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View Full Version : [ISBoxer] DirectX11 support in ISBoxer/Inner Space now in public testing!



Lax
11-08-2010, 02:56 PM
Cross-post from ISBoxer.com (http://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=774)

Inner Space 1.11 build 5332 adds initial DirectX11 support. Specifically, this will enable proper function of Inner Space and ISBoxer when the game being played is set to use DirectX11 -- previously, only DirectX8 and DirectX9 were supported; DirectX10 is not supported. DirectX11 ships with Windows 7 and can be installed on Windows Vista if you have Vista Service Pack 2 installed.

Switching to DirectX11 should improve performance over DirectX9 with the same settings, more so if your video card provides hardware support for DirectX10 or 11.

As of this post, Inner Space 1.11 build 5332 is currently the development build of Inner Space. To try out the development build:
1. Right click the Inner Space icon in the system tray (notification area)
2. Select Patcher
3. Check "Download development (test) patches"
4. Close and restart Inner Space (the setting will not take effect until you do).
You can switch back later with the same process. (just un-check instead)

To use DirectX11 in Lord of the Rings Online, select DirectX11 from the drop-down box in the in-game video options panel. You may need to do this in each ISBoxer window, and you will need to restart the game after changing this setting.

To use DirectX11 in World of Warcraft, there is a setting in Config.WTF but this setting would need to be applied to all of your virtual Config.WTF files. Until ISBoxer has this option built in for you, it is recommended that you use the command-line switch instead to select between DirectX11 and DirectX9. That is, you can add a -d3d11 or -d3d9 parameter to wow.exe through your Inner Space Game Configuration, as follows:
1. Right click the Inner Space icon in the system tray (notification area)
2. Select Configuration
3. Click the Game Configuration tab
4. Select World of Warcraft from the first drop-down box
5. Select World of Warcraft Default Profile (or your custom profile, whatever ISBoxer is configured to use per Character) from the second drop-down box
6. Make sure "Main executable filename" is wow.exe, NOT the WoW launcher. In the "Main executable parameters" box, put "-d3d11" with no quotes. To switch back later if needed, replace it with "-d3d9" with no quotes.
7. Click Apply to save your changes
8. Click Close Profile to back out of the Game Profile editing panel if you want, or just hide the Inner Space window; you're done.

Known issues with DirectX11 support in build 5332:


Force windowed mode is yet implemented, or may be partially implemented but completely untested. To avoid this issue, the game just needs to be configured to be in windowed mode or "Windowed (Full screen)" (which is also windowed mode)
Display selection (as in the Inner Space Game Configuration, used mainly for multiple video cards) is not yet implemented. To avoid this issue, the game itself should select the display. World of Warcraft has an option for this as of 4.0.1, in the Video options panel (above the Multisampling option). I'm not aware of an equivalent option in Lord of the Rings Online, so if you need this option at this time, please stick with DirectX9 mode until it gets implemented in Inner Space.


Please report any further issues you experience with DirectX11 mode, particularly if the issue did not exist with DirectX9. Also, please report the disappearance of any issues from DirectX9 to DirectX11, such as the fake mouse cursor suddenly working (LOTRO + Windows 7 users, this means you!)

---
And just a quick note on performance, in my testing this morning I'm seeing a 10-15% FPS improvement on 5 WoW instances on the same PC (Asus G73JH laptop with i7 CPU and HD 5870 GPU). I saw a 10% improvement in Dalaran (64.7 vs 58.7 FPS, times 5 windows), 15% elsewhere (96.7 vs 84.0, times 5 windows).

MiRai
11-08-2010, 03:34 PM
Lax for El Presidente!

Jafula
11-08-2010, 05:14 PM
Woot! Going to give this a go.

Ualaa
11-08-2010, 05:38 PM
Cool.

Thanks for you constant work to improve IS Boxer.
It is appreciated.

burningforce
11-08-2010, 06:19 PM
thanks for the heads up lax

just a question though:

I have a nvidia GTX 260 card, I believe that supports directx 10 and below. Will setting WoW to directx 11 in the config file make any difference to me in game? and will I have to switch to this development build to use isobxer?

thanks

Lax
11-08-2010, 07:00 PM
DirectX 11 can operate on down-level hardware (meaning that you don't need DX11 hardware, it can also optimize for DX9 and DX10 hardware). A DX10 card is probably sufficient for most DX11 features anyway. Any performance gains are probably going to be marginal -- I would probably assume my 10-15% FPS increase is probably among the highest possible gains.

Really, your best bet is to just try it out, see if it improves performance, and keep it if it does. If you want to set WoW to DX11, you will need the development build of IS, but again I'd recommend using the command-line parameter instead of putting it in config.wtf.

burningforce
11-08-2010, 08:21 PM
awesome lax, thanks for the explanation

Igg
11-09-2010, 01:22 AM
Thanks for putting this feature in so soon instead of making us wait for JMB :P

Slats
11-09-2010, 07:14 AM
Love it, noticed a nice FPS boost especially in Dalaran.

