DirectX11 support in ISBoxer/Inner Space now in public testing!

[Lax]

Cross-post from ISBoxer.com

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]

Lax for El Presidente!

[Jafula]

Woot! Going to give this a go.

[Ualaa]

Cool.

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

[burningforce]

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]

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]

awesome lax, thanks for the explanation

[Igg]

Thanks for putting this feature in so soon instead of making us wait for JMB :P

[Slats]

Love it, noticed a nice FPS boost especially in Dalaran.

Running an ATI 5870 1GB.

[Frostie]

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?