Drop the off-topic pvssyr, this thread is not about discussing notebooks :nono:

Todd said so himself with a definitive "yes" that that SR supports DX11.

A game that uses no DX11 features, not even the performance boost, does not support DX11, there is no two ways about this, it will utilize something that DX11 does, otherwise Todd would have said "No".

Just because you have windows 7 or a dx11 card doesnt mean every game that runs on your system supports dx11, it means your system is backwards compatible.

Your argument was that you didn't want a game that required a gtx500 card to run. Like I said, even the most advanced games like crysis could run fine on weaker hardware. If your computer is so old that it can't run a game with dx11 features even on low then its time you upgrade, its not time for developers to stop improving the visuals for your convenience.

Also if your notebook can play so many games on medium/high then I don't see why you would worry or need to mention it unless you were expecting to be able to max the game.

Btw most notebooks with high end graphics cards have to be larger to fit the card and therefore need to have a higher resolution screen.

true+futureproof (kinda) and I don't think many, if any games at all that support dx11 make full use of it's features.

@dareme
Thanks for absolutely not getting what I wrote. Over and out.

Global illumination for sure. It makes such an immediate and obvious difference in a scene. After that probably tesselation.

It won't effect sales. Those who want Skyrim for PC are gonna want it regardless. I couldn't care less about DX11, as I primarily only play PC for its modability. If it weren't for mods, I'd switch to console.

I c wut u did thar.
Lemme try:

In other words, PC elitists won't get what they want due to 90% of the fanbase being console

On topic; Modders should be able to add some of the Dx11 features, since Todd says it'll be compatible.

i dotn care much about any of those features, just as long as i get better graphics, higher rez textures, 0 mouse lag, no mouse acceleration, and a well optimized engine (unlike gamebryo) that doesnt crash every hour im playing

from what im seeing of the graphical features of the game, im not impressed.

i would just once, just once, like to get a decent sized resolution image of the game on pc before its release

90%? Enjoy your dodgy statistics. Industry experts estimate that the majority (between 60% and 80%) of North American PC game sales happen digitally via Steam, Impulse, EA, etc. That study completely ignored those sources. It ignored the majority of the platform's business and Bethesda is sickeningly unprofessional for using it.

Can't we all just get along. Hey PC gamers, did you know console gamers like playing video games too? Hey console gamers, did you know that PC gamers like playing video games too? Oh look, we all have something in common.

I don't think it matters where most of the sales come from. With online purchases PC sales are definitely higher than 10% I'm sure. Regardless, who cares as long as they are making sales and improving the size of the dev. team and constantly updating their technologies for future games. They are trying to appease everyone and that is a daunting task because, well, you can't please everyone. I don't know enough about when DX 11 became available, but did Bethesda have access to it when they first started developing Skyrim? Anyway, look at the size of this project. Do we really expect them to develop it twice, once for DX9 and then try to make it work properly for DX11? I'd say they are probably developing on DX9 because they are masters of it now and can fully optimize the game to run on it and properly use all of it's features (on PC). But there is a small amount of DX11 support (confirmed by Todd), which means they've opened things up for the game to be able to support other DX11 features, but due to trying to get the game released on time, they are not including those (yet?). Guaranteed modders will take advantage of this, but I wouldn't be surprised if we see a special "PC" patch at a later date that takes further advantage of DX11 along with hi-rez textures and such.

I'm a console gamer for the most part but have an older, slower PC. PC people, I feel for you that you've spent money on the newest technology and it isn't being used to its full potential, but I think what we're forgetting about TES games is that it's about a 5 year project life-cycle so by the time the game is set to release, some new tech has been invented. Unfortunately, at that point they've already developed much of the game on "last year's" hardware, so they can't just scrap what they've done and start over just because new tech came out. That would be a vicious cycle as then new tech would come out again, and what, they'd just keep scrapping the old one? We'd have no games if they did that.

I say, let's give them a break and let them work on finishing and polishing up Skyrim as is. DX9 or DX11, I'm sure you're still going to pump hours and hours of your life into this game.

Well, I'm still using Vista and can't have DX11. So where is the 'I couldn't care less' option or 'N/A'?

Honestly I keep watching YouTube vids comparing DX11 to older versions and I just see very little difference. Certainly not enought to justify them spending a whole lot of time on DX11 only graphics.

As has been said, repeatedly, there won't be any groundbreaking features.

I want it to support DX11 for two reasons:

A.) Performance increases
B.) The possibility of a Graphics Extender like those that have been done for Morrowind and Oblivion.

Granted, this position really has to do with the fact that I'm upgrading my graphics card (pretty specifically because Skyrim will use DX11, even if not fully).

I bet your attitude would change if Skyrim was being made for the Wii as well, thus making it the system it has to be built around.

The point is, the game IS pushing the 360's and (probably the) PS3's to their limits, but not PC's (aside from very low end ones). And sure, we can mod things in, but that's no excuse for not taking the time to make an adequate version of your game for each system (working on the PS3 properly with no problems due to it's different API, a proper PC UI, etc).

