Why DX9 and Windowed mode

[Mhurron]

It's a silly question, not really important when you think about it, but I was wondering what prompted the decision to update the engine to DirectX 9 and adding an official Windowed Mode, and why now?

[Raydeus]

Noooo, you didn't add the question mark! You are doomed.


And I think their answer after all the official stuff will be:

"Because we felt like it. w"

=P

[IfritnoItazura]

The answer to why of adding Windowed mode is fairly obvious; NA players on PC have been demanding it forever, and many are using the Windower to get this feature.

The DX9 question is very interesting, though; I'd really like to know why as well.

[Feba]

Ita, the "What prompted" is the important bit here. It's a nice way of saying "thanks for finally getting off your asses, but why now instead of three freaking years ago?"

And this is actually an interesting question, despite how simple it is.

[Mhurron]

The answer to why of adding Windowed mode is fairly obvious; NA players on PC have been demanding it forever, and many are using the Windower to get this feature.Thats true. The reason it popped into my head was the "why now" After 5 years and 3 expansions they get around to adding it.

The DX9 question is very interesting, though; I'd really like to know why as well. I also should have added if this means they are dropping support for older DX8 cards.

[Shadowneko]

It's probabaly to keep up with vista since it's not very backwards compatable friendly...

[Mhurron]

It's probabaly to keep up with vista since it's not very backwards compatable friendly...
Actually, other then the same nVidia problems that XP has, FFXI runs just fine on Vista the way it is.

Incidentally, I believe that it is the nVidia driver problems that were a big reason for the DX9 update.

[Jarre]

Would the DX9 patch sort out alot of problems had with some of the later graphics cards that many threads on this forum complained about? if so then its a great dea, especially as people will be using the new DX10 cards in systems, the abckwards compatibility of those can only go so far..

[Ellipses]

Pikko: The Allakhazam community was very happy to hear about an official windower. Are you involved in its development and do you have any word on its progress?

Tanaka-san: Up until now the problem has been that the graphics parts of it have been published in DirectX 8 but now that we’ve been able to upgrade it to DirectX 9, which is what we are doing right now, this will become available for all of the cards. We hope to have it in by the release of Wings of the Goddess. We think it will be ready.
So, ostensibly DX9 support is being added because of windowed mode.

[Feba]

I doubt that, it's obviously possible to create windowed DX8 applications.

[Ellipses]

Yeah, thus "ostensibly." Just a question of whether they'd give out any other reason if that's the official party line.

[Mhurron]

I doubt that, it's obviously possible to create windowed DX8 applications.
Obviously it's generally possible, but this is asking about FFXI specifically. It's possible that if the decision to add windowed mode came first, then when they sat down to do make the engine modifications that they realized or decided the quicker way was to clean up and modify the engine to a point where it was designed with windowing in mind.

On the other hand, the decision to upgrade the engine could have come first as a response to the growing problems on modern nVidia cards, and they just decided to add windowing mode while they were fixing the engine anyway.

Would the DX9 patch sort out alot of problems had with some of the later graphics cards that many threads on this forum complained about?
Yes it should.

[Raydeus]

I'm more interested in Exactly when? than in Why?

But it would be fun seeing them coming up with an answer to this. :P

[Mhurron]

I'm more interested in Exactly when? than in Why?

When it was let out that they were, they already said they were hoping to have it out with Wings.

[Feba]

Mhurron: obviously, they could've just used a method similar to the Windower to make FFXI windowed if they wanted to. I agree that it's far more likely they did it for compatibility though.

[Raydeus]

But knowing SE that could be between next week and 6 months after WotG release. >_<;

[Mhurron]

Mhurron: obviously, they could've just used a method similar to the Windower to make FFXI windowed if they wanted to. I agree that it's far more likely they did it for compatibility though.
Why use dirty hacks when you can do it correctly.

[Feba]

Why use dirty hacks when you can do it correctly.
Because dirty hacks are cool.

Also would it really be much worse than anything else about the PC port?

[IfritnoItazura]

Because dirty hacks are cool.

Also would it really be much worse than anything else about the PC port?

Dirty hacks are dirty. It may be too much to ask for elegant, beautiful design at this stage of the game, but there's no reason to muck it up more.

[Ziero]

Ita, the "What prompted" is the important bit here. It's a nice way of saying "thanks for finally getting off your asses, but why now instead of three freaking years ago?"
And this is actually an interesting question, despite how simple it is.

Didn't they say they wanted to add the windower now because cheating and 3rd pt apps became too common place and having their own windower might prevent people from gravitating towards those third pt aps?

