KSP 1.1 and Dx11(12?)

[Vegatoxi]

Will KSP 1.1 have Dx11(12?) native support?

Also, anyone knows when 1.1 is release?

[Whizzkid]

I don't know much about Dx11/12 so can't help you there.

As for 1.1, Squad doesn't give release dates, with the exception of KSP 1.0.

[davidy12]

It could be next week, or it could be next month, only Squad knows.

[Streetwind]

Squad has not stated that they're paying special attention to DX11 mode. I would assume that they are in fact not paying any attention to it. There is little to be gained apart from RAM savings, and that is already taken care of by the 64bit client which has been confirmed as being in the works.

[sal_vager]

Support for DirectX 11, 12 (or 10 for that matter) depends entirely on the Unity3D game engine which by default exports to DirectX 9 on Windows platforms, and OpenGL ES on Linux and OSX.

Looking at KSP it's not the kind of game that relies on graphical fidelity, there will be much greater gains to be had from the physics engine improvements.

Also you can already force DirectX 11, it's somewhat broken but it works, it's up to Unity to fix this however.

[boxman]

Squad has not stated that they're paying special attention to DX11 mode. I would assume that they are in fact not paying any attention to it. There is little to be gained apart from RAM savings, and that is already taken care of by the 64bit client which has been confirmed as being in the works.

Graphically alot could be gained with dx11 support though. They say they want to polish up the visual aspect, so dx11 support would help alot in that area.

[Temeter]

Squad has not stated that they're paying special attention to DX11 mode. I would assume that they are in fact not paying any attention to it. There is little to be gained apart from RAM savings, and that is already taken care of by the 64bit client which has been confirmed as being in the works.

It does lower the burden on the CPU though, if i remember correctly?

That said, I'm not expecting anything in this direction either. Too much stuff to be done for Unity 5 already, and with some multicore support the performance be fine.

[Streetwind]

Graphically alot could be gained with dx11 support though. They say they want to polish up the visual aspect, so dx11 support would help alot in that area.

Yeah, but that'll not be part of 1.1, and maybe not even 1.2.

It does lower the burden on the CPU though, if i remember correctly?

DirectX 11 doesn't. DirectX 12 does, IF the game uses a lot of draw calls. Graphically impressive AAA-titles tend to do that. I'm not sure if KSP's more... utilitarian graphics engine does. If not, there won't be anything worth mentioning to gain.

And keep in mind that DX12 is Windows 10 only, and you need the right graphics card to boot. Any work sunk into supporting it will benefit only a small subset of KSP players for the foreseeable future, which makes it largely a waste.

[TheTom]

Yeah, but that'll not be part of 1.1, and maybe not even 1.2.

DirectX 11 doesn't. DirectX 12 does, IF the game uses a lot of draw calls. Graphically impressive AAA-titles tend to do that. I'm not sure if KSP's more... utilitarian graphics engine does. If not, there won't be anything worth mentioning to gain.

And keep in mind that DX12 is Windows 10 only, and you need the right graphics card to boot. Any work sunk into supporting it will benefit only a small subset of KSP players for the foreseeable future, which makes it largely a waste.

There are 2 issues with your statement. Nothing big - just totally invalidating it.

* We KNOW that the UI is issuing a ton of draw calls. That is the lack of UI mechanisms to make it easier - which the new UI will fix. Especially with a lot of multi threaded work going into Unity 5.2 to combine the draw calls in a separate thread or something like that. But the current UI is quite ineffective.

* Dx 12 helps all graphics cards. It kills a LOT of overhead in the driver section. I read in various places about a 20% gain even for old games that are not rewritten And most graphics cards support Dx 12 - or they could not run Windows 10 at all. They do not support the new features, but they support the new driver model with less overhead.

[NoMrBond]

The main reason to go with DX11 over DX9 under Unity 4 would be that Unity's DX9 implementation has a bug with CPU texture mirroring which inflates memory usage significantly (by keeping redundant copies of textures in system memory instead of offloading to GPU memory) which exacerbates KSP's 32 bit limitations.

If this particular bug has been fixed in Unity 5's implementation of DX9 then there won't be too much difference given KSP is (relatively) graphically lightweight.

DX11/12 support would be nice though for their various advances, maybe essential even if the DX9 bug still isn't fixed

[322997am]

Yeah, but that'll not be part of 1.1, and maybe not even 1.2.

DirectX 11 doesn't. DirectX 12 does, IF the game uses a lot of draw calls. Graphically impressive AAA-titles tend to do that. I'm not sure if KSP's more... utilitarian graphics engine does. If not, there won't be anything worth mentioning to gain.

And keep in mind that DX12 is Windows 10 only, and you need the right graphics card to boot. Any work sunk into supporting it will benefit only a small subset of KSP players for the foreseeable future, which makes it largely a waste.

A question about windows 10. Is it worth it for the 1.1 release I run windows 7 and I am happy with it. But if KSP will run faster on the new os I will upgrade.

[SyberSmoke]

A question about windows 10. Is it worth it for the 1.1 release I run windows 7 and I am happy with it. But if KSP will run faster on the new os I will upgrade.

I would say if you have the time, make a full backup of your PC with the Win 7 install then get the free upgrade to 10 and try it. Win10 is different, but unmanageable and in some ways better then 7. But that is up to you to decide.

[Van Disaster]

KSP is mostly cpu limited as far as I can tell ( I've not tried running it on some fully integrated microPC or something else with nearly no GPU ). No version of DX is going to help that.

DX11 mode seems fine in 1.0.x - doesn't add any shinies out of the box, but I've not found any of the bugs that were there upto & including 0.90. Admittedly I don't use 1.0 much...

[klgraham1013]

Unity using DirectX 9 in 2015 is almost as weird as Unity being 32bit in 2015.