Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone! =) Just that i was wondering if there were any news regarding directx 11 in game, since the searcher is not working (at least for me), is it going to be implemented? is directx 10 available? and if it is, how do i know if it is enabled? Thx for answering guys, have a nice day

They said a while back they would look into DX11 after launch.

Im waiting for DX11 and a 64bit client as well.

I still dont know why people ask about DX10, it came at a bad time right before DX11 came out so not many games used it and most skipped it for 11. DX10 is like Windows ME,.. no one cares. DX11 came out and had more goodies and better multi threaded support so it took over and DX10 is now kinda like vista and ME is…forgotten.

i was under the impression that gw2 didn’t need to run on dx. or im mistaken o.o

I can’t see what the big deal is about Directx 11. The game looks and runs great as it is. I’m not against Anet improving the appearance or performance of the game, but whether they use Directx 11 or not to do that seems irrelevant.

thats because you don’t really understand the backend improvements that DX11 could bring in terms of cpu utilisation and how it could improve gpu usage and framerates on lower end systems…..

Directx 11 increase performance quite a lot in video cards that can run it, it would pretty much for sure. If you have a relatively “new” video card, this one most likely is optimized to use directx 11 and it is supposed to work with it

direct3d11 hardware is not required to benefit from direct3d11’s performance improvements.

yes it is, it utilises direct compute components not available in older hardware.

how do you expect to use dx 11 with a dx 9 card?

aside from that no wonder the game performs so badly on modern gpu’s when so much of what they have isn’t being used.

thats right, modern gpus perform a lot better with directx 11

orlen.7810:

yes it is, it utilises direct compute components not available in older hardware.

No. Directcompute is rarely used in games, and is available with D3D10 hardware as well to some degree

how do you expect to use dx 11 with a dx 9 card?

by using D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL. Many of the performance improvements come from changes in the API itself (Multithreaded Display lists for instance)

aside from that no wonder the game performs so badly on modern gpu’s when so much of what they have isn’t being used.

With cpu power to spare, this game easily chews up a GPU

Many games have been tested on DX9 and DX11. If the card supports it the game runs a heck of a lot better on DX11.

I dont care to much about pretty features but the perfomance gain and a constant FPS are more important to me.

Cards that support DX11 run a lot better if using that mode.

Also again I will say…a 64 bit client will also make a performance difference and most computers today are running a 64 bit OS.

Both these features have already been proven in other games including MMO’s. Its just odd that both these were not included in a 2012 game that is supposed to be next gen like GW2.

Off topic but many game developers have stated taht upcoming titles will be 64bit only and many Devs are moving to DX11 only as well.

There is also a reason that AMD and Nvidia are launching all of their new gen model video cards now from cheap to top of the line almost all models of the 600 series nvidia and 7000 series amd are out now to offer consumers a choice. You can pick up a cheepo Gefoce 650 now for under 200 bucks.
All these cards support DX11.

So what effort is involve for Anet to switch to DX11? Is it a simple ‘flick of a switch’ or does the game or graphics engine have to be designed with DX11 in mind?

Doomy.9526:

So what effort is involve for Anet to switch to DX11? Is it a simple ‘flick of a switch’ or does the game or graphics engine have to be designed with DX11 in mind?

Is your answer.
If i am right (and correct me if i am wrong) DX is used to communicate to the hardware/software in your system. So right now the engine communicates in DX-xx and not DX-yy.

DirectX acts as a software layer to the driver, which does all the translations to machine code (gpu specific stuff)

It works like this:

Moving from DX9 to DX11 for a existing game is mainly a software optimization, with additional rendering features, which might be used by the game or not. The FPS increase on PC comes mainly from the reduced “drawcall” costs, which “probably” is also a issues in GW2, especially in WvW.

Modern GPU’s don’t run in a DX9/11 “mode” the driver basically abstracts all down to the hardware, so your GPU shader lighting code for a dx9 game is doing the exact same things than for a dx11 game, assuming the same HLSL shader. The difference is that the DX11 game can use additional commands that may improve FPS, the closest similarity would be going from MMX to SSE instructions.

