EVE Information Portal

Yeah, more eye candy, because that's really what players are concerned about. Sigh...

DirectX9 is over friend. With XP Extended Support End Date 4/8/2014 and the mainstream support for XP ended 4/14/2009.
Would be illogical for CCP to continue DirectX9 support forever. As I am sure more and more of their tools get upgraded DirectX9 support disappears. This is the life cycle.

Just as Mantle will punch DirectX lights out. Nvidia is already trying to get all their partners to not get in bed with AMD. I just hope CCP does the right thing and keeps their options open for mantle as there is coming a shake up.. For history just look back to what 3DFX did with glide. Nvidia was dealt a crushing blow. 3DFX was a terribly run company so that ran short term. Considering AMD is smarter, wealthier and is in every single console...3q 4q 1q 2q earnings will be huge. China is opening up for console sales in Jan. With that being said that means that DUST will pick up a huge market in china..I am quite happy for CCP. I am sure they are bouncing like bunnies with the happy news about China. Sorry for some off topic details but I see it as the more money CCP makes the bigger their developer team gets. :)

Thanks everyone for the positive words!



There's no black and white answer for this one. It'll depend on the feature.
Obviously something like tessellation would only show up for DX11.
If a feature can be done totally under DX9 and still look and perform awesome, we'll do that.
If there is a feature like ship damage, that may have some advanced features under DX11 like mesh displacement but also DX9-compatible features like decal textures, I'd expect we'd make sure it looks good under DX9.

Of course we're not working on any DX11-only features right now so this is just what I'd expect us to do. No guarantees! If I were you I'd buy something DX11-compatible though :)


I'd expect Mac to be DX9 in the near future (and probably mid future). I can't say for the long term.

Super.

Well done CCP.

I will speculate a little...
DirectX is the middle ground API. OPENGL I doubt would ever happen. Technically all new Macs within a month will be Mantle ready. Since all macs since 2009/2010 ship with AMD cards. I believe that mantle will only run on new AMD cards so I think if you were thinking of getting a new Mac soon would be a good time. All the best games will run Mantle since it will allow for cross platform and cross console. Technically long term a large portion of EVE users will shift to AMD cards as BF4 and Crysis will get a Mantle Patch in a few months. Which means it will become the " API " to be in. Hrm thinking about it...This means that Dust could easily come to the PC from the PS4. I do wonder if a Nvidia card could run on the mantle API but without the optimizations that the AMD cards get. If so CCP would be inclined to switch to Mantle if Mantle shows a huge acceptance. In theory if AMd made it where all cards could run on Mantle that means Nvidia( no optimizations ) and AMD ( with optimizations ) could both "RUN" on the mantle api this would allow huge cross platform use. OSX( BSD) Linux, Windows, playstation... hrm this could mean Eve Online on PS4...That could be epic actually...hrm but just me speculating about possibilities. CCP could you guys do a test to see if a nvidia card will run on Mantle ? I assume you already have DUST on Mantle for the PS4.

That's interesting, you should tell Apple. I am pretty sure they expect Mac to stay OpenGL.

/troll

Directx 11 cool, EvE at Directx 9 looks awesome i cant imagine EvE on Dx 11, well as you mention CCP here small steps, cant wait for full dx 11 support in full EvE Grafic engine.

Ugh, messed up.

You missed the part that I wrote about the new cards :P Mantle is its own API, DirectX is its own API :P. PS4, XBOX1,new WII = AMD.. So if I was to make a game on PS4.. Something like DUST :) .. If I wanted to put it on the PC.. Mantle would be an awesome thing to use if AMD allows Nvidia cards to run on it with 0 optimizations. Question is will they ?...Short term I think 0 chance. I think they will use mantle api exclusive to all their new cards. Why does this matter ? Well consider if they control the API and MSFT does not that means AMD could optimize it for their cards only :) This means they will basically cripple Nvidia. Smart business and they will do just that. When big boys jump onboard the API its weight. Weight always breaks the camels back. In markets you have bottom market pressures and we see that since yesterday in the stock market. You get to a certain level on a stock and because their are so many buyers the sells get bought up and the price does not break through. Once sellers overflow the buyers price drops off like a cliff. This could happen with Mantle. So many big developers get in it that MSFT wil take a serious hit since they charge developers to use not DirectX but for Visual Studio per machine etc etc.

Sorry, I should clarify my earlier statement about the Mac. The Mac client uses Cider from Transgaming. This translates Windows calls (DirectX, Win32) to Mac equivalents. So when I say "Mac client uses DirectX 9" I mean "Our rendering engine on the Mac is the Windows DX9 version, but calls are translated to their Mac equivalents including OpenGL by Cider."
From a code and development point of view, our Mac client uses DirectX 9. From a lower-level point of view, of course it doesn't.

Does that clarify or just confuse things even more?