Bad Example of DX9.0 vs DX10.0

Bad GIZMODO bad !!

DirectX 9.0 Screenshot ::

DirectX 10.0 Screenshot ::

The difference one would notice upfront in the 2 images is the sunlight peeping through the forest which is referred as HDR and that is,

High Dynamic Range. This is a lighting procedure designed to emulate the way that light levels in the real world vary over an enormous range. This is mostly achieved by the use of floating point textures and render targets (as well as using the appropriate lighting algorithm); integer formats do not offer the anywhere near the same range of values. Although visually better, the use of floating point formats can result in a large performance impact on some graphics adapters.

and Floating Point Textures and Render Targets (Buffer Objects) were introduced with Shader Model 3.0 ( DirectX 9.0c ) and not Shader Model 4.0 aka DirectX 10. Hence this is no example to differentiate between DX 9.0 and DX 10.

PS : I believe DX 10 rather Shader Model 4.0 is the biggest leap in the history of Graphics, hence I totally agree with the mightiness of Shader Model 4.0 but the way it is projected here is no right way to tell people about the difference.

skp