Microsoft has finally officially launched its new Windows 7 operating system and with it comes the new DirectX 11 support that is supposed to make things easier for game developers and the games looking nicer for the people that play them. And so far only ATI has released a DirectX 11 hardware on the market, but have you taught about what can you get with the combination of Win 7 and DX11 video card at the moment or lets say by the end of this year?
The first game that was supposed to have DirectX 11 support was BattleForge, a game that received a patch to have it updated with some effects using DX 11… a game that uses an old engine (DX9). Then comes the new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat which should’ve been a bit up to date, considering it had been one of the “first DX10 titles”. But the engine of the game also allows it to run even on DX8 hardware, so yet again here we have just some nice additional effects applied in the last minute to show off DirectX 11 and say there are games supporting it. The third title with DirectX 11 support is the upcoming in December Colin McRae’s: Dirt 2, but hey… we’ve played that game already with Vista and DirectX 10, right? And still DX10 is not that common and actually very few game titles make use of it and if you remember it was also revolutionary back in the time.
Now, unlike the previous two titles that are available only for PC, Dirt 2 already has its console versions on the market and the PC port of the game is getting a bit delayed, probably because of having it implement a bit of DirectX 11 features. Codemasters have released the video above to show off some of the nice features the game should offer when used with Windows 7 and a DirectX 11-capable video card and the video sure looks nice. The DirectX 11 effects featured in the video are Cloth Tessellation, Hardware Instanced Tessellated Crowd, Tessellated Water with Dynamic Displacement Mapping, Enhanced Lighting and Post Processing. These effects sure are nice and make the game look a bit more realistic, so they are definitely nice, but that is not something that should make you buy Windows 7 and ATI Radeon HD 5000 video card, especially when considering that all of the three games mentioned so far will still work on your older OS and VGA and look pretty nice. But it seems lately that more and more game developers start to focus too much on how to make a game title “more realistic”, “more detailed”, more whatever, but tend to forget to include the fun factor when playing the game. Do you remember how long has it been since you played a car game on your PC that was actually fun to play (Gran Turismo fans need to stay quiet here), and it seems that Dirt 2 will not be an exception. A bad game will not become good even if you label it with DX11…
And for god’s sake when will the game developers start releasing true gameplay trailers showing exactly how the game will look, instead of some cut scenes taken from replies, outside of the car and the normal camera view when you play the game. Sure it looks nice to see these too, but this way the game could’ve be seen if you were in the audience, but not in the drivers seat… and it Dirt 2 you should be behind the wheel, right?
So 7/10 for focusing too much on DirectX 11 and how Dirt 2 for PC will look in overall
Higher Twisted Rating is worse!
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Another “DirectX 11″ game is Turbine’s D&D Eberron Unlimited. It was DX 9 in the beginning. They added some bloom and shadows and it became DX 10. Not they added nothing but support and it became DX 11. I’m sure when we get DX 11.1 it will get there first too. Prolly – with the same low-poly look, but hey, ATI can make it look real, right? Or not…