[SilverMatrix]

I can answer your question for DX9



For a couple years now FFXI has been on the brink of destruction in my eyes because of the Vista support issues and nVidia 8600+ series. For a long long time I researched this as to why the game does not support higher end video cards or vista in that matter. Vista is not able to run FFXI on the system very well because of Direct X. the minimum requirements for Vista is DirectX 9, so if you have a game etc. FFXI, running for DirectX 8, its not going to run very well. Thus you get 5-10 FPS when you have even 3 or 4 characters on the screen. almost any nVidia graphics card u get etc. 50series -80 series supports DirectX 7-10, when you have a video forcing a OS to run in DirectX 8 mode your gonna suffer when it comes to framerates. Upgrading the engine creates a whole new world for vista users to use there chipset/graphic/cpu to full potential and no longer have to bottlekneck to slow ps2 import settings.

My input on the windowed mode:

No other mmorpg really allows it and players really like to look at guides while they can play the game which makes this game much more popular then others to me, its more enjoyable, im not locked into the game. this game is like 6-7 years old already, and its still 3mil+ player strong, if they dont add more options to the game then players are gonna get bored. I love watching a couple bleach episodes while im waiting for a party or selecting what album im gonna listen to while I rock out with my **** out during the party.

[Xhaztol]

What do you think in regards to use high-end video card users still on Windows XP? Will the DirectX upgrade give us a bit of a boost? I mean, I'm not expecting anything astronomical (that won't happen until they lift the 56k cap >:|) but I wonder if my GeForce 7800 GT is going to be able to utilize a little bit more of itself efficiently for this game. It's a wonderful video card, I'd just like to see the results.

[Mhurron]

I can answer your question for DX9
For a couple years now FFXI has been on the brink of destruction in my eyes because of the Vista support issues and nVidia 8600+ series. For a long long time I researched this as to why the game does not support higher end video cards or vista in that matter. Vista is not able to run FFXI on the system very well because of Direct X. the minimum requirements for Vista is DirectX 9, so if you have a game etc. FFXI, running for DirectX 8, its not going to run very well. Thus you get 5-10 FPS when you have even 3 or 4 characters on the screen.Except the problem also happens in XP, for the most part only on nVidia cards, and was around before Vista went into public betas. DirectX 9 is backwards compatible to 8.1 no, Vista does not inherently have any problem running DX8.1 games. Some of the problems were exasperated early in Vistas lifetime because of horrible drivers.

Vista has no minimum requirement of DX9, some components (Aero) do, but they are not required to run Vista, only beautify Vista. Vista will run just fine or cards that do not fully implement DX9 or don't implement it at all.

[SilverMatrix]

What do you think in regards to use high-end video card users still on Windows XP? Will the DirectX upgrade give us a bit of a boost? I mean, I'm not expecting anything astronomical (that won't happen until they lift the 56k cap >:|) but I wonder if my GeForce 7800 GT is going to be able to utilize a little bit more of itself efficiently for this game. It's a wonderful video card, I'd just like to see the results.

Yes theres no doubt a 7800 GT will take full advantage of Direct X.

Heres a brief explaination of DX

:Ability to quickly render high-quality 3D graphics using DirectX-compatible graphics hardware.

And of course the higher the version the smoother and faster the game is going to run. I gaurantee you those with Direct X 9 video cards and a good cpu setup.. you will never go below 30FPS unless they take the vertical sync off. And the 56k Cap.... they ARE doing a full server hardware upgrade and therefore able to take a heavier load of data and information, so hopefully they will raise it up a bit ^^.
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Except the problem also happens in XP, for the most part only on nVidia cards, and was around before Vista went into public betas. DirectX 9 is backwards compatible to 8.1 no, Vista does not inherently have any problem running DX8.1 games. Some of the problems were exasperated early in Vistas lifetime because of horrible drivers.
Vista has no minimum requirement of DX9, some components (Aero) do, but they are not required to run Vista, only beautify Vista. Vista will run just fine or cards that do not fully implement DX9 or don't implement it at all.

Do you run FFXI on a vista basted OS? Have you searched any forums that people have the lag issue with vista? I know I have, and I have not found one user with a solution to the Vista lag.
Yes DX9 is backwards compatible, but as you can see theres a HUGE bug issue when trying to use the DX9 Backwards compatibility with FFXI. XP's problem was solved a long long time ago, infact almost a full year ago XP's video issue was solved in a snap of a finger, I read forum posts about the Vista problem, and the problem lies within DirectX, and FFXI has identified this as a huge issue and they cant just take down the server and patch it in a snap of a finger, no they need to upgrade the whole engine so instead of going thru the whole code and finding out whether its DX or nVidia, or Radeon(Because they have the same issue as well) or Chipset drivers(Which would ultimately be all of them cause people have tried multiple chipsets to get around this bug). Its not like microsoft is gonna turn around update Direct X to 8.0D just for FFXI sake. so FFXI being smart they are just gonna implent one engine upgrade for better compatibility for Vista users.