Will Source use Direct X11 in Half-Life 3(or Episode 3)?

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Looking at other complex engines that can house bigger and more detailed environments, with minimal loading screens as possible. Gel physics in Portal 2 was a step up, but I thought the game just looked decent. In the past, Valve worked so hard to make a great all around game, with Half-Life 2. Will Valve ever blow us away again? Playing a game like Battlefield 3, with things like parallax mapping, displacement mapping and realtime radiosity... it looks ****ing brilliant.

It seems though Valve are more concerned with making their games playable on all systems, but funnily enough... a DX11 game like Battlefield 3 looks great on the consoles at 30 frames. There is no reason why Valve doesn't just overhaul the Source engine, thoughts?

 

[AtomicSpark]

Nope.

 

[ríomhaire]

Valve works like this: All the people in there do what they want pretty much. If someone in Valve decides he wants to bring Source up to DX11 he'll be told go and do it. If no one in Valve can be bothered to do that, it won't happen.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Nope.

Why not?

Valve works like this: All the people in there do what they want pretty much. If someone in Valve decides he wants to bring Source up to DX11 he'll be told go and do it. If no one in Valve can be bothered to do that, it won't happen.

That's what Gabe says, and people at Valve want to work on L4D or Portal, they work on it... or if its HL, they work on it. Valve has stated that they've doing alot of projects at once, so they haven't had time to fully upgrade Source (like Valve did with the Quake 1 Engine in GoldSrc games). But also Valve's Chet Faliszek opens up the possibility of Source 2 in the future.

I feel that Valve has fallen behind the competition in graphics for a long time, but do small updates... kind of like Infinity Ward does with Call of Duty (which still uses the 1999 ID Tech 3 engine). But there comes a point its polishing mediocrity (the Source engine in DX9 API's).

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

Who really cares? The DX updates are largely marketing bullshit and intentionally staggered features to pace games. All these tricks can be worked around using slightly different techniques from previous DX relases (dx9, namely). It's just a number.

If only OGL and alternative graphics APIs had the support they deserve.

 

[ríomhaire]

I feel that Valve has fallen behind the competition in graphics for a long time

I don't get this. I thought Portal 2 looked great. Then again I thought Human Revolution looked great but everyone on the internet was complaining about how disappointed they were about the graphics and how it looked sub-par. I guess I'm just easy to please.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Who really cares? The DX updates are largely marketing bullshit and intentionally staggered features to pace games. All these tricks can be worked around using slightly different techniques from previous DX relases (dx9, namely). It's just a number.

If only OGL and alternative graphics APIs had the support they deserve.

Probably for the most part, but there's things like displacement mapping and parallax mapping, those would make the Source engine look alot better.

I don't get this. I thought Portal 2 looked great. Then again I thought Human Revolution looked great but everyone on the internet was complaining about how disappointed they were about the graphics and how it looked sub-par. I guess I'm just easy to please.

Have you seen the wall and ground textures on the test chambers? They look 1998 esque, alot of flat ugly textures.

That is not to say its an ugly game, because I thought it looked nice. But again, Valve hasn't really pushed the Source engine that much.

 

[ríomhaire]

I guess I didn't walk up to walls and stare at them from two inches away

But what does low rez textures have to do with DX11? They don't need to upgrade the Direct X version to use bigger textures.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

DX11 takes advantage of things like terrain and water tessellation, I think the Dear Esther remake is using it. Infact, most of the things in Dear Esther is 80% resources that already are in Source, but Valve refuse to use it (like parallax occlusion mapping). It seems tess is the new magic wand for making movie CGI like detail.

 

[99.vikram]

Half-life 1 and Half-life 2 arguably featured best of breed graphics for their time. I sure as hell hope Valve does something very fresh for Episode 3. To say that Source is "good enough" to tell the stories that Valve wants to tell is meaningless, because personally I think GoldSrc is good enough to tell every story that can ever be told from the first person perspective. Graphics just add that extra bit of wow to the game the first time you play it, and that is something Valve hasn't really delivered since Lost Coast.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Agreed, Valve used to push boundaries in Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2. When the Source engine was used in HL2, no engine came close to the visuals it could pull off. What Valve does today in the graphical aspects, Infinity Ward does similar stuff with CoD *gasp*, which is to say it has very subtle changes to the visuals. Both use low res textures to be easier on old machines (Xbox 360, PS3 and windows XP PC's). The Source engine isn't even the most flexible anymore.

