- WinSAT: Is Your Computer Ready for Gaming Under Vista?
- How to Check Your WinSAT Score
- The Perfect CPU
- How Much RAM?
- DirectX 10 Graphic Cards: What? When?
- Fast Hard Disk
- Gaming Performance and Compatibility Under Vista
- Compatibility Mode
- Example: Age of Empires III
- DirectX 10 Changes the Way We Look at Hardware
- Geometry Shader
- Unified Architecture
- Where Are the Other DirectX Features?
- Games Explorer
- Bottom Line
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Geometry Shader
DirectX 10 features a new geometry shader capability that doesn’t calculate based on vertices, as DX9 hardware does, but rather on units such as dots, lines, and triangles. This new geometry shader results in games that feature entirely new levels of detail that we’ve never seen before. For example, not only will you see every single detail of a blade of grass, but dewdrops merging together and slipping to the ground. With DX10 and the geometry shader, you can actually see a face (of your game character, for instance) with hundreds of existing muscles, bones, scars, or scratches (see Figure 5).
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Figure 5 DirectX 10 will create a new sense of virtual reality.
As Figure 6 shows in one of the early screenshots from Crysis (the first DX10 game), facial characteristics are more realistic than ever before.
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Both pictures show facial details that have only been possible in rendered movies such as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within or Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Now, with DirectX 10, we finally see this in-game!