cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

DirectX 9 (DX9) Will be Deprecated Starting with Next SDK

cybereality
Grand Champion
Due to API and resource limitations, we’ve decided to deprecate DirectX 9 support and will be removing it from LibOVR in the near future. This will allow us to focus on future work using DirectX 11 and OpenGL that will help deliver a great VR experience on Windows.

Apps that use DirectX 9 will continue to work for the foreseeable future, but they won’t compile in future SDK releases and may have additional runtime latency after we remove DirectX 9 support.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
58 REPLIES 58

virror
Explorer
Yeah, why would ppl create a game thats based on dx9 this day? Just seems strange since only a very few % still have cards that only use dx9 and the benefits from dx11 are huge compared. I think its a good move. A bit sad for some of the cool games out there but thats the way things go.

Scawen
Heroic Explorer
OK, why did I have to pretend to read a stupid legal document just so I could log in? As if anyone would read that crap. Oculus should fire their lawyers. :evil:

Why would anyone create a game based on DX9? There is one good reason. If you would like your software to run on Mac or Linux. That is possible, using Wine, for a game written for DX9. But Wine does not support later versions of DirectX, so if you use DX10 or later, your software can ONLY run on Windows (later than XP).

I think Live for Speed is not affected by this change. Using Extended mode, LFS is fully responsible for the output and doesn't share DirectX objects with the Rift drivers. I guess this change is very bad for any developers or users of software that use Direct mode and DX9.
Live for Speed - www.lfs.net

agnu
Honored Guest
what about opengl? Is there no info on specific opengl version support? Half life 2 does have an opengl renderer on the linux and mac. Valve could port hl2 to opengl on windows and integrate the latest sdk.
My 3D android game: Attack of the Teapotcopters Google Cardboard mode RELEASED! Screenshot

bigmike20vt
Visionary
"agnu" wrote:
what about opengl? Is there no info on specific opengl version support? Half life 2 does have an opengl renderer on the linux and mac. Valve could port hl2 to opengl on windows and integrate the latest sdk.


This is a good point. I think ETS2 can be run in openGL as well.
Fiat Coupe, gone. 350Z gone. Dirty nappies, no sleep & practical transport incoming. Thank goodness for VR 🙂

EisernSchild
Explorer
Did not get it at all... You say you remove the D3D9 DistortionRenderer class from LibOVR ? If i use DX9 in my engine i still can include the old rendering code in my own project, right ? So that does not change anything, right ?

kojack
MVP
MVP
"EisernSchild" wrote:
Did not get it at all... You say you remove the D3D9 DistortionRenderer class from LibOVR ? If i use DX9 in my engine i still can include the old rendering code in my own project, right ? So that does not change anything, right ?

They will probably remove DX9 from direct rift mode. You don't have the code for that, it's part of the closed source driver.
Supporting DX9 just for rendering is easy, I bet it's entirely due to problems with direct mode that are making them drop it.

"DarrenM" wrote:
Hopefully someone can make a runtime switcher if it ends up being necessary to swap back for the dx9 games. iRacing (dx11 support in progress), Live for Speed, Richard Burns Rally, Euro Truck Sim et al. It also cuts off hope of CV1 support for those games

I just tested, Euro Truck works fine in OpenGL with the DK2.

Modern OpenGL and DX11 are both a lot more powerful than DX9. Geometry shaders, domain shaders, hull shaders, compute shaders, none of those are dx9.

"scawen" wrote:
Why would anyone create a game based on DX9? There is one good reason. If you would like your software to run on Mac or Linux. That is possible, using Wine, for a game written for DX9. But Wine does not support later versions of DirectX, so if you use DX10 or later, your software can ONLY run on Windows (later than XP).

Wine supports DX10. https://www.winehq.org/winapi_stats
If they really cared about linux and mac users they would use opengl instead of dx9, so they can easily just build native versions.
Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

agnu
Honored Guest
Do we know if they are experimenting with dx12? it is due to be released around/before the CV1 (2015 fall).
Most of todays GPUs (intel haswell, broadwell and up, AMD GCN gpus and up, nvidia dx11 capable gpus) will have support for it, and because of Microsoft's offer (free windows 10 for every win7/win8 user) DX12 will spread very fast.

Unreal engine 4 and unity are already integrating support.
My 3D android game: Attack of the Teapotcopters Google Cardboard mode RELEASED! Screenshot

swt
Honored Guest
PLEASE reverse this poor decision (to deprecate DX9) immediately! Removal of DX9 will render the Oculus Rift useless for a significant class of applications (including professional applications that simply cannot be easily ported to DX11/12). Oculus should have more than sufficient resources to recompile for DX9 (especially after the significant Facebook investment). If you cannot adequately support Direct Mode using DX9 then simply state that Direct Mode is not fully supported when using DX9 (and DO NOT remove the option for extended mode ... including in CV1+ ... ever). Removal of DX9 support would cause serious financial harm to our company. Perhaps you can just hire a summer intern to support/recompile for DX9. Please reconsider. Thank you. Have a good day.

pixel67
Explorer
So they are dropping support for a 12 year old API (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX) that:

1. Has been replaced twice and coming up on a 3rd time with clearly superior technology as already stated
2. Was initially part of an OS which itself is EOL.
3. Was never intended to render VR

All i can say is good riddance. If it makes the end product more stable and responsive then all we have lost is support for a few titles who were solely relying on outdated technology...

Good decision in my book.

Anonymous
Not applicable
"pixel67" wrote:
So they are dropping support for a 12 year old API (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX) that:

1. Has been replaced twice and coming up on a 3rd time with clearly superior technology as already stated
2. Was initially part of an OS which itself is EOL.
3. Was never intended to render VR

All i can say is good riddance. If it makes the end product more stable and responsive then all we have lost is support for a few titles who were solely relying on outdated technology...

Good decision in my book.


You say all these things, but you're forgetting some things.

DX9 was revised with Vista to support Vista/7/8's features for the Window Manager. This is called DX9Ex.

Aero relies on DX9Ex, as it's a reliable target that nearly every single Windows computer will be able to meet.

If Microsoft deems DX9 to be a reliable "baseline" for functionality, how is Oculus unable to match this? Especially when it's an arbitrary decision unbased in technical reasoning.