Thank you Todd , you are the man! Its about time a game like this has DX11 support.

Adding DX features into a game is really hard. Only a very few modders know how to do it.
Timeslip is one of them I think.
OBGE/MGE team also probably know some, but I can't be 100% sure, we have to ask them. I already asked in the OBGE thread...

If I remember correctly, it was Timeslip who created the DX-upgrade and code foundation for both MGE/OBGE.

It also said Skyrim uses the .nif format. Anybody knows enough about tessellation in DX to know if .nifs even work with that?

So DX11 support is confirmed. I don't expect them to design around it, but this is good news for modders I'd imagine.


Vista is most definitely not faster than XP unless you have a newer machine. It takes triple the time to boot into even Windows 7 than Windows XP on an older computer that exceeds Vista's system requirements (Windows 7 runs better on lesser hardware than Vista), and it hogs so much CPU time that it negatively affects system performance.

You should never upgrade to Vista anymore either. Windows 7 is just plain better. For a new computer sure, but I would never advise someone with a computer working well with XP to upgrade to Windows 7 unless they have great hardware. If they have an old computer, even if it was a strong one when Vista launched, XP is probably better.

Sure, and XP struggles on a machine that runs 3.1 fine. What's the issue here? On actually modern hardware, a modern OS can make use of it.

Also, great news on the DX11 support, I'm honestly quite surprised about that.

Thank God the TES community has the best modders in the whole world
They can do everything.

http://i621.photobucket.com/albums/tt297/Vality7_2/Elder%20Scrolls/Azuras%20Coast/mwtl_103.jpg

I believe the reason they aren't fulling utilizing Direct X 11 is because that would require a large time sink just for the PC version, meaning A) They'd have to delay all versions or B) they'd have to delay just the PC version. I'm perfectly happy with them not utilizing it personally, because it would not be a good cost. Not enough people have the capabilities to utilize the work they'd have to put into it, so the cost wouldn't be worth the end result.

As long as the engine is capable of handling the features, and just not used by the art team, I'll be content. Not happy, but content. Because then at least the modders will be able to get to work on it right away, instead of waiting for someone to patch up the engine first to make up for that shortcoming.

I'd imagine the engine is supporting DX11 but not actually making much use of its features in preparation for the next console generation.

So basically PC get screwed over with a "gimped" version of directx 11 because "graphics work centers around doing things that will look the same regardless of platform"?

Consoles use directx 9, but we have directx 11. I think this clearly shows that they need to make a new console or else games are never really going to improve.

That's pretty much how it sounds.

Improve graphically you mean, and even then graphics themselves can improve even if they don't get more powerful. Developers find better ways to do things, learn to utilize the technology more efficiently, etc. Games are improving on all other fronts very nicely (gameplay and such). I'm fine with no new consoles for awhile myself. It's good to have a break from the madness.

Most PCs don't even use DX11. Its features are completely unnesceassary considering Bethesda has very little experience with DX11, things such as tesselation will take far more work, and very few PC gamers, let alone PC owners and the huge numbers of console gamers, have PCs that support DX11. If you want to blame someone, blame the vast majority of ALL gamers... or maybe yourself for investing in such a brand new technology when it's still so largely unused.

As long as the artist are dedicated and the engine is good, most DX9 games still look good enough, but for the sake of future possibilities for Skyrim there should still be DX11 support. So I'm perfectly happy with Bethesda's approach to include DX11 but not focus on its all features at Skyrim's release.

Any gamer who has built a PC in the last year or so should have a DX11 compatible graphics card, so it's not exactly "brand new", just unused because the consoles don't support it. Also, many graphical effects that need DX10/11 can just be slapped on the game, they won't necessarily need years of experience with the technology. God-rays, advanced motion-blur etc. could be added without much work. Tesselation would probably be more demanding to add though.

DX11 adoption is so minor because there's little need for anybody to have a DX11 GPU. Hell, an 8800GT, a 4 year old card, still more than holds its own. There's no *reason* to upgrade, so not making DX11 games because there isn't much of an install base is a self fulfilling prophecy. Give people a reason to go DX11, and they will come - otherwise, who can justify spending money on something that will get them no benefit yet?

