Naughty Dog have proved their talent in the gaming industry with the work they have done. Their game engines are usually state-of-the-art and most of their games are usually “coded to the metal”. Recently, a couple of Naughty Dog developers had something new to share regarding optimization techniques on the PS4 and DirectX API.
Christian Gyrling, who is the lead programmer at Naughty Dog, talked about optimizing for PS4 API and how low level access to the hardware is better.
Low-level access to the GPU really makes you understand why using DirectX is slow and why it is really just in your way.
Being able to unmap/remap memory pages from its virtual address space while maintaining its contents is absolutely amazingly useful.
Cort Stratton, Sony’s ICE Team member and programmer at Naughty Dog, was also asked to comment on the recent DirectX 12 session held at GDC and about the statements that were made at that conference calling it “Biggest leap in technology”. Stratton had quite an interesting response to this question.
I was in that room : ) That session was pure marketing hyperbole. Later DX12 sessions at GDC were more realistic/interesting IMHO.
And but so yeah, these GDC sessions are exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the tweets I linked you to earlier.
The tweets that he is referring to is what he earlier said regarding DirectX 12 API, when it was originally unveiled. He agreed that new SDKs do improve performance significantly but he can’t say anything about DirectX 12 since it was not his area of expertise.
Microsoft is trying their best to push DirectX 12 as increasing the performance for software development on the Xbox One. This is somewhat echoed by some other developers as well. According to Slightly Mad Studios’ Ian Bell, who are currently developing Project CARS for Xbox One and PC, the move to DirectX 12 can result in a possible 30% performance boost under certain circumstances.
We’re hearing that up to a 30% performance increase is possible under certain circumstances.
Xbox One should support it, as will PC. It will make the Xbox faster and it’s something worth caring about.
DirectX 12 will be released for the Xbox One and PC next year. Maybe once it is out, we will have a better picture of the performance improvements it can bring to the table.
http://gearnuke.com/naughty-dog-programmers-talk-directx-api-optimization-ps4/
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