Engine upgrade and DX12 coming to ETS2 and ATS!

[theguy69]

Steam graphs show that much more than half of users are on Windows 10 or Windows 11. Only a little portion are still on Windows 7/8/8.1.

To be more exact, near 95% of Windows users on average are on Win10 or 11.

But remember that Steam survey is NOT a collection of ALL the users in Steam. It's a survey only between those that are "randomly" selected and accept to be scanned. Steam survey is useful to see general market trends, but only SCS could have the figures that interest to them, the real picture of their players. It's possible that it could be near those numbers, but also is probable that a lot more old computers are playing SCS games (that do support them) than the average Steam game (that doesn't support already such old machines). If the non-DX12 windows users would be "only" a 10% (double the Steam survey ones, but still a clear minority); that would still be several tens of thousands of people.

There would be no real problem, they could keep playing in OpenGL if they want or to remain in old version like those who didn't want to link the game to Steam. But to be honest, the OpenGL version is the lesser evil they need to keep Linux and Mac versions players supported; not something a Windows user that has seen the DX version would like to go play. Would they release "soon" a Vulkan version, they could get rid of OpenGL and DX11 in a single shot. We all could play under the same version
except those with very very old systems probably under min-specs or so close to those today that would probably came out of specs on next change of them. And then they would be free to add the DX12 version at will.

Whatever, DX12 now is pointless. They had to do lots of other changes prior to be able to leverage the improvements DX12 can offer. Neither Vulkan could offer so much without those other changes first; but at least it could superseed OpenGL that is a moving corpse.

So, don't expect to see DX12 before having seen several other big changes in future updates the kind we saw with FMOD or Lighting.

Regards

But wouldn't dx12 help with cpu usage? Currently the game has terrible cpu performance so you need to have very good single core performance

[fratrac]

It's been said that many ETS2/ATS users are still on Windows 7 so even if dx12 actually helped with cpu performance it wouldn't matter because it's not supported in W7 (from my understanding).

Still, I think SCS's strategy to keep selling old games as new by renewing them but not too much not to break compatibility with old systems won't last forever if different branches are not created, but strategies are debatable, it's a choice

[flight50]

SCS has to push forward. If people are still on Win7, they can continue to play but their updates will cease. So if 1.44 brings DX12, those people are locked in at 1.43. Update to Win10/11, find another game or play the highest update you can.

[Jatruck]

Or SCS might bring Vulkan too for Win 7/8.1, Linux and Mac. Then people could still buy more DLC's ...

[flight50]

Vulkan has been mentioned as well along with DX12. Whether both are programmed for simultaneously, I have no idea.

[plykkegaard]

Sorry you seem to forget that the main advantag with DX12 over DX11 is the advanced multicore support in DX12 second is the api access to low level calls aka a very fine grained acces to the graphics engine

[flight50]

^Who is that directed to Sir?

[Some newbie driver]

But wouldn't dx12 help with cpu usage?

No, you understand it the opposite. DX12 can LEVERAGE more CPU than DX11; and that's because DX12 can send multiple "streams" of data to the GPU from different software threads working on different CPU cores. DX11 is limited to a single stream of data to the GPU; so it doesn't matter how many raw power your CPU has; the amount of it that can be tasked to graphics is limited.

That means that, if your software works on a multi-core architecture; more of those cores could be tasked to graphic tasks to tame higher complexity 3D scenes. But the software HAS to have a whole multi-core architecture on the main parts of the graphic engine. SCS one isn't on that stage; it's still mono-core on the main worker thread; so it's pointless to do all the hard work to migrate to DX12 as the engine is now. Either they will move to multi-core first (with a single one tasked entirely to graphics); and move to DX12/Vulkan later; either they will do both things at the same time (but potentially taking still more time).

On general, people use to confuse a lot the terms of "being optimized" and "using less resources" when they see some software "performing better". And that's not correct. Noticeably better graphics will ALWAYS require more resources and be a way more resource hog software. Programmers can do a lot of fine tune, but optimization can only improve things on a small scale (in computational complexity). While any new fancy graphic feature worse the problem on a whole higher order of magnitude. And usually, those other fancy games that "perform better" are a shame optimization-wise; it's just they had the tech to use all the raw power of very high end hardware so they can showcase a lot more.

SCS had optimized A LOT their games, is something absolutely normal when a company develops the same game for long periods. What they lack is the technological features to leverage more raw power that it's there but not available to them. It's like squeezing till the last drop of juice on a bottle but not having the key to open a whole tank full of juice just sitting right to you. And without that change the game can't progress so much. It has been for sure their top priority on last years; but that kind of changes aren't neither cheap, easy nor fast.

Regards

[zeti]

I'm looking forward to DX12 (DirectX)... (I hope that all graphics cards have no more loads)... ((Especially in the main menu))...

Kind regards

Sebastian Maier

[Trucker Nik]

I use Windows 11, which means that when SCS adds DirectX 12 to ETS2 and ATS, which is for Windows 10, nothing changes for me?