Who can justify spending the money right now at all? Most people couldn't afford it if they wanted to, to be honest.

A $100 video card is not exactly a huge investment. DX11-capable cards are current generation, their price points don't change. Any new build would be DX11 capable simply because they're the cards being made.

yeah.... except that with hardware tessellated object will use a fraction of the mem bandwidth as a presubdivided mesh. Something like a 1k tris going through the card as opposed to something with 3 subd levels making it 64k tri.(which is actually currently the upper limit to a single mesh object in OB/F3 lol) also as I understand it, you can store vertex data, like skinning or perhaps UVs, colors? dunno, in the vertex shader, before the tessellation shader comes on, you just try running skeletal animation on a rigged mesh with 100k tri and see if that actually even works in any engine and rig... but this works in real time with hardware tessellation though.

What you have said about actually using dense meshes to begin with is not equal in terms of performance. by a long way! this is whole reason hardware tessellation exists. You simply cannot equal the geom level on screen of tessellation, just by firing as many polies on screen as possible. one scene will be max a few million, the next would be an order of magnitude greater in geom.

plus LOD system with hardware tessellation is easily the best solution- on one hand you create 1 mesh and the shader does the rest without having to fetch and reload new geo, on the other you create up 3/4 versions of the same object and the engine will do a swap and replace with a new higher rez version of the object as it moves closer in the zbuffer. which means you only need 1 low poly object and the displacement and tessellation can do the rest, instead of having to pack several of the same mesh, all of which bar the lowest would be increasingly larger in file size something like 100kb as opposed to, 100kb+250kb+500kb for the LOD versions. DX11 Disk space win.

anyway yeah... DX11 shaders are pretty rad. but while cool, i am agreeing with anyone who really doesn't care very much if it happens on the pc version. I doubt they would do anything amazing with DX11 anyway. to really use it well, you kinda have to go at it with teeth bare and say gimmie that good stuff. I suppose some shaders would look a little better if they tack it on at the end. I'm not making the mistake, they would be trumpeting if they were the least bit excited about using it... which they haven't. so I doubt it. and if they do use some of it, it'll just be a marketing ploy for adoring fans.

Most important for me is high resolution textures for PC so the textures in the world are not blurry but very detailed.
That does a lot for a game making it more beautiful.

I really wouldn't mind some bump/normal/displacement mapping in the game, this is something we used to have in games several years ago but lately all textures are always flat, and I think it's because of consoles.
They can't handle the 'upgraded' graphics and do bump mapping at the same time. With that I don't mean consoles can't do bump mapping, I know they can, it's just that developers doesn't seem to do it anymore.
I wonder if it is something that they just have to skip to fit in better textures or something?

Games like these need bump mapping, walking around a castle and old stone buildings and the textures being all 100% flat from an angle is just atrocious.
This is what tessellation do very well in DX11, it allows contoured surfaces with high density with greater ease.

This game will have some DX11, but I bet it is just some 'soft shadows' or something like that, I doubt it will utilize tessellation.

Yet again, I can live without it as long as we get really high rez textures and some bump/normal mapping.

Why settle for bump mapping, which only gives the illusion of depth, when you can have displacement mapping/tessellation, which actually gives it depth?

I looked at benchmarks for cards recently and the DX11 tests grind the FPS in those tests into the ground. They may technically be capable, but could a random mid/low end graphics card that supports DX11 actually support the bells and whistles people seem to think should be default, even ignoring the fact that most gamers don't use DX11 cards yet anyway?

And just like that, another platform flame war starts. Number 73 for the week I think?


Soon as PC gaming is an economic viability, DirectX11 will be used. No sooner. So PC gamers need to get to work on revolutionizing manufacturing techniques to bring the cost down.

No one is asking for default. They're asking for inclusion. The option to turn on tessellation or the other features that DX11 brings to the table.

That's reasonable. I don't expect that they will add all the art assets for it, but allowing the players to mod it in by including the features would be awesome.