It's my understanding that FPSCR is running under Directx9.
An upgrade to DirectX11 would be great for performance and graphic capabilities.
With Windows 10 even DirectX12 will be published.

As FPSCR still have a long time before its official release, I think it will feel quite old. Still running on old DirectX9.
Most games nowdays running DirectX11. With DirectX11 you also can write shaders with support for PBR.

Just so whe are clear here, do you know exactly what DirectX is? I don't intend to insult you in any way, but I often had this discussions with people who didn't know what it is, and just wanted the latest, most shiny thing in the engine.

FPSCR will (unless something is going on that I am not aware of) keep running under DirectX9. So does every XBox360 Game. You think you will manage to do a better job than your regular XBox360 Game? Congratulations, you shouldn't be using FPSCR then.

Sorry to sound dismissive, but this has been talked to death.



-Wolf

Lee had once talked about this on his blog (wayyyy back). I don't think it will be shifting to a different version of directx any time soon. Only if it becomes absolutely critical to do so.

I am sure Lee hasn't ruled out updating Reloaded to DX11 at some point while still supporting DX9 for cards that do not support anything higher. Although visually there isn't a whole lot I can see gained in DX11 that couldn't be replicated in DX9, it would still be a forward-thinking move for the engine. In the past I know Lee has blogged about various features etc. that are DX11-based so could not be used in Reloaded without substantial work, such as a deferred lighting model to allegedly support thousands of lights with no performance hit. Since Windows XP is no longer relevant to support, all other OSes support DX11 but of course many slightly older graphics cards do not. I know Lee hinted this would take months of work so is definitely not something that would be done before V1.0 is out the door and fully functional in DX9.

You can do PBR shaders in directx 9 just fine.



In fact, if you were so inclined, you could change the lighting model in Reloaded's shaders to use a PBR based lighting model like Cook Torrence/GGX type lighting model. You'd have to tweak all the textures to account for this different type of lighting model, but it's something that could be done today if a person wanted to. You don't need dx11 for this.

It's always refreshing posting anything that may be perceived as criticism by some



Of course, why would anyone be interested in a newer version of DirectX that have better support for multicore processors, better shading and texturing techniques, tessellation (see attached picture for comparison), smoother 3D animation and more realistic and nuanced graphics?
Sorry, I must be totally stupid.

Concering Xbox360, the 360-games do not run on a clean Direct9. It's rather a DirectX9,5. A mix of DirectX9 and 10.
Xbox360 has hardware from 2005 (with some upgrades) - that's almost 10 years now. Just saying...
Most PC games look better than it's 360 counterparts, even 6 years ago.


If that's true - why has it not been done? Didn't you, bond1, write the shaders for FPSCR?

Wolf want to ask Not: do you know what it can do?
There is a difference for me!

I know what kind of usefull things we could get with directX 11, but here is the problem. Do you know why the indie scene is grown so much for the last 5 years? Because the games were inovative and not shiny!(or you say minecraft, slender and so on are beautiful) So create a good game und you will sell a lot no matter how it looks. Create a beautiful game with stupid game play and you end like crytec. And there you don´t wanna be!

Have a nice day

Corno_1

Corno_1, games can be both inovative and shiny

@Steohl72:

I take it that your interpretation of my post is that I am blindly defending FPSCR... for some reason
but I'm not, I just wanted t

I'll just add my 2 cents. DX11 was the current standard at the time Reloaded started development. In fact, DX11 has been around already for 5 years. So, naturally, there is no reason whatsoever to start engineering a new shiny game engine using DX9 instead of the current DX11. It's just as simple as that.

[EDIT]THis one was meant towards wolf...[/EDIT]







Been there. Done that







Still there during every single Steam Update on Into the Dark.







No, the Indie standard is Unity. And there are people out there (including you, although I always swear to kill you when you cancel another one of your stunning creations before we can play it) who beat 90% of all unity indoor scenes in FPSC classic. As of today, there are definately many elements where FPSC-Reloaded already beats Unity, and it has some potential to be in key elements at least on par with Unreal 4.X (not the DirectX-related GFX shinyness, but usability, prototyping speed, LUA (!!!!) support...).



Otherwise you nailed pretty good why DX9 is not the limitation for any of us here (yes, including me and all my team members). However, you forgot to mention that tesselation is fricking cool...

Or it could be that there simply haven't been as many big PC games released, or when they are, they are console conversions and almost never work as well.

I look at Steam, and see some of the games being released these days.. So much rubbish. There are some good Indie games as well, but many are just badly drawn, 'Retro Style' games, that are retro only in the fact they are badly drawn. I'm not sure which games you think are innovative as such, but I haven't seen that many myself. I've seen decent games, based on old games but nothing really new.

