According to a report released by Eurogamer today, Crytek is trying to create DirectX 11 features on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 for the release of its upcoming shooter, Crysis 3. In the report, Crytek claims to have parallax occlusion mapping running on the Xbox 360, among other features. Crytek was quick to point out that these features may not make it to the final versions of the console releases if they impact performance, however.
Rasmus Højengaard, director of creative development at Crytek, claims Crytek has been able to get some DirectX 11 features to run on consoles, although he did not elaborate how this was achieved. According to Højengaard, the features won't use the same structure as DirectX 11, but they will achieve a similar result:
It is very, very difficult, but it is possible. It just requires a lot of effort. Some of the stuff these guys are making work on consoles now is absolutely amazing. It's render features that shouldn't theoretically work on consoles, but they've managed to construct code that can emulate a similar thing from a… hack and slash sounds wrong, but they don't have the same streamlined pipeline you would have with a DX11 structure, but they can get to a similar result just by experimenting and using tips and tricks.
Neither the Xbox 360 nor the Playstation 3 have DirectX 11-compatible hardware. The Xbox 360 uses an ATI Xenos graphics chip which supports a custom version of DirectX graphics, on par with DirectX 9. The original Xbox was actually code named "DirectXbox," which was shortened to "Xbox" for the release of Microsoft's first gaming console. Conversely, the Playstation 3 uses a custom Nvidia graphics chip, the RSX, which supports OpenGL ES 2.0.
Crysis 3 is expected to launch in Spring 2013 on the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. A gameplay trailer, which can be seen here, was released earlier today.
3 Comments - Add comment