[Devblog] DirectX 11 Tessellation Tech Demo at Fanfest 2012

[MrBadidea]

I don't want to start a DX vs OpenGL flamewar here, but I honestly see no reason why DirectX 11 would be the better choice in this particular case.

Moving from DirectX9 to 11 is a shitload less work than DX9 to OpenGL4. If you had a shop full of people with OpenGL experience and you were literally starting from scratch, OpenGL could be a compelling choice.

The fact is CCP is pretty heavily a DirectX shop, they have an existing codebase that leans on DirectX, and its far easier to find compentent DirectX developers, insofar as they already have people with solid, proven knowledge of DirectX on staff. Maybe some of those are pretty handy with OpenGL, but it won't be all of them.

e: There's also the fact that OGL4 support for OSX still isn't finalised/dated/etc.

[Verite Rendition]

I don't want to start a DX vs OpenGL flamewar here, but I honestly see no reason why DirectX 11 would be the better choice in this particular case.

Moving from DirectX9 to 11 is a shitload less work than DX9 to OpenGL4. If you had a shop full of people with OpenGL experience and you were literally starting from scratch, OpenGL could be a compelling choice.

The fact is CCP is pretty heavily a DirectX shop, they have an existing codebase that leans on DirectX, and its far easier to find compentent DirectX developers, insofar as they already have people with solid, proven knowledge of DirectX on staff. Maybe some of those are pretty handy with OpenGL, but it won't be all of them.

e: There's also the fact that OGL4 support for OSX still isn't finalised/dated/etc.

OpenGL is basically a shambling corpse at this point. The only AAA title scheduled to be released in the next couple of years using it is Doom 4, which is based on the same engine as Rage. No one else is actively developing for it, and even Carmack has stated that he's long since warmed up to DirectX. If CCP used OpenGL, they would quite literally be the only major studio making a new OpenGL engine.

Which is not to say that it wouldn't be nice to see a resurgence in OpenGL, but the fallout from the development of OpenGL 3 has effectively killed it to game developers. There's too much old crud in OpenGL for the purpose of professional applications; on the game development side it's harder to use because these features keep the OpenGL API from being streamlined, and on the driver side these features make it harder to optimize OpenGL performance because of all the edge cases. OpenGL ES does strip out all of the old crud, which is why it's so popular for mobile gaming, but it's years behind in features. OpenGL ES 3 isn't even out yet, let alone something with parity to DirectX 11.

[Daneel Trevize]

I hear DirectX is going well on Nintendo, Sony, Apple and Android devices... ohwait, you're retarded.

[MrBadidea]

I hear DirectX is going well on Nintendo, Sony, Apple and Android devices... ohwait, you're retarded.

PS3 does support an effective subset of OpenGL ES 2.0, called PSGL which differs from the acutal ES 2.0 spec, and libgcm. Libgcm is the primary graphics API used for PS3 game development.
The Wiis graphics API supposedly shares a lot in common with OpenGL 1.1 in terms of approach, but it's not actually OpenGL.

You may note that at best, all those platforms you've listed support ES 2.0 at best, which is feature-parity with OpenGL2.0; we're talking about bleeding edge development, and the fact remains, OpenGL is behind DirectX in terms of where it's supported and how many people are working with the cutting edge versions.

In an ideal world, designing your engine from the ground up to be able to effectively swap between graphics APIs almost at will is a Very Good Thing™ and how studios should be targetting cross platform development, but this IS CCP we're talking about.

[Nu11u5]

The Trinity rendering abstraction work we are undertaking at the moment will essentially make the engine API agnostic (DX11 is a rendering API). Theoretically this means we could build Trinity up to support both Direct X and OpenGL. This is a massive, theoretical could, there are no plans to support OpenGL for the next year or beyond.

[MrBadidea]

The Trinity rendering abstraction work we are undertaking at the moment will essentially make the engine API agnostic (DX11 is a rendering API). Theoretically this means we could build Trinity up to support both Direct X and OpenGL. This is a massive, theoretical could, there are no plans to support OpenGL for the next year or beyond.