As for DX11, hopefully when Todd said users with it will have "increased performance" he was talking about features such as multi-threading support, and not just the blatantly obviousness that having a newer DX11 card will maker the game run better than an older DX9 card.

What's with all the thread necromancy today...

Considering the hideous condition of the US broadband networks, I kind of doubt that. :shrug:

some of directx11s features would be nice, but some of the new lighting effects have just been killing my computer. tessellation is important to me, water comes as a packaged deal buddy.
not gonna happen though XD, iv given up hope. and im actually ok with whatever skyrim ends up being. iv decided that when it comes it comes. no big deal, ill just play witcher and guild wars 2 if i want a super pretty game XD

its true.

What program are you talking about?

The fact that Skryim will support DX11 optimization features does not necessarily mean that NVIDIA will pay Beth money to promote the NVIDIA brand as they have occasionally done with other games. Am I missing something here?

Big nerdy post. Don't read it.


If all "deferred rendering" does is speeding things up, then I say don't use it. I'd rather have a game running at 40 fps WITH anti-aliasing than 140 fps WITHOUT anti-aliasing. I'm serious, I hate jaggies.
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No. You wouldn't get it. Because choosing "deffered/forward pipeline" is one of the most major desigions in engine development. Support them both means almost twice work. Do you want it? Me - no.
Besides, there's way to handle AA emulation in deffered. And with DX11 you got programmable AA-pipeline (MSAA), which allows you to handle hardware AA within deffered pipeline.
And I'll tell you, why you WANT deffered pipeline. It allows you up to 40..80 light sources, pixel light sources with fine FPS. Forward pipeline would give you not 40 FPS, but 0.4 FPS. Feel the difference.
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It took several years before games started using dx8 and dx9 features. I mean, look at these techdemos from 2002 and 2004
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Semi-true. Cut-edge tech stuff really takes couple of years to get into gaming expirience. Tesselation AFAIK is couple of years old.
About demos: they push MAXIMUM from hardware. In game conditions you just don't have THAT MUCH resources for some tech stuff - you still had to handle particle effects, game logics, AI, physics (even if it isn't physics simulation, you don't wanna go through walls, right?)


Keep in mind that the displacement map following tessellation requires extra work for the art department
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Wrong. As soon as modern model assets pipeline is:
take low- & high-poly models, take difference
you could get both normal maps and displacement maps in, well, about 4 mouse clicks. And even if you SUDDENLY lost your high-poly model (or if you.re a modder and you just don't have one), you could generate displacement map from normal map. Automaticaly.


if every developer in the future is going to use deferred rendering, what is the future of hardware AA
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MSAA. Google it.
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But isn't the same thing true of today's tesselation demos?
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No. Tesselation exist, tesselation is applied. Recent Aliens vs Predator, or HAWX2 for example. Metro 2033. They're just done right without "LOOK AT ME, I AM TESSELATION!" scale. (remember the time, where pretty much every game has that thing about HDR or Bloom? Oblivion, for example. HL2 was, in opposite, smart and finely-tuned, just done right)
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new Unreal 'Samaritan' demo ran on three SLI'd GTX 580's!
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Because of VERY expensive shaders (read - materials). Screen is just about to blow up because of effects realism and materials' complexicity.


I'd assume actual resolutions will eventually get so high that AA will become unnecessary
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Agree.


I could inform you that Skyrim has DX11. But apparently, it doesn't use any of its features, according to Todd.
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Correction: it uses features that improve perfomance.
BTW, only tesselation is DX11-only feature, everything else could be done at DX9.
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Why would he sacrifice the enjoyment of awesome graphics on the PC for the moral of forcing all platforms to look "similar", when they in reality aren't similar at all. I don't get this.
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He don't want hurt consolers' psychics


They make this new engine, give it DX11, but don't take use of the latest features...
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Well, to be honest, it isn't THAT easy. It could take up to 5 month for small crew (2..4 people) to implement tesselation alone. That's mostly because of UV issues and _possible_ graphics artifacts. If you're a modder, you don't risk anything. If you're big-gold-plated-company, you risk A LOT. Also, GI could be done easy with closed areas, such as UT3-maps and that shooter stuff, but not with open-world games. It could literaly eat several GBs for itself! There's pretty much work about graphics (that's why Unreal Engine has whole team working on it, constantly, to keep it on the cut-edge of hardware possibilities)
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Modders won't be able to add DX11 features for a long long time.
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We can't definitely say "yes" or "no" about it. If high-level shader assets aren't crypted and stored within game, then it'll be less work. Re-write shaders isn't that hard, really. But it could take couple of weeks or couple of month to implement them - just about how lucky modder is.
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I just think it's so sad that Bethesda COULD add DX11 features, but they don't.
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ARE YOU [CENSORED!] CRAZY?! THEY STILL HAVEN'T DESIGION ABOUT HORSES!!!


