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DirectX 11 game roadmap released

Robert Hallock October 12, 2009 1:27 PM ET in Tech

One day ahead of schedule, the industry’s timeline for DirectX 11 games and engines has leaked.

While two MMOs overhauling their engines to support DX11 is impressive, the skeptic in us doesn’t find the list terribly earth-shattering. Some of these titles were already announced with the Radeon HD 5870, while the remainder belong to franchises which have received little notoriety compared to other titles in their genre.

dx11_titles

5 titles before March, 1 title in 2010, and 5 engines in 2010.

The CryEngine 3 engine (the followup to what’s used in Crysis), will be joined by four other completed DirectX 11 engines throughout 2010. This more or less indicates that 2011 will be the year when the trickle turns to a flood.

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16 Comments:

  1. Cliff_Forster
    Keepin it real
    12 Oct '09, 2:03 pm

    A new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. title, Drit 2 and especially Aliens vs. Predator, how can a PC gamer not be excited by at least one of those if not all three?

  2. Buddy J
    Dept. of Propaganda
    12 Oct '09, 2:12 pm

    Well, it's easy Cliff. You just have to ask yourself "Are any of these titles Gran Turismo?" and when you see the answer is "NO!" you go back to a state of apathy.

  3. Robert Hallock
    Cad
    12 Oct '09, 2:14 pm

    ^ This. Times a thousand.

  4. Butters
    Phat Rat
    12 Oct '09, 2:17 pm

    As much as I want to play a DX11 title as the next guy, early adoption and the premium associated with it isn't justified for me. I'm still looking foward to titles that are still going to be released in dx9, unfortunately. 2011 = DX11, at least for me. Ya'll have fun upgrading for Aliens Vs. Predator.

  5. Cliff_Forster
    Keepin it real
    12 Oct '09, 2:21 pm
    Quoting Buddy J

    Well, it's easy Cliff. You just have to ask yourself "Are any of these titles Gran Turismo?" and when you see the answer is "NO!" you go back to a state of apathy.

    See, Gran Turismo is not an example that appeals to me because I just don't find it to be any fun, too much like work. I acknowledge that allot of people love it, but I just don't care for it. I don't want to obtain a license, I just want to drive fast and crash right now.

    Dirt 2 is more my style. I love the original Dirt, I think its one of the finest racers ever made.

    So, what you are saying is DX11 wont do much to excite you until Half Life 3? Kinda makes me think of Snark's article.

  6. Robert Hallock
    Cad
    12 Oct '09, 2:24 pm

    It's not a good racer, it's just approachable.

  7. mirage
    Veteran Icrontian
    12 Oct '09, 5:34 pm

    None of the games we plan to buy until the end of this year seems to be using DX11. I am glad that our DX10 cards will support all of the eye candy for now. COD-MW2 will be the most anticipated release of this year, I guess.

  8. mertesn
    Icrontic Duke of Haxor
    12 Oct '09, 6:44 pm
    Quoting Cliff_Forster

    So, what you are saying is DX11 wont do much to excite you until Half Life 3? Kinda makes me think of Snark's article.

    The article doesn't relate to this topic at all. What was said was that the listed games didn't appeal to the OP. It's got nothing to do with desensitization. It has everything to do with wanting (or not wanting) to play a particular game.

    If the technology isn't supported by the games I want to play, I'm not concerned by it. Doesn't mean I don't think the technology is cool.
    I don't get excited about a game because it supports MagicWidget 35.2. I get excited about a game because said game is one I'm interested in playing.

    Quoting Cliff_Forster

    A new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. title, Drit 2 and especially Aliens vs. Predator, how can a PC gamer not be excited by at least one of those if not all three?

    None of these excite me. Bioshock 2 and Half-Life 2 Ep 3 are the ones I'm looking forward to. There may be some others. But like I said, if they support DX11, then great. If not, it doesn't make a difference. I prefer a good game to good graphics.

  9. Robert Hallock
    Cad
    12 Oct '09, 6:59 pm

    It doesn't even have anything to do with my opinion. The predecessors for those games had low critical reception and/or were wildly outsold by competitors in the genre.

