Microsoft Announces DirectX 11 API
At GameFest 2008 in Seattle, Microsoft made a rather interesting and expected announcement of DirectX 11 API that is said to be fully compatible with the current DirectX 10.
So, what might gamers expect from transition to the new API? According to the sources, developers call DirectX 11 a kind of a bugfix of DirectX 10, its more advanced version.
Microsoft plans to make DirectX 11 as simple as possible for game developers, and calls it a long step towards perfecting of gameplay. The new API has the following innovations compared to DirectX 10:
- Complete support (including hardware capabilities) by Windows Vista and future OSes (but not Windows XP);
- Compatibility with hardware supporting DirectX 10 and 10.1;
- New shader technology that allows using GPU not only as a 3D processor, but also as a massively parallel processor;
- Better support for multi-core configurations;
- Support for curved surface tesselation to negate differences between pre-rendered high-resolution graphics and real-time graphics.
Microsoft plans to finish the DirectX 11 development by late 2008 / early 2009. And games supporting new API should be expected late next year.
Source: Shacknews, Kotaku, GameTech
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