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DirectX 10: Information Summary

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26 May 20063 min read 43.7K   12   4
Learn about DirectX 10 here - article will be updated as information is released

Introduction

With the impending release of Vista, supposedly the largest computing leap since Windows 3.1...or whichever point and click OS came first, many new technologies have been announced. One of these is DirectX 10, naturally the successor to DirectX 9 - but in this case it really is that, it succeeeds it.

Microsoft want a new start to their Operating System, and this means a new DirectX which does not need to support older versions, meaning it can use new technology to make it faster and more effective than every before. Vista will only run pre-DirectX 10 applications in software mode, and current-gen graphics cards cannot run DirectX 10 at all.

From a developer's point of view, DirectX 10 changes are:

Sprites / Offscreen surfaces can no longer be used, all rendering must be done via primitives (polygons)- in addition to this, DirectDraw is now completely un-usable (it no longer exists)

Apparantly there will be no fixed function pipeling (FFP) and so all rendering must be done using Pixel / Vertex shaders (by this time Shader Model 4.0 will be released). Geometry shaders will also be introduced which have the ability to modify entire polygons, giving effects such as fluid simulation, growth etc

There is a new, much improved version of HLSL (high level shader language) - more details in another article

DirectX 10 uses much faster, completely new DLLs to increase performance dramatically

The GPU's supporting DX 10 have a more advanced, unified structure allowing them to complete tasks which traditionally could only be completed by a CPU. More information will be added to this as I learn, I just started researching and jotted down a few main points - check back soon

The New HLSL (High Level Shader Language) & Shader Model 4.0

Since DirectX 8 in 2000, we have seen various different forms of "programmable shaders". These allowed developers to customise the looks of their application's graphics by overriding the default "fixed function pipeline" which was used by default to render pixels and vertices. In DX8, this was possible only through an assembly-like syntax, and was very complicate and not really worth learning for the hobbyist DirectX programmer.

In DX9, however, this was further refined by the introduction of the High Level Shader Language (HLSL). This allowed developers to write shaders using a familiar, C-style syntax. This was much simpler, and more people started to override the fixed-function-pipeline (FFP) in favour of their own shaders, adapted to their games.

Shader Model 3.0, the current model of choice for shader development is good, but it still has its limits. In the new version, 4.0, there are no limits on instructions on each pass. Why? Because in Vista, the GPU will be seen as a shared resource, so infinate loops / rolls can be done without hanging the rest of the computer's processes.

The HLSL has been updated include every mathematical and logical operator you would expect to see in a normal programming language such as C, including bitwise and equality operators etc.

It also adds support for Shader Model 4.0's new "Geometry Shaders". These are similar to Vertex and Pixel shaders, but they allow the GPU to create, delete or modify whole primitives. It is run in before the Pixel shader and after the Vertex shader.

Well, whether you like using shaders or not is you're choice, but in Vista you are going to have to weigh it up, the advantages of using custom shaders in DirectX 10 is that you can actually render more than a black screen (Doom IV?).

Thats right, in DirectX 10, there is no such thing as a "Fixed Function Pipeline" - you will have to use shaders.

More information such as the syntax of the new HLSL and specifications of SM 4.0 will be put on this site as they are released.

More information will be released as it is provided by Microsoft. Feel free to post here with any additional information.

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Written By
CEO Synap
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Founder & CEO of Synap, an online education platform that uses machine learning to help people learn more in less time.

Software developer, main languages currently are Objective-C, MySQL and Javascript, though I got started on C++, C# and PHP.

Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralMy vote of 1 Pin
snortle13-Feb-11 7:32
snortle13-Feb-11 7:32 
GeneralMy vote of 1 Pin
Aric Wang31-Dec-09 19:35
Aric Wang31-Dec-09 19:35 
QuestionATi release DirectX 10 SDK ? Pin
Identity.Classified13-Feb-07 21:37
Identity.Classified13-Feb-07 21:37 
GeneralAh thank the stars no shader instruction limit! Pin
sirlyloin-mr13-Jun-06 13:39
sirlyloin-mr13-Jun-06 13:39 

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