What's everyone's opinion on Windows 11?

[Thaldor]

28 minutes ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

The thing is it’s not going to be.

because direct storage is a thing on the Xbox. It’s going to just be in the planning for the games already

If it requires even just tens of lines of code to work it's going to be on the list "Do we really need to implement this?".

 

DirectX has a lot of things no one uses because they require implementing and a bit more than them just being there already baked in and ready to ship. Like remember what kind of number Microsoft made for spatial audio being a feature in Windows 10 and how it will make games better? Well, it was already in DirectX 9 since move to XAudio 2 (in 2008) it was just called HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) and in it's basic form it took like <100 lines to be implemented. Few lines more and you can still get complete object position based sound system for normal stereo output (preferably headphones). Aaaand almost no one used/uses it because out of the box there already was/is stereo and surround support baked into the project and "who needs more than 7.1 audio if it costs us couple days to implement?".

[Helpful Tech Witch]

3 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

If it requires even just tens of lines of code to work it's going to be on the list "Do we really need to implement this?".

 

DirectX has a lot of things no one uses because they require implementing and a bit more than them just being there already baked in and ready to ship. Like remember what kind of number Microsoft made for spatial audio being a feature in Windows 10 and how it will make games better? Well, it was already in DirectX 9 since move to XAudio 2 (in 2008) it was just called HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) and in it's basic form it took like <100 lines to be implemented. Few lines more and you can still get complete object position based sound system for normal stereo output (preferably headphones). Aaaand almost no one used/uses it because out of the box there already was/is stereo and surround support baked into the project and "who needs more than 7.1 audio if it costs us couple days to implement?".

No I don’t remember it. Because I was 6.

most new Xbox games use direct storage anyways, and since lots of Xbox games (like all of them) are on pc, lots of pc games will also have it since the apis the same. It simplifies development if both games work the same as much as possible, so if the pc one loads slower, and has a major architectural difference in how it loads stuff, it’s easier to do it on both

[Thaldor]

9 minutes ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

No I don’t remember it. Because I was 6.

most new Xbox games use direct storage anyways, and since lots of Xbox games (like all of them) are on pc, lots of pc games will also have it since the apis the same. It simplifies development if both games work the same as much as possible, so if the pc one loads slower, and has a major architectural difference in how it loads stuff, it’s easier to do it on both

There's always changes, if nothing more the graphical API needs tweaking for the PC version. What it is on Xbox is a bit different because the architecture of the Xbox is still a lot different from PC. So something as huge as the storage management will need implementation and it probably isn't as easy as putting an X to a an option.

 

So far this is the first time we see DirectStorage in actual use on PC (1:55):

 

And notice those are DirectStorage applied NVMe vs. SATA SSD vs. HDD, in their GDC speak Luminous showed the full performance sheet:

 

And as I said that almost double IO speed from NVMe is impressive but as it turns into loading times, it's not that impressive.

 

And just to double down, Xbox Series S/X isn't a PC, expecting same thing do the exact same on PC as it does on Xbox is pretty much stupid. One huge thing here is how the storage is used, while Xbox has complete freedom to set everything perfectly for itself and most likely it has the ability to dedicate the whole NVMe drive only for the games usage, that isn't something that works on every PC, you can make it work but that doesn't only require the game to have the tech but the PC to be build for that (for example running OS from the same drive as the game can already tank the DirectStorage performance because there's a lot more happening than the game reading its files). And again we already have tools to make the in-game loading screens go away completely, to some extent even in games that don't have them build-in (Skyrim Open Cities), it just asks what the developers want to do.

[GoodBytes]

5 hours ago, Thaldor said:

There's always changes, if nothing more the graphical API needs tweaking for the PC version. What it is on Xbox is a bit different because the architecture of the Xbox is still a lot different from PC. So something as huge as the storage management will need implementation and it probably isn't as easy as putting an X to a an option.

 

So far this is the first time we see DirectStorage in actual use on PC (1:55):

 

And notice those are DirectStorage applied NVMe vs. SATA SSD vs. HDD, in their GDC speak Luminous showed the full performance sheet:

 

And as I said that almost double IO speed from NVMe is impressive but as it turns into loading times, it's not that impressive.

 

And just to double down, Xbox Series S/X isn't a PC, expecting same thing do the exact same on PC as it does on Xbox is pretty much stupid. One huge thing here is how the storage is used, while Xbox has complete freedom to set everything perfectly for itself and most likely it has the ability to dedicate the whole NVMe drive only for the games usage, that isn't something that works on every PC, you can make it work but that doesn't only require the game to have the tech but the PC to be build for that (for example running OS from the same drive as the game can already tank the DirectStorage performance because there's a lot more happening than the game reading its files). And again we already have tools to make the in-game loading screens go away completely, to some extent even in games that don't have them build-in (Skyrim Open Cities), it just asks what the developers want to do.

It's not about load times, it is about streaming data.

DirectStorage only benefits games specifically designed around it, like you saw with the PS5 demos and first party game at release. 

 

The demo in the video uses a loading mechanism to have a set number of textures and models to load, and have everything consistent at 100%, so that it is reproduceable and eliminate variations between runs.

 

If implemented correctly, games would no longer have any loading screen beside the first time regardless of where go or do, including quest/side quest/missions/etc, and all without elevators, long hallways, unskipable cut scenes, and doors that open slowly (all tricks to hide loading screens).

 

[darealsoulless]

I have noticed that my PC despite having 2 pretty basic Western Digital blue NVMe drives, it boots within 10 seconds and general random usage even with 10 or so chrome tabs open, Excel open, music playing, whatever all at the same time, there has not yet been any noticeable slowdown and I'm only running 16GB of RAM.

 

So far it has met my needs and performed very well doing so. I could see how different hardware configurations may not work as well, but my 10700 does just fine.