When will we finally be rid of dx9?

Hardware isn't the real culprit though. That honor belongs to an OS that is ancient by most standards. Think about it for a moment. Windows XP is thirteen years old. Claiming we should support an OS that old is a bit like claiming we should support MS-DOS 6.22 when Windows XP was shipping and it was only seven years old.

Sometimes it can be good to keep older hardware with older OSes for games that simply do not function under modern OSes. I've got games laying around that are completely unplayable on anything newer than XP.

 

Stop thinking about hardware. Start thinking about users.

 

Sure, but that's not what this one is. It's my previous gaming/dev machine, which has become my girlfriend's gaming/work machine. These days we mostly play the same games. The difference is that I have the settings turned up more.

Anyway, the point was that aside from a replacement GPU (for non-performance/compatibility reasons) it hasn't been upgraded in that time due to a lack of need. Since most people are somehat less demanding of their hardware than I am, I can easily imagine that computers would last even longer for non-enthusiasts. So unless I knew my audience was going to have new stuff anyway, I wouldn't simply draw a line in the sand at "6 years ago" and refuse to support people on the other side.

 

Graham believes we'll never be rid of DirectX 9, but I do believe at some point the percentage of users limited to DirectX 9 are going to shrink enough that companies developing engines may simply decide it is no longer financially worthwhile to support an aging platform.

It isn't even merely an issue of supporting older features, older hardware is simply going to be too slow at some point. I remember pointing this out for my dad's GeForce 8600GTS. I did some research and found out that modern Intel HD is actually faster than his card.

He's interested in the new Obduction game from Cyan Worlds. Catch is the game uses the Unreal 4 engine and unless they put in considerable time ensuring it runs well on older hardware, he will need an upgrade.

It isn't because his computer's hardware or software lacks features. It simply lacks sufficient speed.

 

Many people use dx9 in games just to boost their frame count up, and yeah you guys are thinking of :
"buy new pc = problem solved", but you cant really just simply do that, and there are many threads on other forums discussing this "boost fps" topic and people asking to buy a better pc, and the best solution is to actually use the lowest possible directx version. And dont ask for proof, youve seen it and you know it( or maybe im wrong, sorry )

 

I'm going to take a wild guess that you've never developed a commercially available game. Is that correct?

 

Sure, but again I call upon the difference between desktop and mobile hardware. Or the difference between PC and console (where the life cycle often exceeds the 6 years darkhog is suggesting we ignore people at!).

Or how about considering non-technical aspects. Here's one - a 10 year old computer could be perfectly useful to someone in a less wealthy part of the world, as long as software in general still supports it. Another - throwing out old devices just because current software doesn't support it is a colossal waste of natural resources. I know that in both cases games (being luxury goods) aren't exactly a prime concern, but I personally don't use this tech just to make games.

 

Fact of the matter is, were on the cusp of next gen. Hardware will go obsolete and developers will stop trying to factor old API's in which will in turn push the market. Don't get me wrong I think some "next gen" requirements are way over the top, like Assasins Creed Unity. Min spec is a GTX 680..

You should think about hardware for your users, most of this debate depends on what your target market is and it's a compromise. If you're in a commercial position, you need to outdo your competition and on PC that's not going to happen if you're constantly worrying about scaling your game back to run on very old hardware.

Personally in the PC / Console market, with such a small amount of DX9 users in play it's not something to be concerned about.

 

I do try to keep systems running for those in my area that simply cannot afford better. There is a big difference though between a computer that can handle internet, email, office work, etc and expecting it to play games.

There comes a time though when old devices are simply too weak or too feature limited to be worth the investment of time necessary to maintain them.

As an example I was recently given a pair of used office computers to fix up and give away. I took them, stripped the valuable parts, and disposed of the remainder. Both computers, despite not being that old, were incapable of booting anything newer than XP despite Dell's troubleshooting pages claiming they were capable of Vista.

I tried three ways to install the OS. First through the DVD-ROM each computer had followed by a USB flash drive and finally by manually performing the initial process of partitioning the drive and copying the installation files.

When none of those worked, I removed the memory sticks (DDR2), optical drives (DVD-ROM), and magnetic drives (160GB SATA drives). Those will be put into another system once I have a computer case and a PSU.

The remainder was sent to either the landfills (some of it was simply unable to be separated or recycled) or recycling plants (local university has an easy way to recycle used computer parts).

I've been there before with some of my purchasing decisions. It wasn't fun discovering that my computer I had semi-recently finished building (first time building with new parts) was practically incompatible going forward.

