Ken Cox Posted February 27, 2007 Report Share Posted February 27, 2007 SEEhttp://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/11/3...c_gaming/1.htmlhttp://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost....32&SiteID=1http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=enKEN Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanewcomb Posted February 27, 2007 Report Share Posted February 27, 2007 This is only one view of the future. A lot is up in the air right now in the software/computer world. In one sense, Microsoft is fighting for its existence, or rather the existence of the business model that made it so profitable.The articles above talk about Microsoft's decision not to release a version of DirectX 10 for Windows XP. It is clear this is being done to make people upgrade to Vista. It is one of the disadvantages of the near monopoly OS situation. Why should someone's 3D graphics experience depend solely on the operating system? What about the concept of supporting past versions, especially the previous version?There is no technical reason DirectX 10 could not be ported over to XP. The hardware functions in your video card are available to whatever calls any software driver makes. The software cannot magically create hardware functions.Google, Linux, OpenGL offer a different view of the future. They are all based or favor the open source philosophy. OpenGL is a graphics driver similar to DirectX that dates back to 1992. Actually, it predates DirectX, which was a Microsoft response to the success of OpenGL.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL#HistoryIt has always offered superior performance over DirectX and has planned major revisions to compare to DirectX 10 this summer and fall. Many video games use OpenGL drivers. Google Earth uses the OpenGL driver on your computer if you have one. In fact, it is one way to compare the two graphic systems by switching back and forth. Though this is not a comparison of the latest versions of either. There are video performance issues to upgrading to Vista as well, mostly because Vista will no longer allow direct access to the video card. See this article, particularly the Will My Applications Run Fast? section:http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_7/There is a fight going on between the old monopolistic OS model and a new open source, advertised supported content way. It's been going on for a decade or more, but Google's success has many people wondering if the monopoly OS days are over.Given the situation it may be worth putting off buying into the Microsoft version of the future for now. It's a significant investment and things could be very different one year from now. I have no plans to upgrade to Vista this year and want others to realize they aren't missing the boat by not buying Vista now. I still use Word95 because it does all the things I need in a word processor.SteveTucson, AZ USA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conflow Posted February 27, 2007 Report Share Posted February 27, 2007 This is only one view of the future. A lot is up in the air right now in the software/computer world. In one sense, Microsoft is fighting for its existence, or rather the existence of the business model that made it so profitable.The articles above talk about Microsoft's decision not to release a version of DirectX 10 for Windows XP. It is clear this is being done to make people upgrade to Vista. It is one of the disadvantages of the near monopoly OS situation. Why should someone's 3D graphics experience depend solely on the operating system? What about the concept of supporting past versions, especially the previous version?There is no technical reason DirectX 10 could not be ported over to XP. The hardware functions in your video card are available to whatever calls any software driver makes. The software cannot magically create hardware functions.Google, Linux, OpenGL offer a different view of the future. They are all based or favor the open source philosophy. OpenGL is a graphics driver similar to DirectX that dates back to 1992. Actually, it predates DirectX, which was a Microsoft response to the success of OpenGL.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenGL#HistoryIt has always offered superior performance over DirectX and has planned major revisions to compare to DirectX 10 this summer and fall. Many video games use OpenGL drivers. Google Earth uses the OpenGL driver on your computer if you have one. In fact, it is one way to compare the two graphic systems by switching back and forth. Though this is not a comparison of the latest versions of either. There are video performance issues to upgrading to Vista as well, mostly because Vista will no longer allow direct access to the video card. See this article, particularly the Will My Applications Run Fast? section:http://www.opengl.org/pipeline/article/vol003_7/There is a fight going on between the old monopolistic OS model and a new open source, advertised supported content way. It's been going on for a decade or more, but Google's success has many people wondering if the monopoly OS days are over.Given the situation it may be worth putting off buying into the Microsoft version of the future for now. It's a significant investment and things could be very different one year from now. I have no plans to upgrade to Vista this year and want others to realize they aren't missing the boat by not buying Vista now. I still use Word95 because it does all the things I need in a word processor.SteveTucson, AZ USASTEVEYou might have seen my Post further down the page ~ Yes,I am in complete agreement with your uptakeon the Microsoft situation and in particular I resent the 'overt pressure' being imposed on current Windows Users in attempts to enforce them to use Vista right now !Brian.Conflow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LumenLux Posted February 27, 2007 Report Share Posted February 27, 2007 And how nice it is to have PTE Forum members, who we all know, express their "takes" on such subjects. It can be a real help to those of us less involved in the broad broad pc tech universe. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alrobin Posted February 27, 2007 Report Share Posted February 27, 2007 Steve,I couldn't agree with you more! You have laid it out very logically and convincingly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stonemason Posted March 1, 2007 Report Share Posted March 1, 2007 Steve is there an OpenGL "update route" for windows XP ?Geoff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conflow Posted March 1, 2007 Report Share Posted March 1, 2007 Hi Guys,For ongoing updates to XP and other Systems the link below brings you to Major Geeks:-http://www.majorgeeks.comWe have used them for major Updates for Win.98se and even downloaded the "unpublished"Microsoft Pak SP-2 for Win 98se ~ in my opinion these 'guys' really do know their business.Just 'Bookmark' them for future reference or have a prowl around their site if you are havingproblems with some System or other.Brian.Conflow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanewcomb Posted March 1, 2007 Report Share Posted March 1, 2007 Steve is there an OpenGL "update route" for windows XP ?GeoffI couldn't find a page showing this, but OpenGL has always been a cross platform driver and I expect they will continue to support XP. The current version still runs on Win95 and one of their "selling" points is Available Everywherehttp://www.opengl.org/about/overview/#5It most likely will be later than the drivers that will allow the next version of OpenGL (Longs Peak) to work on Vista. It all depends on the video card companies writing their drivers, and right now they are all focused on Vista. Since the Longs Peak documentation isn't finished, it is not possible to tell when actual drivers will be available.One thing to understand is use of DirectX 10 is also in the future. Although the code is in Vista, there are only a few very high power video graphics cards that support it, and they are very expensive like the NVidia GeForce 8800GTXhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814130072Windows Vista OS itself, including Aero, does not use DirectX 10. It uses DirectX 9:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/...de/capable.mspxAs far as I can tell one of the main differences in DirectX10 is a mandatory requirement by Microsoft to have the video card hardware accelerate the Shader Model 4.0. The 8800GTX is the first card to do this and it has nothing to do with the operating system. There's more about DirectX10 herehttp://www.tomshardware.com/2006/11/08/wha...0_is_all_about/At this time there are no video games or other applications that use DirectX10 that I know of. The one most gamers are talking about is Crysis, which is due out in June 2007. You will have to purchase a new machine, OS and video card to run DirectX10 only games, but there is no reason to do any of that right now, when prices are highest for these technologies.One certainly does not have to purchase Vista to run very nice and smooth P2E high res slideshows.SteveTucson, AZ USA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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