More Direct X 11 (and cloth physics).

Don't know if you guys actually care about this but here are two videos displaying Direct X 11's capabilites. Note that the following vidoes are recorded under the Unigine engine. Hard to believe we've got 11 now considering the fact most games these days don't seem to use 10 that much. Anyway, I know you guys don't like long walls of text so I'm just going to let the vidoes do the talking.
 

I haven't even used DirectX 10 yet, although I do have a card capable of using it.
 
Edit: The videos look really pretty, but will games look as good as that?

Well, upskirts are gonna be harder to come by.

That was just... beautiful.

" Well, upskirts are gonna be harder to come by. "

Edit: The videos look really pretty, but will games look as good as that?

Tech demos have the advantage of: 
 
a) being highly optimized for specific hardware 
 
and 
 
b) focusing the entirety of the gpu's compute power on a very specific thing. A game needs the gpu to render far more than a single woman in a dress.

@Diamond:

" Well, upskirts are gonna be harder to come by. "

" Tech demos have the advantage of:  a) being highly optimized for specific hardware  and  b) focusing the entirety of the gpu's compute power on a very specific thing. A game needs the gpu to render far more than a single woman in a dress. "

those were some pretty sexy skirts.

Maybe they can finally make mages cool without having their equipment clip through their mounts and such.

The skirts were okay, but tessellation seemed much more impressive. It's exactly  what graphics needed to become almost photorealistic. Textures used to be flat 2D images. Then came bump mapping and made them seem three dimensional. Now, they actually have a natural, more rough edged look that makes it look truly 3D.
 
Of course, this means every single texture will need to use resources equivalent to character models. I can't see how even the newest hardware can handle that at super high resolutions.

" @eroticfishcake: yep... and as far as we go graphically the less diference we encounter in each step of the ladder.  So as long as the graphics are believable and aren't horrible i don't frisk too much. "

All I want is a flag not to look completely fucked up.

" All I want is a flag not to look completely fucked up. "

It's about on par with Crysis I think. I get about the same performance and it looks the same from what I can see. Perhaps slightly better bump mapping (or occlusion is I guess what they're calling it now?).  From the first video though the tesselation effects look pretty dramatic. I might pick up a new GT 300 card when they come out. 
 

" @Jeust said:

" @eroticfishcake: yep... and as far as we go graphically the less diference we encounter in each step of the ladder.  So as long as the graphics are believable and aren't horrible i don't frisk too much. "

That sounds so poetic when you phrase it that way. Heh, but yeah I do agree with you on that. Since good graphics are easy to come by nowadays, most developers focus more in the art style of a game, which is a good thing as it inspires them to take on new looks as opposed to the realistic appearance that we are oh so familiar with. Take Borderlands or Street Fighter IV for example, their praise partially comes from the art style they've adopted. "

Games that have a Cel-shaded look can be seen as timeless when compared to the games that try and achieve realism. Games that tried were loved for their "realistic" graphics years ago are not so enjoyable to look at as now.  "

" @FrEeZe said: 

Games that have a Cel-shaded look can be seen as timeless when compared to the games that try and achieve realism. Games that tried were loved for their "realistic" graphics years ago are not so enjoyable to look at as now.  "

It definitely forces more effort into design and ways to visually represent without actually just taking a picture of something and plastering it on a model etc. Good design is the middleman and just gets lost more often with games using generic 'realistic' middleware. Look at Half Life 2, while it was a great realistic looking game, going for amazing realism at the time I still think it's great looking because of it's amazing design and presentation.  If a game is visually designed and presented well, it won't matter if it was going for abstract or real. "

It's amazing how far we've come.

" @Absurd said:

Edit: The videos look really pretty, but will games look as good as that?

To answer that, here's a tech demo showcasing hair technology from 2004.
 
 
    Realistically, I'd say we'll see graphics of the nature in the above DX11 demos and cloth when the next generation of consoles come out, pretty regularly.  Tech demos don't actually appear as advanced as they used to. "

As long as Windows 7 receives a good reception and is successful I think we'll see a much wider use of DX 11 then 10. Vista just wasn't around long enough and wasn't popular enough for DX 10 to take hold.

Fuck that.

Show me boob physics - plastics and reals.

"I haven't even used DirectX 10 yet, although I do have a card capable of using it.  Edit: The videos look really pretty, but will games look as good as that? "

" As long as Windows 7 receives a good reception and is successful I think we'll see a much wider use of DX 11 then 10. Vista just wasn't around long enough and wasn't popular enough for DX 10 to take hold. "

" @Babble said:

" As long as Windows 7 receives a good reception and is successful I think we'll see a much wider use of DX 11 then 10. Vista just wasn't around long enough and wasn't popular enough for DX 10 to take hold. "

I'd like to believe that, but you need developers to care. We're more likely to see this stuff get baked into the next Xbox than we are going to need a million PC gamers to go out and buy quad-core videocards to support it :) "

LoTRO does look awesome(er) now, though I think they did a fantastic job of scaling the other way too. Just about the time I was ready to re-up AoC for the sun-beams you see in DX10, Vista Ultimate gave up the ghost and I wimped back to XP :) I've got W7 coming though, and  think a rig good enough to push some graphics to the limit. We'll see.

I have always had an 'on the wall' but very enthusiastic interest in cutting edge graphics even if I could never afford the rig to play them. This sort of stuff is fantastic to me. Can't get enough of it.

those look really great. i want to see the graphics in some games once they come out.

CryEngine 3 on PC (consoles don't have dx11 cards yet) will probably have the tesselation similar to this Heaven benchmark test. This level of graphics won't be seen on consoles in next few years. "

@GunnBjorn

The Medusa Demo is a little more spectacular.  What is ATI's current top demo to compete with this?

whatsup with those bumpy as roads in the second video, goddamn they must be so annoying lol