[Techradar] The forgotten API: just what is going on with DX12?

[happy medium]

Why don’t developers love DX12?


"18 months on from the launch of Windows 10 the reality is that there are only 16 titles with DX12 support and a couple more in the pipeline.

Which begs the obvious questions: why don’t developers love DX12, and is this becoming a significant issue?"

'
"The generally agreed number of Windows machines in use is about 1.25 billion. And, based on figures released by StatCounter in December 2016, 40.23% of those run Windows 7, 27.15% Windows 10 and 8.43% Windows 8.1.

That’s roughly equates to 340 million potentially DX12 capable OS installs compared with 637 million of DX11 users. "

http://www.techradar.com/news/the-forgotten-api-just-what-is-going-on-with-dx12



Added source to title

AT Moderator ElFenix

 

[Bacon1]

Because all of those buisness PCs are secretly gaming ones??

Steam stats have Windows 10 > 50% install base. They even mention that in the article, so why are you using those quotes?

 

[bystander36]

I was hoping to see an article that explored all the possible reasons for it taking a while to take over. Anyway, I think the biggest thing they mentioned is simply a fact that has repeated every DX release in the past, which is that it takes time before it is worthwhile due to how many have a system that can take advantage of it. But they could have also explored how the performance is not currently improved in any real way, and has more stuttering issues. They also only had about 1 sentence mentioning the extra complexity of creating DX12 games. There is also the issue that developers will have to retrain to make use of the new API. There are surely other things I or they didn't mention as well.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I'm curious what factual basis the numbers have first of all. Right now, it's hard to have an opinion, because the numbers presented by OP and article have no real meaning. The adoption rate of Windows 10 has little to do with real effort behind DX12. We can see that when we see games still being released on DX9.

Secondly, I don't know what relevance the game releases have, because no other data was provided. Ok, 16 DX12 games in 18 months. What about the other APIs? DX11 was released in 2009 and it got hacked on patches to DX9 games for years. In fact, the first commercial native DX11 game was Civilization 5, which came out 1 year after DX11 released.

So I'm curious, when viewed from the standpoint of an advanced API that will take time for developers to learn and leverage (in an environment where money in king and re-hashing the same content for PCs as for consoles is the status quo), what exactly seems slow about the DX12 adoption rate? I'd need more data to know.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

Nothing is going on with DX12 ...

Some games were too late in the development cycle to adopt DX12. Practically every big PC game publisher aside from Activision has already created a DX12 game ...

There's going to be more reasons this time around to not ignore DX12 when there's going to be a new shader compiler along with new extensions too such as multiview rendering ...

 

[Spjut]

DX12 being tied to Windows 10 was always going to limit its adoption rate. As long as Windows 7 has a significant chunk of the market, no one is going to make a game that needs DX12.

I think the bigger question is why Vulkan has gotten so little love yet. It supports the same graphics cards as DX12 does (and many new games don't even officially support Fermi and HD 6000 series anymore anyway) and works on Windows 7 too.

 

[crisium]

I'm not convinced by that article. We need something to compare it to.

Well, the article does deliver with a quote by AMD:

“DirectX 12 has in fact benefited from a very rapid take off. Faster than DX10, faster than DX9, indeed it has the fastest take off in terms of titles per year than any previous version of DirectX with the possible exception of DirectX 11."

But also caveats:
"...a game which is not really limited by GPU horsepower, and which isn’t bottlenecked by just one CPU thread isn’t usually going to gain much from moving to DirectX 12.
In those cases DirectX 11 or DirectX 9 likely represents a perfectly acceptable way to design titles. But titles which are highly graphically ambitious almost invariably benefit from DirectX 12."

So how is it forgotten? Unless that quote is a lie or exaggeration, it looks like non-AAA graphical games are not 'forgetting' DX12, there's just not a need for it so they are deliberately not choosing it. And AAA graphical games are doing anything but 'forgetting' DX12, as the adoption rate for AAA is up there with the best of any version of DX.

