Will you see the difference between DirectX 10 and DX9 games?

Microsoft’s highly advertised graphics library, on which games are written - DirectX 10 (and its spin-off 10.1) should have been one of the strong points convincing people to switch over to the Vista camp. You see, only windows Vista has DirectX 10, while windows XP still has DX 9, with no plan for the update… Microsoft placed a bet on the gamer segment, where fans of Crysis and other DX10 games should theoretically migrate merrily to the shiny new OS. This had a few people thinking for a while, but they made up their minds when they saw the DX9 shots after a few smart brains tampered with Crysis’ files. The differences were next to impossible to distinguish more often than not.

As for other games, of course, no game developer is crazy enough to target its content on a single DX release, especially since the new OS from Redmond is such a failure. And as a matter of fact, the Vista & DirectX 10 combination usually scores lower in benchmarks than the well-tested, trustworthy, XP DX9 combo. There goes the gamer segment.

DIRECT X 10 is in focus this week with the release of Crysis, but there is also a new patch out this week for Lord of the Rings online which enables DX10 graphics in the popular MMO.

The headline features for the patch include improved water effects and dynamic shadows. It has to be said, the shadows look super sexy - with trees casting shadows on the ground that move as their leaves blow in the wind. How very Tolkien-esque.

What's clear is that the designers regard DX10 as nothing more than a 'minor cosmetic upgrade', and they call the patch such in the release notes. For all the hoo-hah graphics companies have been making about DX10 compatibility, it seems that developers just aren't really up for it. Which we're sure will delight 8800 GTX SLI buyers.

As for DX 10.1 - Kevin Unangst, Senior Global Director for Microsoft Games for windows, already dismissed its importaince, with this comment " DX10.1 is an incremental update that won’t affect any games or gamers in the near future." He is right, mostly because it won't be out until SP1 hits, so no argument there. More importantly, DX10 and onward is tied to the broken malware infestation known as Vista, so it is really irrelevant, but there is more to it than that.

Lets be honest, DX10.1 brings a lot of new features that don't really matter much if at all, and you can read all about them on the Direct X 10 games site here. That said, there is one there that will matter a lot, contrary to what MS people say. This magic feature is the multi-sample buffer reads and writes(MSBRW). If you are wondering how you missed that big one in the feature list, well shame on you, read better next time.

MSBRW gives shaders access to depth and info for all samples without having to resolve the whole pixel. Get it now? No? OK, we'll go into a bit more detail. DX10 forced you to compute a pixel for AA (or MSAA) to be functional, and this basically destroyed the underlying samples. The data was gone, and to be honest, there was no need for it to be kept around.

Anyway, games like Quake3 would do a lighting pass, then a shader pass, and another lighting followed by shaders and so on until everything was rendered right. This was quite precise but also quite slow. Dog slow.

The first reaction most people have is that if a game is written for DX10, then new 10.1 features won't do anything, AA awareness needs to be coded in the engine. That would be correct, but we are told it is quite patchable, IE you will probably see upgrades like the famous 'Chuck patch' for Oblivion. Nothing is guaranteed, but there is a very good chance that most engines will have an upgrade available.

In the end, DX10.1 is mostly fluff with an 800-pound gorilla hiding among the short cropped grass. MSBRW will enable AA and deferred shading, so you can have speed and beauty at the same time, not a bad trade-off.

Games written specially for DirectX 10 are Crysis, John Woo's Stranglehold, Gears of War, Hellgate: London…

See screenshots comparison of DX9 and DirectX 10 games at this direct x 10 games site… There are some funky new screenshots out this morning that show the comparison between DX9 and DX10 versions of the game. There really isn't that much to show. DX10 adds better effects for smoke and lighting, although these are rather subtle. More noticeable is the 'very high' and 'extreme' shader settings, which add depth of field effects. The effect is slightly strange, and we can see gamers actually turning it off as overly distracting, but perhaps our cynical eyes are just too battered to hack it.

In any event, this appears to be yet another game where DX10 brings next-to-nothing to the table. Bread and cheese for Vista, once again…