Running an ATI 5870 1GB. :D

Frostie
11-10-2010, 03:32 PM
Just thought i'd add that I noticed quite a considerable performance drop when enabling this as per instructions at the top of the page. Also the graphics dont look as crisp as before, in fact very slightly blurry, anyone else notice this? Running a GTX480 1.5gb gfx card

Had to put my graphics down from Good to Fair to re-gain performance... am i doing something wrong?

Edit: And changing back to the original Innerspace settings and install has now prevented Innerspace from launching any more than one instance of WOW? Any ideas? :(

Babysir
11-10-2010, 05:39 PM
I had the same issue Frostie where it would only open one when I went back to the original. You can easily fix this by going back into the configuration and putting -d3d9 in the main executable parameters.

Lax: I did experience an error while running this on my system 9600GT SLI. It loaded the clients just fine, but then when I switch from one wow window to another it would lock up and the clients would be black windows. I am using two separate profiles since I have the main screen rendered by one card and the remaining 4 clients rendered by the second. I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the error.

Talos
11-11-2010, 06:20 AM
im back to D3D9 too... too bad

the problem when using DX11 on my setup is the same problem i encountered when playing solo
when i have the graphics set to ultra everything is fine and even better with dx11 but when multiboxing that lowers my FPS

when im boxing i have my slaves set to low, and my main char to good
but when using dx11 and using the settings as good i get tearing and black screens :S

setup is Q6600@3ghz, 8gig ram, gtx260xxx 1gig.

Lax
11-11-2010, 10:55 PM
Just thought i'd add that I noticed quite a considerable performance drop when enabling this as per instructions at the top of the page. Also the graphics dont look as crisp as before, in fact very slightly blurry, anyone else notice this? Running a GTX480 1.5gb gfx card

Had to put my graphics down from Good to Fair to re-gain performance... am i doing something wrong?

Edit: And changing back to the original Innerspace settings and install has now prevented Innerspace from launching any more than one instance of WOW? Any ideas? :(
All you had to do was change the -d3d11 switch to -d3d9 as explained in my post. WoW saves the setting to config.wtf (thus why it's still in d3d11 mode and not launching more than one instance in the non-dev build without d3d11 support), but the command-line parameter overrides it (thus being the recommended method).


Lax: I did experience an error while running this on my system 9600GT SLI. It loaded the clients just fine, but then when I switch from one wow window to another it would lock up and the clients would be black windows. I am using two separate profiles since I have the main screen rendered by one card and the remaining 4 clients rendered by the second. I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the error.SLI is bad mmkay. If you're in SLI, I don't think plugging monitors into the second card is going to have any particular advantage. If you have the display selection set in Inner Space this is one of the features that my post explains is not currently implemented anyway -- you'd have to set the monitor via the option in WoW instead. And disable SLI.


the problem when using DX11 on my setup is the same problem i encountered when playing solo
when i have the graphics set to ultra everything is fine and even better with dx11 but when multiboxing that lowers my FPS

when im boxing i have my slaves set to low, and my main char to good
but when using dx11 and using the settings as good i get tearing and black screens :STearing I believe is supposed to be solved by enabling VSync, in WoW's advanced video settings panel. I don't have an answer as to why you would get black screens, but if I'm interpreting what you said correctly you also get this black screen problem without Inner Space and therefore it's probably not my fault?

Thanks for the feedback guys, I can try to reproduce some of these issues by fiddling with the game options but I imagine I might have to test separately on NVIDIA hardware, etc. Either way, even if this support goes into the live build you can still run d3d9 :P

Jafula
11-11-2010, 10:58 PM
Just to let you know I've been running a DX11 ATI Radeon 5750 (or something similar, can't remember exactly) powering two monitors / 5 toons and I've got a nice 10 FPS boost on my main (all video settings set to ultra) with DX11, making Dalaran bearable again, so thanks very much!

Noids
11-12-2010, 12:48 AM
Haven't tried DX11 through IS but running solo on my laptop 5730 I am getting players and objects moving around with black textures. Sometimes when I load new areas the majority of things will be black and I have to reloadui.

Kicksome
11-12-2010, 10:10 AM
I am using this on a 5850 with dx11. I think I might have had a slight drop in frame rates at very low graphics settings. But I'm going to up the settintgs a bit and see what happens. I am running my main wow window at 1900x1200 (I lowered this from like 2100x1200, and the frame rate is a lot better.

Vociferate
11-12-2010, 04:34 PM
I gained a ton of performance with this.

I can run through Org & other main cities at 50FPS. :D


Cheers heaps!

confusedtx5
11-21-2010, 09:44 PM
Don't have specific numbers, but my wow windows feel a lot more responsive with the change.
5x windows @ 2560x1600 across 2 screens and 2 graphics cards.
From being laggy on HH runs to awesome rift destruction now. And the Dalaran experience is the smoothest its ever been.
edit: running on: i7 940 @ 4GHz, GTX480(main) + GTX285(alts), 12GB DDR3 RAM and a 128GB SSD