DirectX 9 only, no 64 bit either?

Wednesday 17th April, 2013 · Posted by Roguey · 5 comments

With the recent development video about the LOD system from egosoft; it has resparked conversation in the community about DirectX. DirectX 9 is rather old now (launched Dec 2002) with modern drivers/software slowly dropping support for it. DirectX9 can only be found on XP systems because Windows Vista and higher support DirectX 10/11. The newer operating systems can backwards support DirectX 9, however its not very cutting-edge to use API's which are out-dated.

What does this mean? well in DirectX 10, there was a big rewrite of a large part of the code. This resulted in a performance gain up-to 30% over DirectX 9 based gpu's. However DirectX10+ gpu's dont just have performance increases but better rules around the gpu's /software leading to better compatibility. It is said that DirectX 11 is easier to write for too, which would of meant a faster release (which at the current rate would help a lot).

This could also mean Rebirth is only 32-bit, limiting the maximum app memory size to 2gb (unless the /3gb flag is used). However many modern pc's have well over 2 or 4gb, more like 8gb which cant be used by Rebirth if its using 32-bit code. Do you feel that Rebirth needs to support 64 bit too?

At the moment, X-Rebirth will only support DirectX9 and 32 bit (tech of WinXP era). Egosoft used to always release games that pushed the hardware, giving us very detailed games. However in its current state it looks like its stuck in the old-era - albeit with multi-core support.



The poll is open to anyone, so get voting. If you wish to talk about it more, see the forum post here.

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