Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing • Hacker News Board

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#221

Post by oneplane » Tue, Mar 20, 2018, 11:44 PM UTC

DoveBrown wrote: post #207

oneplane wrote: post #110

That's great.. if you are on Windows. I get that Microsoft works on Microsoft-technology, but it really doesn't help adoption or global development as a whole. DirectX doesn't work anywhere except Windows PC's and the Xbox. That's no biggie for Microsoft, but it's bad for everyone else.

There is a value to having competition. My guess that if it works out and Nvidia and AMD have it implemented on silicon, then they will push to have those features accessible through a Vulkan interface. I love open standards as much as the next guy but for something like this where the utility is still an open question, I'd rather than some just makes an implementation for just their technology. The alternative is th…

Yes to competition, but this isn't really that, this is plain vendor lock-in, and it is not really competing anywhere except within the Windows ecosystem itself, where it practically has a monopoly.

If DirectX were to be used on Linux and macOS, you'd have some real competition, but that is not the case.

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#222

Post by headsoup » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 12:22 AM UTC

romanovcode wrote: post #185

swebs wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Stack Overflow developer survey, the percent of developers using Windows dropped below 50%. Nobody actually likes using Windows (except for a few Stockholm syndrome sufferers and zealots who drink the MSDN kool-aid), it's just that people are forced to use it due to third-party application support like video games. It seems like every week there's a new article on how Windows 10 is shit for users, wh…

> the percent of developers using Windows dropped below 50%. Yeah, not sure how is this relevant. Developers are not your average CoD, LoL, WoW etc.. players. I'm not trying to defend anything as I don't even use Windows myself, it's just that from a business point of view making sure DX and "gaming" in general is locked to Windows makes absolutely 100% sense as again - most gamers do not care if they have to use Win…

This is exactly the problem. Gamers are paying for Windows, just to play games, because the free options aren't usable, because of DX.

They're not choosing Windows because it does X or Y better or because it's a consciously preferred choice, they're choosing it because it's the option they get by default and because it keeps being reinforced through support of proprietary systems like DX.

Though only anecdotes, I sure do see a lot of comments around people willing to support/use Linux if not for lack of games/particular apps. As you state, gamers don't care what OS they use as long as it works. And well, Linux is free and works, it's just not well enough supported because of the chicken and egg of no market size vs no products available so no market size. I.e. if AAA games were developed with full Linux support, gamers wouldn't care if you gave them Linux as default instead, would they?

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#223

Post by headsoup » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 12:36 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #194

swebs wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Stack Overflow developer survey, the percent of developers using Windows dropped below 50%. Nobody actually likes using Windows (except for a few Stockholm syndrome sufferers and zealots who drink the MSDN kool-aid), it's just that people are forced to use it due to third-party application support like video games. It seems like every week there's a new article on how Windows 10 is shit for users, wh…

Sorry to disappoint you, but as developer with Stockholm syndrome that left Linux back for Visual Studio, C++ and .NET. Also former IGDA member and attendee of a few GDC conferences, game developers only care about shipping games and their IP. AAA studios don't care 1 second about APIs to make a better world. Adding a new rendering backend to a games engine is a trivial task, when compared to the pile of features a g…

You mean you left Linux for .Net. Visual Studio is just an IDE and C++ is cross-platform last I checked.

You appear to be speaking on behalf of all/Windows developers. Perhaps not 'most' think that way? What is your evidence other than your stated status and related anecdotes?

Why should we care what AAA studios care about? Should we be happy they've continued to push DX as default?

What do you do when DX doesn't provide what is needed for a game? Too bad? Fight with MS?

Overall, shouldn't we want gamers to enjoy the games being developed as widely as possible on a range of platforms? It's a little lazy to just fall back on the old catch-22 of 'no market' because 'no games' because 'no market...'

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#224

Post by Aardwolf » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 1:30 AM UTC

rasz wrote: post #114

Aardwolf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in AAA games of today with amazing graphics, I still see polygons in cylindrical, conical and round objects (I'm not talking about raytracing but regular rendering). Everything looks so realistic, but a well or bucket [1] or some other cylindrical object you encounter looks not round but faceted, breaking the suspension of disbelief. Raytracing may bring more roundness, but why not quadratic surfaces or some oth…

would you prefer world's greatest virtual concrete slab? https://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation-to...

No, there the extra polygons do nothing visually useful

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#225

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 8:54 AM UTC

headsoup wrote: post #223

pjmlp wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to disappoint you, but as developer with Stockholm syndrome that left Linux back for Visual Studio, C++ and .NET. Also former IGDA member and attendee of a few GDC conferences, game developers only care about shipping games and their IP. AAA studios don't care 1 second about APIs to make a better world. Adding a new rendering backend to a games engine is a trivial task, when compared to the pile of features a g…

You mean you left Linux for .Net. Visual Studio is just an IDE and C++ is cross-platform last I checked. You appear to be speaking on behalf of all/Windows developers. Perhaps not 'most' think that way? What is your evidence other than your stated status and related anecdotes? Why should we care what AAA studios care about? Should we be happy they've continued to push DX as default? What do you do when DX doesn't pro…

I am just yet another guy on the Internet, with personal anecdotes like everyone else.

