Microsoft calms DX10.1 hardware storm

via Computer and Video Games


Microsoft released details on a new version of DirectX 10 - DirectX 10.1 - last week and, in the wake of the announcement, reports sprang up that the iteration of the API would render current DirectX 10-supporting graphics cards obsolete.

But the company has now confirmed this isn't the case.

"DX10.1 fully supports DX10 hardware. No hardware support is being removed... It's strictly a superset. It's basically an update to DX10 that extends the hardware functionality slightly", Microsoft's DirectX lead program manager Sam Glassenberg has told Next-Gen.

Glassenberg said that the update is similar to what Microsoft did with DX9. "We did make updates to [DX9] that extended the supported feature set.

"All the hardware is still supported, all the games still run, all the features are still there, we've just simply extended the feature set and the lifetime of the API," he added.

However, Glassenberg conceded "There will be new features [with DX10.1], and those features may be exposed on new hardware, but this is similar to the model that we had with DX9... [except] with DX10.1, we're saying [to developers], 'if you want to support the new features, you have to support all of them [including original DX10 features].'"

Even though DirectX 10.1 will support current DX10 graphics hardware, today's DirectX 10 hardware will not be able to support all of the features of DX10.1, which includes incremental improvements to 3D rendering quality.

But Glassenberg stated, "It's a minor update, so we don't expect any developers to say, 'oh, this game is DX10.1 only.'

"All off the games that are coming out in the next few years will take better and better advantage of current DX10 hardware."

He said Microsoft is simply planning to support upcoming generations of graphics hardware. Glassenberg added that he "has no timeframe" on when this new hardware that supports DX10.1 will be available.

The final version of DirectX 10.1 is expected to ship with Vista SP1.