CCP in potentially competant design shocker. Shit the bed.

[Intigo]

hi MBI, how are you? <3

[randomToon]

The Trinity rendering abstraction work we are undertaking at the moment will essentially make the engine API agnostic (DX11 is a rendering API). Theoretically this means we could build Trinity up to support both Direct X and OpenGL. This is a massive, theoretical could, there are no plans to support OpenGL for the next year or beyond.

I really thought that this is troll, but here's the source.

CCP in potentially competant design shocker. Shit the bed.

Yup, but the vague wording means that it's more like: CCP could theoretically be a competent developer, but this is a massive, theoretical could and they have no plans to become one for the next year or beyond.

[Verite Rendition]

I hear DirectX is going well on Nintendo, Sony, Apple and Android devices... ohwait, you're retarded.

PS3 does support an effective subset of OpenGL ES 2.0, called PSGL which differs from the acutal ES 2.0 spec, and libgcm. Libgcm is the primary graphics API used for PS3 game development.
The Wiis graphics API supposedly shares a lot in common with OpenGL 1.1 in terms of approach, but it's not actually OpenGL.

You may note that at best, all those platforms you've listed support ES 2.0 at best, which is feature-parity with OpenGL2.0; we're talking about bleeding edge development, and the fact remains, OpenGL is behind DirectX in terms of where it's supported and how many people are working with the cutting edge versions.

In an ideal world, designing your engine from the ground up to be able to effectively swap between graphics APIs almost at will is a Very Good Thing™ and how studios should be targetting cross platform development, but this IS CCP we're talking about.

MrBadidea is more or less spot on with regards to the consoles and handhelds. The consoles don't have OpenGL (well, at least nothing that gets used), and the handhelds are using OpenGL ES, which is not the same as OpenGL.

And then there's computer support. Don't even get me started on Apple's OpenGL 3.x support, never mind 4.x...

The Trinity rendering abstraction work we are undertaking at the moment will essentially make the engine API agnostic (DX11 is a rendering API). Theoretically this means we could build Trinity up to support both Direct X and OpenGL. This is a massive, theoretical could, there are no plans to support OpenGL for the next year or beyond.

CCP in potentially competant design shocker. Shit the bed.

Tell me about it. I thought that was a troll at first. I don't ever expect CCP to move to OpenGL, but it's nice that the answer is no longer "no, we're a Microsoft shop".

Anyhow, CCP must be rather confident about EVE's rendering performance. Having an abstraction layer like that makes development easier, but it usually impacts performance. The question of course is why are they undertaking this now? Because they've had to port their engine twice over (DX 7->9->11), or are they working on porting EVE to something besides desktop Windows?

[depili]

Might be falloff from dust development

[MrBadidea]

hi MBI, how are you? <3

Not bad; keeping busy actually being a graphics programmer

I hear DirectX is going well on Nintendo, Sony, Apple and Android devices... ohwait, you're retarded.

PS3 does support an effective subset of OpenGL ES 2.0, called PSGL which differs from the acutal ES 2.0 spec, and libgcm. Libgcm is the primary graphics API used for PS3 game development.
The Wiis graphics API supposedly shares a lot in common with OpenGL 1.1 in terms of approach, but it's not actually OpenGL.

You may note that at best, all those platforms you've listed support ES 2.0 at best, which is feature-parity with OpenGL2.0; we're talking about bleeding edge development, and the fact remains, OpenGL is behind DirectX in terms of where it's supported and how many people are working with the cutting edge versions.

In an ideal world, designing your engine from the ground up to be able to effectively swap between graphics APIs almost at will is a Very Good Thing™ and how studios should be targetting cross platform development, but this IS CCP we're talking about.

MrBadidea is more or less spot on with regards to the consoles and handhelds. The consoles don't have OpenGL (well, at least nothing that gets used), and the handhelds are using OpenGL ES, which is not the same as OpenGL.

And then there's computer support. Don't even get me started on Apple's OpenGL 3.x support, never mind 4.x...

