OSNews

Well, it's not just about games. I am personally interested in PureVideo HD 2.0, which is only available in Vista currently. Nvidia said that they will make an XP Purevideo HD 2.0 driver available for XP this summer too, BUT, it will use a proprietary API and apps will have to be coded to take advantage of it, while on DX10 and Vista, all apps can take advantage of 100% CPU offloading in h.264 1080p video automatically.

So, personally, I pretty bummed about XP not supporting DX10, even if I don't play any 3D games anymore. And I can't upgrade to Vista, because I have many apps for my hobbies that don't quite work on Vista, while I need Purevideo HD 2.0 for my video editing with Sony Vegas (Vegas does not support GL cards like the Quadros you see, so these Purevideo cards would have been perfect if DX10 was supported on XP).

It certainly is a real shame. You've raised some good points, but for me I am primarily a gamer when it comes to DirectX 10 and as such I feel that I am being forced to upgrade to Vista to enjoy the benefits of DX10.

I guess, fortunately, there aren't many impressive games yet that offer any decent benefit over their counterparts to force the upgrade. Yet...

Shame on sony for not supporting openGL but for supporting DirectX10 so heavily.

Lots of industries are in a big quandry because of microsoft discourating opengl and pushing directx10. Small fragile industries are faced with having possibly deal with investing a fairly tidy sum into supporting a "lock in" technology instead of improving their products already based on open cross platform standards.

Ugh.

bnolsen:

A thought on your your seperate question. If I was a game developer and had my choice between OpenGL and Direct X (At least now) I would go with Direct X just for the fact that my game that I developed would be published on Windows and Xbox360 with virtualy no extra effort of porting. Both of those two platforms have a very large user base. then after if I knew my product did well in those two markets I would port to Mac,Linux and or the other game systems.

>> Aseparate question is why people would develop for the platform-limited DirectX 10 rather than OpenGL 2 (or the imminent 3), since they now have near feature parity?<<

Some answer as always, because some company (A..) provides better driver for DirectX than for OpenGL.

Lots of industries are in a big quandry because of microsoft discourating opengl and pushing directx10.

How dare them try to promote their product...

It's not about promoting a product, but about deliberately hinder other products in working. Particularly open standards.

Same Company, Same Old Story.

You all have it backwards.

When it comes to 3d (not other aspects of directX), it's the HW which has "features" and OpenGL and DirectX are just the interfaces to use those "features".

OpenGL is actually the one to have things first most of the time, because it offers an extensions mechanism, while you always have to wait with directX for the next release to get them.

gee where to start.

it has ALWAYS been possible from day one to get DX10 into XP with out major reconstructive surgery. this was MS spreading FUD.

the new opengl is on par with directx on features and effects, along with visual quality.

does anyone remember how MS was originally talking about not supporting opengl except through a DX10 wrapper? that bombed not for any technical reason, but the market for lots of video editing and CAD type and rendering software is done in pure opengl so they would have killed its performance. literally forcing large render houses to switch to linux/ solaris. etc.

i dont get why peeple dont like the inq, and the reg. they are more often right then not, and a lot of times they post opinion pieceis. its hard to be WRONG when its an OPINION. also their attitude and peeple skills are what keep me around, most other news sites are fruity at best.

"it has ALWAYS been possible from day one to get DX10 into XP with out major reconstructive surgery. this was MS spreading FUD."

Hmmm, do you work for MS or one of the VC manufacturers?

Please explain to me (feel free to be as technical as you can) how you know this to be true. Every thing that I have read about GPU memory virtualization is a good thing, and perhaps they were forcing users to upgrade to Vista to get that DX10 goodness, that doesn't mean that the goals weren't justified.

The benefits of virtualization might have been worth it for MS, but then when Nvidia couldn't get it together, MS was looking at a disaster, if Nvidia couldn't support Vista, Vista was dead in the water, so they loosened up the requirements to make sure that both companies were able to sell VCs for Vista, and users kept the ability to choose the best VC from the best company for them.

MS has backported quite a bit of functionality from Vista to XP, they can't backport everything, or why would they even bother with developing Vista anyway? They are a business, and they have to keep improving (as far as they are concerned) Windows to continue to exist. offering free upgrades to their newest toys doesn't do MS, it's employees or it's shareholders any good, and could be disastrous for the company. Other companies don't backport everything from their latest releases, so why does MS have to?

"the new opengl is on par with directx on features and effects, along with visual quality. "

so what? OpenGL can be installed on Vista, and MS has relented and allowed more direct OpenGL support, so it is not crippled like in their original plan. So if you need an application that uses OpenGL, it can be installed.