It is easy find out how the industry actually thinks, and if I am just writing nonsense.

Go spend some time reading Gamasutra (all articles available online), Connections, MakingGames Magazine, or the free sessions and slides at GDC Vault.

If there is an university degree in game development nearby, attend their monthly meetings.

Then you can validate for yourself how is the games development culture and what is actually relevant.

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#226

Post by jlebrech » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:21 AM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #190

jlebrech wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one tricky thing to code is where you as the player look into a mirror, the trick usually is to create another exact replica of the room you're in and your player and use that like a skybox. but with this you could have all the particle effects work properly in the reflection.

> one tricky thing to code is where you as the player look into a mirror, the trick usually is to create another exact replica of the room you're in and your player and use that like a skybox. Actually mirrors can be easily implemented as a pre-render step, you just re-render the system from the right perspective, a virtual camera, and then paste that on the polygons that are acting as the mirror.

frame rates will drop as you look in the mirror no?

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#227

Post by DoveBrown » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 10:39 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #220

DoveBrown wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there is effort involved, but from my point of view it's a small one (a couple of man months on a project with 50+ coders). I'm going to have to make adjustments between the platforms because the hardware is different. Even on a DirectX PC, you can often have a lot of differences between the rendering scene for Nvidia, AMD and Integrated Intel gpus. Don't know exactly what issues Everspace had with the UE4, but…

> Part of the reason I left the games industry is that once you work at studio with an internal engine it is extremely frustrating to work on AAA games without the freedom to walk over to the engine programmer and get them to move the engine closer to what you need. Internal engines also on average are less cross platform. Simply because big publishers and shareholders don't want these very expenses that creep into d…

I disagree with the characterisation that internal engines are less cross platform because of lock-in, the big publishers don't care about lock-in. It's not part of the calculus in deciding whether to support a platform or not.

A port of a game is more than changing the low-level APIs used to control the hardware. It's the hardware of the platfrom the decides the complexity of producing the port.

Linux is a special case because it's the same hardware as a the Windows. Your market is people who want to play the game but aren't dual booting. Most of the issues with producing your port are going to come down to driver incompatibilities and the fact that every Linux system is set up a little bit differently (the reason Blizzard never released their native Linux WoW client[1]). It's not a big market and there are loads of edge cases.

For big publishers and AAA development, they're not looking to break even or make a small profit. They need to see multiples of return on their money or they aren't going to do it. Using a shim is cheap and doesn't hurt sales enough to matter to them.

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTA0NQ

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#228

Post by mikevin » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 12:14 PM UTC

audunw wrote: post #201

joosters wrote: post #26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXo0WdlELJk I'm pleased to see that the tech video includes spherical mirrors. As I understand it, all raytracing demos are obliged by universal law to include at least three reflective balls in any promotion of the technology. One day, someone will figure out a game where these super-shiny ball bearings are a critical part of the gameplay, and at that point, raytracing will finally ta…

Spheres are just a super simple and dead obvious way of showing that your rendering engine is able to do realistic reflections. In the demo, there are actually lots of much more subtle reflective surfaces that contribute to the realism of the scene. > .. critical part of the gameplay .. Strictly speaking, graphics hasn't been a critical part of gameplay for a long time. I think we've mostly gone beyond the point wher…

The exception being VR/AR

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#229

Post by bhouston » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 12:32 PM UTC

jlebrech wrote: post #226

bhouston wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one tricky thing to code is where you as the player look into a mirror, the trick usually is to create another exact replica of the room you're in and your player and use that like a skybox. Actually mirrors can be easily implemented as a pre-render step, you just re-render the system from the right perspective, a virtual camera, and then paste that on the polygons that are acting as the mirror.

frame rates will drop as you look in the mirror no?

It should sort of even out. Because in the area of the mirror there is very little first order scene - because it is just a simple polygon, there is just the second order scene. This is how mirrors have been done in video games for the two decades.

Example in Three.JS: https://threejs.org/examples/?q=mirror#webgl_mirror

Re: Announcing Microsoft DirectX Raytracing

#230

Post by shmerl » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 1:40 PM UTC

DoveBrown wrote: post #227

shmerl wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the reason I left the games industry is that once you work at studio with an internal engine it is extremely frustrating to work on AAA games without the freedom to walk over to the engine programmer and get them to move the engine closer to what you need. Internal engines also on average are less cross platform. Simply because big publishers and shareholders don't want these very expenses that creep into d…

I disagree with the characterisation that internal engines are less cross platform because of lock-in, the big publishers don't care about lock-in. It's not part of the calculus in deciding whether to support a platform or not. A port of a game is more than changing the low-level APIs used to control the hardware. It's the hardware of the platfrom the decides the complexity of producing the port. Linux is a special c…

I'm looking at publishers who do release Linux games using internal engines. Most of them use binary or source wrapping. Only a minority are implementing proper native rendering in those engines. And I bet it's based on cost considerations like I said above. How would you explain it otherwise?

And I'm sure that cost plays a role when small market is evaluated. The higher is the cost, the less likely such publisher is to care, because prospects of profits are also reduced. So it goes back to my point. Lock-in proponents like MS and Co. benefit from lock-in in slowing down competition growth.