Is DirectX Supported on other consoles besides Xbox?

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14 comments, last by Hodgman 10 years, 2 months ago

Is DirectX Supported on other consoles besides Xbox?

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Obviously anyone with direct knowledge will need to preserve their nondisclosure agreements.

The exact details of Sony's development tools are covered by NDA, which means Google will be your best source of information if you don't have it directly. (And if you do have it directly, linking to third party articles describing it is your safest bet for the same reason.) There is much information out there already, some obtained by reverse engineering and others obtained by information leaks.


Because of the NDAs in place, Google will be your friend in getting detailed answers. Useful clicky.

According to articles ( smile.png )The PS4 systems are extremely similar to the DX11.2 interfaces but have a few name changes. Also consider the hardware in the machine and this should make sense.

Dreamcast 'supports' DirectX too :) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms834190.aspx

Thing is, because console hardware is fixed, some of the abstractions in the Direct3D you find on PC are unnecessary, so even on the Xboxen (and Dreamcast) there's D3D and another API that lets you get at some of the lower level aspects of the hardware directly - people tend to use a mixture of both.

Regarding PS4, this article: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-how-the-crew-was-ported-to-playstation-4 covers a talk I co-presented at the Develop conference last year and has the few details that Sony allowed us to talk about publicly - as frob says, everything else is still covered by NDAs so isn't open for discussion.

Simon O'Connor | Technical Director (Newcastle) Lockwood Publishing | LinkedIn | Personal site

A short and cryptic answer:
AFAIK, there's no two consoles that use the same graphics API, and there's no console that uses an API that's also available/identical on PC. They're all unique.

According to articles ( smile.png )The PS4 systems are extremely similar to the DX11.2 interfaces

Half Life 3 confirmed.

"I AM ZE EMPRAH OPENGL 3.3 THE CORE, I DEMAND FROM THEE ZE SHADERZ AND MATRIXEZ"

My journals: dustArtemis ECS framework and Making a Terrain Generator

No, unless I went crazy... Only OpenGL is crossplatform.

BTW the upcoming steam consoles are cool...

No, unless I went crazy... Only OpenGL is crossplatform.

But not supported on any consoles...

Now that would really surprise me as PS4 is based on FreeBSD. Of course it supports OpenGL look for ex. here:

http://gematsu.com/2013/03/sony-shares-new-ps4-details-at-gdc

Personally I'm more surprised to see DX support. Wonder how they do that? Probably something alike Valve is

doing for their Steamboxes?

Now that would really surprise me as PS4 is based on FreeBSD. Of course it supports OpenGL look for ex. here:
http://gematsu.com/2013/03/sony-shares-new-ps4-details-at-gdc

Personally I'm more surprised to see DX support. Wonder how they do that? Probably something alike Valve isdoing for their Steamboxes?

Never trust news reporters for technical content. Even when they provide direct quotes from experts they tend to miss critical details, misrepresent facts, or misstate details when they simplify it for the masses.

No current or previous game console, not even those from Microsoft, uses DirectX. They don't even use the Direct3D subset of DirectX. Even on the Microsoft products there are differences from what the console's library offers from the Windows DirectX suite. That doesn't mean they are dissimilar, only that it is different.

The hardware is based on certain instructions and commands, and is a custom built card based on those used on desktop computers. It is very easy to devise a rendering library that is similar to -- but distinctly different from -- the desktop counterparts. Several systems have offered a graphics interface that was similar to OpenGL, but it wasn't exactly OpenGL. They usually also include an interface that provides lower-level access.

Now that would really surprise me as PS4 is based on FreeBSD. Of course it supports OpenGL look for ex. here:
http://gematsu.com/2013/03/sony-shares-new-ps4-details-at-gdc

Personally I'm more surprised to see DX support. Wonder how they do that? Probably something alike Valve is
doing for their Steamboxes?

That article is plain (laughably) wrong on saying that the PS4 supports GL and D3D.
The source that they're citing actually said that the PS4 GPU supports the entire set of features that are available via D3D11.2 or GL4.1 on PC -- not that it supports those specific APIs. Tech-illiterate journalists then misinterpreted the presented statements otherwise (confusing a set of features with a way of accessing features)...

I have a PS4 devkit on my desk, so I can't say too much due to NDA, but it goes without saying that consoles use their own APIs instead of borrowing wholesale from the PC.

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