DirectX with true programmability. PS2.0 is the first decent pixel shader that actually lets you do stuff without using texture lookup for everything, and there's definitions for PS2.x and VS2.x (which stand for version 2 extended, if you wonder), and the definitions for VS3.0 and PS3.0, which means there will be at least three more generations of graphics hardware that will do only DirectX 9. Of course, after VS and PS 3.0 are implemented on every platform, and blending operations are made available for floating-point framebuffers, all that's needed is just to wait for everyone to get VS/PS3.0 hardware, 'cause that has everything - dynamic branching, booleans, texture lookups at the vertex shader, and whatnot.
Basically, that level of hardware could have a compiler that can compile any Renderman script for it (Renderman is a language used for shaders in some commercial 3d graphics programs), even if it may be multi-pass.
What I meant to say is, that while FS2 uses DirectX 8, DirectX 9 IS a significant upgrade, even if there don't seem to be any "new" features, like the original introduction of shaders in DirectX 8, or Fixed-Function TnL in DirectX 7.
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You never know... Maybe when fs2_open 4.0 comes along, they'll update it to 9.0...
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Narol keeps trying to convince me that DX9 would be faster than 8. But then he has a TNT2 so his opinions are less valid than mine :nervous::D
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It looks like it wouldnt be as much work to take D3D8 to D3D9 as it was to take D3D5 to D3D8 but..
DX9 could well be slower than DX8
DX9 is not officially compatible with w95
It would throw open a whole new series of compatibility problems and bugs just when fs2_open is getting stable.
How long can the rest of the DX code stay static while D3D races on without causing some kind of problem?
I will hopefully have something to say on this topic in a few weeks.
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The version of DirectX the SCP uses isnt compatable with win95 either.
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No? Is that official for 8.1 or is that a bug.
Please e-mail me.
If that is the case then no one complained and its not an issue
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The Windows 95 compability issue was just briefly discused when deep_eyes released the his first readme draft. Never heard more about it.
Ive stated in the readme that fs2_open wont work with windows 95 and nobody has corrected me, so I asumed this was correct.
Would be nice to clear this up.
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Originally posted by bottomfan
Would be nice to clear this up.
Yes. Would be good to know if its because of DX8.
If it is perhaps it could run under OGL instead.
Anyone with win95 want to speak up?
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Ive got win95, but is on a very old and slow machine(133mhz). I sorry to say ive havent got the time nor thr energy to install FS2(thou it is rather heavy).
DirectX 8 works on Windows 95, or so they say:
System Requirements
* Supported Operating Systems: Windows ME
* This download applies to customers running Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me.
* The DirectX installation process requires approximately 50 megabytes (MB) of free space on your hard drive.
After installation, the DirectX download takes approximately 15 MB of hard drive space. If you have an earlier version of DirectX installed on your system you will see little difference in used space on your hard drive following installation of DirectX 8.0.
* DirectX 8.0 will overwrite the earlier versions.
Anyone with a blank partition willing to try it out? :)
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I might be able to manage it at some point with my space machine.
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you can run fs_open with DX9 though, right?
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Originally posted by Carl
you can run fs_open with DX9 though, right?
Ive tested FS2_open with all released versions of DX9( dident plan to, It just happend that way) and all of them work.
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Originally posted by RandomTiger
Yes. Would be good to know if its because of DX8.
If it is perhaps it could run under OGL instead.
Anyone with win95 want to speak up?
Yes, i do. DX8 works with win95, however the SCP wsnts 8.1, which does not work with win95. I did have win 95 until the start of this year and I have pointed this out before (though due to e-mail problems it prob wasnt noticed).
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K. Thanks.
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I think SCP will stick with dx8 for the foreseeable future.
You need the new .NET dev environment for dx9, and I see no reason to buy that just for this :)
SCP will run with DX9 runtimes.
And, I am sorry your still on Win95 :(
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no, i was on win95, I'm now on XP. ooooo pretty colours!!:D
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Originally posted by Inquisitor
I think SCP will stick with dx8 for the foreseeable future.
Sounds right.
You need the new .NET dev environment for dx9, and I see no reason to buy that just for this :)[/B]
Not sure about that, I have a DX9 appwizard for VC6 which seems to work nicely. Or is that not what you mean?
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You have to remember, also, that the vast majority of GPUs don't really support DX9. Everything up through GF4 Ti4800 and the Radeon 8500. And the bargain DX9 cards (like the FX 5200 and it's ATI equivalent) apparently don't handle DX9 very well either, but this (unlike with the other cards) isn't because of the hardware not being designed to handle it. Rather, it's due to the fact that they are slow and are about an equal performance-wise with the GF4 MX cards.
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I'm using the DX9 SDK with VC6. If you want to use VB with DX9 though, you need VB.NET.
AppWizard? I don't use no stinkin' AppWizard... even though there is one available.
My own DX9 experiments work very well at the moment. Debugging fullscreen mode on a single computer is hell, so my graphics engine will be windowed-only until I get the bugs ironed out. My hacked-up Direct3D app framework is performing very nicely though, with none of the overheads inherent in the AppWizard framework.
So far, the program draws a rotating, textured, lit cube with material effects. I'm using the program's general mesh stack for the cube object, as the ship and AI stacks aren't finished yet. The general mesh stack is used for things such as debris and asteroids.
So DX8 uses the same VC++ API as DX9? I wish I'd known that when I started writing the Quantum Reality engine... Does DX8 have the geometry functions that DX9 has?
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Oh, I guess I am running on old info about the .NET stuff. Good to know I don;t have to spend the bucks to upgrade.