Also:

 

 

 

It's pretty easy:

 

Steam Hardware Survey

 

That shows ~19% of gamers using XP. That is sampling 15-20 million people, by the way, and not just computer users, but customers who bought and play video games.

 

Oh, and only 2 of the top 10 video cards support DX11 (GTX 560 & ATi 5770).

 

So, yeah, you can do the research and come up with numbers. It's just not going to support the conclusion you want it to.

Actually, if you see my post on page 2, you will see that Steam says 31% of users have a DX11 capable system.

Actually, if you see my post on page 2, you will see that Steam says 31% of users have a DX11 capable system.

Indeed, I missed it because it was posted directly before one of mine. Nicely done.

So the discussion here is: Would you like to cater to 31% of your customer base at the cost of alienating 69% of them?

Even if we point out that anyone running DX10 should be running DX11, just with a card that can't handle the advanced features of DX11, that is still 21% of your customer base that you've potentially removed. Do we really think that over 20% of the people playing this game are quitting in the near term due to lack of sufficiently tessellated graphics or multi-threaded rendering ("My CPU is so idle, if only SWTOR could give it something to do....")?

there are many strange decisions Bio made.

Surely you're trolling... everyone knows BW put all ideas into a hat and let a 5 year old pull them out.

Considering how abysmal the fps in this game can be at times even on all low. I would highly suggest they get their game on and go Dx11. And a 300M budget and Dx11? This BW Austin is a dishonor to BW.

The game didnt take 300 mill to develop.

The game didnt take 300 mill to develop.

I've seen and played the game and yes I'd tend to agree... but in both cases your post and the post you quoted, both are in the realms of speculation. What we do know is that this game has had a huge budget irrespective of the numbers bandied about.

Erm Issues

Lots of games support dx11 but do not make it required. Rift, WoW, even AoC.

Issue is SWTOR simply cant, the underlying engine is the issue. Hero only supports DX9. If BW wants to make it support anything newer, they will have their hands full. They are struggling to even fix small bugs, a rework of the game engine they bought is probably outside the question.

Secondly as someone mentioned, AMD and Nvidia are not going to work on dx9 drivers. That means any current bugs will remain, and the efficiency of dx9 drivers will not improve beyond their current state.

As to this game not needing it, I seriously disagree. Unless you are comparing it to WoW, every modern AAA mmo supports these techs and they look leagues better than SWTOR. Its pretty evident to see why Bioware went the cartoony route for SWTOR; because going any other way would reveal just how bad looking the game engine is. Which really is not a big surprise given they bought an engine thats a decade old and has never been used in any successful game.

And oh yeah, the company that made hero engine...they make MUDS for a living (text games). Tera is using the latest version of Unreal, which has tons of developer support and expandability and has been used in tons of succesful games. It has had its 'tires kicked'.

Bioware went to cheapo route and got crappy tires. Now you wonder why you cant drive over 40 MPH on the freeway?

Erm Issues

 

 

Lots of games support dx11 but do not make it required. Rift, WoW, even AoC.

Issue is SWTOR simply cant, the underlying engine is the issue. Hero only supports DX9. If BW wants to make it support anything newer, they will have their hands full. They are struggling to even fix small bugs, a rework of the game engine they bought is probably outside the question.

 

Secondly as someone mentioned, AMD and Nvidia are not going to work on dx9 drivers. That means any current bugs will remain, and the efficiency of dx9 drivers will not improve beyond their current state.

 

As to this game not needing it, I seriously disagree. Unless you are comparing it to WoW, every modern AAA mmo supports these techs and they look leagues better than SWTOR. Its pretty evident to see why Bioware went the cartoony route for SWTOR; because going any other way would reveal just how bad looking the game engine is. Which really is not a big surprise given they bought an engine thats a decade old and has never been used in any successful game.

 

And oh yeah, the company that made hero engine...they make MUDS for a living (text games). Tera is using the latest version of Unreal, which has tons of developer support and expandability and has been used in tons of succesful games. It has had its 'tires kicked'.

 

Bioware went to cheapo route and got crappy tires. Now you wonder why you cant drive over 40 MPH on the freeway?

So I've been wondering lately - how hard would it be to implement another engine with the already written code?? I'm sure the peeps at BW have asked the same question..

Microsoft still supports Windows XP SP3.

Until they stop supporting it, games MUST support it also (DX9...).

So what if DX9 isn't being enhanced? The game still has to support it.