While I agree with you that the Inq is far from the paragon of journalistic rigor and integrity, I don't find it hard to believe the argument that MS is using DirectX 10 as an incentive to move to Vista.

If the facts presented in the article are true, and it shouldn't be to hard to find out, then it really does mean that the only reason MS isn't providing DirectX 10 for XP is that they want to force their users to upgrade - and in my book that's a pretty shady thing to do.

If the facts presented in the article are true, and it shouldn't be to hard to find out, then it really does mean that the only reason MS isn't providing DirectX 10 for XP is that they want to force their users to upgrade - and in my book that's a pretty shady thing to do.

Wonder if people will make the same comment about Apple if they don't backport Core Animation (along with the other nifty new Leopard features) to OSX 10.4.
Anyway, how much of Vista's functionality should MS reasonably be expected to backport? They've already got the new DotNet stuff from Vista in there.

This is *really* not the same thing as Core Animation. We're talking about DirectX here, one of the cornerstones of PC Gaming! You really can't compare this to Apple's new desktop features.

From your comment, I gather you are opposed to any backporting of DirectX 10 to XP, and therefore approve this shady tactic on MS's part to force PC gamers happy with XP to upgrade?

Can anyone say "MS shill"?

This is *really* not the same thing as Core Animation. We're talking about DirectX here, one of the cornerstones of PC Gaming! You really can't compare this to Apple's new desktop features.

I dunno .. if it ends up being used by a lot of developers, will apps built using this technology work in OSX 10.4, which was only released back in 2005?

From your comment, I gather you are opposed to any backporting of DirectX 10 to XP, and therefore approve this shady tactic on MS's part to force PC gamers happy with XP to upgrade?

Personally, I don't do much gaming so couldn't care less. But if I did, I'm thinking that XP is 6 years old .. I don't expect that they'd support it forever. Hell, a lot of people are still happy with Windows 98, so why not demand of MS to release DX10 on Win98? Or why not a version for Windows 3.1? Where exactly do you draw the line?

I don't know if MS not releasing DX10 for WinXP is a shady move or not, but it's ironic that people who endlessly bash MS don't hold Apple and other companies to the same standards.

Edited 2007-07-12 22:15

Indeed.
Another example is that Apple could've easily provided Spotlight to Panther users, but made it a Tiger-specific feature to add incentive to upgrade to Tiger (and ideed, Spotlight is THE feature wrt Tiger). And good for them! That's the way things work. It makes no sense to make all features of new versions of software available for old versions if you want to provide some reason for users to buy the new version.

The only thing is that Microsoft gets ripped for making Vista features unavailable to XP, while Apple got praised for making Tiger features unavailable for Panther. And Microsoft did back-port .NET 3.0 and PowerShell to XP; they do much more of that sort of thing than does Apple.

This isn't the same thing at all: did Apple introduce a new framework for game development in Tiger, ensuring that games made for Tiger wouldn't play on previous versions of the OS?

It seems the Microsoft Defense Brigade is already all over this. Would it be too much to ask for you guys to consider the possibility that MS could be in the wrong, here?

Wonder if people will make the same comment about Apple if they don't backport Core Animation (along with the other nifty new Leopard features) to OSX 10.4.

If I understand correctly, applications currently running on OS X 10.4 will run on 10.5 (the reverse might not be true obviously)

That is not the case with Vista.
I for one, do not want to spend money upgrading all my applications just because I need to move to Vista.

Me being a geek that I am, I might have done so, provided that Vista itself presented compelling enough reasons to upgrade. IMHO it doesn't. Not at the moment.

So, from XP, moving to Vista or OS X would present a similar effort (new, faster hardware would be needed for Vista anyways) and Macs do run XP and its application, so...

Go tell apple you want spotlight in 10.3 and see what happens. Newer versions of apple's own software(itunes, etc.) require newer versions of OSX.
Go tell cyber media that you want HD-DVD and Blue Ray support in an earlier version of PowerDVD. Not going to happen.
Companies want to sell software and the only way to continue to do so is to come up with new features in updated versions to sell.
It's just common sense. Microsoft releasing DX10 in XP(and there is alot more to it than the article suggests) would not sell as much product for them.

Businesses are in it to make money. It's common sense, it's to be expected. If I want you to buy a new product I will put new features in it that are only in that product. Otherwise there would be no reason to purchase my product. Makes sense.

Edited 2007-07-12 23:10

That's only possible insofar as Vista came from the same codebase as XP (well, it came from the 2003 codebase, of which XP was just one fork).

There are actually some serious changes across the kernel to make the Windows Driver model work. Most notably, the memory management system was changed to encompass the GPU memory as well as the main system memory. There is also some added security mechanism to allow for DMA transfers directly from usermode without risking system stability. These things are pretty serious changes and you'd need to replace the XP kernel with the Vista kernel to really get it to work.

