
DirectX 12 - kanche
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/directx/p/directx12.aspx
======
higherpurpose
It seems SemiAccurate was...accurate - Microsoft just took Mantle and renamed
it DX12, to call it their own "innovation":

[http://semiaccurate.com/2014/03/18/microsoft-adopts-
mantle-c...](http://semiaccurate.com/2014/03/18/microsoft-adopts-mantle-calls-
dx12/)

~~~
wmf
And it's rumored that Mantle is heavily "inspired" by the Xbox One and PS4
APIs. So really MS is copying themselves.

~~~
Jare
They are all inspired by the hardware and the experiences implementing high-
content game workloads. The main goal is to reduce CPU occupation and improve
parallelism of CPU cores. This is achieved in several ways:

\- reduce raw CPU work by increasing precompilation of state and data to
native formats

\- reduce communication from the CPU to the GPU, by increasing the flexibility
of API calls

\- reduce CPU <-> GPU dependencies by moving some forms of logic and flow into
the GPU

All of them conspire to increase parallelism as well since there are in
general fewer points where synchronization is needed.

Playstation developers have a long tradition of doing these things since the
first model; Xbox developers not so much, but still a lot more than on PCs.
Since the general goal is to reduce API surface, remove abstractions and match
the metal more closely, it's natural for APIs to converge.

------
owenjones
I am not a graphics / engine programmer but I know a decent amount of what
goes into programming a game, and I have to call "suspect" on the claim that
low level graphics API programming was heretofore only available on game
consoles like the Microsoft Xbox, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Microsoft Xbox One!

~~~
reitzensteinm
From Microsoft's warped perspective, where dogfooding is a religion, it's more
or less correct.

You've always been able to get a _lot_ more out of consoles considering their
specs; the 360 was marginally better than the state of the art of PC hardware,
for a few months, but being able to code right to the metal (not as much as on
an Amiga or Nintendo, but relative to the PC) gave an efficiency that made the
games unmatched for years.

AMD's recently released Mantle is the first exception on the PC, and DirectX
12 is reportedly quite similar. Bing it on your Zune for further reading.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Unmatched? Compared to what? Those games look like shit compared to a PC that
came out on the say day, let alone years later. Not to mention things like
limitations of map sizes, player numbers, etc.

~~~
ordinary
The issue with PC hardware is that it's just too varied to get really close to
the metal. The deeper you get, after all, the more different the various GPU
architectures become. Consoles, on the other hand, are all identical, so you
can do the most unportable bitfucking to get the absolute most out of the
hardware. This is also the reason why it takes years for games to really start
to shine on a console: it takes that long for game developers to really get to
know all the nitty-gritty details that just do not exist on the PC.

Console games often look mediocre despite the above because console hardware
is far cheaper, and thus simply less powerful, than the hardware in high end
gaming PCs, despite the fact that consoles benefit from economies of scale,
and are priced at a loss to boot. It is not fair to compare the way a game
looks on a $2000 PC to the way it looks on a $400 console.

~~~
archagon
That's what I've always heard too, but it seems that the tide is turning:
[http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/20/opengl-
gdc2014/](http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/20/opengl-gdc2014/)

(I can't answer for the technical details, though. It reeds like hieroglyphics
to me.)

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hudo
Holiday 2015? That's like, 1.5 years from now!? Or 10 internet years!

~~~
KamiCrit
That's like forever away! Or two E3s away.

~~~
jagger27
Now that sounds like an eternity.

~~~
JetSpiegel
ETERNITY! ETERNITY! ETERNITY!

------
shmerl
Vaporware to scare developers off using Mantle?

~~~
pjmlp
Until Mantle is as portable as DirectX in terms of graphics card support, only
console developers will care about it.

Most of the studios use engines nowadays, so Mantle impact on studios besides
AMD blessed ones, remains to be seen.

~~~
shmerl
Mantle isn't yet usable either, but my point is, that DX12 was announced as a
vaporware to detract attention from Mantle. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware)

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Rickasaurus
I guess this means that if I want to get the most out of my games I'll have to
"upgrade" to Windows 8.1. Not super excited about having to configure away all
of the metro garbage.

~~~
dmm
Ask your favourite developers to use OpenGL instead. Even xp users get the
latest version of OpenGL.