If the game did not support Windows XP they would lose out on a lot of customers... and angry customers at that.

Get over it.

LOL, people like this remind me of the West Borough people. "What we say is right! Because... uh... we said so!".

Hell... I still disable DX11 in just about every game that "supports" it considering it's buggy... at best. Don't even get me started on writing code for it... just thinking about it makes me want to slap everyone on it's development team.

The game didnt take 300 mill to develop.

QFE , and should be obvious the minute you load the game =p

I think people are completely misunderstanding my original post. Adding direct X 11 does not mean they need to completely get rid of direct X 9, it merely means you have the option of using the much more efficient direct X instead of the old one.

Using WoW as an example, when they launched the direct X 11 version, I gained about 25 fps on my D11x card. I also noticed a marketably improved frame rate in large population areas. (Org fully packed for example).

To clarify, in 2012 Bioware should of at least supported Direct X 11 from launch.

MMOS are meant to be played for a considerable amount of years, so the biggest point I am trying to make is that why not future proof a game instead of relying on old technology that continues to have limited support. I would of thought they could have implemented a DX9 version along with DX11 to assist with people who still have not upgraded.

DX11 cards have been on the market for 3 years.

there are many strange decisions Bio made. tbh i was suspicious when they moved their offices from canada to texas... i mean from the beautiful and democratic VAncouver, to the messy and dangerous Houston... really? why? no idea

Vancouver? You know they started in Edmonton, AB right? AS a matter of fact their offices are just off Whyte ave!!! Pssst they don't even have offices in Vancouver!!!

So I've been wondering lately - how hard would it be to implement another engine with the already written code?? I'm sure the peeps at BW have asked the same question..

Impossible.

A game engine isnt just some paintjob developers throw on at the end. The engine is the framework for the entire game. New Engine = new game code. They would have to start from scratch with the code, though all the art would be already done this would still be setting them back about 2-3 years.

Hell... I still disable DX11 in just about every game that "supports" it considering it's buggy... at best.

Maybe it's just your system is bad, I have no trouble running dx11 games. Direct X is an API btw, I don't understand what can be "buggy" about it.

It is disturbing how many people seem to have absolutely no idea what "must", "required" and "needs" mean.

thankyou for that Slick, was beginning to wonder if Id missed something.

First thing iv ever do in MMO's is turn stuff down, fps owns eye candy.

Both AMD and Nvidia officially stopped supporting and developing performance drivers for direct x 9 in 2010 and instead stated they would focus primarily on direct x 11(stated on their respective sites)..

Key words there is performance drivers.

They are already optimized as much as they are going to get for DX9. This changes nothing, 10 years down the road DX9 will still run just fine (unless microsoft decides to completely alter the API for it)

This alone makes your entire post invalid.

First of all, switching to dx11 will only restrict the os to vista and 7, dx 9 cards can still support a subset of dx11 (3 dx 9 modes are available) until you start to use advanced features of dx10+ cards.

The advantage of dx11 over dx9 is the state management is less cpu costly (state validation is moved from rendering state change, to state block creation time (loading)). The larger texture size can't be used in practice (16k * 16k limit on dx11 instead of 2k * 2k on lowest dx 9 profile), because on most objects 512 - 4096 sized textures are sufficient (also swtor currently uses about 900 megs vram with all settings to height (except aa)). Also dx 9 does not support instancing, witch allows the gpu to draw same objects in different position (or pose) as one batch (speeds up particle effects, grass, trees, blaster bolts, l.sabers ....). The multithreaded rendering is nice, but the perf gain is not that great.

So an optional dx11 rendering path would be nice and might improve perf., but the current perf. problems are not dx9 related, its the design of the entire engine, its just broken.

I also believe they don't have the needed man power (or knowledge) to get it done (the port to dx11 and the perf fixes of the engine) in the next couple years at least.

Vancouver? You know they started in Edmonton, AB right? AS a matter of fact their offices are just off Whyte ave!!! Pssst they don't even have offices in Vancouver!!!

Psst, they moved the offices to Sherwood Park

there are many strange decisions Bio made. tbh i was suspicious when they moved their offices from canada to texas... i mean from the beautiful and democratic VAncouver, to the messy and dangerous Houston... really? why? no idea

There we have it.

BLAME CANADA!

http://www.220.ro/desene-animate/South-Park-Uncut-Song-Blame-Canada/9tyJsNi7b6/