It was somewhat mitigated when I found a motherboard sold by ASRock that supported both previous and current generation graphics (both PCI-Express and AGP slots) and memory (both DDR and DDR2 slots).

I try my best now to avoid these problems, but sometimes you simply have to realize that a newer generation of technology means it is a time for older hardware and software to be phased out if you intend to keep using your computer in the same manner.

Taking an old gaming rig and re-purposing it into a media center or similar is my general solution. My dad is currently running an older GPU of mine and my mom has my old Phenom II triple-core plus motherboard.

 

Bizarre how the graph actually went *down* from mid-2012 through mid-2013. What was going on then?

--Eric

 

Yes, but only for 15% the hardware is the cause. For the rest the problem is that they are on Windows XP.

You can just use OpenGL for those users like other companies do too. Don't let MS's stupid policy stop you from upgrading.

 

Smart users that are actually interested in playing the game (i.e. either finish it or do 80% things in it) will buy hardware it requires. If they can't buy hardware required, they're probably not wealthy enough to buy game anyway (i.e. they'll pirate it). Or they are just stupid - in either case good riddance.

 

There is merit to this point. But, one, I have it understood that the web player is kind of "second class citizen" now, as in it may not have the priority to be upgraded as HTML5 is taking over. So switching it to OpenGL on windows may require resources(though maybe not as much as people think) that they just don't want to spend, especially with Unity5 on the way.

And two, there is nothing stopping Unity from upgrading. In fact, they have upgraded to DX11. What is being stopped is "fallback" support for DX9. If you are exporting to windows there is nothing stopping you from using DX11 with Unity. I'm not sure if Unity has supported every single DX11 feature, but they have a fair bit of the important stuff there to play with.

 

Less wealthy parts of the world have other things to worry about, like access to clean water.

 

Won't WebGL pretty much eliminate this problem? At least for those limited to Windows XP?

 

Yes, but maintaining each render path binds resources. And implementing PBR in DX9 is also work that would not be needed.
So no DX9 == more time for other stuff.

 

Hate to say this, but if you throw away the dx9 attitude, there's a lot of users that will be upset that they can no longer use Unity.

I for one have used Unity for the past two and a bit years SOLELY on my laptop, that runs Intel graphics. Which by the way, is DirectX 9. Like I assume many others may do.

So basicly, Unity would lose a huge cut of their customers. At least 30%. So yeah, there's still a reason to keep dx9 around.

 

Well you know what they say about statistics on the Internet... So let us present some factual statistics from Unity themselves concerning actual developers (aka editor statistics).

http://stats.unity3d.com/editor/gpu.html

3.2% of users are limited to DirectX 9b (aka shader model 2.x).
1.9% of users are limited to DirectX 9c (aka shader model 3.x).
0.8% of users are limited to software-driven, fixed function, or DirectX 8.

So altogether we have 5.9%. Not 30%.

 

Eh. I thought it would have been much higher, but I guess there aren't many people out there that use Unity on their laptops frequently, or they just have much more money than myself.

I appreciate the factual statistics, I never knew that Unity even had something like that. So thanks.

EDIT:
Maybe I was just confusing myself with DirectX 10. which is 33%. Either way, forcing dx11 is a bad idea.

 

Well, nobody's using DX8. There will come a time when nobody's using DX9. That time is not right now.

 

Intel's integrated solutions have had better than DirectX 9 for at least seven years. I can understand being stuck on a laptop as that literally has no upgrade path, but a DirectX 11 graphics card can be had for desktop users for around $30-40 USD.

Diamond Radeon 6450 (Amazon.com)

I do apologize for coming off in a way that seemed harsh, but the statistics people tend to give are usually way off. I wasn't aware of this source either until superpig listed it. I've noticed he has a habit of linking very useful sites just as they're needed.

Forcing DirectX 11 is most likely a bad idea, but reasons to support DirectX 9 are going to eventually disappear for the most part. Especially as Unity can simply use OpenGL for those platforms lacking DirectX 10+.

 

Yes, because there are only two groups of people in the world: Those who have kickass desktop PCs tailor made for the most modern games, and those who lack access to clean water.

And you know, speaking of people who lack access to clean water... f*ck them anyway. Why should they be able to enjoy games if they can't afford an expensive desktop gaming PC? They should solely be thinking about how poor they are and not be able to take their minds off that with an enjoyable game on an affordable system. Am I right? Guys?

 

Come on LOL!, technology is always constantly evolving and you can only hold onto the past so long before it starts becoming detrimental. Although how many teams are developing anywhere near the top end of this gen? Never mind what's coming in the "next gen" near future? The market is huge for "next gen", but it leaves a gap which is cool for smaller indies who can play on smaller less technically demanding games.

