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OpenGL supports tesselation, and PhysX is available for Mac OS X and Linux.

The real questions are: For tesselation, when will Cider update their DX -> OpenGL translation layer (or have they already)? And what will people running AMD cards on any platform get in place of PhysX?

EDIT: I should clarify, tesselation is an old and necessary step pioneered by SGI (inventors of what became OpenGL) in order to turn everything into triangles for easy processing. I'm not sure if what they're calling "tesselation" here is precisely what OpenGL calls tesselation.

At this point it seems the question of DX11 isn't if it should be done, but how fast and how should it be handled.

Tesselation is definately the way to go, but at the cost of how many more GB of space on low-end hard drives? The ideas about sharding the client into 2 would solve this, but I think sticking with one client is overall a better option. For example, you could have the new launcher download the larger-res artifacts just for those users that can and want to use the tesselation features. The client then notices that the computer can handle tesselation and has the artifacts available, so it just displays objects in space with a different rendering style.

The big issue I see is the PhysX handling (if it is accepted, remember they talked about implementing DX11, not necessarily PhysX). You can run PhysX without a GPU that supports it, it is just less powerful. Multithreading support is now in PhysX 3.0, so the difference isn't that great between high end GPU and non-GPU systems. However, we should keep in mind that the physics in EVE at the moment runs client and server side. PhysX would either need to be supported and integrated on both ends for all machines, or it would not be allowed to effect any game mechanics (which is a deal-breaker for me, and why run two physics engines at the same time?)
I am not sure this will happen within a year timeframe and would need the involvement of not just the art departement, but the core game department as well. It was a really cool tech demo to see asteroids colliding and breaking on the ship though..


So..
DX11 = YES!!!
PhysX = I want it, but not at the expense it would likely come with...

Looks a vast improvement and more importantly feels better, if there is a commitment to internet spaceships this is one of the next obvious things to do.

i find the current system of bouncing of rocks very crude, it's like flying a ship in a giant rubber thingy, it makes navigation around belts very haphazard, there's nothing worse than bouncing of invisible sphere's when desperately trying to warp.

In addition to looking and feeling better it would be even greater if it interacted with the flying of space ships. Guns should not be able to fire through them, larger ones perhaps that do explosive or kinetic damage could break them and missiles fly around then to hit there target. It'd be excellent to be able to do a Star Wars Hoth asteroid field and hide inside some of the larger ones if you were caught ratting. Some could perhaps interfere with ship scanners so making it difficult to scan or use directional scanner. Taking a big ship into a roid field could cause HP damage to the ship, while small ships fly around them. And i'm sure it be used to make mining more interesting in someway.

This is a definite must and if it starts to make belts and anomalies viable and interesting locations to hang out it could be used to enhance pvp in low sec for example.

Bring on the shinies!

CCP Solomon, I will be honest - given your replies so far I'm struggling to understand why you are even asking us. Given the success of the trinity upgrade and the relative effort required to do tessellation, this question is a complete no-brainer. These graphics look fantastic.

So, assuming we aren't missing out on something equally shiny or more important, what the hell are you waiting for - get on with it.

+1 for me

I would be disappointed if a physics implementation was limited to only one GPU manufacturer, although CCP has failed to address this point.

As for the other stuff, yes please. Shield impacts and damage skins are something I've been waiting for since 2008.

I most certainly doubt there will be a hard restriction to one manufacturer's hardware. Most likely you'll get it emulated on CPU for more cpu usage or somewhat less physics detail, or both. Like all of the modern PhysX-enabled games still run without any trouble on other hardware as well.

And current EVE's physics work fine with ATI cards.

Eiter way, even if i were forced to use physx, i'd rather buy a cheapo graphics card and run it as a dedicated physics processor than swith to the manufacturer entirely, but that's just my opinion :)

Also it'd be really cool to get my hands o the demo =]

Poster above. Your doing it wrong. Look up how high poly modeling is made.

Then watch this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFK7UIYUMMQ

Then look back at the 2 screen shots more careful to really see whats going on. Honestly I'm surprised you couldn't see that it caves in the side of the ship near the back, where before there was just a flat texture.



why not, Just upload it to the eve downloads page :/

DX 11 is a no brainer and even if you do not jump start it right away and finish till start of the 2013, you should definitively commit some resources to start the slow burn right now and then pick up the pase when it's needed.

But you should look at the textures. Even at full graphics you don't want to put your camera close to anything because it becomes an ugly mess. On my HD 24" monitor it becomes even more ugly because of the size of it And I don't think the tessellation by itself can fix this, the Revenant in the demo still looks blurry up-close (all capital ships suffer from the bad textures. They are the size of the mountains, but it feels that the model has the same size textures and polygons like battleship or a battlecruser).