The Pain and PRomise of DirectX 10

[Evangolis]

With the release of Vista comes DirectX 10.  While the DRM-related performance issues have been discussed here, there are other points to consider.  I made a quarterly visit to Tom's Hardware, and read some articles about what lies in the immediate future.

First, from November 06, we have the promise of Direct X 10.

Now, from this month, we have the the painful reality.  Here's a hint, this is the title of the article: Gameplay Stinks with RTM Vista and Current Drivers

Some, for those not eager to throw themselves on the bleeding edge, here are some articles on value buys:

How $200 Goes a Lot Further

The Best Gaming Video Cards for the Money: January 2007

And for those of you like me, still using a system that time forgot: AGP Platform Analysis, Part 1: New Cards, Old System

So much of this was news to me, and I present it for your consideration.

To wrap up, here is a review of Vista, two weeks before release.  I only needed to read the first page to know that it will be awhile before I get a Vista system, and that the systems on my current boxes will remain there permenantly.

[Sky]

I'm excited for DX10. Vista...meh. But it's great that MS has finally decided to shed that legacy crap, and of course there is going to be a lot of transition pain. It's worth it in the long run. The 8800 shows great promise with the unified shader tech.

I'm still a bit wary about hardware sound support, and a bit bummed out EAX got shafted out of existence. That doesn't exactly scream 'gamer support'. Maybe a more open-source approach will benefit in the long run, hard to say.

[Trippy]

I'm still a bit wary about hardware sound support, and a bit bummed out EAX got shafted out of existence. That doesn't exactly scream 'gamer support'. Maybe a more open-source approach will benefit in the long run, hard to say.

EAX did not get shafted out of existence. It did get shafted in Vista in the majority of older games that don't support OpenAL. However the majority of newer games do support OpenAL. You do, of course, have to have a sound card that supports OpenAL as well.

[Stephen Zepp]

I'm still a bit wary about hardware sound support, and a bit bummed out EAX got shafted out of existence. That doesn't exactly scream 'gamer support'. Maybe a more open-source approach will benefit in the long run, hard to say.

EAX did not get shafted out of existence. It did get shafted in Vista in the majority of older games that don't support OpenAL. However the majority of newer games do support OpenAL. You do, of course, have to have a sound card that supports OpenAL as well.

Unfortunately, when it comes to audio standards OpenAL isn't a good one--at least the versions that are as backwards compatible as possible. One of Torque's biggest weaknesses as an engine is sound, and OpenAL is quite the big influence on the suck when it comes to Torque sound.

Fortunately, the newer OpenAL libs are much better, and there is a lot more support for it now.

On the DirectX10 thing, our R&D guys are really excited about it, but it's also quite a pain currently. As they often do, MS has no sense of continuity between releases, and extremely often break critical aspects of their dev SDK's in the next release with no thought of backwards compatibility--which sucks royally for those trying to design and code against them.

[Sky]

Well, maybe not out of existence, but close. Does OpenAL support all the occlusion effects and other jazz EAX was good for? DD5.1 is nice, but EAX has a lot more going for it than just surround. I know Creative is using some hack right now to catch OpenAL calls and run them through EAX, but it's gotta be messy. At the very least ($$$ aside), I'm holding out on Vista until I'm sure there's a good sound option.

I really wish they'd just put dx10 in XP :P Or gut the DRM out of Vista and put DirectSound back in...