Right now there is no reason to get rid of DX9, but it won't stay around forever.

 

Yup.

I'll just go where my customers are but that doesn't mean I can't use all the DX11 goodness. It's called having an options screen.

 

Yup, I totally agree. I was responding to the guy who thinks only people who buy the latest PCs should be able to play games. His premise that customers with older PCs can go screw themselves is what got me, because to the best of my knowledge he's never released a commercial game and is talking from a "player" standpoint instead of a "developer" one. That's cool, whatev.

Of course technology advances. I've been doing this since 1647, I've seen amazing advances. But I also know from releasing countless commercial games that there are a ton of people out there with older PCs who have money to spend and will happily spend it. Acting like they don't matter just leaves money on the table. And that's fine, because some of us will be there to pick it up.

 

*squints*

 

Hey now. I messed up the date! I WAS making games in 1647. Damn. Why people can't believe that is beyond me. And you know what??? I STILL support those games and the people who play them on their ancient 350 year old PCs!

or something.

 

Yeah Charles Babbage was a no good pirate!

 

Shhh... you'll mess up my timeline.

 

Well I must admit it would be nice if everyone ran 780Ti's across the board, make my life much easier. IMO in larger games artwork takes ages and coding the same, but mainly it's relatively simple. Getting artwork and coding to run efficiently on multiple platforms, now that's an art form an extremely difficult one.

I don't think it's possible in 2014 to make openworld RPG's / FPS / RTS games which stand up to the competition, looks good and performs on old hardware. I think most will struggle with mid sized games, my target is GTX 460 / 470 min specs so DX9 will never come into the equation.

 

There's the assumption that this is all about games, again.

What do you consider 'old' hardware in this context? World of Warcraft's minimum requirements (which change over time) imply that it can be played on approximately 8 year old systems. Edit: Guild Wars 2, which is a newer game, actually supports older (though higher-end) hardware, too.

 

With quite a bit of conversation geared towards current users of Windows XP and DX9. I recently took this photo of a production machine we have running within my employers workplace, and must admit that I am quite frustrated with UT and their decision to not support these instruments.

Thumbnail:

 

Which both are aged (oldish) MMO's and I also take min specs from a lot of publishers at face value recommended would probably be a more ideal base spec, which supports target market yet again. Diablo 3 would probably fit the bill also in these range of games.

Let's look at more recent games min specs:

Assasins Creed Unity: GTX680
Watch Dogs: GTX 460
Far Cry 4: GTX 460
Shadow of Mordor: GTX460
COD AW: GTS 450
Metal gear solid 5: GTX 650

One interesting point, Dragon Age Inquistion stated min specs GT8800, it didn't run that well on a 780M with medium settings. Even though it's published as a "last gen game". (Averaging 30 - 40 FPS).

Bit of a re-occuring theme in places, I'd say anything less than a GTX 460 especially with the release of new upcoming engines is off the cards. Still depends on the game, some will require more and some less.. Some will publish min specs and everything will run in slow motion, which happens more often than not.

 

So it was wrong of me to buy a PS3 with a ton of games available for cheap money because it's older than 6 years?
Damn. I'll throw it on the trash, then.

In all seriousness - no. You may have this mindset for your own projects and there surely are quite a few cases where this is correct but just not everything that works for one project works for another.
Now imagine this scenario: you are a small company or even work alone on a game that doesn't need much hardware. You know that your audience will like your game for gameplay or puzzles. Unity only supports DirectX11, though. So you produce your game that would run perfectly fine on most machines up to 10 years back because your project simply demands nothing more. Yet just because DX9 is though of as outdated and obsolete you cannot serve those remaining people. So you (a) produce at a low demanding level for the reason of finishing the project easier or even just because your game does not need high fidelity but (b) still lose margin X for no reason whatsoever.
Also maybe consider that the statistics from steam are a good ressource for Steam gamers but what about the people who are not as much gamers as the ones that use steam regularly and chose to submit their statistics?

Now - does it cost Unity much extra resources to keep DirectX9 in the Software? I don't know. Yet unless it's a really significant amount of extra work to maintain it - why limit customers? Just because that market share does not hald relevance to you? I want to hear your opinion if something gets dropped someone else does not seem to hold of any relevance any more but you do.

 

What is the sample size for those stats, and does Unity collect and location data along with those stats?