"the only reason MS isn't providing DirectX 10 for XP is that they want to force their users to upgrade - and in my book that's a pretty shady thing to do."

Their product, their decision, their rules. I don't find this any more shady than, for example, Sony not backporting PS3 games to the PS2 and therefore "forcing" people to buy a PS3.

"If the facts presented in the article are true, and it shouldn't be to hard to find out, then it really does mean that the only reason MS isn't providing DirectX 10 for XP is that they want to force their users to upgrade - and in my book that's a pretty shady thing to do."
Yes indeed, I also found shady that my 1983 Honda Civic wasn't updated to latest Civic model in cardealer, free ofc. If DX10 is one of the main big thing in Vista then why should they bring it free to Windows XP, answer they shouldn't! Whole article was pure crap mostly (call it Inq quality) and I been hearing this same nonsense since Vista was released. Hey get used to it that if you want something new you must pay, same goes with cars.

Sure, except that when Microsoft came out with DirectX 8 and DirectX 9, it backported it to Windows 98 and ME (which are as different from XP as XP is from Vista). In other words, MS *used* to backport DirectX to previous systems - heck, the last version to support Win98 and ME came out in December 2006! Oh, and contrary to your irrelevant claim that "if you want something new, you must pay", these updates to DirectX were free.

I vote that archiesteel is awarded an "Entitle Mint" (you know, the one that tastes great to start, but causes everything else to taste worse than before because it doesn't mix well) for arguing on emotion and cutting every bit of logic out, attacking everyone, etc. and calling all logical rebuttals in the discussion "intellectually dishonest" and "intellectually lazy" and calling everyone "MS Shills" because people won't bend over and acknowledge his opinion as being consistent with how life should be.

Even if hit upside the head with an unbreakable Clue-By-4, it would only be a noisy affair, as nothing could possibly sink in to someone that only uses emotion and refuses to allow logic to seep in.

Everyone, at least on this point, we might as well give up attempting to convince archiesteel using any form of pursuasion: he simply is not amenable to any remote bit of logic, and he'll only scream bloody murder "That's not true!" based on emotions.

Let us not forget, it is also not their first time at such foolishness. If DX10 genuinely requires features only included under Vista, then o.k. - maybe they shouldn't be *forced* to include additional extensions, wrappers, etc. for the sake of an older product line.

However, if they are doing OS version checks, and then purposely locking-out older versions - even if that OS is capable - then that is wrong.

It has happened before: Windows live messenger (8.0) runs fine on W2k, once you grab your hex editor and change it's version check. Same to some screensavers and the like.

"Anyway I don't trust anything posted there, especially about Windows since that is a very biased anti-Microsoft web site that has no journalistic integrity at all."

Ignoring bias of your own statements. The Inquirer does not pretend to be anything else, and it doesn't hide behind any subterfuge, unlike Ars Technica which is a higher class site but lies, and is pro-Microsoft. This is very different from say something like phoronix which is just plain bad.

The bottom line is Nvidia is a hardware manufacture it does not sell Vista...It does not even care about selling Vista, unless their is mutual benefit from it doing so, and there would be if Vista was selling better.

OpenGL 3.0 which contains DirectX10 features in a few months so will be available to XP.

They call Intel "Chipzilla" and AMD/ATI "DAAMIT" quite often too. They're equally biased toward each depending on the article. People read too much into the tone of the article(which is as far as i'm aware) is intended to be humorous and not lacking in personal opinion and not enough into what the article actually says.

I really cannot find flaw with the actual facts they're reporting, the rest is just down to your own personal opinion of their type of journalism. From my point of view at least they're upfront about what to expect unlike newspapers (mostly just lies) or other sites that try to pretend they aren't biased yet make excuses only for the party they support.

Here's where people fight about whether directx should be backported or not. Honestly I dont think they should have to. The only reason people are making such a fuss is because vista is such a massive failure of an operating system, especially for gamers. Things like changing hardware and then, oops, you require a new £200 licence to use your OS you paid for 3 months ago are just silly. That shuns customers and people hate it, it's unacceptable.

As vista is such an utter failure in many regards (spying on you, drm, gaming, huge driver related issues) if i was still using windows i'd be *demanding* DX10 on XP. Not because XP is great, because it isn't(i've never considered any os great...) but because it's reasonable, it does do some things extremely well.....gaming being one, backwards compatibility being another, and just general unrestrictive ease compared to vista.

My point really is that if vista were a slightly better, slightly upgraded XP we wouldn't be here. As it is now vista is a worse desktop OS than XP ever was.

