The Future of OpenGL (cont'd)

The DX9 screenshot is exeptionally bad, you could've done this with DX7 class hardware (cheap reflective water, no refraction, extremely cheap planar pseudo Perlin noise "clouds" without lighting).

I don't see any reason why that DX10 screenshot wouldn't be possible in DX9 or OpenGL 2.0. The only difference to the Dx9 one is the water (proper refraction, Fresnel term, bumpmapped reflections, and some perpixel cubemap lighting as it seems) and the sky (volumetric clouds, and some geometry based volume light). Nothing special here. I've seen much better renderings done in DX9/OGL2.

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So what is the future of Opengl competing against DX 10 which one will prevail?

The new functionality will be exposed as extensions, and with an update of GLSL, as soon as DX10 class hardware hits the market. Nvidia will be the first to release such extensions, ATI will lag by several months. As always. *shrug*

Can you proove that this can't be done with any other API?
The difference is art and detail.

It's kind of like running FarCry and switching between Dx8 and Dx9. Although what was beeing done with Dx9 is also possible with Dx8, they were advertizing as Dx9's greatness.
The issue is that old hw(Dx8 capable) can't support enough detail.

So it's because of hw that graphics can look better, not the API.

Agree with Yann, also what they leave out is that the image is an Artists concept image (real screenshot?).

original image (see bottom left)

Of course I am not a guru, but I am sure that images such as the above and much better can be made by a 3d rendering programm like 3d studio max that uses OpenGL and DirectX versions prior to OGL2 and DirectX10.

Well, there are some more differences than just the skybox and the water. The mountains are self-shadowed, but there's no reason why that couldn't be done in DX 9. The water in the DirectX 10 one is by far in the way best water I have ever seen in a game. It actually looks like *water*.

I'd prefer to see some more technical descriptions rather than just some screenshots, though.

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Original post by Ezbez Well, there are some more differences than just the skybox and the water. The mountains are self-shadowed, but there's no reason why that couldn't be done in DX 9.

Although it's hard to judge from a distance, it seems that the additional shadows on the DX10 image come from the clouds. The self shadowing of the terrain is the same on both images. But even projected cloud shadows are no problem in DX9.

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also what they leave out is that the image is an Artists concept image

Really ? That would be extremely cheap, especially for Microsoft. I would at least hope that the DX10 shot comes from a software emulated DX10 renderer.

To me it seems like they blended artist oncept and dx 9 picture, cause the reflections are exactly the same if you look closer.

The reflection might be the same since it's algorithmically generated in terms of position. It's not clear, but perhaps the clouds are shadowing the mountains in the first image. The waves are very detail have have bubbles while on the second picture, they made no effort to add this detail. On the second picture the water looks very calm. The problem is that there is no transparency and fresnel term.

The big difference between the 2 is the water.
If the water is interactive, then it's even better.

There was a war game 2 years ago that had detailed water. They used R2VB and sampled in the VS. It was a nVidia only feature since it needs texture reads in a VS. This one looks even better.

Maybe, but how do they got exactly the same frame of reflection ondx10 and why is the reflection the same, but the water has another surface, i dont mean polygonal, but the normals

picture A has been 'sexed up' then again
i ask u where do u want to be, picture A or B. A looks like its gonna piss down at any second. whats this fixation with water, there was this recent joke with the uninquirer WRT nvidia/ati + water. unless your name is popeye water is something u see on tv) then again whens the last time u saw popeye on a boat

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Maybe, but how do they got exactly the same frame of reflection ondx10 and why is the reflection the same, but the water has another surface, i dont mean polygonal, but the normals

ok how should it look?

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whats this fixation with water, there was this recent

LoL
It looks cool!

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Original post by Red_falcon Maybe, but how do they got exactly the same frame of reflection ondx10 and why is the reflection the same, but the water has another surface, i dont mean polygonal, but the normals

The reflection on the DX9 one is perfectly fine, it's just not properly applied and modulated on a perpixel level. You could just take the DX9 reflection, add a refraction map, modulate both by the Fresnel term, and you'd have something much more realistic already. Add to that a surface shader with bumpmapped reflective turbulences, speculars, some blue/green filtered subsurface scattering and lighting, and you'll get close to what is shown in that DX10 "screenshot" (or photoshop, or whatever). The reflection will essentially stay the same, except for the bump'ed noise.

Of course all that is perfectly possible with DX9, no need for DX10 here (unless you want to actually generate the water geometry on the GPU, but that is in no way required to get the visual effect).

