AMD has recently released two DirectX 11 technical demos that are designed to run on the firm’s lineup of Radeon HD 5000-series GPUs. The new demos highlight features made possible by the advent of DirectX 11.

Ladybug demo

The Ladybug demo shows how DirectX 11’s Direct Compute architecture, which standardizes and facilitates GPU processing, can be used to simulate lens-accurate depth of field. Depth of field is a cinematography technique used to draw the draw the viewer’s eye, or to enhance emotion, by unfocusing unimportant scene elements. The specific technique used in this demo is called “lens-accurate” because it perfectly imitates the dynamics of a traditional camera lens.

Notice that blur increases as a function of distance from the virtual lens.

If you decide to try either of the two demos, Ladybug is certainly the more impressive of the two. We’ve had some time to play with and observe the demo on a large display, and trust us when we say it looks outstanding.

Mecha demo

The Mecha demo illustrates a DirectX 11 technique called “Order independent transparency.” OIT is a function which sorts the various elements of a transparent 3D object into the right order, with respect to the camera. This prevents the video card from displaying an object with elements that are ambiguously placed on the Z-axis, such as with the ghost at right. Notice that it is not absolutely possible to determine if the ghost’s arm is in front of or behind the body.

A transparent 3D object rendered with OIT, however, does not suffer from this problem. It is easy to see what elements are closer to the camera, and what elements are farther away.

OIT is only possible with any speed on DirectX 11-based architecture. Developers are capable of programmatically simulating the effect on modern DirectX 10(.1) architecture, but it is simply too slow to be useful. This has caused developers to simply avoid layered transparencies, such as viewing a glass on a table through a window, or to go ahead despite the consequences.

With OIT, there is no confusion over where elements of this transparent object are positioned relative to the camera.

Requirements

Users interested in running these two demos must meet the following requirements:

• Windows 7
• Dual or quad core CPU
• 2GB RAM
• Radeon HD 5000-series GPU
• Catalyst v9.9 or better