When will we finally be rid of dx9?

When will we final toss the decaying corpse, that is dx9, off a cliff and join the dx11/dx12 only future?

I have had multiple asset devs (shader gurus) say they can't or won't add modern features to their products because they need to remain remain dx9 compatible. It makes business sense but also makes me sad...

Too bad Unity 5 won't get us out of the dx9 ghetto.

 

Why on earth would you want that? From memory only something like 1 in 3 Steam users has a DX11 system. Admittedly it depends on your target audience - enthusiast gamers are likely to sit largely within that one third - but broadly speaking why would you want a tools vendor to toss out support for two thirds of the people who may otherwise play your game? If you don't want to use that support that's cool, but why would you want it to no longer be an option?

Plus, it's not just "Direct 3D 9" that's to be supported. OpenGL on OS X and mobile devices and various other rendering APIs for other platforms (like game consoles) are to be considered as well. Some of those sit at a D3D 9 equivalent feature level.

It's not a "ghetto".

 

DX 9 limits shaders greatly.

I feel like anything that uses frostbite, ubi's new engines, ect requires a dx11 card and 2gb of gddr5 ram. Are 1 and 3 people really trying to play this year's games on tech from last decade? Or are the numbers just skewed by dota 2 players eeking by on toasters..Lol.

Maybe I am crazy but aren't all 400 series and newer nvidia cards dx11 capable?

Why would a person making a pc game in 2014, targeting an low end 2014 computer, (let's say a 460 gtx or equivalent) want to be held back by dx9? I mean, In 2016, when said game might actually release, the average would be like a 560 gtx and dx12 would likely be here.

I assume it is actually mobile that is holding unity back.

I wish ea would release frostbite engine 3, or CDPR would release RedEngine 2. I would love to see what some of these brilliant indie devs could do with some real horsepower.

 

Why would a person going through the tremendous effort of making a whole game want to limit themselves to a) PC and b) hardware released in the last 12 months?

Don't let your own preferences blinker you to what's in use in the rest of the world unless your target audience is you.

You have to strike a balance between using the latest stuff and maximising your audience reach. What you're suggesting would involve Unity making that decision for us, and that would leave many people unhappy. Plus, it's not like you're being stopped from using DX11 fanciness if you want to. And if Unity did stop supporting DX9 level hardware so soon plenty of users would jump ship to a vendor which did support their target hardware, and that'd have roll on effects as well.

 

Sorry I guess I should say current gen consoles and pc for target audience.

Anyways, the 460 gtx, an average card for 2014, is 5 years old and a dx11 card. So it's not tech from the last 12 months

PC/ps4/xb1 are what people (serious developers) should be developing for. Mobile is a crap shoot (literally a gamble), and, unless you are extremely lucky, it is a complete waste of time, money and effort.

 

Tell that to all the big names making repeated success in the mobile space.

The seriousness of a developer isn't derived from the level of graphical hardware they're targeting. Only a small portion of users have graphical hardware of the level you're saying we should limit ourselves to if we're "serious".

I'll turn that around and say that if you're "serious" then you should be trying to get your game on every platform where there's a potentially significant audience. Especially if you're working with a tool like Unity where cross-platform development is a major strength. Do you really want to turn players away because they don't happen to have a bigger GPU?

 

Tell that to the millions of people barely making pennies off it.

 

I also don't make money from my writing. That doesn't mean nobody should write books.

 

If you want dx 11 shaders go for Jove

 

Did you make that up?
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

 

Lol, 3% is a pretty far stretch from 66%.

 

as of october it's showing that 74.38% of steam users have a DX11 capable GPU. am i reading that right?

 

That's just hardware. If you're running XP, then you are not using DX11 even if your card supports it.

--Eric

 

When the previous generation consoles finally die off completely. A large number of games that reach the PC are actually back ports from the consoles. The PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 are still receiving new titles.

 

Yes because those living the third world are likely to buy games from steam, and not pirate them . If you are still running XP you are either too poor to buy a game, or elderly and not aware of the dangers(and unlikely to buy such a game).

http://www.kaspersky.com/about/news...l-Run-Windows-XP-Kaspersky-Lab-Statistics-Say
Take a look at which countries are running XP the most.


