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By Fredrik Olsson 07-03-08 07:27
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The mythical MMORPG Age of Conan, due out Q4 2007 has been updated with comparison screenshots of DirectX 9 and DirectX 10. The difference is quite notable, escpecially when it comes to draw distance and vegetation.
What does DX10 do?
DX10 doesn't bring any new vital graphics features to the table, but rather sets a minimum for the hardwares feature set.
Why do the DX9 screenshots look so much worse?
As you see in those comparison shots, screenshots from DX9 has much less vegetation and shorter draw distance. But, wait! DX9 doesn't restrict neither of those, just take a look at Far Cry, it has a huge draw distance and the surroundings are full of plants, grass and trees. Or Serious Sam another DX9 game cluttered with plants and trees. Both these games use graphic shaders to draw the vegetation, so why do they need DX10 in Conan to do it?
Why Age of Conan craves a DX10 graphics to draw lush vegetation
It can be that the game was developed for DX10 and not much time was put on the rendering path for older hardware, using DX9.
A more probable cause to why the game looks so different though, is spelled Microsoft. Age of Conan has become a Windows Vista showcase game and one of Microsoft's biggest selling points for getting people to upgrade to Vista is DirectX 10, which is Vista Exclusive.
Enough ranting, let's take a look at the comparison, click the images to zoom.
Camp fire DX9 vs DX10
DirectX 10 has longer draw distance and what looks like displacement mapping on the ground to make it look more detailed. Displacement mapping was introduced in DX9 and has been available since the first hardware implementation in OpenGL.
DX9
DX10
Jungle DX9 vs DX10
DirectX 10 has longer draw distance, more grass and small plants, more dramatic shadows and strangely enough what looks like a "simple" god ray light effect coming through the trees, seen in a DX9 games such as Far Cry.
DX9
DX10
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