DirectX 10.1 patch released for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky

[Dalo Harkin]

A chance for owners of Radeon HD 3000 and 4000-series cards to try out DirectX 10.1 features in a real game

 

ATI has been loyal to Microsoft with its support for DirectX 10.1 since the release of the Radeon HD 3850 last year, but game developers have been slow to adopt the new API. However, if you have a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and a Radeon HD 3000 or 4000-series graphics card, then you’ve now got a chance to try out some real DirectX 10.1 gaming features with the latest patch.

 

Patch V1.5.06 for the game can now be downloaded from here for both the retail and download versions of the game, and it adds a number of graphical changes. First off is, of course, DirectX 10.1 support, which manifests itself in the new MSAA (multi-sampling anti-aliasing) feature for alpha-tested objects. In the standard DirectX 10 mode, you get a standard ‘alpha-to-coverage’ mode, but with DirectX 10.1 you get a customised ‘alpha-to-coverage’ MSAA (multi-sampling anti-aliasing) mode, which the game developer says results in improved performance and better quality on native DirectX 10.1 cards.

 

There’s also a new shadow map technique that can take advantage of DirectX 10.1, which the game’s developer says will ‘speed up high quality sunshafts’ at high resolutions with top-end graphics cards. As well as the DirectX 10.1 support, the new patch also speeds up the rendering of high quality sunshafts with the DirectX 9 renderer, and there’s also a new Ultra quality level for sun shadows.

 

The patch also changes a few elements of the game, fixing a few bugs, and also including the ability to load your last saved game by pressing Spacebar as soon as you die. You can read the full list of new features added with the patch in the release notes.

 

To coincide with the release of the patch, AMD has released a hotfix to speed up the performance in the game when using DirectX 10.1, although the hotfix will also speed up performance in DirectX 9 and 10 too, and also apparently improves frame rates in Far Cry 2. If you have a supporting Radeon card, then Windows XP and VIsta users can download the hotfix from here.

 

 

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