Shoutbox

I'd think it was more the last DX that was underspecified. When you leave wriggling room in a standard, you can't expect certain features to be there.

I think we should take a lesson from the first revisions of OpenGL- that specified a certain minimum size for the matrix stack, for example. I think that the OGL interface should have handled as many matricies as memory allowed, and how that worked in hardware should be irrelevant. There was just too many strange requirements on hardware and implementation and yet too much breathing room in actual capability.

It's silly to break something twice, and that's certainly what this feels like. Having a standard that was essentially never used before the next revision came along was probably a dumb idea and should have been better thought out. However, it's not as serious as it sounds. There isn't any real functional difference between 10 and 10.1. Games should run as well on one as on the other, but the stronger standard of 10.1 points hardware developers in the right directions.

[Sort of- the RIGHT direction would be for game engine / rendering / CAD companies to consult with hardware vendors directly about the way forward.. who are these "Microsoft" people anyway? And get off my lawn!]