DX9 for B.o.S??

[RickRuski]

Why would the new production team go with a 12 year old Dx system (based on the release date for B.o.S. and the first release of DX9) when there is a better one now. The subject at the new forum has been locked , why?? is it becoming a hot subject that the new development team don't want to answer?.

Is it because the R.o.F. engine is based on DX9 and to change it is not economically viable.
Surely this is a bacwards step, by the time B.o.S. gets released there may even be a new DX system (Dx12 or whatever). It sounds like the new series will be using old technology based on the R.o.F. engine. I have R.o.F. and find it not as good as C.o.D., the clickable cockpit features will disappear along with what else? so that it will be easier to use the R.o.F. engine?.
What a disappointing start to the new release.

[theOden]

Oh yes, someone should tell those pesky devs looks are all in a sim, working features are for kids.
What we need is cinema style graphics. DX15 preferably.

[taildraggernut]

Oh yes, someone should tell those pesky devs looks are all in a sim, working features are for kids.
What we need is cinema style graphics. DX15 preferably.

+1, we shouldn't even bother with display devices, visuals are for pussies, who wants realistic visuals in a sim anyway.....monochrome in blocky pixels thats what we want, we wont get any nasty stuttering then.

[Fjordmonkey]

It's 2 years out, people. Much can happen in that timeframe.

And even if the game ISN'T in DX11, as long as it's good enough, why worry? Graphics isn't everything.

[theOden]

+1, we shouldn't even bother with display devices, visuals are for pussies, who wants realistic visuals in a sim anyway.....monochrome in blocky pixels thats what we want, we wont get any nasty stuttering then.

:grin: :) :grin:

[AbortedMan]

Take a look http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=36437&page=4

[Wolf_Rider]

Why shoot for DX11 now, when you can milk the DLC fans every step along the way to it??

Eighteen months/ two years out they say? it should be going to DX11 now as newer versions of DX will/ could well be out by then! and perhaps Windows 9

[Ataros]

If seems RoF visuals are not DX9 issue but art direction issue: artistic style vs. photo realistic style and maybe lighting technologies complexity.

[ZaltysZ]

If seems RoF visuals are not DX9 issue but art direction issue: artistic style vs. photo realistic style and maybe lighting technologies complexity.

Photorealism implies that image is like photograph, which is very different from what human eyes see in reality. I.e. photorealistic image tends to suffer from typical low dynamic range, what makes bright parts too bright, or dark parts too dark. If you are going to represent a tree in bright summer day in photorealistic way, then it will have some leaves almost black, and some leaves almost white, while other leaves will be green. Black/white leaves are details being seen by eyes, but lost because of "photorealism". If you choose to drop photorealism, and make bright leaves less bright, and dark leaves less dark, you will represent more details, but image will become more flat, less impressive/convincing. In other words, if you fix one end, you will break the other, and it will be so until graphic cards and displays will be able to represent high enough dynamic range.

I personally prefer details over impression/feeling in combat sims, because the less I see, the less realistic decision I can make. However, lots of people prefer impression, and RoF kinda goes more for later.

---

By the way, DX9 isn't so inferior visually like some people think. The differences between it and later DX APIs are more important for programmers than end users. There are things impossible or hardly done in DX9, but they are not used commonly anyway.

[Liz Lemon]

Honestly, it doesn't make much of a difference.

DX10 offers some advantages over DX9 - but almost all of them are on the developer end, ie how certain types of texture formats are handled, their max resolution, ect. I think the biggest thing it offered was geometry shaders.

DX11 went a bit further. Again, it offers a bunch of advantages for developers to make their lives a bit easier. But it also introduced some very cools things like tessellation. However none of those differences really matter unless you use them. And arguably the biggest feature for a flight sim, tesselation, is not used in either CLOD or ROf (although CLOD has some remnants of tesselator code iirc)

I think most of the differences people are seeing between CLOD and ROF have to do with CLOD using a deffered renderer (only in dx10 mode) and ROF using a forward renderer, CLOD system has the advantage of tons of dynamic lights and high quality shaders and little performance impact. ROF system has the advantage of offering hardware AA. But neither of them are using the API they are tied to to its fullest extent - CLOD particularly.

TLDR: The DX API you are using doesn't mean much to the end user today. DX11 offers tessellation and a few other cool features that the user will notice (and tons they will never see) Thats it though. You can make a very graphically impressive game in DX9.. but it would run a bit better if you did it in DX10 or 11.

I just wish they had kept the openGL part in the game....

[AbortedMan]

By the way, DX9 isn't so inferior visually like some people think. The differences between it and later DX APIs are more important for programmers than end users. There are things impossible or hardly done in DX9, but they are not used commonly anyway.

Yes! Thank god there's someone else out there that seemingly knows the facts!

