It was only a matter of time before someone began tearing down the walls between DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 renders in BioShock.  There isn’t a huge difference but there is some and you know what, I’ll take it.  Given more time, DirectX 10 renders will make DirectX 9 look like the same level of ugly that DirectX 8 and DirectX 7 are today.

For the most part the DirectX 10 renders increase the shininess or glow effects and smog/smoke effects as well as increasing the fluidity of the water and making the reflections appear more real.  Distortion effects from heat, water and smoke also appear more realistic using DirectX 10.

This is conjecture on my part but DirectX 10 seems to be faster, I mean, scenes seem to render faster which enables me to run the game at my monitor’s native resolution of 1680 x 1050.  I had trouble running STALKER at that resolution and actually had to disable some effects, you wouldn’t think that would be a problem for a Geforce 8800GTS, either STALKER or the drivers weren’t up to the task.

I don’t know if it’s now a case of better drivers, better coding on the part of the BioShock developers or simply that DirectX 10 is just faster if you can take advantage of it, that’s what I’m going to think until someone can prove me wrong.

This forum has all the comparison screenshots I think you could want, I’m not embedding them here because shrinking the images will reduce the quality and detail.

Related:

Halo 2 and Gears of War are coming to a PC near you

Mass Effect PC system requirements revealed

BioShock gets sequel in form of prequel

Halo 3 and Little Big Planet coming to PC evidence fake?

Limited edition BioShock package confirmed

Entry was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 6:40 am under PC.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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