Microsoft will announce DirectX 12 March 20

Yeah. Just like we should all run linux too.

 

No one is denying that it will require modern hardware. But two problems arise with what you said. One is since DX10, every version of DX, regardless of how minor it was (even 10.1) required a specific hardware upgrade, the days of adding new support of existing hardware for DX is gone. It's something that OpenGL usually has the leg up on, for the past 7 or 8 years now.
Second, we already learned that this kind of abstractionless layer can be done on even Windows 7 with Mantle (which still uses Direct3D mind you). Any requirement for a new OS would be artificial, just like DX 11.2 is now for 8.1.

 

This is a surprise, while i hoped Mantle would get MS to sort things out i honestly never thought they would, and certainly not announce anything so quickly.

It might just be a co-incidence as this does seem to be very quick, but i imagine MS and likely even Nvidia knew about Mantle long before we all did.

Who cares if MS is 95% about console gaming and 5% about PC gaming, 5% of resources and support from them is better than 100% from anyone else at the moment.

 

Well if DX wants to compete with Mantle...they are going to HAVE to support Winblows 7...thats just how things are. It'll be interested in to see...cause MS will have to swallow everything theyve been spewing for the past few years...JUST to do that...

..and who are you kidding? Mantle OWNS DX even in BETA..and DX has been around for YEARS...goes to show how useless the MS DX team is these days...when someone can write something that takes a month to write...and about the same time to implement..and then release a month late...and even later for the patch to the game..well...DX...you are pathetic. If you dont support winblows 7, noone will care. I know about 10 ppl that wont even LOOK at winblows 8x....they are all content with the potential of Mantle and Winblows 7....so...unless something truely GROUNDBREAKING comes out or some feature that changes the entire game...which is very unlikely...MS hasnt had a good idea in a decade now....theres almost NO reason to upgrade past this point. Just my $.02

 

Mantle beats DX because it's designed specifically for the hardware its running on. DX needs to be compatible across a range of hardware.

And no, it doesn't have to support Windows 7 to beat it, it just has to come close in performance and no dev is going to spend extra money implementing mantle for a fraction of users.

 

In other words you are saying DX needs to be a standard. While Mantle does/is not. I got so much crap for saying that. But you are right.

 

Judging something that has 10s of millions of users, on the thoughts of 10 people you know is stupid.

I know at least 10 people who wouldn't LOOK at an AMD card and are content with DX and Nvidia, doesn't mean they do or don't represent the majority.

DX12 is far more likely to succeed than Mantle, mostly due the fact Nvidia, AMD and even Intel and Qualcomm chips will support it.
Even if it did need yet another OS upgrade, people who have no issue with MS would pay it, while those who did have an issue could probably pirate it.

 

I still hope OpenGL's implementation of this will at least start making it the defacto API. One can dream.

Still though, console emulators are going to be amazing.

 

The problem with OpenGL is all the outdated garbage extensions with no documentation. Nvidia and AMD implemented the same effects differently, and further fragmented it even more with different graphics architectures. If OpenGL is ever going to overtake DX either Nvidia or AMD or some third party needs to go through and rewrite all the useful extensions over again and make them work well on both. They need to document them well and make sure they are compatible with a wide range of hardware. Until that happens OpenGL will never be used over DX -- with the exception if like MS goes out of business or some random thing that wont happen.

 

Lol, fine. A simple user like myself doesn't care how it happens or why it has not, I just know I want it to. Whatever steps needs to be taken to make it happen should be taken. Ect.

 

What is the number one operating system on the planet?
ANDROID!I see ton of game on android and none use opengl or opencl?
Since I know they can't use directx!what is Google using then ?Alice in wonderland?

 

It uses OpenGL ES which is another subset of extensions for OpenGL.

 

Well XP is a pretty extreme example, after all you are talking about an OS that's over 10 years old.....

 

Well XP is a pretty extreme example, after all you're talking about an OS that's over 10 years old.....

 

Ever heard about D3D feature levels 9_1, 9_2, 9_3? They have been around since the release of Direct3D 11 in 2009.

And even though D3D11 is the official grahics API on Windows RT/Windows Phone 8, overwhelming majority of mobile devices only have a 9_3 level graphics processor.

AFAIK Mantle uses HLSL for shaders, but the implementation doesn't depend on Direct3D (i.e. no intermediate byte-code compiler and other D3D stuff).

Also, Mantle is proprietarty to AMD and so it talks directly to the internal driver API and internal data structures.

Direct3D12 on the other hand requires a well-defined and documented intermediate driver-level API so every vendor can supply drivers for their graphics card.

 

That obviously does not mean tessellation will work on a DX9 card. Don't fool yourself, the features in DX12 that will imitate Mantle will also not work on a DX9 card.

And second-secondly, that is not what we were told. Mantle is 'supposed' to be open and hardware-independent.

 

Yeah probably.

 

What a proprietary mess DirectX is. Oh well at least we have OpenGL booming and making directx a niche API more and more

 

OpenGL booming? ES doesn't count.

 

You need to distinguish between software and hardware features. The current CPU overhead is supposedly a software issue.

The DX10 cards got some benefits by the software improvements in DX11, but of course not support for DX11 tessellation or compute 5. And the DX11.0 cards "support" DX11.1/11.2, although not fully due to lacking some specific hardware features.