• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

DirectX

  • Thread starter Thread starter mgh
  • Start date Start date
M

mgh

Messages
1,413
Country
unitedkingdom
Installing FSX seems to install DirectX9.0. Does uninstalling FSX also uninstal it?
 
Hi,

As far as I know uninstalling FSX does not remove DirectX (or things like C++ runtime libraries that get installed as well).
 
It's been reported that currently P3D won't run under DX11 and that DX9.0c needs to be installed.

I know it's hypothetical, but would that also apply to FSX in principle?
 
Yes, FSX also needs DirectX 9.0c installed.
 
It's said that Version 2 of P3D will use DX11. I'm thinking aloud but what are the implications likely to be for existing, FSX-based, add-ons? I'm not an expert on graphics coding but the possibilities seem to be:

At best they'd run provided DX9.0c is installed

At worst they wouldn't run if the new P3D code isn't backwards compatible.
 
Hi,

I don't think it matters much. Addons don't work with directx directly, the rendering engine does that. So as long as the rendering engine works fine with the directx version it targets it should be fine.
 
Thanks for the replies.

Will existing FSX models be able to take advantage of the new features in DirectX 11, such as tessellation?
 
Hi,

That depends on how they code the rendering engine. Might be, might not be. Big changes might require changes to the MDL format and thus break backwards compatibility. But it is all guessing at this moment.

The fact that DirectX offers some functionality, does not mean that every rendering engine using DirectX also uses that functionality.
 
My understanding is that tessellation requires displacement maps. Would non-DirectX11/non-tessellated models won't have those?
 
Hi,

From what I have read it is more the other way around. You need tessellation to be able to use displacement maps. Tessellation on itself is nothing more than divide some polygon into smaller ones.

But supporting displacement maps indeed would mean such a texture should be available in your material settings and that would require the MDL format to change.

But only the P3D developers know if they plan to use displacement maps or not. Using DirectX 11 does not require that.

I think it could be most useful to get a better terrain representation. In that case it would be inside the terrain engine and would not affect MDL models.
 
So updating to DirectX 11 will have little, if any, effect on existing models?
 
It depends on the rendering engine. They could rewrite the rendering engine or the shaders, so that existing models can still benefit from new features or improvements in DirectX 11. But without that not much benefit.

And feature that would require information that is not stored in the models now will of course not work with old models.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top