EDIT:
This is a little old, so I would expect the number of XP users are even lower now....
http://www.neowin.net/news/steam-stats-show-its-windows-8-users-outnumber-mac-os

 

Indeed. This means 1/3 of your target base is still using DX9 which is rather large percent. Of course selling a more impressive looking game may result is more sales from the 2/3 than a less good looking game sold to everyone, but still is a matter of considerartion.

 

@OP perhaps you should ask yourself why there are no DX-11 AAA games only. With Unity 4 and 5, you can pull the finger out and develop a game that targets both platforms.

This thread smacks of pure laziness. Being a game developer means - yes - you have to do some work.

 

DirectX 11 is 74.38% and DirectX 10 is 22.55%. Only 1.24% are using actual DirectX 9 hardware.

 

You, uh... confident in that math of yours?
A) 75% is 3/4, not 2/3.
B) Over 22% of the remainder is DX10, not 9. 9 comprises a little under only 3%.
C) Even if you take into account Eric's statement that XP cannot access DX11, they still have access to DX10.Also that other chart, which is already two years old, shows that only ~15% of users still had Windows XP.

 

Probably never. Wanna know how to run a DX11 game on year ~2000 hardware? Disable the DX11 lighting and tessellation features. There's a guide on doing this to run the newest call of duty game on computer specs recommend for call of duty 4. These directx versions are really only super expensive lighting and probably water/cloth effects

 

I am not sure if DX10 suppport everything of DX11, my laptop is DX10 and does not run some DX11 things for example.

I rounded to 70% for my calcs, but you are right, it is 3/4, which is not that much higher than 2/3.

 

Why would an older DirectX support everything for a newer DirectX? It still doesn't change that DirectX 9 hardware is very rare now and very few people will be gaming on it. Whether or not they are running a sufficient OS is another story.

 

That is only one aspect of not using DX11, the other is keeping global compatibility with all devices Unity supports.

That said, now that Unity 5 will support DX11 for most major platforms and PS4, i will definitly be looking into adding a DX11 layer of coolness in my RPG game (and will DX11 enable some of my asset store packs as well).

 

I was one of these people for quite a while. There was a lot of bad publicity around windows vista, and a general sense that windows xp worked fine. For various reasons i refused to upgrade to vista, and i also had a general distrust of microsoft after it, refusing to also upgrade to anything beyond it. i held out for several years before eventually jumping ship to win7

 

Probably exactly the same nonsense they're making with UE4 and Unity. ie a lot of crap. AAA is AAA for a good reason, and the engine is only a part of that.

 

Unity already got us "out of the ghetto" by giving us the option to use DX11. We can already choose to use DX11. Unity does not need to drop DX9 in order for us to use DX11.

Users will eventually drop DX9, simply because DX9 is tied to Windows XP and Windows XP has already been end of lifed by Microsoft. As a function of time, users will switch to Windows 7, 8.1 or 10. Windows XP numbers will continue to drop until XP is no longer relevant. Honestly, that has already largely happened. If you look at the Steam numbers, the vast majority of gamers already have support for DX11. And everybody knows that DX9 and Windows XP usage will shrink more and never expand.

As for asset devs clinging to DX9 instead of moving to DX11, that will also change over time. A lot of developers let themselves fall into the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, so some asset devs are probably continuing with DX9 because that what is their code was originally designed for. Over time, much better looking DX11 based shader assets will become available. At that point, those DX9 based asset devs will need to redesign their assets for DX11 to remain relevant and competitive.

There will probably be a sizable shakeup anyway once Unity 5 is released. A lot of old DX9 assets might seem old and in need of an overhaul at that point, and other assets will be directly obsoleted by features built into Unity 5. Anyway, Unity does not need to forcefully evict DX9 support from their engine. Time will wash DX9 away from this world, and it has largely already happened.

 

Giving someone access to a AAA engine does not automatically make their game AAA quality.

 

No, I did not. First of all I said "system" (so see what Eric said), secondly I said "from memory" and made it clear that the figures were second hand. Seems like I got the proportions flipped, but there's still the issue that (depending on target audience - which is a matter I also covered) you're giving around a quarter of your potential paying customers the flick if you don't support both hardware levels.

 

How about supporting DirectX 8, 7 and 6 as well? After all, it's not Unity's role what hardware your game runs on. Might be Pentium MMX with GeForce 2 just as well.

 

good argument

 

A year or two ago Unity polled the community extensively to see if dropping DX8 level systems was ok. The overwhelming response was "yes". I suspect that some time in the future the same will eventually happen for DX9 level systems.