I highly doubt anyone would care that DX10 was Vista only if vista was actually any good. People would just move to vista. Right now what im hearing from friends in pc retail is that more than half of their vista PCs come back demanding they put XP on them. That's a pretty damning statement on its own.

Fairly unrelated but ive just found out my (seemless) bluetooth printer adapter doesn't work in vista....I find that kind of odd considering it works by disguising itself as a usb printer(thus requiring no drivers, just like if the printer was plugging in directly) when using the adapter. Does anyone have any idea why that might be? It's worked in every version of windows since 2000 and pretty much every linux distro since linux had usb2 support :/

Edited 2007-07-13 06:44

why in the world would that switch be to Linux? So you could play killer ogl games like tuxracer?

No, SuperTux.

how bout warsow, nexuiz, racer, or even savage2. not that they dont have windows ports but they are opengl.

and more with: vendetta-online, eternal lands, secondlife (yeah we have that too), ufoai, Defcon, Darwinia… we've got quite a few games over in Linux

I don't know that i'd call any of those good.

The best games are Neverwinter Nights, Tribes 2 and RTCW:ET but now all of those are old and no longer worth playing IMO.

The funny thing about Microsoft is they are a business. Their goals are completely focused around market saturation and profit. Although partnerships with Microsoft can be beneficial to both, Microsoft is only looking out for Microsoft.

I'm not knocking Microsoft for being that way, but it's not particularly friendly competition and it certainly isn't designed to benefit partners.

As for DX10. It looks real nice, but just about everybody I know who plays games these days owns at least one gaming console. Although I don't ever see computer gaming going completely away it seems to me to be a dying breed. As consoles have gained hard drives, memory cards, keyboards, lan connections, etc. the games that once relied on computers to connect online can now be played via the console as well.

Hence why I liked to quote about Ubuntu and Wii. To me the PC is slowly becoming the least favorite place to play games among the general population of gamers.

Those reasons are the one the Inq article claim are not valid anymore.

As for sources, they're not necessary: all you need to do is validate if GPU memory virtualisation is still a requirement for DX10. That's the crux of the article's argument.

They are necessary. A source that validates even that claim should be necessary for the article.

Besides, the URL I linked talked about MORE than just the memory management. There was also "GPU task switching and more".

I wish I could find a more in depth explanation, because I know there was one.

Thank you for providing that information. It's basically the same type of stuff I read previously about why it wasn't backported. It's nice to see actual information posted here instead of all the other crap.

Thank you for providing that information. It's basically the same type of stuff I read previously about why it wasn't backported. It's nice to see actual information posted here instead of all the other crap.

There are a lot of technical issues with backporting DX10, but with enough time and effort, it is, in theory, possible. It's just not practical and Microsoft gains nothing from it other than the very temporary praise of a few gamers. Actual developers WOULD STILL have to develop multiple rendering paths and, let's face it, graphics alone do not a good game make. The whole premise for this argument that developers and gamers would somehow massively benefit from a backport is just silly. DX10 is a new API, requiring new hardware with lib's built around the WDDM/DXGK infrastructure. People just need to get over it.

The bigger issue, as I illustrated in my first post, is that I believe the Inquirer's article to be completely wrong with no technical merit whatsoever. The technical specifications, documentation and ACTUAL current drivers, strongly support my position and no one has provided one iota of information to the contrary. I would assert that the ONLY reason the Inquirer article has any credence is because Jeremy Reimer of Ars Technica essentially republished the Inquirer's statements (in very un-Ars like fashion). I have an e-mail out to Jeremy asking for technical clarification of the issues, but until I see some documented proof, this entire discussion is, IMHO, based on a false assumption - namely that the Inquirer article is correct.

"Btw, playing games is a hobby - not a way of life,"

This is going offtopic but...
Are you sure? I mean, they have Gaming Olympics and Cyber Athletes (that made me laugh harder than I have ever done before) nowadays and gaming is serious, or at least big, business.
Cyber Athlete...seriously...there's nothing I can say that could possibly make those two words any more hilarious than they already are.
Ok, I'm being sarcastic, sue me, but this whole gaming "lifestyle" is just really annoying me. Playing computer games is even less of a sport than chess is.
Then again, poker is apparently a "sport" these days so what do i know.

Edited 2007-07-13 06:48

Half hour? Geez, my arms get too sore to play anymore after 15 - 20 minutes.

I can do 2 hours of hockey, but only 15 - 20 minutes of boxing..

"Do half an hour of Wii Boxing, then get back to us on that... ;-)"

Sorry, it's still not a sport. Sex is also exhausting but you don't see that in the olympics, do you?