BTW, include the source website in your title.

 

[Madpacket]

Complex game development and new tool creation takes a long time, a lot of money and much effort. I think that's all that's really going on here. DX12 will become the standard, just not as fast as we enthusiasts want it be.

 

[mohit9206]

Give it another 2 years. Most games have a development period of 3-4 years. So in the next 1 to 2 yrs, there will be many more DX12 games on the market.

 

[Rifter]

Unity has supported DX12 since version 5.4

There were several dozen unity engine based games released last year, im thinking there is more than 16 games that support DX12 out there.

 

[Yakk]

Yup the DX12 adoption rate I believe is the fastest seen in a long time.

 

[ElFenix]

Which begs the obvious questions: why don’t developers love DX12, and is this becoming a significant issue?"

that's not begging the question.

 

[Elixer]

Awww, you mean they can't snap their fingers, and integrate the API just like that?

Shocking!!!

As was stated, it takes time to design the engine to take full advantage of DX 12 (or vulkan for that matter).
We do know that all new engines WILL use DX12 (or vulkan), since it does offer a huge performance benefit that most devs want.

Such a lame attempt at click-bait.

 

[tamz_msc]

Nearly all DX12 implementations at the moment are quite spotty, often with very noticeable frame time variances, which makes me think, do Microsoft-published games like GOW4, GOW Remastered, Forza 6 and Forza Horizon 3 have the same issues as the other games which also work with DX11?

 

[nathanddrews]

DX12 seems capable enough as is, but so what? It's restricted to Windows 10 and not all available GPUs on the market fully support all the features yet. Naturally it won't be used for every game quite yet. It's gonna take a few years.

I'd like to see Vulkan become the de facto lead API for the next generation of games, but that is unlikely given Microsoft's ambitions.

 

[tamz_msc]

Vulkan will take time to achieve the same levels of adoption as DX12 as there are simply not enough developers who develop primarily for OpenGL. I know Vulkan does not have backwards-compatibility with OpenGL, even so the experience will count in making the transition to the newer API. It is no surprise then that only id Software has been able to make most out of it at present.

I see Vulkan gaining prominence in the mobile space where Microsoft has virtually zero presence.

 

[Paul98]

Because it is new, because it takes time to implement

 

[happy medium]

that's not begging the question.

what does this mean?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

what does this mean?

I believe he is referring to http://begthequestion.info/

 

[happy medium]

I believe he is referring to http://begthequestion.info/

Why did he quote me?

I quoted the article. In fact I think everything is in quotes from the article in my OP.

Edit:
Is he attacking the article? That's what I'm getting at.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Why did he quote me?

I quoted the article. In fact I think everything is in quotes from the article in my OP.

Edit:
Is he attacking the article? That's what I'm getting at.

Well your post is the thing that would be quoted to make a comment about it. Assuming the best in people, I'd say it was directed to whomever wrote the article.

 

[happy medium]

Well your post is the thing that would be quoted to make a comment about it. Assuming the best in people, I'd say it was directed to whomever wrote the article.

we call that thread crapping .

 

[ElFenix]

Why did he quote me?

because it's in your post. you can highlight text and get a quote button with the new forum software.

I quoted the article. In fact I think everything is in quotes from the article in my OP.

Edit:
Is he attacking the article? That's what I'm getting at.

uh, yeah.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I see Vulkan gaining prominence in the mobile space where Microsoft has virtually zero presence.

Bingo. Vulkan will see the most traction on Android.

 

[happy medium]

because it's in your post. you can highlight text and get a quote button with the new forum software.


uh, yeah.

SO you jump into a thread, change the title as a mod, throw in a 4 word half sentence, and post nothing to challenge the article or any link either.
Seems like you want to use your mod powers to change a title of a thread and then derail a thread rather than debate the context with something usefull..
Good job and thanks.



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