Yeah thats a point, but the techical aspect is not the problem, ist more that to me it looks like a little photoshop surgery on dx10 shot. the dx10 reflection of the peak of the mountain in front is exactly the same as dx9(look at the left side of peak reflection), it bothers me a little, cause the probability to get exact the same frame as the distortion texture is in the same position is low.

EDIT: As for the thing of water in dx9 vs dx10. I recently played demos of Just Cause, Joint Task Force and El Matador, the water effects in all three are very beautiful and its dx9 not dx10. So i think its a very poor deal of Microsoft to make such promotion.

Is this thread still about the future of OGL 2.0 or is it now about the hardware capabilities between DX9 and DX10 cards?

Ok, back to the topic. As of latest news i heard that ATI and nVidia are working together on GL 3.0. As for other things i wait for GL SDK which is work in progress, than it would be clearer what's going to go on. I already read here on gamedev, that some people are feeling funny about Khronos as GL comitee. Their opinio was that Khronos wouldn't do the job right.

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Original post by Red_falcon Yeah thats a point, but the techical aspect is not the problem, ist more that to me it looks like a little photoshop surgery on dx10 shot. the dx10 reflection of the peak of the mountain in front is exactly the same as dx9(look at the left side of peak reflection), it bothers me a little, cause the probability to get exact the same frame as the distortion texture is in the same position is low.

Well, if you want to compare shader profiles or render paths, you usually don't do it on a running simulation. Instead, you'll set up a static frame, stop the physical simulation at a given point in time, and then switch between shaders on that static image. That's the only way to get meaningful visual comparisons.

But well, we'll probably see it soon enough if Photoshop was involved or not, when the first DX10 cards hit the market.

About GL3, we are in an interesting position right now. In the past, new functionalities were often first exposed under OpenGL as an extension, and only later in D3D. While this was nice, it had a lot of drawbacks. These extensions were almost always vendor dependent, and usually a little rushed. When they were standarized later on, their syntax was often changed, which required a rewrite of engine code.

D3Ds little feature lag had the advantage that MS could objectively study how new features would actually be used in real life situations (there's often a difference between how GPU manufacturers expect their features to be used, and how they're eventually getting (ab)used by ISVs). This made D3Ds approach more consistent, and avoided the sometimes choatic situation amongst OGL extension sets.

Now Khronos can take advantage of the reversed situation, if they're smart. Let's see how useful the new DX10 features will actually be, and how they're getting used in real world scenarios. Maybe annoyances will appear, or things that MS would have better made differently. OpenGL can then do it right.

One poster has already explained that the DX10 screenshot above is an artist's concept image (the OP should be banned for excluding that information). I don't really understand why everyone is talking about the differences between these two pictures, they are the same picture, but one has been photoshoped.

There were images released with this same set that were done on the software rasterizer, so at least post those.

If you are going to compare APIs it should be done on an API level, not a comparison of screenshots.

"The time will come, one day you'll see ..." - The Miracle, Queen

So lets wait for the real hardware for that stuff. Duke Nukem Forever is the best example, how it wasn't meant to be done.;) Marketing nowadays is much more important than quality.

Besides a bit off topic: I hope MS will fix the problem with FS at all. After playing FSX demo and FS2004, i noticed same bug of terrain/model/texture popups.

Jonnys, I've checked your link.
Now, since it presents a DirectX 9 vs. DirectX 10 comparison, that's what I'm going to talk about, but I think pretty much everything that applies to DirectX applies to OpenGL as well.
This is what I have to say on the subject.

This is a completely meaningless comparison.
DirectX 9 can do pretty much everything DirectX 10 can, but with higher hardware requirements.

Now, for those images:

The “DirectX 10″ version of the first image is not a DirectX 10 rendering.
A similar rendering can be achieved with DirectX 9, though.

The second DirectX 10 image demonstrates detailed artwork, not the capabilities of the DirectX 10 API.
The same face models can be rendered using DirectX 9 with little difference.

The third DirectX 10 picture…
It’s been done a million times using DirectX 9.

I’ve seen better things done in DirectX 9.
The only reason for all this confusion is because the only technologies average graphics fans are aware of are those implemented in computer games, which are meant to be run on their average hardware.
To all DirectX 10 fanatics: you haven’t seem even a slice of the capabilities of DirectX 9 and you won’t see even a slice of the capabilities of DirectX 10 either.
Computer games won’t look as good as those pictures anytime soon.
It's not a matter of API.
Advanced techniques and high quality models require high end hardware.
Some gamers do have such hardware, but most don’t, so computer game developers don’t even bother.

As for OpenGL vs. DirectX... there's more to computer graphics and OpenGL than Windows games, but that's all there is to DirectX.