GamersCrib
04-16-2009, 08:29 AM
PC Games Hardware (http://pcgameshardware.com/) stated today that DICE's flagship Frostbite engine is now compatible with the not-yet-released DirectX 11. Expect to see a wide amount of support of Direct 11 when Windows 7 releases later this year.
Johan Anderson, Rendering Architect at DICE, revealed some details about the Frostbite Engine, which is the base for the Battlefield games.
At the beginning of the porting progress the developer had to face a cross platform engine (PC, Xbox 360, PS3) with an exclusive DirectX 10 rendering path that had DX 10.0 and DX 10.1 features. The actual port of the Engine from DirectX 10 to DirectX 11 was done in three hours said Anderson. Searching and replacing the relevant parts inside the code required the most time.
Since currently there is no DirectX 11 hardware or appropriate development software, the Frostbite Engine was equipped with a switch inside the compiler that can be changed to DirectX 10 or DirectX 11. The developers at DICE are certain that the CPU load during API calls can be reduced noticeably with DirectX 11 drivers. Among other things the Frostbite DirectX 11 Engine offers HDR texture compression, Compute Shader and hardware tessellation for characters and terrain.
With Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 1943 there are two more games of the Battlefield series are based on the Frostbite Engine.
You can read this article here (http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,681665/DirectX-11-Battlefields-Frostbite-Engine-already-ported/News/). If you've followed PC hardware/software like all PC Gamers should, then its well known that Frostbite will be supported to DX9.0c since most users are still on WindowsXP, but its advised that you upgrade to Windows7 when it releases and just skip a dying Vista if you wish to even experience Directx 11 at all.
Learn about DirectX 11 below:
So, what's new in DirectX 11? As we reported this summer, DX 11 will include compute shader technology, enabling the GPU to perform operations other than 3D graphics; better multi-core resource handling; more efficient utilization of the processing pipeline; hardware tesselation support for more detailed 3D models.
When can you expect to buy DirectX 11-compliant GPUs? AMD says its first DirectX 11 parts will be available in late 2009 - right about the time Windows 7 is expected to arrive. New operating system and new graphics hardware? Hopefully, that's a recipe for more realistic 3D graphics than ever before. If Microsoft and OEMs continue to work as closely as the Engineering Windows 7 blog suggests, that's much more likely than a repeat of the poorly handled rollout of Vista-ready hardware at Vista's introduction.
How about you? Are you going to wait for DirectX 11 before you buy a new graphics card, or are NVIDIA and ATI's current products tempting you to spend your money on DirectX 10/10.1 parts now? Hit Comment and tell us what your heart (and your wallet) are telling you.
source (http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/windows_7_directx_11)
Johan Anderson, Rendering Architect at DICE, revealed some details about the Frostbite Engine, which is the base for the Battlefield games.
At the beginning of the porting progress the developer had to face a cross platform engine (PC, Xbox 360, PS3) with an exclusive DirectX 10 rendering path that had DX 10.0 and DX 10.1 features. The actual port of the Engine from DirectX 10 to DirectX 11 was done in three hours said Anderson. Searching and replacing the relevant parts inside the code required the most time.
Since currently there is no DirectX 11 hardware or appropriate development software, the Frostbite Engine was equipped with a switch inside the compiler that can be changed to DirectX 10 or DirectX 11. The developers at DICE are certain that the CPU load during API calls can be reduced noticeably with DirectX 11 drivers. Among other things the Frostbite DirectX 11 Engine offers HDR texture compression, Compute Shader and hardware tessellation for characters and terrain.
With Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 1943 there are two more games of the Battlefield series are based on the Frostbite Engine.
You can read this article here (http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,681665/DirectX-11-Battlefields-Frostbite-Engine-already-ported/News/). If you've followed PC hardware/software like all PC Gamers should, then its well known that Frostbite will be supported to DX9.0c since most users are still on WindowsXP, but its advised that you upgrade to Windows7 when it releases and just skip a dying Vista if you wish to even experience Directx 11 at all.
Learn about DirectX 11 below:
So, what's new in DirectX 11? As we reported this summer, DX 11 will include compute shader technology, enabling the GPU to perform operations other than 3D graphics; better multi-core resource handling; more efficient utilization of the processing pipeline; hardware tesselation support for more detailed 3D models.
When can you expect to buy DirectX 11-compliant GPUs? AMD says its first DirectX 11 parts will be available in late 2009 - right about the time Windows 7 is expected to arrive. New operating system and new graphics hardware? Hopefully, that's a recipe for more realistic 3D graphics than ever before. If Microsoft and OEMs continue to work as closely as the Engineering Windows 7 blog suggests, that's much more likely than a repeat of the poorly handled rollout of Vista-ready hardware at Vista's introduction.
How about you? Are you going to wait for DirectX 11 before you buy a new graphics card, or are NVIDIA and ATI's current products tempting you to spend your money on DirectX 10/10.1 parts now? Hit Comment and tell us what your heart (and your wallet) are telling you.
source (http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/windows_7_directx_11)