As for 32bit vs 64bit, thats overrated from the FPS standpoint. The main reason is the 2GB 32bit RAM limit per process, so by going 64bit games don’t necessary need “good” memory management. If u have 4GB ram for your game, u can simply get away with “bad” memory code and memory leaks, which otherwise would crash the game over time.

If we check the features added to a 64bit CPU + OS, we mainly get more registers, which don’t impact game FPS greatly. The branch prediction and pipeline trashing costs or cache misses, play a much larger role in game code and those are the same for a 32bit OS using the same CPU.

The improvements some 64bit game releases see, are more a result of using a updated compiler or some additional code optimizations, unrelated to the actual 64bit recompile.

As for updating, going 64bit is relatively easy for none network games, often a simple recompile. The problem is that network code might need to-be adapted or reviewed.
Going DX11 from a DX9 engine, is quite more time consuming and often shadows/lighting is updated for the new DX11 code, which means the need to update/test shaders and the whole pipeline. Considering this amount of time, most DX9 games only go DX11 if they can “advertise” with those cool new features/improvements, so the work pays off with potential new buyers/subscribers.

perhaps they will look into DX11 when the MAC client will be finished .. it is still in BETA

It would be really nice if a member of arenanet answers the topic, at least to say ‘Hey! we haven’t forgotten this!’ or just to say they are working on it

64bit was never meant to be an FPS increase. It however is a performance stability and multi tasking increase.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

orlen.7810:

yes it is, it utilises direct compute components not available in older hardware.

No. Directcompute is rarely used in games, and is available with D3D10 hardware as well to some degree

how do you expect to use dx 11 with a dx 9 card?

by using D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL. Many of the performance improvements come from changes in the API itself (Multithreaded Display lists for instance)

aside from that no wonder the game performs so badly on modern gpu’s when so much of what they have isn’t being used.

With cpu power to spare, this game easily chews up a GPU

direct compute is used in most dx 11 games to increase performance, some use it more than others but most do use it’s feature set.

dx9 does not have dx 11 features, sure it can be patched to have some elements but not direct compute elements because those cards don’t have the hardware to do it.

as much as you are right you are also just as wrong, dx11 is as much about the hardware as it is about the software layer interface, without the hardware to support it you will not get the benifits of dx 11 features.

you also won’t get dx 11 features on vista/xp as the os doesn’t support those versions, just as windows 8 will have a dx update that windows 7 won’t support because it can’t.

look if you want to argue this go play crysis 2 dx 11 mode with a dx 9 only card i’ll eat 100 cute fluffy kittens if you can get that to work.

hell go play the original crysis and try to enable dx 10 on a dx 9 only card and i’ll eat another 100 cute fluffy kittens.

you will not get higher version dx features on dx9 or 10, and when dx 11.1 comes out at the end of the month dx 11 cards won’t get those feature sets either, there is a hardware standard that has to be implemented for those features to be enabled.

if direct compute which is a dx 11 feature only and partially dx 10 though was pointlessly bad to really mention worked with dx 9 hardware we wouldn’t need newer versions of graphics cards if it was so easy.

direct compute is used in most dx 11 games to increase performance, some use it more than others but most do use it’s feature set.

No it isn’t

dx9 does not have dx 11 features, sure it can be patched to have some elements but not direct compute elements because those cards don’t have the hardware to do it.

You’re completely missing the point.

as much as you are right you are also just as wrong, dx11 is as much about the hardware as it is about the software layer interface, without the hardware to support it you will not get the benifits of dx 11 features.

No. The only real changes that D3D11 brought were HDR compression formats, which almost nobody implements properly anyway, and Tesselation. The majority of improvements in D3D11 are in the API itself. Direct3D 9 and 10 can both benefit from these improvements using the Feature Level sets provided by Microsofts work in implementing Down Level support.

you also won’t get dx 11 features on vista/xp as the os doesn’t support those versions, just as windows 8 will have a dx update that windows 7 won’t support because it can’t.