 

Exactly.
"AAA" games can already be made in Unity. Why don't indies make "AAA" grade games in it? Because they're not a goddamned studio of several hundred trained professionals

 

Only in the same sense that we'll never be rid of IE6.

 

I can't afford a DX11 system right now, I'm still saving money for my next computer. May I please continue to play video games until then? Thank you sir.

 

Sorry, you'll have to make do with an old checkers set, which is missing a few pieces.

--Eric

 

Checker boards in the future run on dx10. Look at how the light reflects off of those chrome pieces! It's so life like you could swear it was real.

 

I just wonder what percentage of Windows XP users have a legal copy of the Operating System? Which begs the question, if they're running a pirate OS will they buy your games, whether it uses DX9 / 10 or 11, or will they download an equally illegal copy?

 

I know some users who are still running legal copies of Windows XP. Mostly because businesses in the area tend to donate or sell their older hardware and it tends to be running XP.

 

You should look up the actual legality of selling licensed software. I honestly feel morally fine doing so, but I think due to technicalities it is actually illegal. This is why when you buy a refurb machine it comes with a new software install, frequently a newer windows than the original install. In fact, Microsoft sells windows specifically for this purpose, refurb versions.

Now, the morality of it is another story. I've never agreed that it should be illegal, but software isn't like a physical material thing, though in many cases it really should be. In any case, this is another topic altogether.

About the actual topic, I don't think there needs to be any hurry to get rid of DX9. The reason isn't because of a high amount of users(which in reality isn't very high, considering the above data). Consider though, for the lower end users, though the video cards(including Intel integrated ones) are capable of DX10/11, in reality, what are games going to do, be capable of, on lower end(but modern) systems that can't already be done in DX9. Frankly, what is really to be gained by using DX11 if you aren't going to be doing any of the modern effects like tesselation shaders on lower end machines anyway?

Also, in the case of Unity, consider how they also support lower spec platforms like iOS, Android, etc... Unity needs to keep around a "lower" form of rendering capablility in order to support these devices. DX9 can be comparable to that, even though the devices are using OpenGL. So, if they have to maintain these "lower level" renderers, then what is the point of fully removing DX9 from the systems? The thing is that the OpenGLES available on these devices is at a similar level to DX9. Sure some devices are capable of more, but generally that is the case. This is different from when they wanted to remove DX8/8.1 because that old of DX version doesn't compare to mobile hardware OpenGLES.

 

You should also look it up. Depending on the license, it can be attached to an individual, or a business, or the hardware it's installed on. If the licenses in question are tied to the hardware rather than the business/individual, it's fine.

 

You are right. I actually should have said it "could" be illegal, which is true. I accept my mistake there

 

@OneShotGG

Well that doesn't make any sense to me, it's not like you can't add in redundant measures (fallback) in case your shaders won't work on a specific API set. It's only a simple line added to force DX9 and test anyway, so I'm not sure who you're talking to but it can be done and without that much effort. There's no need to get rid of DX9...

Well other high budget / high GRFX companies pick up pre-made engines, Square Enix, Lionhead and Namco to name a few. The question here is if they can, why aren't they?

As for DX9 Vs. DX11, well at this point I'm not sure DX9 really matters anyway going forward. If you're going to be creating 3D games for PC and console, chances are it's going to take you a while. Factor that in and by 2016, I dare say the market share of DX9 will be extremely low and with the general push for OMG GRFX there's not chance anyone would be able to run these games on DX9 only hardware. (Not that it actually matters)..

 

When will Mac get geometry shaders?

 

When it'll be open enough that we can easily replace S***ty default gpu with a proper nVidia one.

 

Not to mention those too stubborn to migrate from Windows XP may start running into the now rather tight memory limitation that a 32-bit OS has. Consoles are now sporting 8GB and while it is not all available to the game itself there is more available than Windows XP is capable of addressing. XBox One, for example, allows games to access 5GB.

 

100% correct, Ryiah. Anything older than 5, maybe 6 years should be considered obsolete and as such not supported. If they don't have money for modern hardware, they likely don't have money for modern software as well.

 

I have a 7 year old computer at home that's still in active service, as a gaming machine no less. It had an updated GPU put in it ~3 years ago for about $80 (in Australia), not because it needed the speed boost but because the one that was in it was wanted elsewhere. Not upgrading isn't always about a lack of money or availability. Sometimes it's about a lack of need.