My point is, I'm not really a PC gamer, but why should PC gamers not be given the ability to utilize their PC's to the maximum capacity. They've spent money on a top of the line machine, so they should be given the option to play a game using the newest tech available at maximum capacity.
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And Skyrim development would take few extra years to finish... U-huh, yeah, that's what we all want, right?)
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as long as a game is optimized to take advantage of my PS3 hardware at its fullest potential and utilizes my HDTV's 1080p setting , I will be happy with how it looks on my HDTV.
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Sorry, mate, but I'm afraid Skyrim is going to run in 720p, no matter how good your TV is... Consoles just haven't enough power today to run games at fullHD at comfort frame-rates (wiki Little Big Planet 2... sad but true)
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Problem is, that isn't really happening. What it comes down to is money. I would assume it is costly to release across multi-platforms if you have to tailor to all different types of hardware. So, you program to your weakest platform then try to tweak and optimize for the stronger ones, in order to save money. That being said, I'm not a game developer and again, I am a bad resource of info when it comes to gaming PCs. Really, my statement was just my personal opinion, so please, someone correct me if I am way off base.
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Well, there's different "visions" about cross-platform dev, one of which you've described correct. As for me - bad way, but that's big money saving... As far as we know that Skyrim will have DX11, however, I guess that isn't Beth. way
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should I bother re-installing Morrowind and getting some mods? Does it change the game play experience much?
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My suggestion: yes. Try it - you'll like it.


It takes A LOT of time for modders to add DX features, or even shaders. And first they need to "hack" it in. They can't implement it normally as developers can. And when they "hack" it in, other problems occur, etc etc.
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True. But! I hope we'll get open shader sources in Skyrim...


On the Bioware forums there was this discussion about the HighRes Texture pack for Dragon Age 2 and the fact that most of those textures are not visible on WinXP/DX9. Someone claimed that was because DX11 supports larger texture sizes than DX9. Is this true? If so, how then is "Qarl's Texture Pack" for Oblivion possible in DX9?
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Top texture resolution depends on videocard. Not DX version. However, some DX11 features (like texture arrays aka "atlasing done right") may handle better textures faster... Well, there could be numerous reasons for that, but there's no direct limitation for texture resolution in DX9 (well, to be precise, there's no limit that is less than hardware limit... Never heard about DX9 own limit ever)


Hm, I'm very confident that this game will use DX9. There's not much point in using the DX10 or DX11 libraries when they don't take any advantage from it. Also the game will probably run on Windows XP, too, so in order to allow that, the game must use DX9. Of course it is possible to write a DX9 renderer for XP and a DX11 renderer for Vista/Win7, but these kind of engines are not typical for Bethesda. It is more typical for companies that make graphically intensive games and want to sell the engine. Also, as we know that nif model format will return and this also means that the Creation Engine is based on Gamebyro.
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You've got it, Captain Obvious golder star mark. Of course it is based on GameBryo, we were TOLD by devs that it is so. They've just renamed it because of the ammount of work and re-work they've done.


The lighting is what makes a game look realistic and beautiful imo.
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You don't need "imo" tag for it, it's a fact. Our mind is trained to "imagine" detalisation, but not "rework" lighting. That's why wide-spots-drawed paintings seems so real for us.


Oddly, many of the "getting a new gaming computer" threads that I've read in other game forums are about people getting "gaming laptops".
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Marketing [censored]. Nothing more. If you need something to browse on the move and play at home - build desktop and buy netbook. You'll get more for your money. Let's think about it:
- less powerful CPU due to battery life/heat
- less powerful hard drives due to "awesome" pricetags
- less comfortable keyboard layout (no, I don't want handle 21" laptop, but I need NumPad)
- way less powerful videocard (in EVERY single aspect) - desktop videocard could have 200W power consumption, which would eat laptop battery for about 15 minutes itself
- you overpay for building
- you get painful upgrade
So, where's the profit in "gaming notebook"? Well, it's just pretty concept. Marketing [censored].


But there is a small amount of DX11 support (confirmed by Todd), which means they've opened things up for the game to be able to support other DX11 features, but due to trying to get the game released on time, they are not including those (yet?).
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Agree. I'm glad for that Beth desigion, to be honest... With TES modding community Beth could cut corners on quest dev. and balance (what will immediately make you sick in any other game!) and polish gameplay features - that's really "semi-fan" calculation... Quite interesting development model, I think)


Considering the hideous condition of the US broadband networks, I kind of doubt that.
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You didn't saw Russian networks for example, 20$ per month for 20 Mbit/sec in Moscow and same price for 1 Mbit/sec somewhere in the middle of european part


Huh... Well, I was bored Yeah, THAT bored.

http://www.ngohq.com/news/16601-how-to-install-directx-11-in-windows-vista.html

Today is http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=335089!



http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=e2da6ef8-92b6-4370-9e22-2c05a8c37ab0

The only people who can't use DX11 are people using XP (or earlier), which is a good ten years old and due to be phased out/dropped.