Ubisoft: No Direct 3D 10.1 support for Assassin's Creed planned

Ubisoft told PCGH that there is no plan to reintegrate Direct X 10.1 with a future patch. (Thilo Bayer, 28.05.2008)

Assassin's Creed & DirectX 10.1: Ubisoft is not planning to reintegrate D3D10.1 [Quelle: siehe Bildergalerie]

You might remember: The enormously successful Assassin's Creed was the first game to have DX 10.1 support. But the patch 1.02 removed this feature.

PCGH was able to get some more information about this business. Below you will find an email interview with Ubisoft.

PCGH: D3D 10.1 support in Assassin's Creed was a hidden feature. Why do you choose not to announce this groundbreaking technology?

Ubisoft: The support for DX10.1 was minimal. When investigating the DX10 performance, we found that we could optimize a pass by reusing an existing buffer, which was only possible with DX10.1 API.

PCGH: What features from Direct 3D 10.1 do you use with the release version? Why do they make Assassin's Creed faster? And why do FSAA works better on D3D 10.1 hardware?

Ubisoft: The re-usage of the depth buffer makes the game faster. However, the performance gains that were observed in the retail version are inaccurate since the implementation was wrong and a part of the rendering pipeline was broken.
This optimization pass is only visible when selecting anti-aliasing. Otherwise, both DX10 and DX10.1 use the same rendering pipeline.

PCGH: Why do you plan to remove the D3D 10.1 support?