It's time that Valve upgraded, especially after waiting 4-5 years for EP3/HL3. I want to be blown away again.

 

[Born]

Half-life 1 and Half-life 2 arguably featured best of breed graphics for their time. I sure as hell hope Valve does something very fresh for Episode 3. To say that Source is "good enough" to tell the stories that Valve wants to tell is meaningless, because personally I think GoldSrc is good enough to tell every story that can ever be told from the first person perspective. Graphics just add that extra bit of wow to the game the first time you play it, and that is something Valve hasn't really delivered since Lost Coast.

Agreed. Lost Coast was the last time I was blown away by the Source engine; that was really something. With the release of Portal, L4D and sequels my reaction has just been 'meh.'

 

[MetalWrath]

Hi,

Maybe they are waiting to release HL2 ep3 (or HL3) to close the Source era with a great new surprise!

I agree with you, future releases must have at least DX11 implementations

 

[Naph]

It should, DX15 will be released the same year HL3 is.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

I know Valve makes advancements in graphics based on Steam hardware survey's, but supposedly people running Windows 7 with DX10/11 GPU's with vram of 1024mb seem to be the most popular.

DX9 has become the minority, hopefully a serious upgrade with Source is soon. Like fully dynamic lighting, shadows and bigger map sizes (in this case, chapters).

 

[Krynn72]

DX9 has become the minority

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... you may want to recheck your own image. The people who can use DX 9 are a little over 30%. The people who can use DX10 and 11 are a little over 8%. Even if you were to count people who have dx10/11 cards but not the prerequisite OS, the DX9 systems would still out number the 10/11 systems by more than 10%.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... you may want to recheck your own image. The people who can use DX 9 are a little over 30%. The people who can use DX10 and 11 are a little over 8%. Even if you were to count people who have dx10/11 cards but not the prerequisite OS, the DX9 systems would still out number the 10/11 systems by more than 10%.

Then tell me, how does a DX9 card have vram of 1 gig? That makes no sense. Last I checked, the 6xxxx series and the 7xxxx series by nvidia was around 128mb I'm pretty sure (more or less, don't quote me on it).

Probably that diagram wasn't the best, here's a better one (small but it shows how low the popularity on steam users for DX9 setups/OS are)

Granted this doesn't include the consoles, so it sort of negates any hardware survey. Even if Valve wanted to upgrade Source to DX10/11, at the moment consoles would be in the way of that, or Valve would be forced to treat any major upgrade to source just like in 2004 (with the xbox version looking like and playing like shit when HL2 released).

 

[ríomhaire]

He posted the wrong graph the first time, what that says is the most popular DX11 card on a DX-capable system is the ATI HD 5770 at 4%, not that the DX11 is at 4%.

Here is the relevant page.

DX11 is at 35.62%
DX10 is at 58.57%
DX9 is at 4.85%
<DX9 is at 0.96%

Of course, not all people with DX10 and 11 capable graphics cards are not running DX10 and 11 capable operating systems, though I have no idea what proportion of people have that set up, it could be negligible.

 

[kupocake]

I don't get this. I thought Portal 2 looked great. Then again I thought Human Revolution looked great but everyone on the internet was complaining about how disappointed they were about the graphics and how it looked sub-par. I guess I'm just easy to please.

Portal 2 and Human Revolution are probably among the best examples of honest to goodness visual design on 2011's release slate. There's a certain section of the player base that gets hung up on poly counts and texture compression, and there's a larger section that isn't... I think everyone appreciates the artistic intent behind it though, and the former group complains only because they see how utterly spectacular things could have been.

 

[bobtheskull]

Portal 2 and Human Revolution are probably among the best examples of honest to goodness visual design on 2011's release slate. There's a certain section of the player base that gets hung up on poly counts and texture compression, and there's a larger section that isn't... I think everyone appreciates the artistic intent behind it though, and the former group complains only because they see how utterly spectacular things could have been.

^This^

I too, like riom, thought Portal 2 looked great and HR blew me away... But to be honest, I prefer how a game plays over how a game looks. If its got a good story and the gameplay mechanics are sound, i'm happy... good graphics are a bonus to me.

 

[NeptuneUK]

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... you may want to recheck your own image. The people who can use DX 9 are a little over 30%. The people who can use DX10 and 11 are a little over 8%. Even if you were to count people who have dx10/11 cards but not the prerequisite OS, the DX9 systems would still out number the 10/11 systems by more than 10%.