The Trinity rendering abstraction work we are undertaking at the moment will essentially make the engine API agnostic (DX11 is a rendering API). Theoretically this means we could build Trinity up to support both Direct X and OpenGL. This is a massive, theoretical could, there are no plans to support OpenGL for the next year or beyond.

CCP in potentially competant design shocker. Shit the bed.

Tell me about it. I thought that was a troll at first. I don't ever expect CCP to move to OpenGL, but it's nice that the answer is no longer "no, we're a Microsoft shop".

Anyhow, CCP must be rather confident about EVE's rendering performance. Having an abstraction layer like that makes development easier, but it usually impacts performance. The question of course is why are they undertaking this now? Because they've had to port their engine twice over (DX 7->9->11), or are they working on porting EVE to something besides desktop Windows?

Some fallout from Dust is a potential reason; rolling back in some of the experience that the graphics/engine engineers working on Dust & the PS3 have into the core EVE development teams.

I'm more inclined to believe they're only undertaking the engine abstraction because it offers a convinent opportunity to comb over the existing code base and pretty up a bunch of other potential nasty spots that we've heard about over the years whilst rejigging everything to support 11 (specifically, the UI... but I'd have to do some digging around to confirm my current suspicions about the existing UI...) But then, that depends entirely on how much of a mess their current implementation is, so...

[depili]

AFAIK they still draw brackets via software on top of everything instead of using GFX cards for it, and that is mainly why brackets cause problems in huge fleet fights...

[MrBadidea]

AFAIK they still draw brackets via software on top of everything instead of using GFX cards for it, and that is mainly why brackets cause problems in huge fleet fights...

I figured as much. I've given EVE exactly zero fucks in the last like 2 years, so fucked if I know for sure \o/

[tricksylicx]

Reminds me of playing with meshsmooth in max 4 , setting iteration to a massive number like 6 and smelling my cpu pop in orgasmic pain.

As well, they said something like the amount of effort involved with this graphics upgrade will be minuscule compared to trinity. Year, I have no problems with this... (if true).

The HUD will be a separate upgrade that gridlock I think is working on atm. (going by what they said on the FF vids)

[Daneel Trevize]

AFAIK they still draw brackets via software on top of everything instead of using GFX cards for it, and that is mainly why brackets cause problems in huge fleet fights...

Is this not due to the way the UI works? That when you hover over a point with multiple brackets under your mouse, all brackets below it are built into a list arranged vertically, so that each are rendered fully visible but no longer at their correct projected position, and these list elements are as interactable as their original stacked versions and not just for show?

[Zeppelin]

CCP should spend half the time they do on misc GFX improvements on improving the bracket performance, think they are still rendering the brackets with software instead of letting the gfx card do it...

CCP Veritas mentioned this at FF, said it was fairly high on Gridlock's stuff-to-fix list.

[tricksylicx]

Must have some HW 2 fans on here, what do you think of eve having an adaptive scale working on their models like homeworld 2 had..? I means eve ships look very very small. The only time eve ships look to scale is in the captains quarters and I havnt seen anything larger than a cruiser in there. ( can any cap caps answer that?) Frigates to me in space look like a corvette or a large bomber. In HW 2 it seemed that the more you zoomed in to look at your selected ship the larger everything else looked, almost as if it was in a fish eyed lens, only very slightly.

Kill me but it just seems scale seems more important than curvature, even when you take into account machinima.

i.e fuck off with the POS and bring in the ringworlds ffs.

Maybe a HW2 wiz can explain to me and CCP wtf was going on in HW2. pls! xD

[depili]

AFAIK they still draw brackets via software on top of everything instead of using GFX cards for it, and that is mainly why brackets cause problems in huge fleet fights...

Is this not due to the way the UI works? That when you hover over a point with multiple brackets under your mouse, all brackets below it are built into a list arranged vertically, so that each are rendered fully visible but no longer at their correct projected position, and these list elements are as interactable as their original stacked versions and not just for show?

Supreme commander did already selectable hardware rendered icons, I see no reason why CCP couldn't do the same.