It seems strange that they are showing 38% windows XP usage, when most others who analyse it seems to come up with in the 10% range .

http://www.statista.com/statistics/...ld-by-operating-systems-in-the-us-since-2009/
and one for worldwide.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=11

 

Not really. I tested several really cool WebGL examples in both FireFox and Chrome on several different desktop systems I have access to including Windows 7 and Windows XP. WebGL examples worked awesome on Windows 7 but often failed on Windows XP. Some examples did work on XP. Some had unbearable framerate issues on XP. Others did not render properly on XP. WebGL was totally hit or miss for XP. At this point, I am not convinced that WebGL will be a viable solution for XP users. The only real solution for XP users is an OS upgrade. Once Chrome blocks plugins (such as Unity Web Player), Windows XP users will be largely cut off from web based gaming and WebGL will not fill in the gap for those users.

 

Yeah, like those people will actually buy your game instead of going to TPB.

 

Can't seem to find entries for Windows Game SDK or even Win 95
Unity doesn't support this!??

Outrage!

 

You're referring to those companies who are unwilling to migrate forward while their systems still work? Last I checked they don't tend to migrate forward with newer versions of their developer tools either. If Unity 6.x, for example, lost DirectX 9 support it wouldn't matter because Unity 5.x and older would still support it.

By the time DirectX 9 support is removed from Unity, I'd imagine the vast majority of these companies will have already left Windows XP behind and any hardware that was incapable of newer than DX9 will have failed from sheer age.

World of Warcraft is also an eight year old MMO.

Thanks for the correction. Upgrading an OS on a laptop can definitely be hit or miss. I was lucky in that my 2006 Toughbook ($70 on eBay) was able to run as high as Windows 8.1 when I tried newer OSes. I ended up going with 7 SP1.

No, because the PlayStation 3 is still popular. Windows XP could be better compared to a PlayStation 2. You don't expect games to still be developed for the PS2 do you?

 

Going to have to ask for a refund since Unity doesn't support the difference engine.

Joking aside, Warcraft runs like crap on old machines these days. Times have changed, and so has the game. I doubt an 8 year old system will run it properly at all these days.

So while you can support older hardware, it doesn't always make sense for it to be more than a token gesture.

 

Agreed, as everything this is all circumstantial. Really depends on what type of games the developer is making, in mainstream AAA min specs are shifting to about 4 year old hardware max. A lot of indie games and MMO type games will require less to run, even though as you said I doubt you'll get away with 8 year old hardware.

Right now in the PC / Console arena times are changing and then will probably not change again for another 6 or so years until they drop Xbox one and PS4.

 

Well, PS4 will probably last a decade given sony's history with keeping older machines around

 

Probably will but there will be a PS5 out eventually and dev for PS4 will eventually die off, but all of us already know that.. ...

Grand summary: Whatevs'! LOL!.

 

I dare say the last game released for the PlayStation 2 was only slightly over a year ago - so by this comparison we still have just under a year of releases left for Windows XP

 

So? That doesn't help external contractors, or people making off-the-shelf software where such organisations are a part of the target market.

For instance, if you're making software which you're hoping will be purchased into schools or government organisations, you may well have to support some old stuff.

However, Unity 5 won't support versions of iOS / Xcode which Unity 6 will support. So, for cross-platform stuff, developers would then be in the unfortunate position of having to support two versions of Unity...

Yeah, I generally agree, since I don't see DX9 level support being removed any time soon, based on how recently they removed DX8 level support and how long the reign of DX9-level hardware was.

Sure, but its requirements have evolved with it, and both content and tech are still under active development with a major upgrade released quite recently. ESO, by the way, has similar requirements to GW2 and is more recent again. My point was that such games support hardware from nearly a decade ago despite still being actively developed today. That's certainly not something we all need to do, of course - those games have very different target audiences to the others ShadowK raised as examples - but I do think they're good counter examples to the idea that it can't be done.

Also, to be clear, I'm not using them as examples of developing now for hardware which is old now. As ShadowK correctly pointed out in another post, its prevalence at the time of release that matters, not the time of development. So his targeting a GTX 460 would be exactly in line with be examples above for a game expected to hit storefronts ~4 years from now.



Anywho... I think all this beating about the bush is getting away from what I was originally saying, which is that I don't think it's time to drop DX9-level support now as the OP wants. I do agree that it should be dropped as soon as it's no longer of practical advantage, whenever that is. I know it still is for my work, and I suspect that plenty of others are in the same boat.

 

A smooth transition with a shift towards DX11 would be preferable for me as well, there is no need to eliminate it completly, as it can coexist with DX9, just offer more options in DX11