The DX11 tessellator generates hundreds of triangles based on the camera position. The DX9 version uses surface illusions represented by just two triangles.
High Dynamic Range lighting can be rendered at a higher quality in DirectX 11 than in DirectX 9 without the performance hit .
There are usually too many models to store with high polygon counts making it difficult to create realistic crowds. Using hardware tessellation enhances crowd models with no extra memory footprint.
First of many great DX11 titles to come
ATI has been enjoying brisk sales of
its Radeon
HD 5000 series of video cards. With the only GPUs capable of
supporting DirectX 11 graphics on the market, the Radeon
HD 5970, 5870, 5850, 5770, and 5750 have been selling out around
the world. DirectX 11 is a major part of Microsoft's Windows 7
operating system, and is also available as a downloadable update
for Windows Vista.
Although BattleForge was the
first game to support DX11, it isn't the kind of graphically
immersive game that you would expect to showcase such
a major advance in graphics. STALKER: Call of Pripyat
looks pretty good, but it has only been released in a few countries
and won't hit the U.S. until next year.
Enter Colin McRae:
DiRT 2, the latest in a long line of off-road racing games. DiRT
2 has been available for consoles since September, but that
version uses DirectX 9 technology. Codemasters is releasing today the
DirectX 11 version of the game, featuring graphics that are far
superior to the console versions using DX9.
DailyTech
had the chance to preview DiRT 2 at a Radeon 5870 media event
in September. The preview featured ATI's Eyefinity technology and a
unreleased card supporting six 2560x1600 monitors. While that setup
isn't available today, the current Radeons can support a three-way
Eyefinity setup with resolutions up to 7680 x 1600.
“DirectX
11 brings incredible visual realism to the DiRT 2 experience,
allowing gamers to enjoy the most realistic simulation of racing
environments ever seen, including the most life-like water, cloth,
crowds and lighting,” said Bryan Marshall, the Chief Technical
Officer of Codemasters. “We worked closely with AMD to take
advantage of the new graphical technologies of DirectX 11, and
technologies such as ATI Eyefinity found in the latest ATI Radeon
graphics cards, to make DiRT 2 an unparalleled racing game
experience on the PC.”
Some of the DirectX 11-based
improvements that gamers can enjoy include:
- Improved water
effects including more realistic ripples, accurate reflections, and
life-like splashes and wakes, more detailed, animated crowd models to
cheer on your race, and smoother, more realistically flowing flags
and cloth as a result of hardware tessellation where more polygons
are generating the scene without degrading game performance.
- More
accurate simulation of light and shadows as a result of Compute
Shader 5.0 found in DirectX 11, allowing for complex computations
without major hits on frame rates.
- Truer depiction of high
dynamic range lighting at twice the color depth of the DirectX 9
version, with special effects rendered at the full screen resolution,
up to four times the resolution of the DirectX 9 version.
“AMD
has worked tirelessly with Codemasters to collectively transform
realism in PC gaming through new DirectX 11 technologies only
available today on the latest ATI Radeon graphics cards,” said Matt
Skynner, Vice President & General Manager of AMD's GPU
Division.
“Players taking advantage of the incredibly
detailed graphics of DiRT 2 on ATI Radeon graphics cards, or
the phenomenal game experience an ATI Eyefinity technology setup
affords, will agree that DirectX 11 allows for a faster, more
thrilling, and more engaging racing simulation than ever
before.”
Many Radeon HD 5000 series cards sold over the last
two months have included a bonus coupon to download DiRT 2 for
no additional charge.
DiRT 2 is just one of over three
dozen games in development that will support or be optimized for
DirectX
11 graphics. The list includes:
- Alan Wake
- Alien vs.
Predator
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2
- Battlefield 3
- Crysis
2
- Dungeons and Dragons Online
- F1 2010
- The Lord of the Rings
Online
- STALKER: Call of Pripyat
- Supreme Commander
2
Additionally, there are several game engines under
development that will support multiple new games. They include
CryEngine 3 from Crytek, Frostbite by DICE, and the EGO engine by
Codemasters.
"I f***ing cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it." -- Bungie Technical Lead Chris Butcher
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