Awwww

It's always interesting to see how the market it moving and where it is going.

I hope this is just Valve not knowing which cards qualify for true DX12 (with all the different tiers and with Nvidia not supporting key features like A-Sync), and not due to incompetence.

Nice new avy, btw.

Guys, the days of PC gaming as we know it, might be numbered.

PC Gaming Shakeup: Ashes of the Singularity, DX12 and the Microsoft Store

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/PC-Gaming-Shakeup-Ashes-Singularity-DX12-and-Microsoft-Store

It's a looong read, so here are a few excerpts

"For the NVIDIA platform, tested using a GTX 980 Ti, the game seemingly randomly starts up with Vsync on or off, with no clear indicator of what was causing it, despite the in-game settings being set how I wanted them."

"Testing the Radeon R9 Fury X proved even more confusing. Try as I might, I could not get Vsync to turn off with Ashes of the Singularity, regardless of what the settings menu claimed I had asked for."

"So what is going on? Is AMD screwing things up? Is FCAT simply an outdated tool that is not properly measuring what it is supposed to? As it turns out, neither of those assertions is true.

What we are seeing is the first implications of a new pipeline for graphics and compositing. WDDM 2.0 (Windows Display Driver Model) is a very big shift from what existed previously with WDDM 1.3. The days of exclusive fullscreen gaming may be on the way out as Microsoft shifts developers and hardware vendors into a standard path through the OS compositor rather than bypassing it."

"Microsoft is pushing DX12 games (and maybe not just those sold in the app store) to render through a standardized pipeline that uses the Windows compositing engine. In fact, from what I can tell, any game that is sold through the Windows App Store will be required to do so. Rendering through the Windows compositing engine is very similar to running in the borderless windowed mode that we have today"

And more.

If all this is true, we should start praying to make Vulkan the API of choice!

Meanwhile at MS:

Joking aside, I'm actually rooting for Vulkan all the way, DX 12 so far was touted as being efficient and giving huge returns for PC gaming, so far we're looking at DX 12 games needing much higher end hardware (which goes against DX 12 being "efficient") and we aren't getting huge returns and even then the main issue is the one you've brought up and that alone is enough to cause worry. I can't see MS going back on DX 12 in such a way that they would try to undo something they thought was a great idea (which it's the worst idea possibly imagined).

In the end I don't care for DX 12 games and I'll still be able to play Ashes on Windows 7, I'll stick with Vulkan supported titles.

A lot of developers hated Microsoft's API since 90s. John Carmack first man hated DirectX & prefered OpenGL. Also i found this interesting very old post.

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX

And Vulkan is much apperciated. I mean look at this.

After those bad news from MSoft, I think we need some laughs:

At this point Vulkan has to be a shoe in for this gens (well we can't call it a gen since it's PC but lets roll with it) API, it's basically going to support more hardware and software than MS is ever going to support.

I don't get the DX12 bashing in here ... 

Edit: I feel like I'm probably the only one here who's going to defend Microsoft to an extent ...

Also a recent piece on Vulkan:

http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr/panel-discusses-vulkan-khronos-paris-chapter

At the end of January, I was at the ISART Digital in Paris to join a panel discussion titled New Graphics APIs discussion panel at the dawn of Vulkan. The meeting was organized and chaired byChristophe Riccio from Unity and focused on the Khronos Group’s new Vulkan graphics and compute API.

Vulkan is a next-generation API for grapics and compute

The panel consisted of a mix of ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), IHVs (Independent Hardware Vendors) and platform owners with a range of experience from modern rendering algorithms to API implementation to driver implementation:

• Sébastien Lagarde (director of rendering research at Unity, previously at EA Frostbite)
• Julien Ignace (R&D rendering programmer at Unity, previously at Quantic Dream)
• Jasper Bekkers (rendering engineer at OTOY, previously at EA Frostbite)
• Cyril Crassin (research scientist at NVIDIA)
• Jon Kennedy (senior graphics software engineer at Intel)
• Adrian Bucur (senior software engineer at Samsung SERI)

We covered a number of topics, including: the type of developer Vulkan is most applicable to; how difficult it will be to integrate into existing rendering engines; and how the quality of debugging tools could affect the success of the API.

My biggest problem is not with DX12 per se, but what MSoft is trying to do to the PC gaming ecosystem with the excuse of DX12.

Microsoft Store is the issue but I don't see why we should be throwing DX12 under the bus for Vulkan ... 

Did people here forget that we got screwed over by the Khronos Group with OpenGLCL so what is stopping them from doing the same with Vulkan and SPIR-V ?