  10. mirage
    Veteran Icrontian
    12 Oct '09, 7:29 pm

    The following link nicely demonstrates (especially tesselation) what DX11 has to offer over DX10. I like what I see.
    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...eenshots/News/

  11. ardichoke
    King Banana Spanner
    12 Oct '09, 9:03 pm

    STALKER is the only title in there that I'd even be mildly interested in. I heard good things about Shadow of Chernobyl but I never got around to buying and playing it. I have the feeling I'll be too busy with L4D2 (and moving) to give a rip about it anyway.

  12. Cliff_Forster
    Keepin it real
    12 Oct '09, 10:08 pm

    A low critical reception??

    Fact check!

    The original Dirt for PC has a metacritic score of 8.4, solid at least.

    GameSpot says - "As a graphical showpiece, DiRT is an unbridled success. It also happens to be an entirely enjoyable rally racer."

    Not a critical flop.

    S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has a metacritic of 82. Per Yahoo games "Its setting is superb, its gameplay tense and convincing, and it boasts what are definitely the best fill-your-pants moments in a PC game for quite some time. It's hard to see how it could have turned out better."

    Not a critical flop.

    Aliens vs. Predator. I'm not even going to give a history lesson here. If you were playing first person action games in 1999 you know its follow up is a big deal. The original is a modern classic.

    So where is the low critical reception?

    These are three follow ups to be excited about.

  13. Robert Hallock
    Cad
    12 Oct '09, 10:16 pm
    and/or
  14. Zuntar
    Modder extraordinaire
    13 Oct '09, 7:14 am

    I believe patience will be the best virtue here.

  15. Cliff_Forster
    Keepin it real
    13 Oct '09, 10:21 am

    My Radeon 5870 arrived today, so I will let you all know when I am enjoying those titles as they were fully intended.

  16. chizow
    Icrontic Regular
    13 Oct '09, 5:39 pm

    I'd agree the launch titles are a bit underwhelming, but overall I'm excited about DX11's adoption rate compared to DX10. Of course much of this success will hinge on Win 7's acceptance and adoption rates, as any momentum will be welcome in convincing devs to add new features to an ever-increasing percentage of console ports.

    Most DX11 features are actually available in DX10 and DX10.1, DX11 will just make programming these additional features easier by providing a single modular codepath (instead of the dual code paths in the DX9/DX10 era). The only major distinction here for DX11 is hardware tesselation (not compatible with ATI's DX10.1 implementation) and slightly upgraded shader/compute models, but for the biggest advantages of DX11 implementation should effect down-level DX10 hardware as well.

    Here's a quick list of DX10/11 innovations that I'm excited about:

    1. Multi-threading improvements built into the API. Combined with efforts to improve driver threading performance, CPU limitations may be less of an issue with DX11, provided Devs make use of the improvements.
    2. Direct Compute. This opens the door for offloading of math intensive functions to the GPU, like physics. Think co-processing like back in the 80386/80387 days.
    3. Better AA performance. This was actually available in DX10 and DX10.1, where you could read the multisample depth buffer and thus save bandwidth and clock cycles when sampling Z values. DX10.1 also offered a "Gather" function that allowed 4 color samples with a single call function.
    4. Tesselation. I know some people are pretty excited about this, I'm not simply because of existing high poly counts in games. The only compelling example of Tesselation I've seen so far is displacement mapping with tesselation, which undoubtedly looks better than the texture mapping techniques like normal, bump, parallax occlusion etc used currently. Here's a pretty good comparison of the mostly underwhelming impact of tesselation: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,696171/DirectX-11-Tessellation-in-Stalker-CoP-Dirt-2-Unigine-and-Alien-vs-Predator/News/

    That's all I can think of off-hand....again not a huge benefit from the additional features. I think the biggest gain will just come from its widespread adoption, which will essentially give us the DX10 features in a wide variety of games that we never really got due to Vista's limited acceptance and adoption rates.

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