Sorry, what? Vista doesn’t support D3D11?, what small moon have you been living in the shadow of?. The Graphics platform update is specifically to upgrade Vista to being able to use the DXGI 11 kernel.

look if you want to argue this go play crysis 2 dx 11 mode with a dx 9 only card i’ll eat 100 cute fluffy kittens if you can get that to work.

hell go play the original crysis and try to enable dx 10 on a dx 9 only card and i’ll eat another 100 cute fluffy kittens.

And now you’re just reaching for hairs, after finally realising you don’t really have a valid argument.

you will not get higher version dx features on dx9 or 10, and when dx 11.1 comes out at the end of the month dx 11 cards won’t get those feature sets either, there is a hardware standard that has to be implemented for those features to be enabled.

Multithreaded direct3d, display lists, deffered batching, etc, all techniques that would improve performance (as compared to the multithreaded d3d9 technique used in gw2) even if the hardware only provides 9 or 10 feature level

if direct compute which is a dx 11 feature only and partially dx 10 though was pointlessly bad to really mention worked with dx 9 hardware we wouldn’t need newer versions of graphics cards if it was so easy.

Again, you incorrectly claim that DirectCompute is used heavily in D3D11 titles. This is NOT the case. The only real usage any game has of it thus far, is those which implemented AMD’s crappy MLAA shader.

I think we can agree that any improvements that can be made to the game to improve fps even by a small margin is worth it. If that is switching to DX11 from DX9 then do it. If it was 3 to 5 fps, then lets do it. Those of us that get good fps might not care. Those players that get 15-20 fps on older hardware im positive would accept another 5 fps if theres anything Anet can do to get it.

It would remove the lower end CPU bottlenecks that are keeping the AMD users down.

What’s DirectX 11?

Oh you mean that thing companies told us to go out and buy and spend money on, only to then later get Tessellation Water thrown in our faces in some games?

Ya, the day GW2 gets REALL tessellation will be the day I give away 15 GTX 690’s (and I don’t mean Tessellation water, because that seems to be the only thing developers know how to toy with)

Crawford.4135:

What’s DirectX 11?

Oh you mean that thing companies told us to go out and buy and spend money on, only to then later get Tessellation Water thrown in our faces in some games?

Ya, the day GW2 gets REALL tessellation will be the day I give away 15 GTX 690’s (and I don’t mean Tessellation water, because that seems to be the only thing developers know how to toy with)

It still would be amazing to get real tessellation. Would make gw2 look even more amazing. And just in case they do ever introduce it to gw2, I wouldn’t mind if you sent two of those gtx 690s my way

Crawford.4135:

What’s DirectX 11?

Oh you mean that thing companies told us to go out and buy and spend money on, only to then later get Tessellation Water thrown in our faces in some games?

Ya, the day GW2 gets REALL tessellation will be the day I give away 15 GTX 690’s (and I don’t mean Tessellation water, because that seems to be the only thing developers know how to toy with)

Blame console kitten for holding back API progress.

Gief tesselation please? =P

I just realized some good news for a DX11 update :p
They have a MAC version running, this means they already have a “good” abstracted graphics engine layer. This means moving from DX9 to DX11 is a lot less time consuming, since all important layers/interfaces are already abstracted.

I only really hope they don’t use those D3D mac wrappers, that “translate” D3D9 calls, since than we are back to square one.

im fairly sure they are using Opengl 3.0 on the mac port

Squall Leonhart.2075:

im fairly sure they are using Opengl 3.0 on the mac port

Ofc they do, since there is no D3D9 on MAC, but there is D3D9->Mac OpenGL wrapper middleware and company’s out there, that can “port” a game quite fast to MAC using wrappers. What this means is that u can “port” a lazy D3D9 engine to mac, but this wont help with DX11, since those wrappers wont work here.

Means if they use a wrapper, we are not one bit closer to a Dx11 version, while if they actually have a “clean” OpenGL abstraction layer for there render core, abstracting also a Dx11 version is much more easy.

oh, i see what you mean. as in, unlike Gamebryo, the engine isn’t tangled up with the video api so it makes it easier to port to alternative api’s.

I guess directx 11 must be in their schedule