Unreal Engine 3 and XBox2

Post by **SplishSplash** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:44 pm

Microsoft has chosen the Unreal Engine 3 for their XBox2 games. (Maybe this is old news)

How is that possible? I always thought the UE3 relied heavily on DirectX? And DirectX, in turn, relied heavily on the x86 architecture?

The XBox2 will be powered by a PowerPC CPU, how can they just turn around and use a PC engine for the PowerPC?
Wouldn't porting the UE3 be just as much work as developing a completely new engine?
Especially in the light of the recent Doom3 benchmarks for Mac, which have proven that porting from x86 to PowerPC is everything but easy?

Post by **rgoer** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:02 pm

directx is just a language

it is quite portable

the ppc version of simd (apple calls it altivec, I don't know what imb calls it in their non-apple-branded chips) is superior to x86 simd, so directx could actually see some improvements

Post by **rgoer** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:02 pm

and, backing up--you didn't think ms was going to be using directx on the new xbox?

what else would they use, opengl?

lol

Post by **Grudge** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:05 pm

Post by **rgoer** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:38 pm

xna is just a ms buzzword name for their fairy-tale unified development environment--think visual studio + deep exploration + radiant all in one

if anything, xna would be an app (or suite of apps) that spoke directx

but, xna doesn't really exist (yet)

who knows if they're actually going to finish it

Post by **Grudge** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:04 pm

Post by **Chupacabra** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:10 pm

hah! rgoer acts like he knows what he's talking about :icon19:

jk...btw you guys ever get that 3s cabinet in your office?

Post by **rgoer** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:19 pm

no some twat sniped me with a minute to go on that auction

so I just play 3s on the dreamcast still

Post by **SplishSplash** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 3:22 am

rgoer wrote:directx is just a language

Well actually it's an API. And since it's so close to the hardware, porting it would be quite the task I imagine.

rgoer wrote:and, backing up--you didn't think ms was going to be using directx on the new xbox?

what else would they use, opengl?

lol

They could have invented something new. I figure that wouldn't be much more work than porting DirectX to a new hardware platform.
I'm pretty sure that's what they're doing anyway, they're just gonna call it DirectX.

Post by **rgoer** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 7:45 am

well, I can tell you for certain: it's the same old directx

and btw application programming interface is just a fancy name for "language"

it is quite portable