Direct 3D 10.0: We Hardly Knew You
Microsoft is planning to update Direct3D to version 10.1 despite the very limited selection of DirectX 10 titles on shelves.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem that the new features are likely to be included in a game near you any time soon. The primary reason is that the SDK has only recently been recently released to developers and driver teams, so there’s no way of knowing when graphics hardware will be ready to support these features in ‘real world’ applications.
What does D3D 10.1 bring to the party? Here’s a tidbit:
Sadly, it doesn’t seem that the new features are likely to be included in a game near you any time soon. The primary reason is that the SDK has only recently been recently released to developers and driver teams, so there’s no way of knowing when graphics hardware will be ready to support these features in ‘real world’ applications.
What does D3D 10.1 bring to the party? Here’s a tidbit:
“Direct3D 10.1 will improve 3D rendering quality in a number of ways. Support for FP32 texture filtering is now required in hardware (D3D 10 requires only 16-bit), which will improve texture filtering when performing mipmapping or anisotropic filtering. Other image quality improvements in D3D 10.1 include 4x AA and two specific sample patterns. Again, in standard D3D 10, the number of provided anti-aliasing samples is optional. Direct 3D 10.1 compliance also requires that a video card support programmable shader output sample masks and MSAA depth readback. The new standard will support bitwise copying from uncompressed to block compressed texture formats, and is capable of compressing textures to BC/RGBE on the fly.”
