Quote: "From the things Lee has said, it would be difficult to make a game for DX9, that also took advantage of the DX10 new features. Perhaps all they have done is ramp up the texturing and switched on some additional effects for DX10."
It's not that difficult, in-fact the DirectX SDK provides tutorials on creating combined executables to take advantage of both APIs with single source.
Although it does extend development time by almost 2-3x due to the added complexity and compatibility.
Quote: "They greyed out thing is probably there for a reason, I wouldn't know why, but it did that on the demo of Doom 3 for me. "
Yeah they did, cause Very High does NOTHING over High.
More to the point about all the harping about "DirectX10 for Windows XP" or such conspiricy theoriests out there...
THE CRYSIS DEMO DOES NOT SUPPORT DIRECTX10
Seriously, they use entirely different executables (anyone in the Beta on Fileplanet know this) and there is a world of difference between the two.
For one, the islands in the DirectX10 version there is constant dust in the air. The clouds are fully volumetric (which you can walk through) this also goes for the dust that settles at ground level after explosions.
Explosions themselves have far more volumetric properties and are DIFFERENT EVERYTIME, in DirectX9 on high-settings they're the exact same blast effect each time with the smoke itself that differs due to the wind physics.
Plain and simple fact is there is a world of difference between the two versions. While models themselves don't look that different nor does lighting as much. In-fact on the islands there is very little difference, when the additional weather effects kick-in and the water effects you can see quite a bit of difference.
Again on the videos of the "Very High" settings (still not Dx10) you can clearly see the beach waves are not actually part of the water or throwing up spray. On the DirectX10 version it makes the sand wet, slowly sliding up silt on the beach, looks part of the actual wave, and bubbles and foams up based on the object interaction.
The DirectX9 version still does look quite pretty, but has nothing on Call of Duty 4; especially when both are running under DirectX10. However a reason there is not DirectX10 version of the demo (or runtime provided) is simply because the performance is slooow. 8800 Ultra and Radeon HD 2900 XTX both struggle to keep more than 30fps on High settings at the 1024x768.
