DirectX 12

The Xbox 1 uses an 8 core AMD 'Jaguar' based CPU (you know the ones they use in the super cheap, really really slow netbooks and low end tablets) bumped up to around 2ghz clock speed, with an integrated GPU which is similar to a desktop R7 260X card. The PS4 uses a very similar cpu, but with a slightly more powerful gpu that is roughly between the desktop R9 270 and R9 270X cards.

Whilst the gpu side on the new consoles would be fine for PA, I don't think that weak 8 core cpu will cut it, as PA really needs good *single thread* performance. Even if the graphics side was ok, the simulation would kill it (although I guess if Uber did release on console they could make it online only to avoid the weak cpu holding the sim up I suppose).

The point is the xbox one and PS4 are both pretty weak in the cpu department compared to a modern PC. Heck an original Phenom or Core 2 Quad would outrun those cpu's.

Alright, I'll bite.

There will not be a DirectX 12 or Vulkan version of PA.

A few points:

• PA is an OpenGL renderer so it can run on Windows, Mac, and sometimes Linux (sorry Linux users) with minimal changes for each platform. There has been a ton of work done to optimize our game for OpenGL at this point that isn't applicable to DirectX because of the different ways they work so we'd have to rewrite everything.
• The differences between OpenGL and Vulkan are greater than OpenGL and DirectX (except DirectX 12, which is basically the same as Vulkan).
• Some older games that are OpenGL can be made to run using DirectX with simple wrappers that translate OpenGL calls into equivalent DirectX calls, especially ones written to work with WebGL which is actually being run as DirectX on Windows anyways by most browsers. We also use features of OpenGL which have no direct equivalent in DirectX or which would run much, much slower if using a DirectX wrapper.
• The specs for Vulkan aren't out yet and haven't been finalized, and we're not cool enough to get previews (because we're not on the Kronos group board). DirectX 12 is out in preview, but we're not doing DirectX.
• Games that use an existing engine toolset may be able to rerelease with DirectX 12 / Vulkan because the bulk of the work is being done by the company making the engine, not the smaller company making the game. It might literally be as easy as checking a box. We made our own engine.

OpenGL and DirectX 11 and earlier do a lot of work in the drivers to try to hide the differences between GPUs. If you're doing something relatively straightforward you can be reasonably sure newer video cards will render what you ask it to faster. Vulkan and DirectX 12 are about stripping away many of the abstraction and hidden work the drivers (and the GPU driver teams) have put in and allow direct access to the hardware. This means huge possible performance wins if you know how to optimize your code, but now you have to optimize your code for every single individual type of video card yourself instead of relying on the drivers to do it for you. If you don't an old integrated GPU might end up running a game better than the latest and greatest GPU you didn't test on.

If you have a big team of engineers, this isn't a problem. If you're small you'll probably stick with OpenGL, DirectX 11, or end up using someone else's engine.

Are any of the old Uber devs working on Ashes of singularity? The DirectX 12 update to that comes out on the 20th.

I see, thanks for the interesting information!

EDIT: Mods can lock this.

Not that I know of. That group started work on an engine right when Mantle was announced. They ended up making an engine designed to take advantage of Mantle and show off its potential early, as well as work with DirectX11. Mantle shares a lot in common with Vulkan and DirectX 12 so adding support for those APIs shouldn't be too hard. The underpinnings of the PA engine are going on nearly 4 years old now, long before Vulkan was even discussed. It started life before even DirectX 10 or OpenGL 3 were guaranteed to be supported on many people's PCs.

Thing is your graphics engine is really efficient already. It scales down to run on a toaster (well in my case the ancient gt420m gpu in my laptop), and up to high end cards. It's seldom client fps that I find struggling performance wise.

I think people need to understand what possible problems dx12 / vulkan actually solve as I don't think they're really the issue with PA.

PA's FPS is high enough; except when looking at many many units. The sim is where the slowdown/problems occur.

And the problem is, CPU performance is barely going up lately. Using Vulkan would only free up some of the CPU calls that are used on GPU, and not speed up sim directly.

If PA were running on direct x (therefore being compatible) it'd work fine, the Xbox one is more capable than the computer I used to run PA with before the optimizations.

I think you're really skewing the definition of bad hardware, the Xbone and PS4 are basically mid range

The processor is a bit weird- it's being octocore 1.75Ghz which is definitely it's downside, but 8 gigs of RAM and what I believe a decent video card the current gen consoles are.. Decent, though they're already becoming out of date. (The jump from previous Gen to this gen was just not big enough)

The draw of consoles is they're cheap, for 349$ (price of the Xbox one) you'd get a very lackluster desktop or an absolutely horrid laptop.

Desktops at comparable prices:

http://www.frys.com/product/8489588?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

http://www.frys.com/product/8356647?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

http://www.frys.com/product/8375627?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Three different companies.

No. I would define what is inside the consoles to be bad hardware. It maybe was "okay" when they were released.

I occasionally play BF4 and this drives me insane, they got AMD optimization just fine because of the PS4 and xbox 1, but I have a GTX 760 that can barely push 15fps on some maps.

I really did not want to buy the 760 but I also didn't really have a choice, I bought an R9 280 and it was DOA, and then the replacement they sent me was also DOA, so I ended up wasting quite a bit of money on that card.

I run a 280 it's great.... Strange that 2 cards doa...? Surely you'd get a third replacement if second was also dead? What psu you using?

I decided not to get a third replacement, I reconsidered partly because I heard the 280 runs really hot, and because the experience I had with the first two was absolutely terrible. I have a 600 watt PSU, forget exactly which model it is, I'll check when I get home. I know it isn't the problem though, my 7850 ran fine.

I owned a Zoltac GTX 760 and I was able to run BF4 50-60FPs no problem. You might wanna try properly uninstalling ALL drivers using DDU (display driver uninstaller) and get rid of any left over AMD drivers, and all Nvidia drivers and reinstall latest ones, perhaps even re-download them. a 760 EASILY maxes out BF4 without too much trouble, theres something wrong with your machine if you can barely push 15FPS. Also check and make sure your GPU is getting used at least 60% usage while playing BF4, if its not, you have a problem, Turning the card power management to maximum in nvidia control panel may help with this. Don't use DSR or upsampling of any kind either, 760 isn't built for those features on a game like BF4, can do it, but yea you would get like 15FPS using super high resolution.

Thanks for all the stuff you wrote and so on, but I got one question left:

What about your next big strategy title you´ll hopefully put on crowdfunding sometime near end of this year or at the start of the next year?
Wouldn´t you then be forced to updating/porte/rewrite your own inhouse engine to/in Vulkan anyways? I guess you would, but I can´t be sure unless you (or anybody else from the team) tells me exactly that!
And IF you done so, I consider porting PA to the same engine wouldn´t be that ultra-freaking stuff anymore, would it?

It runs at 99% usage constantly. Most maps I can push 30-40 FPS, but on siege of shanghai it drops to 10-15.

Vulkan is not replacing OpenGL. It is going to continue existing, and they are going to continue upgrading it. (In fact, in an nVidia presentation, they mentioned that you can use both the OpenGL stack and Vulkan APIs in the same application)

I have a 500 watt rocketfish PSU in my machine, which is the minimum for the 760, 7850, and R9 280, afaik. One of the 6 pin connections is a twin molex adapter, but that never gave me problems on the 7850.