Just wondering... I'm not in any major rush for it or anything but I figure a big difference between LFS and games like GTR/GTL, to the prospective buyer, is the quality of the graphics, but I've never heard anyone talking about a timeframe for implementing DX9. Is it in the pipe?

LFS would look nice with DX9 graphics, although I fear having them may lose one of LFS's pluses, that being the reletivly light system requirements.
DX9 graphics require some fairly hefty sys req's to get good FPS.

Dan,

What would be the plus-side of DX-9 graphics? We got all the cool shader-stuff since 8.0 anyway, if I remember correctly.

Vain

Scawen is probably very busy with the physics so i doubt we'll see any major gfx updates, such as the use of dx9.

System reqs would not change, since DirectX 9.0 effects could be easily turned off. There is difference between 8.0 and 9.0 in definition - 9.0 is supprort for Shaders 2.0 and 3.0. DX 8.0 is usage of 1.0 shaders. As far as I know.

However I would very likely see effects like Paralax Lightning, Depth smooth and some motion blur. They are quite easy to implement.

I think Scawen would prolly figure out a way for LFS to run better in Dx9 vs rFactor in DX9. For as many resources that rFactor demands in DX9, the graphics don't seem to be what one would expect after all that processing. I say devs work on refining the physics first. Besides, DX10 is just around the corner with Windows Vista.

I see.
Though I never understood the difference between the shader model 1.0 and the others. Speed doesn't seem to be an issue and all the reflections and stuff can be done with the first shader model.
At least that is my experience from looking into the code for 1.0-shader-effects. But I'll be happy if someone helps me here, I'm not a DX-wizzard, I prefer openGL. (Yay for platform independent software!)

Vain

Nevermind, don't want to give anymore people are excuse to bash another sim

The main difference between the DX8/9 and DX7 screenshots is bumpmapping, which looks strange on normal tarmac. The difference between DX8 and DX9 is antialiasing (see inner side of rear window), higher resolution bumpmaps and an extra gloss-reflection-texture. No technology-change. You could do the DX-9 screenie in DX-8.

Vain

GTL is using an outdated and crap engine, you cant really compare this...
When using DX 9, you can add loada more nice shader stuff and awesome effects, but it would suck if 90% of all current LFS racers were no longer able to play this game with more than 5 fps

DX9, or even directly 10 in the next big step, will come with S3 imo.

And you can't just switch from DX8 to 9, things are not THAT easy :P


Google for ATI Toyshop and you'll see what DX9 is capable of.. it's a HUGE difference to DX8

You can switch from DX8 to DX9 in about 5 minutes + one compile.
DX is (nearly) completely backwards-compatible. You could recompile '98 DX-6 games with DX9.

Vain

Yes, but it will not really look different then, so it makes no sense

You could turn off the new DX9 effects so people with older computers could run LFS smooth. But I think that people with new computers could beneficiate of the new generations of DX.

Anyway I dont expect this till S3

The question is... can you run a DX9 engine with a DX8 card, or does this require special modes like in hl2 for example?
I mean... can a DX8 card play a DX9 game then no DX9 effects are used?
Never thought about that

Quote from ORION :

Google for ATI Toyshop and you'll see what DX9 is capable of.. it's a HUGE difference to DX8

wow. It's not quite photo-realistic but it's a hell of the way to getting there.

As long as we dont have raytracing, we will still be faaaaar away from realism :]

@Orion:
Yes, you can use your old DX 7 card like Geforce1 to play more modern games, DX 9 for example. But, of course, only the DX-7 features will be hardware-accelerated.
So: Yes, DX is backwards compatible.

Oh, and openRT is ready for downloading. We just need someone to make an raytracing-GPU .

Vain