Project Alky is dead

[OverlordMondo]

I have a friend who uses Vista. Says it works all right. I've thought about upgrading.

[Lucandrake]

wouldn't it be cool if MS released a gaming edition of vista without all of the bloat and only the core os

Signed

 

I propose Weirdy to be the one to propose to microsoft Vista:Not So Sh!tty edition

[Weirdy]

oh wait a minute, can't Vista be nlite'd? you can always use that to strip it down

[Wizard]

I think Vista is better then XP.

 

Yeah just too bad it only sold what? 3k copies?

[ken_cinder]

wouldn't it be cool if MS released a gaming edition of vista without all of the bloat and only the core os

 

Wouldn't it be coolER if MS released DirectX 10 for XP?

[OverlordMondo]

So, out of curiosity, what was Vista supposed to have that XP didn't, other than DirectX 10? And is there any reason DirectX 10 couldn't function on XP?

[Sybarite Paladin AxL]

So, out of curiosity, what was Vista supposed to have that XP didn't, other than DirectX 10? And is there any reason DirectX 10 couldn't function on XP?

 

DirectX10 is simply not portable to XP because of how they designed it to run only on Vista. It was built around Vista's kernel, which is quite different from XP's. The only reason they don't want to design another DirectX10 for older operating systems is because they're using it as a gimmick to try and force gamers to upgrade.

 

Excerpt from wikipedia:

 

Windows Vista includes a new version of Direct3D, called Direct3D 10. It adds scheduling and memory virtualization capabilities to the graphics subsystem and foregoes the current DirectX practice of using "capability bits" to indicate which features are active on the current hardware. Instead, Direct3D 10 defines a minimum standard of hardware capabilities which must be supported for a display system to be "Direct3D 10 compatible". Microsoft's goal is to create an environment for developers and designers where they can be assured that the input they provide will be rendered in exactly the same fashion on all supported graphics cards. This has been a recurring problem with the DirectX 9 model, where different video cards have produced different results, thus requiring fixes keyed to specific cards to be produced by developers.

 

According to Microsoft, Direct3D 10 will be able to display some graphics up to 8 times faster than DirectX 9.0c because of the new improved Windows Display Driver Model. In addition, Direct3D 10 incorporates Microsoft's High Level Shader Language 4.0. However, Direct3D 10 is not backward compatible like prior versions of DirectX. The same game will not be compatible with both Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 9 or below. Games would need to be developed for both APIs, one version for Direct3D 9 and below if targeting Windows versions prior to Windows Vista and another version using Direct3D 10 if targeting only Windows Vista. Windows Vista does, however, contain a backward compatible Direct3D 9 implementation.

 

The Direct3D 10 API introduces unified vertex and pixel shaders. In addition, it also supports Geometry Shaders, which operate on entire geometric primitives (points, lines, and triangles), and can allow calculations based on adjacent primitives as well. The output of the geometry shader can be passed directly onwards to the rasterizer for interpolation and pixel shading, or written to a vertex buffer (known as 'stream out') to be fed back into the beginning of the pipeline.

 

D3D10 functionality requires WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) and new graphics hardware. The graphics hardware will be pre-emptively multithreaded, to allow multiple threads to use the GPU in turns. It will also provide paging of the graphics memory.

 

The version of Direct3D 9 available in Windows Vista is called Direct3D 9Ex. This modified API also uses the WDDM and allows Direct3D 9 applications to access some of the features available in Windows Vista such as cross-process shared surfaces, managed graphics memory, prioritization of resources, text anti-aliasing, advanced gamma functions, and device removal management.

[Wizard]

DirectX10 is simply not portable to XP because of how they designed it to run only on Vista. It was built around Vista's kernel, which is quite different from XP's. The only reason they don't want to design another DirectX10 for older operating systems is because they're using it as a gimmick to try and force gamers to upgrade.

See the part I bold in your post? That's why it can't be on XP. The kernel is too different, that's the reason. It would have to be redesigned to be compatible with older operating systems (XP, Win2k) to work. While it is a gimmick to get users to upgrade, it still holds a valid argument on why and how it couldn't be done on previous systems. Many of DX10's techniques are only capable with a complete rewrite of the rendering engine, something the previous DX models all share is a single core that has been improved over the years while DX10 is nearly all new technologies.

[Sybarite Paladin AxL]

DirectX10 is simply not portable to XP because of how they designed it to run only on Vista. It was built around Vista's kernel, which is quite different from XP's. The only reason they don't want to design another DirectX10 for older operating systems is because they're using it as a gimmick to try and force gamers to upgrade.

See the part I bold in your post? That's why it can't be on XP. The kernel is too different, that's the reason. It would have to be redesigned to be compatible with older operating systems (XP, Win2k) to work. While it is a gimmick to get users to upgrade, it still holds a valid argument on why and how it couldn't be done on previous systems. Many of DX10's techniques are only capable with a complete rewrite of the rendering engine, something the previous DX models all share is a single core that has been improved over the years while DX10 is nearly all new technologies.

 

Well true, but they could've designed a version for XP by now. Fact of the matter is, the main and most important reason they're not doing so is because of the gimmick.

[Wizard]

It wouldn't be the same thing though, that's what I'm trying to say. XP is running on something that's been in the same base code for nearly 12 years now because there couldn't be any other way. Not even XP was completely built around an api like DX, it already had it's core with Win2k. Vista was built from the ground up with DX10 and not vice versa.