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Unreal Engine 3 and XBox2
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:44 pm
by SplishSplash
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?
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:02 pm
by rgoer
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
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:02 pm
by rgoer
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
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:05 pm
by Grudge
XNA?
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 7:38 pm
by rgoer
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
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:04 pm
by Grudge
ah
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:10 pm
by Chupacabra
hah! rgoer acts like he knows what he's talking about :icon19:
jk...btw you guys ever get that 3s cabinet in your office?
Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 8:19 pm
by rgoer
no some twat sniped me with a minute to go on that auction
so I just play 3s on the dreamcast still
Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 3:22 am
by SplishSplash
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.
Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 7:45 am
by rgoer
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