[Liz Lemon]

Photorealism implies that image is like photograph, which is very different from what human eyes see in reality. I.e. photorealistic image tends to suffer from typical low dynamic range, what makes bright parts too bright, or dark parts too dark. If you are going to represent a tree in bright summer day in photorealistic way, then it will have some leaves almost black, and some leaves almost white, while other leaves will be green. Black/white leaves are details being seen by eyes, but lost because of "photorealism". If you choose to drop photorealism, and make bright leaves less bright, and dark leaves less dark, you will represent more details, but image will become more flat, less impressive/convincing. In other words, if you fix one end, you will break the other, and it will be so until graphic cards and displays will be able to represent high enough dynamic range.

I personally prefer details over impression/feeling in combat sims, because the less I see, the less realistic decision I can make. However, lots of people prefer impression, and RoF kinda goes more for later.


Ahh yes, the photorealistic vs what the human eye can see argument.

In theory I agree with you. A game should seek to duplicate what the human eye can see as closely as possible. But the problem with this is that we have no displays that can duplicate what our eyes can see.

This is a problem that cinema had to deal with early on. And its still a problem today - be it plasma, lcd, and old CRT or even a 4k projector, you can never display the dynamic range, depth of color, resolution (iffy) or framerate, let alone all the other little things that would match the human eye.

Because of this, I think games should try to emulate films as closely as possibly. Not just because the above problems have been something that film has worked out over 100+ years, but also because our expectations of what reality on a 2d screen looks like are based on film. This is why having things like chromatic abrasion, bloom and film grain can go a long way to making a digital image look "real" on the screens we see them on. But as an aside the things I just listed are often over done to a significant degree in games... but that is a whole other discussion I can get into.

[Skoshi Tiger]

According to wikipedia the new additions to the DirectX 10 API were

The DirectX 10 SDK became available in February 2007.[9]

New features:

1)Fixed pipelines[10] are being done away with in favor of fully programmable pipelines (often referred to as unified pipeline architecture), which can be programmed to emulate the same.

2)New state object to enable (mostly) the CPU to change states efficiently.

3)Shader model 4.0 enhances the programmability of the graphics pipeline. It adds instructions for integer and bitwise calculations.

4)Geometry shaders, which work on adjacent triangles which form a mesh.

5)Texture arrays enable swapping of textures in GPU without CPU intervention.

6)Predicated Rendering allows drawing calls to be ignored based on some other conditions. This enables rapid occlusion culling, which prevents objects from being rendered if it is not visible or too far to be visible.

7)Instancing 2.0 support, allowing multiple instances of similar meshes, such as armies, or grass or trees, to be rendered in a single draw call, reducing the processing time needed for multiple similar objects to that of a single one.[11]



Number 1 allows the programmers to custom build effects

Number 5 reduces the workload on the CPU when swapping textures

Number 7 would be used for representing 3d trees and grass and such.

The rest are basicaly effect the efficiency on the graphics processing.

To reproduce these functions in DX9 the CPU would be taking on a lot more load. Sort of makes sense when people talk about lower frame rates under ROF.

Cheers!

[Ailantd]

If seems RoF visuals are not DX9 issue but art direction issue: artistic style vs. photo realistic style and maybe lighting technologies complexity.

That is the real point here. It´s about having Oleg in the team or not. Even CoD suffered that lighting downgrade since Oleg departure.

In its artistic and lighting department, RoF is not years, not DX versions below CoD, it´s thousands Olegs below CoD. Even the original IL2 is better in color choice than RoF. Sad, but true.

Sorry, but I can´t have any confidence in the artistic direction that let that horrible over glowing white horizon or that acid blue sky in RoF reach the final product and stay there for years.

[AbortedMan]

That is the real point here. It´s about having Oleg in the team or not. Even CoD suffered that lighting downgrade since Oleg departure.

In its artistic and lighting department, RoF is not years, not DX versions below CoD, it´s thousands Olegs below CoD. Even the original IL2 is better in color choice than RoF. Sad, but true.

Sorry, but I can´t have any confidence in the artistic direction that let that horrible over glowing white horizon or that acid blue sky in RoF reach the final product and stay there for years.

Sounds like you need some gamma correction in your life, friend.

[Jaws2002]

Sounds like you need some gamma correction in your life, friend.

He is right. Many colors in ROF are not natural. Just feel off. The sky is wrong, the horizon is too bright, and few other things that show the strong "artistic licence" used in making the lighting engine.

[WTE_Galway]

But will it be available as an iPhone app ?

[Wolf_Rider]

give it time, Galway... give it time ;)

[arthursmedley]

Why would the new production team go with a 12 year old Dx system (based on the release date for B.o.S. and the first release of DX9) when there is a better one now.



Is it because the R.o.F. engine is based on DX9 and to change it is not economically viable.



You've just answered your own question!

[Ailantd]

Sounds like you need some gamma correction in your life, friend.

ROF artist team are the ones needing a serious gamma correction in their lifes, friend.