sooo...buy me something?

The solid state drives are a waste of money, since all they do is effect the load time of new zones. Some people I tell ya...

to be honest, bethesda only has to implement it, they dont have to work with it too hard and add hightmaps and stuff.



add this to the op by the way http://www.dvhardware.net/news/unigine_dx11_tessellation_hardocp.jpg .- as you can see it can transform a flat coble road that is flat into a complicated road with the stones actualy coming poping out instead of a cheap 3d effect- also makes models more smooth by invreasing the amount of triangles on it



the mod community can add most of the hightmaps (that is a texture that makes the stuff pop out)

Uhh, as long as you're on Windows Vista or Windows 7 and have a recent DirectX runtime, any graphics card (within the past several years) can run a DirectX 11 game. DirectX 11 introduced "Feature Levels" that lets you target specific features at only the hardware that supports it.

Honestly, nobody should still be on XP at this point. Not even DirectX 10-only games make any sense at this point, since upgrading to 11 would get them backwards compatibility all the way down to 9.

As for the argument that they may be developing on XP and thus the game can't be DirectX 10+... The only screens we've seen were a level designer's and the audio guy's. The content could easily have DirectX 11 specific code embedded into the meshes/textures. The only thing I can think of that's not up to the engine/graphics programmers is to make certain the meshes all include height/bump/normal maps and that's standard practice anyway. Those maps could then be utilized by DirectX 11 to do the tessellation. The rest would be up to the non-artist parts of the team, which we definitely haven't seen the hardware they're using.

The whole purpose of DX10 is to give more advanced features with the same performance of DX9. Many DX10 only games, and games with DX10 paths have shown a huge jump in performance and quality over DX9. You cant simply enable it on XP. XP is a dated EOL operating system. Most PC gamers have moved on. Over half in the Steam survey (13 million PC gamers) are DX10 ready. Only 35% of the people in survey still used XP the rest where on Windows 7 or Vista. The XP demographic for PC gamers is very small at this point. Statistic after statistic shows it. Never mind the fact that how many PC gaming threads do you see with many people on XP very few. Its 2011. If you cant upgrade an OS that old then maybe consoles are the better choice. They may have a DX9 render if they so choose. But doing so will hamper the experience of the vast majority of copies sold.

Look at Just Cause 2. Released what last year? Sold very well on PC and was DX10 only. They ported between console and PC much easier while making a very optimized fast running game that looks incredible. Some things DX9 simply cant do, Just Cause 2 like it is on PC couldnt have happened.

DICE developer tweeted this.
http://twitter.com/repi/status/20028015661

PS. I would love to see Bethesda at SIGGRAPH 2011.

By that, I mean the OS is cheaper to buy and maintain, thus, by doing that, you're saving a bit more money down the line.

I really don't get this logic myself, but that's what most businesses think. And Bethesda is as much of a business as it is a game studio.

When you're spending millions on creating a game, a few hundred on an OS license that will allow you to code for better infrastructure and run your machines faster (thus saving money in the long run) is not a valid concern.

If a GPU supports DX10, it supports DX11. DX11 = DX10 plus. May as well program for the better of the 2 options.



I disagree. They are expensive yes, but not a waste of money. My rig takes 30 seconds from desktop to desktop. (Restart) Double that with an HDD. Games load very fast, and to me, it's worth every penny spent.

Well, lack of DX11 support is not a deal-breaker, but even the smallest visual and performance improvements are always welcome, so I voted "yes".

Yeah. If my card didn't support DX 11, I would have voted no. But it does support DX 11, so I voted yes.

Of course.

Like many games, there should be the option of playing with only DX10. Maybe even 9...

But 11 should be the default. Absolutely.

Tessellation: Bring it. :rock:

edit: Besides, "it goes to 11" has to be done, y'know.

Ehm.. not really, it doesn't have access to all the DX11 goodies.

My GPU is DX10.1 ready and I hope Beth takes advantage of it. Best thing would be having DX11 support since it's backwards compatible.

OpenGL please... They are going to use it anyway for the PS3, why not use it for PC too. In fact, using OpenGL would mean porting to OS X and Linux would be only a matter of recompiling the source code on both operating systems... If they go ahead and use DirectX, well ports are a lot harder since they have to change things to work with OpenGL instead of DirectX.

Damn, you are right. I misunderstood what I read the first time about 10.1. I was under the impression 11 was just 10.1 with new features on top. ("pasted" on basically, not "new tech" all together. Thanks for making me reeducate myself. (Hate being misinformed.)

I have said it before, and I will say it again, tessellation looks like hell, and I have yet to see a single instance of it that looks even remotely decent.

Because it's not being utilized properly?

Take the Heaven benchmark. Run it without tessellation then with, and note the difference. Admittedly, they went overboard on the cobble stones but it's a tech demo, it's expected. The roof tiles look great in my opinion, hell, so do the cobble stones, though I would not want to walk on them personally.

In the same way that well done bloom looks nice, colour grading can really add to a scene, depth of field can add a great cinematic touch, and godrays can turn a generic scene into a tropical wonderland.

However, bloom can overpower a scene, colour grading can dull colours to the point of monochromy, depth of field can turn your character blind, and godrays can block your vision.

Tessellation can look great and add a lot of detail. It can also look terrible.

That's what I used to think too, however these screenshots taken from benchmark tests don't reflect how it would actually be implemented realistically in a game. In these demos it's done in a way that is 'in your face' to make the difference between tesellation on and off obvious.

This game will support DX10 more than likely. DX11 on the other hand? Who knows. Would be nice though.

DX11, Yes.

Wrong.

XP usage share is at around 44% (compared to around 40% for Vista + 7), and the majority of XP's current share is comprised of businesses. That number is going to drop very quickly this year; especially after Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is released (which is apparently going to be next Tuesday). Please, let's stop this "everyone still uses XP" myth. They don't. There's enough evidence out there to suggest that the majority of people who actually play games don't use it anyway.

Anyway, I think it will be quite absurd for them to not support at least DirectX 10. I'll be really surprised too, given that Bethesda likes to be cutting edge and all that. I just can't see them not even doing that. It's 2011; there's no reason for the game to look like it was released years ago, and I just don't see a company such as Bethesda rejecting current technology for any reason, as it wouldn't be good for their image. It's not like they necessarily have to drop XP support.

But mostly, I want to see DX11 tessellation on all those purdy mountains we know are going to be in the game.

So you have to have DX11 hardware to use DX11 but it's backwards compatible?? :huh:

Like I explained in my last post, if you have the DirectX 11 Runtime (meaning you're on Vista/7) ... You're technically running DirectX 11. Now, that's just the version number. However, because of the DX11 "Feature Levels" they introduced, as long as you can run the DX11 Runtime, you can load a DX11 game. The game will just turn off the DirectX 11 features. This works for even DX9 cards.



Well, you were technically right, See the first part of this post.

This. I have no problem with Bethesda adding support for DX 10/11.... but since a lot of people (including myself) still use XP, I would be very unhappy should the game be exclusive to them.

What? That doesn't make any bit of sense. How can rounding objects that should be round, yet normally wouldn't have enough polygons, "Look like hell"?

Sounds like you are saying "I'd like to be able to count the polygons on this beachball".

All it ends up being is higher polygon counts. You're not a fan of high polygon counts? It's the same thing as if the artist were to create the mesh themselves, and put it into the game. The only reason tessellation is so much better is that it saves on bandwidth/memory, and lets you perform animations on the low poly versions, and then it tessellates.

It's nothing but a good thing. You may be passing off what you said as an opinion, but whatever it is is just wrong.