I would have thought TGC might have opted for the latest openGL myself to avoid O/S issues entirely and open up the possibility of other platforms. Still, we certainly have seen a lot of work put into adding things that aren't supported out the box with DX9, and as yet, still to see any of it filter into the actual product. So using DX10 and above may have been a wiser option for dev speed. I can of course see why TGC did not jump at using DX10 considering FPSCX10's sales. Though, they did jump in a wee bit too early there me thinks. It's odd they didn't think why not update the X10 version now that Vista/Win 7 have been around for a lot longer.

The main issue with using DX9 compared to newer ones is that modern hardware actually runs better with DX11. Tessellation being an example. Seeing as a lot of performance is being lost due to the terrain, we would see better results if tessellation was supported. That isn't going to happen in dx9 as far as I can see. Perhaps it can be done, I am not qualified to say, but even if it were, again would need a lot of time and work to reinvent the wheel.

I also think there is not much chance of it changing any time soon now, it has gone too far along. Lee has said himself he will look at updating to DX11 later down the line, but only when the x9 version is complete. As long as I can get smooth action and acceptable looking visuals I am happy either way.

It HAS been done. Off the top of my head a couple games that did PBR in dx9: Velvet Assassin and Remember Me. The ShaderX6 book details how it was done in Velvet Assassin.



PBR is nothing more than a set of shader instructions usually based on the Cook-Torrence BRDF lighting model. It doesn't know if you're using dx9, dx11, or opengl as long as the syntax is correct.



Yes, I did write some of the original Reloaded shaders. PBR was (and still is) very new, and even AAA artists are still learning the ins and outs of it. It also requires more shader instructions than a simple Blinn lighting model, so count the low end users out. I've mentioned it before, but the weapon shader DOES have "sprinklings" of PBR - gamma correction, energy conservation, image based lighting. Swap in a Cook Torrence lighting model, with GGX specularity and you're all set.



Not to toot my own horn, but I've actually done this very thing with FPSC classic as my own personal pet project. I have a fast GPU so I don't care about catering to the low end. Also keep in mind that PBR uses a different texture set than your standard diffuse/normal/specularity. You can't just swap in a different shader and get instant awesome results. Putting in a PBR based shader system into Reloaded at this point would make every model on the TGC Store useless.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html

a link explaining tessellation bump mapping and so on. worth a check if new to this or if merely interested if you were right

I'm glad your here in this thread bond1... you have have videos in FPSC-Classic from years ago that look better than even some Unity games of today. For instance here is a video from half a decade ago in x9, for those that haven't seen it:







A shame that we were so limited in terms of memory to really create something big enough to show it off. That seemed to be the primary set-back for FPSC at the time.

Well, unless I haven´t said it before - thanks bond for your great work over the years, opened many doors for us.

I would be willing to generate new maps. Most of my new stuff I am already combining a gloss map and a specular map together to give a better sense of what material it could be. The off set of the two blended together gives a great result with the current shaders. Now modifying those shaders to PBR, imagine the possibilities. Looks like I have some more reading to do.

And thanks Mark for the info. You are a wealth of knowledge.

Perhaps the original FPSC could be updated to use the same flag Reloaded 1.9 uses to get full 4 gig memory? I must admit, that would seriously improve the original. The memory limit is the main restriction with it these days, as it ran like butter last time I tried it. From reading the blogs Lee only found out this info very recently, so FPSC could potentially have a huge boost if it could be applied to it also. Pity about fpi though, if it used Lua, I would be using it now lol, while waiting for Reloaded to get updated.

Great idea, DVader! Just a couple tweaks could breathe new life into Classic. Hell, just the memory tweak would be huge, let alone LUA integration.

That's impressive stuff for x9...... If Reloaded looked like that I would be pretty happy

I wish!

Wow, I just found myself watching many of the bond1 videos of Classic. I did not follow FPSC Classic, but definitely remember the Metro Theater as jaw-dropping at the time and even now it is just as impressive (is there an EXE download somewhere so I could walk through it myself?)! From an outsider perspective, with no personal experience with Classic or any of its nuances, I have to admit graphically it seems much richer than Reloaded is currently. Perhaps it is simply that we do not have interior support whereas Classic was all about interiors, so for two years now we've just gotten exterior scenes from Reloaded with no proper indoor lighting support yet. And of course it took Classic years to reach such a level as well--I just wish Reloaded was more 'popping' visually like some of the videos I've seen of Classic and even the original X10 demo.

Well...it appears that the OP does not reply to my post and me trying to prevent the discussion didn't work either, but its nice to see that everyone is a little more reflected on the whole direct X thingie.



