I have heard a couple of people postulating that M$ may delay DX8 for the PC, while using some making some of the technology available for the X Box, thereby giving their new gaming platform an advantage over PC''s (and other consoles, I s''pose). Whadday think? Are my sources full of bulls%^&? It _has_ been a long time.... - gollumgollum

I hope all of that turns out to be false. Though it sounds like a good idea for short-term business (that is, if the XBox comes out really soon, and the effect will wear off after a while).

If it is true, all I have to say is that the PC platform has outlived every console system to date, what makes them think that this advantage would give them any long term advantage?

Null and Void

Nah, i run DX8 beta 2 and its quite solid.
DX8 gonna come out in cople of weeks, i am sure.
BTW X-Box will run DX9.

Edited by - Meduzza on September 22, 2000 5:10:32 PM

This is absolutely not true.

Microsoft has said in the past that XBox will have its own ''version'' of DirectX 8 which is directly targetted for the hardware in the box. But DirectX 8, as announced for the PC, will not be held back.

If Microsoft did this, all of the PC developers who have been expecting DirectX 8 for their Christmas PC titles would be utterly stark raving pissed off. And many of these developers are the people Microsoft is relying on to come up with good XBox launch titles. So, it doesn''t make any sense for them to do this.

Also, it hasn''t really been a long time...DirectX 7 was released late last September....Microsoft''s release schedule since DX5 has essentially been a new major version every year in about late September so that it can ship in time for the Christmas game rush. This year, as in previous years, many of the games you see coming soon are being written against a DX (8 in this case) beta with the expectation that the full release will be out in time for shipping.

My guess is this information about DX8 being held back is just some random anti-Microsoft rantings and rumors.

I would be relly stupid for microsoft to delay the DirectX8 for just the Xbox, after all, they make money with MS-Windows not the X box ....
The thing that just angry me is the no official date for it, i am just excited about the new feature of DX8
The X box stuff might be just an estratigic approach to rule the games future OS (taht could intervine microsoft learedship in personal ciomputer)Wich of course have it bad and good side (bring the console business to america)

The hardware that use the extra DX8 features (nv20) isn’t out yet, so it doesn’t matter if DX8 delay more. If you want the functionality (and the functionality of DX9 or more) go use the OpenGL, and when the features get hardware acceleration your code will work with that automatically.Until then your code will run in software.

Edited by - pavlos on September 23, 2000 6:33:07 PM

Hey pavlos -- there''s plenty of features of DirectX 8 that are of immediate use with current hardware.

DirectX 8 is a lot more than just D3D. DX 8 also has support for easy voice-over-Internet, a lot of nice DirectInput additions that make it much easier to support a wide variety of input devices transparently, etc. You also get the merge of DirectSound/DMusic and DDraw/D3D, which cleans up the interfaces a bunch, which is nice for developers (but perhaps makes no difference to end users). These are just a few examples, there''s plenty of more reasons why we as developers and even users would want to use DirectX 8.

Even within the realm of D3D, you have pixel shaders which can be accelerated on shipping boards (GeForce, Radeon, etc).

I have to apologize here .I have totally forget the rest of DX and some features looks promising.
As for the D3d 8 I’m insisting to my previous statement (the pixel –shaders are in OpenGL almost a year now ).
p.s. Maybe I’m wrong ,but I think Radeon can’t accelerate all the shaders,but only a fraction of them (at least in OpenGL it doesn’t have the flexibility of a GeForce).
And to avoid any opengl-d3d war i have to say that today both apis are good for game development.

I don''t know if it''s true, but if it is, it''s a good reason to use OpenGL.

PS: Please just see this post more as a joke than as a flamewar please!