Engine upgrade and DX12 coming to ETS2 and ATS!

[xXCARL1992Xx]

will not happen as long as OpenGL is still used, i searched for informations and couldnt find anything for OGL, most results only showed Multithreading, which is different, and the game already supports i think, so no, OpenGL has to be replaced with Vulkan for SCS to start working on making the game utilize more then 1 CPU core at one time

[JoeAlex23]

For all we know they could be working on DX12/Vulkan at the same time, only SCS knows, but i agree with that about OpenGL, they could also totally drop support for it when they introduce DX12, it will be bad for the Mac/Linux users but it might be a necessary evil for the sake of improving the game engine until Vulkan can be implemented if they aren't doing anything with it for now, although, Linux users could still have a work around of playing with DX12 with Proton.

[xXCARL1992Xx]

Windows 7/8/8.1 users wont be able to play the games also then, both OS still supported by steam even if MS stoppt supporting them, while Linux can be circumvented with Proton or DXVK, macOS users are in the rain anyway because OpenGL is deprecated for years already and the new Apple Silicon wont have any support for it at all

and i have my doubt that they work on implementing 2 APIs at the same time, they will concentrate on one and make it stable, implementing Vulkan after DX12 will be easier because both share many things and then OpenGL can be tossed for good

[JoeAlex23]

Oh, yeah i totally forgot about that with Windows 7/8, any way you look at it, DX12 will cause problems for a considerable amount of players, but it might be a necessary evil for the greater good of the games.

But i do hope they really considered doing DX12 and Vulkan, if not, no big deal, but it does makes sense to focus on making DX12 stable and then focus on Vulkan.

[flight50]

and i have my doubt that they work on implementing 2 APIs at the same time, they will concentrate on one and make it stable, implementing Vulkan after DX12 will be easier because both share many things and then OpenGL can be tossed for good

This is what I'm guessing as well. DX12 because of the 90% or so users have windows. It makes sense to get it stable first and we run that on beta for a whole update or whatever it takes. Lets say 1.48 (just an educated guess), brings DX12 beta. We run DX12 beta until 1.49 or even 1.50 if need be. Once its stable, now Vulkan can get worked in. I don't see SCS dropping OpenGL without a replacement though. Now it does alienate people unfortunately but it seems like SCS doesn't update other platforms until the windows platform is stable anyways. But the last thing non Windows machines need is an unstable platform while DX12 isn't even stable for the masses yet.

The bad part is that if any dlc's are DX12 made, it will affect initial sales. For this, my thinking is that SCS will not release a new map for DX12 unless its stable.

[bumbumek]

I have Win7, and I don't intend to switch to Win10 or 11, so it will be a complete disaster for me, if SCS decides to quit supporting Win7. I just hope they will at least keep last Win7 release patch, so I could still play ATS and ETS2 without any further updates. If not - it will be a sad goodbye. I play SCS games for almost 20 yrs, I started with "18 Wheels of Steel: Across America" in 2004, then I played their next games like "Pedal to the Metal", "Haulin" etc, also ETS1.

So hope dies last.

[Berniyh]

I have Win7, and I don't intend to switch to Win10 or 11, so it will be a complete disaster for me, if SCS decides to quit supporting Win7. I just hope they will at least keep last Win7 release patch, so I could still play ATS and ETS2 without any further updates. If not - it will be a sad goodbye. I play SCS games for almost 20 yrs, I started with "18 Wheels of Steel: Across America" in 2004, then I played their next games like "Pedal to the Metal", "Haulin" etc, also ETS1.

So hope dies last.

Well, you have to move somewhere at some point, eventually, because staying on Windows 7 forever should not an option due to security reasons.

I also still have a Windows 7 installation, but these days it's more like a backup plan if something doesn't work on Linux.
Which thankfully happens less often.

[xXCARL1992Xx]

it depends how long Valve will support Windows 7, XP was supported until 2019 by Valve, Microsoft supported it until 2014 (the one security patch it got after that not counting) and depending on market share it can be axed earlier or not, where i tend to say it is very likely, seeing as it doesnt even have 2% of the Steam Userbase using it, and Windows 8/8.1 will most likely follow the same date like Vista did

[Berniyh]

Well, MS has already stopped supporting it for regular customers. So unless he's running the corporate edition of Win 7 it's likely not getting any security patches anymore.

IMO that's ok, if you only use it as a kind of gaming console every once in a while, but I would definitely not recommend doing any kind of serious stuff with it anymore.
For that one should rather consider Windows 10/11, OS X or Linux. Or BSD, if you really feel adventurous.

[Some newbie driver]

will not happen as long as OpenGL is still used, i searched for informations and couldnt find anything for OGL, most results only showed Multithreading, which is different, and the game already supports i think, so no, OpenGL has to be replaced with Vulkan for SCS to start working on making the game utilize more then 1 CPU core at one time

The use of OpenGL doesn't have nothing at all with the multi-core architecture of the whole game engine. One thing doesn't limit the other.

OpenGL, as like DX11 or other old graphic APIS can't use more than one pipeline of instructions to the GPU. That means that a single execution thread of the game has to be tasked to send all the instructions to the GPU. Even if you had several threads running in parallel for the graphic calculations, at the end everything should go to that single thread that communicates with the GPU and becomes the bottleneck. A few games tried that path on DX11, but it's rather difficult to code it in comparison of the small performance improvement. So, most games on DX9,11 or OpenGL just use one thread for the graphic part. Then other threads, as usual, are tasked with other thing (user input, AI, physics...). Those other threads could run sequentially (like SCS is doing now) or in parallel (like we hope SCS changes to) to the graphic part. To do one thing or the other isn't related nor limited by the usage of OpenGL or DX11. With DX12 or Vulkan, the graphic part alone can use effectively several threads on its own; so of course the graphic part could improve performance a lot when well coded. But the biggest benefit that SCS can reach for its games now is by making multi-core the whole game, even if the graphic part still remain on a single thread. Because that would give them not only more graphic performance, but more performance and possibilities for absolutely EVERYTHING.

I said it earlier on this thread, I said it lots of other times: people gets too focused on graphic APIS, it's the most "advertised" detail on lots of games (together with the "engine", hence all those "user Unreal" never ending requests). But the main problem os SCS games now (and hopefully, the main point SCS is focusing on) is the architecture of their code, not the API used. The API used was a problem back with DX9; that's why they get rid of that ballast several years ago already.

Regards