@Ertlov:



Unity is the most approachable but still huge! (altough I deeply despise everything about it ) Thanks a lot! This means something coming from someone who knows the biz! Altough this might sound like a cop out , I guess I had to cancel most of my projects due to the way FPSC handled its memory rather than my own incompetence. As an artist (in a wierd, digital way) its never been a pleasure either... the only hope I have where I need FPSCR to be different is this exact thing...memory.



Speed is key! Not just prototyping but in general. Ease of use and speed aswell as possibilities are what makes reloaded great. If we have access to the full range of DX9 aswell, that would just make it better! I believe the cliché of the basment dwelling gamemaker is fading in public conciousness due to the "hippness" of indie games but its still true that those of us who want to make games as some minor weekday-evening hobby don't have the decade to make a game in unreal-engine.







It was the vitamin injection that kept it going before the cancerous memorycap killed it.





... altough making a displacment map is not. So I guess that evens it out.



@Pirate Myke: Nice to see that you are ambitious enough to try it. Altough I assume that 99% of us would be incapable of doing proper texture maps for this technique as it is ... really really new. Again, I suspect that Steohl never worked with it and just demands some state of the art technique without knowing what it'd require. Sure, it would be neat...but deeply unnecessary.



@DVader I think whe should let Lee and company focus on making reloaded everything that made classic great ...and more!



@Bond1: Thanks for the insight!







again... I don't think he knows what Direct X is. ...or how PBR works.

However, any 3D artist, and whe have many ambitious people on these boards, who'd like to know more about it may take this link over to the marmoset-people. (I recommend their software too... using it for almost half a decade now! Very recommendable)







Very important. PBR is not an "instant awesome" button like cranking up the settings in a videogame...it would be hard work to adapt to it and I doubt the OP has sufficent texturing knowledge to even work with the features he'd like to have.



Besides, Bond1, I've been reading an article recently that tesselation would be possible in X9 but I haven't found any examples of it in use. Any insight on that?







True. Dimoxinil, Bugsy, Astek, Getsfile, Rolfy, Lewis (forgot his nickname) and many more artists kept developing visually superior titles often due to bond1s improvments. Spyra visually depends on his shaders.

@xCept



Mostly because it had lightmapping. You can PM me, and I could send you a list of visually impressive Classic games. Anyone else can do so too.







-Wolf

It's software at the end of the day, most things should be interchangeable. Microsoft only went to DX10 for the money. Remember the day when the O/S had nothing to do with the version of direct x you had? Better times. Not sure who come up with the great idea in the first place, but whoever it is, they deserve a kick up the rear end. I rushed out to buy Vista for DX10, not. Still think it is idiotic tying Direct X in with O/S version. For me it should be purely down to your hardware, the O/S should make no odds.

Regarding FPSC Classic, I was more thinking users looking into it, rather than Lee, seeing as it's source code was released. I'm sure it must be a fairly quick fix, it's only a flag after all. If not, I'm sure it would take Lee all of 5 minutes one weekend. Still, as you say, probably unlikely as it may take interest away from Reloaded ;p

The larger memory flag you are talking about is not in the FPSC code.
Its a Visual studio flag for building DLLs. Lee is using a custom version of the DBPro DLLs.
Since the DBPro source code is open source you could rebuild all the DBPro DLLs for "LARGEADDRESSAWARE".
Then rebuild the original FPSC code with those DLLs and theoretically it would be able to handle larger memory address.
This would only make a difference if you are running FPSC on a 64 bit version of windows, which most people were not using
way back when.

The most ironic part of it all ? Great visuals, shaders, blah blah, and what else that goes with it...means diddly squat, if you don't have a level to boot with it, Great visuals, go hand in hand with great models, no version of DX will make a 4x4 brick room look any better than a previous version, granted a proper bump map and texture would make a world of difference.



FPSC employed the lego block mentality and it paid dearly for it, you ended up 99% of the time with a symmetrical level, flat floors, flat roofs ect, no amount of DX wizardry will fix that.By the looks of vids I have seen on youtube some elements of reloaded still seem to employ that 4 x4 block mentality and symmetrical design.



When the reloaded thread first popped up asking what u would like to see, my first and foremost wish was to spend more time in reloaded than in my 3D editor creating content to avoid using and getting the same symmetrical dribble, guess what I am still spending more time in my 3d editor to avoid using the symmetrical dribble.



Harsh ? Perhaps, address the fundamental, then look at visuals.Seriously all reloaded needs to add is boolean ops and primitive creation, and in house texture painting and uvmap adjustments on a per face basis.