Interview: TWIMTBP, DX10 and beyond

There is a Crysis...

We managed to resist asking about Crysis until almost right at the end of our chat, but I could tell that Roy was dying to give me an update on where the game was. I couldn’t help but ask after the big hint he gave me when we were talking about developers choosing not to port current DX9 games to DX10.

Crytek has been pretty quiet in recent months – there have been a few videos but not a lot else, so it was time for Roy to come to the rescue and deliver some tidbits for those of us that cannot wait any longer.

“The alpha is done and the beta demo is not a million miles off – it’s definitely coming though. The game is in really great shape and there are a number of things that work extremely well.

“Everything you’ve seen in the videos is real, and there is a whole bunch more stuff still to come that you’ve not seen yet. Let me just say that it’s a really exciting title and I wish I could say more!”


Roy then revealed that he’d been playing the alpha for a while now – yeah, I was really starting to get jealous. But, as if that wasn’t enough, he then told me that Crysis isn’t the only game that is looking like it’ll be an absolute cracker. “World in Conflict deserves at least as much credit as Crysis – it’s looking superb.” It turns out that he’s been playing WiC, too – I thought he might have been.

Other Tidbits:

Over the course of our chat, there were a number of things that Roy talked about that went off on a slight tangent, but were nevertheless interesting. These would have affected the flow of the article, but were still worthwhile inclusions, as it gives a much wider picture of where PC gaming is heading.

He briefly touched on where monitor technology was going, stating that the next step would be WQUXGA, 3840x2400, or nine million pixels. To put that into perspective, the current 30” monitors have a resolution of 2560x1600 or four million pixels. “We’re currently working with monitor manufacturers to get refresh rates down to respectable levels so that this can be the next step in gaming resolutions,” he said.

We asked Roy what size monitors we’d see with this kind of resolution, but he didn’t really give any specifics: “I think you can already buy 22” monitors with this resolution, but they’re not designed for gaming because the refresh rates are too high. They also cost too much, too.” I guess from that, we might see 30” monitors at 3840x2400, or we may see even bigger monitors...


He also briefly touched on DirectX 10 SLI and said that the company was working with developers to introduce some new rendering modes to further improve the gaming experience for gamers. He didn't give us any specifics, but he said that there would be more modes available over what Nvidia currently offers in DX9 SLI.

This then led onto us discussing how Nvidia’s architects go about designing the next generation of graphics technology. “In the past, we used to talk to the leading developers like Epic and id, along with Microsoft, to ask what they’re looking for in future hardware and then develop the GPUs from that perspective. What we’re finding though is that we’re moving towards a more gamer-experience focused design ethos.

“By this I mean we think about what gamers want to see in games and how we can achieve that with the power we’ve got. Five years from now, we want to be able to walk into a forest, set it on fire and for it to then rain (using a decent depth of field effect) and to then show the steam coming off the ashes when the fire is being put out.”

There is no doubt that is a different way to go about developing GPUs – Roy’s holy grail is certainly an interesting one and is one to aspire to over the next few years. If anything, it proves that PC gaming still has a lot of life left in it yet.

We’d like to thank Roy for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to us!