Is it time to say "So long" to DirectX 8 hardware?
It was 2002 when we started work on the high-end graphics features for SSP, work that culminated in the development of the R-Technics Multimedia Engine (RME). At the time, DirectX 8 was graphics platform for Windows and, appropriately, DirectX 8 hardware was the norm. Midway through the development of the RME, DirectX 9 was released as well as a the next generation of graphics hardware. It was an easy decision to move the development effort from DirectX 8 to DirectX 9. The more difficult decision, however, was determining when to use features only offered in the DirectX 9 hardware and when to provide backward compatibility with DirectX 8 hardware. DirectX 9 hardware was new, therefore more expensive than the DirectX 8 hardware and we expected that there would be a significant number of users who would have recently purchased DirectX 8 hardware and would not be too enthusiastic about quickly upgrading to DirectX 9 hardware. What complicated things even more was that some DirectX 9 hardware, such as the nVidia FX 5200, were slower than previous generation graphics cards like the nVidia Ti 4200 -- but the FX 5200 supported more graphics rendering features. Also, the basic high-end graphics features that we were implementing, such as motion video background, would work fine on DirectX 8 hardware, but the more interesting features like visualizations and 3D transitions, could be more easily implemented using DirectX 9 hardware.
What we decided was that all of the basic high-end graphics features, such as video background, 2D animations, and shadows, would work with DirectX 8 hardware, but that more advanced features would require DirectX 9 hardware. This was a practical decision, but it was also a challenge to clearly communicate to users what hardware was required to run SSP. Unfortunately, SSP became known as a product that required higher end to run than other similar products, which wasn't true -- it was just true if you wanted to use all of its features to their fullest.
Well, we seem to be at a similar decision point once again. As I've mentioned recently, we are completing the conversion of all SSP effects to the new RipFX technology. A significant quality of RipFX technology is that it can be used with 30 fps video. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to take full advantage of graphics hardware. Once again, as we have been implementing the RipFX components, we've had to decide if some features would be supported in DirectX 8 hardware, or they would require DirectX 9 hardware.
One option we have is to, once again, try to communicate which features are supported by which graphics cards. The other option would be to simply make the break from DirectX 8 hardware and require the use of DirectX 9 hardware for all high-end graphics features. In either case, one thing is for certain, some of the new RipFX technologies will require DirectX 9 hardware, which means that some effects that were previously available in non-DirectX versions of SSP (5.3 and earlier) will now require DirectX 9 hardware even when they are not used with motion videos. DirectX 9 hardware has been on the market now for nearly five years, and these cards are quite inexpensive now...perhaps the decision is obvious.
(BE93)