~~~
MichaelGG
OpenGL support seems rather iffy on Windows. Minecraft uses OpenGL and
wouldn't run on my i7. At one point it wouldn't even load, but a while later
it ran, but at laughable framerates.

~~~
duaneb
Did you have the drivers installed? Minecraft runs just fine on many, many,
many windows i7 machines.

~~~
dmm
Exactly. On windows the OpenGL implementation is supplied by the graphics
vender. AMD, Nvidia, or in the case of the i7, intel.

Windows comes with an OpenGL implementation but it's an ancient version.

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Justsignedup
I am not excited, as MS's track record shows, any of their "improvements" are
not backwards compatible with old OSes. For example IE11 is so awesome! SO
AMAZING! Not compatible with Windows XP, yet Chrome and Firefox is still.

MS's desire to ship their latest OS has hurt developers over the years. I hope
people still chose Open GL over DX-whatever.

~~~
ParkerK
>Yet Chrome and Firefox are still

Older versions of FF are yes, but the latest is not
supported[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-no-longer-
works...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-no-longer-works-some-
versions-windows-xp)

There's no reason they should be expected to put dev resources into an OS
that's 12 years old.

~~~
Justsignedup
My point is speed of abandonment. Yes FF and Chrome gonna drop XP support real
soon at EOL of XP. However the creators of XP are not supporting it. That's my
point. MS has a history (not even contradicted once yet) of not supporting
operating systems that are not the latest and greatest. I bet Win 7 wont be
supported by newer IE versions in a year.

Which means IE11 may be great, but we're stuck with it forever just like we're
stuck with IE8, etc.

And if you code for DX12, you will be abandoning like >50% of your audience,
so nobody will code for it. Just like DX11 is only now gaining real steam.

~~~
ParkerK
>However the creators of XP are not supporting it. How long should they be
supporting an OS? You can't expect them to support it forever. No one
complains that older phones aren't supported anymore, any is the case for XP
so special?

------
frik
Forza Motorsport 5 on PC (DX12), that's a good news.

~~~
voltagex_
It's a tech demo only, I'd be very very surprised if we ever see it on PC.

~~~
szatkus
Seems like a lot of work. They had to port, at least partially, some core
engine's capabilities (graphics, physics etc.). They could just enchance some
existing PC game or demo. Maybe Forza will be something like launch title for
DX12?

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jwr
No, I am not excited. I expect this will be (again) used as an excuse to force
me to upgrade either Windows, my video card, or both.

~~~
ksk
So don't upgrade? How are you being forced?

~~~
pjc50
Inevitably a game will come out that is DX12-only, at which point you have to
incur those costs if you want to play it.

~~~
ksk
Sure, and that would suck. There isn't any aspect of force that I can make
out. I'm seeing it as 'minimum system requirements will change and I don't
want them to.'

We've seen studios release DX11/Vista+ games with fallbacks to work on
DX10/XP.

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Lavinski
One API for every device is great for developers targeting the Xbox and other
windows devices.

~~~
TillE
It makes the job of engine developers somewhat easier in the long run, but
very few game developers are writing raw DirectX these days.

And (almost) nobody's targeting _just_ Microsoft devices, even developers who
are paid for temporary exclusives. It's all about the cross-platform engines.

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hughes
Why should I be excited?

~~~
jjcm
Greater efficiency, more ways for devs to optimize their games. Should see
some FPS improvement with dx12.

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wtracy
I somehow cannot access this page with IE 8. WTH, Microsoft?

~~~
joenathan
You haven't heard, Microsoft has dropped support for XP.

~~~
wtracy
I'm on Windows 7, just stuck with IE 8 here at work.

~~~
PopsiclePete
IE8 is a pre-HTML 5 browser. Glad to see more and more sites are dropping
support for it. Install Chrome. You don't even need admin rights. Your IT
dept. never has to know.

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conkrete
Closed source API's like DirectX won't ever be as fast as an open source API
standard like OpenGL.

This is why games like Left-4-Dead2 using OpenGL run substantially faster
(More FPS) ([http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-
fas...](http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-faster-than-
directx-even-on-windows))

~~~
Lavinski
OpenGL is not actually open source.
[https://www.opengl.org/wiki/FAQ#Is_OpenGL_Open_Source.3F](https://www.opengl.org/wiki/FAQ#Is_OpenGL_Open_Source.3F)

~~~
kuschku
But it's also not closed source, because OpenGL is just a specification, like
Wayland.

