First DirectX 11 benchmark released

Windows 7 was unleashed to the world yesterday and world of 3D hardware didn’t need to wait for too long. We got contacted by Matthew Tippett with the link to a Russian developer Unigine Corporation. It turns out that this developer created quite an impressive DirectX 11 engine and made a benchmark of it. The list of features is as follows:

• Native support of OpenGL, DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11
• Comprehensive use of tessellation technology
• Advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion)
• Volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm
• Dynamic simulation of changing environment with high physical fidelity
• Interactive experience with fly/walk-through modes
• ATI Eyefinity support

The world’s first DX11 benchmark is called Heaven, and we would advise you to go and view the footage of all the capabilities of Unigine 3D engine right on YouTube and if you are interested in the Heaven benchmark but don’t have DirectX 11 hardware, you can see a four minute video with Heaven benchmark running in DirectX 11 mode [4:23 video].

Imagine how this flyby looks on a 24 display setup..we like the focus, motion blur and Depth of Field effects.

The multi-platform version featuring OpenGL will arrive soon. According to Michael, the Heaven benchmark will also land on Linux operative system, enabling the benchmark to run in a 24 display mode – did we mention Eyefinity is supported out of the box?

If all things go well, the second 24 display 3D application will be the Linux version of Heaven benchmark, following Laminar Research’s X-Plane. Now, here comes the impressive part about this benchmark. Thanks to extensive use of Tessellation and DirectCompute and JPEG texture format [rather than the BMP of the old days of yore that still survived to this day] developers no longer need to utilize multi-gigabyte downloads. Instead, Heaven benchmark is a brilliantly small 127.8 MB.

This just might deserve the title of “download of the week”.

Original Author: Theo Valich