14 DAY TRIAL // Company of Heroes is a WWII based RTS game coming from Relic Entertainment, that brings back to life the journey of the Able Company and its brave men, as they fight across Europe in the worst conflagration in history.
The video we have provided HERE for you shows slight, but significant differences between identical in-game scenes running first on DirectX 9 and then on Vista's DirectX 10. Although some things are almost invisible with DirectX 9, such as the flowers on the soil and the wrinkles on the men's shoes, few of these things will barely be observed even with gamers running Company of Heroes on Vista, as gameplay is not static. Plus, gamers will actually have to want to see them, therefore control the camera a lot - not something you'd waste time with in a crucial battle.
Along with the release of this demonstration between the two rendering methods, a patch has been released to deliver an even more comprehensive and gameplay experience. Besides DirectX 10 compatibility, the patch delivers various improvements and gameplay fixes:
DX10 Features ￭ Edges of particles are softened where intersecting 3D objects. ￭ Thousands of additional 'litter' objects in the world. ￭ Improved user control over anti aliasing settings. ￭ Alpha to coverage anti aliasing to improve quality of alpha test objects such as shrubs. ￭ Lighting quality has improved by moving all calculations per pixel. ￭ More precise point light calculations. ￭ Point lights can now cast shadows. ￭ 3D short grass on the terrain. ￭ Vertical refresh synchronization is enabled by default to improve visual quality by preventing tearing of the display image, use '-novsync' to disable. ￭ Hardware PCF for improved shadow quality.
Other Fixes ￭ Various crash fixes. ￭ Improved hack detection.
Gameplay ￭ Axis Pak38 50mm accuracy modifiers vs infantry target types have been reduced. ￭ Allied M1 57mm AT gun accuracy modifiers vs infantry target types have been reduced. ￭ Certain Infantry Antitank weapons (bazookas, panzerschrecks, recoilless rifles) accuracy modifiers vs infantry target types have been reduced. ￭ Attack ground functionality was removed from the 234 Armored Car to fix issues enabling it to fire through shot-blocking objects. ￭ Tank and armored car weapon types can no longer one-shot kill 234/Puma Armored car and M8 Armored Cars.
Note: Vista Users, it's VERY important that you get the latest beta drivers if you want to use DX10.
Relic reports there's a bug in the 158.18 drivers that prevents display of effects, and also those drivers have performance optimizations for DX10.
The patch has been released for several languages: English, German, French, Czech, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Polish, Chinese, Chinese-English, Korean and Japanese.
OK then, watch and be amazed at what DirectX 10 can do and decide whether you need this for yourself or not. However, you'll need to get a 8800 GTS card if you want to benefit from the viewing pleasure.