Bullshit that only 8% of gamers can use DX10

*says from GTX 570 SLI-vory tower*

 

[Naph]

I'm not really surprised that the weight of computers sit within the DX9 mark. There is some stupidly high statistic that 1024x768 is still widely used.

 

[SpotEnemyBoats]

I'm not really surprised that the weight of computers sit within the DX9 mark. There is some stupidly high statistic that 1024x768 is still widely used.

Where does it say that DX9 is still the majority? As of febuary, it's under 1%.

Portal 2 looked good enough (the gels were a great addition to the engine), but its still using pretty low poly world models. Everyone expects something mindblowingly spectacular in terms of visuals, and HL2 did during its release.

 

[Lewk]

This topic has been largely debated for years now. I have two things to add to this particular thread.

Firstly, rather than sound like a broken record and repeat myself like I have over in SPUF, I'll focus just on the the origial points of this thread that is DirectX11. It's not a largely known fact, but a lot of signs point toward Valve dropping DirectX altogether in the not-so-distant future in favour of OpenGL. As solid as DirectX11 is, the benefits of an open graphics language far out weigh the rather restricting Microsoft solution. As Valve continue to work with companies like nVidia, ATI and Apple on compiling greater performing drivers for OpenGL, the day they finally switch over Source is fast approaching.

Secondly, in regards towards the so called 'graphical leap' between titles is something that's oddly expected from people. The jump we saw with Half-Life 2 seemed so large mainly due to the introduction of Shaders and Physics. The quality of shaders and physics are pretty much maxed out these days and so the leap we'd like to see won't necessarily come from a shader standpoint as say an interactivity one. Animation and AI are the major focus of game developers these days and the shift in technology of how this is portrayed in games is about to make a huge leap. We're about to see the tip of the ice-berg with Assassins Creed III on new fluid and believable animation, but there's much more to come than that. What makes us gasp in awe will most likely be the subtle details rather than new rendering subsystems. If I were to make an educated guess as to what to expect in the next Half-Life game it is not crazy new shaders or lighting (as Source already supports that), but AI and animation routines that bring NPC's to life like we've never seen before.

And I must say that I would rather see innovative technology that works behind the scenes of the engine to better enhance the game play, than say a variant on the lighting system that barely changes the outlook of a scene.

 

[Godron]

It's not a largely known fact, but a lot of signs point toward Valve dropping DirectX altogether in the not-so-distant future in favour of OpenGL. As solid as DirectX11 is, the benefits of an open graphics language far out weigh the rather restricting Microsoft solution. As Valve continue to work with companies like nVidia, ATI and Apple on compiling greater performing drivers for OpenGL, the day they finally switch over Source is fast approaching.

Now that is interesting. I'm no expert on 3D graphics, but I've always wondered why mainstream game devs always choose DirectX, while indie devs often use OpenGL. From what little I have read, DirectX doesn't seem to be any more capable. I can see how developers would prefer to stick with what they're used to and what has been proven to work by other big games, if the two libraries are equally matched, but that doesn't explain why OpenGL seems to get a lot more use from indie devs. Can you post any sources for this?

 

[tomemozok]

Basically,if you code for DirectX in mind,you can port that game to xbox pretty easy,since the xbox itself uses directx,and that's a selling point for a lot of developers.But it's also a bit harder to code for,and a bit more limited than OpenGL.
OpenGL on the other hand,hasn't got any major publisher holding it's back,so it doesn't have many libraries that you can actually use,bit it is more flexible,it will work in linux naturally,it will run on MacOX,and you will get more power for rendering from your graphic card.That's the main difference i think.
As for Valve and their decisions,i don't think they will drop DirectX,but they won't be racing to update the engine to DirectX11,either,since DirectX9 is pretty powerful as it is,and they are familiar with it.I also think that they will up the animations to the next level,seeing what they accomplished with Alyx for episode 1.They will deffo make Source run smoother than before,and even add some features to it to make the games look more beautiful than before,but it won't be the jump like HL1 to HL2.

 

[Lewk]

Can you post any sources for this?

http://5by5.tv/conversation/16
The video doesn't seem to work anymore but the audio does. Jason Mitchel from Valve talks about it around the 19th minute mark, but I suggest listening from about the 18th minute mark to understand what he's talking about.

It's certainly an interesting notion, and knowing that they've been working with OpenGL since 2009 means they've been working on it for going on 3 years now. One can only deduce something exciting coming from this.