Originally by: Deakin Frost

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Edited by: Deakin Frost on 23/04/2006 12:58:45
Having gone through this thread and reading this DRM-fest crap about Vista left me in awe.

First of all, that Palladium stuff is out. The only components of it that remain are hardware accelerated disk encryption and secure boot, both OPTIONAL. And even then, it seems like secure boot went out of the window with EFI support, since it depended on it.

And second, be happy that Microsoft is actually implementing that encrypted video channel, because otherwise the movie industry might just decide to not issue licenses for software players at all. However that video channel does not affect your highres Xvid **** (or any other pirated movies you downloaded already, or will do so), only specifically HDDVD/BluRay software players, because the industry mandates that the video data may not be intercepted anywhere. The only reason you'd complain about this "DRM crap" is either if you intend to rip HDDVDs yourself, or you're just a clicheed anti-MS slashdot type.

Even then, you don't need to worry about your "backup copies" anyway, since HDMI has already been broken, so there's a way to tap into raw digital datastreams already, and it is only a matter of time until AACS will be broken, too.

So stop crapping your pants.

--edit: And before you go out of your way calling me a Microsoft apologist for this post or those in gamedev, I'm surely not. I'm regularily ripping the devs a new one in their newsgroup for the bloat they implemented. For all I care, I could stay on Windows Server 2003 for some longer, I just care about the coming kernel improvements. If Vista lands on this machine, it'll be brought down to pre-Vista classic mode levels anyway.

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Originally by: Nifel

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Originally by: Splagada

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Edited by: Splagada on 22/04/2006 01:24:04
ah come on... ms is bad etc...

if linux had the same interface as windows,as intuitive and all, it would probably lag at least more than windows...

(more because some of the MS common low level routines are hardcoded in intel and AMD chips eh)

edit : i was a huge linux fan, then xp came and ... why bother...

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Best load of *******s these forums have seen so far this year.

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Originally by: j0sephine

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"OpenGL 2.0 will run fine on Vista. You'll just have to disable the eye candy."

Gah, no... it was mentioned in the thread already, but there's three ways of getting openGL on Vista:

* no 3rd party vendor driver: hardware-accelerated openGL 1.4 done through directX ... maybe not full speed, but vast improvement over software-only openGL 1.1 provided by winXP and older

* current model 3rd party vendor driver: openGL all way up to 2.0+ depending on what exactly is implemented by vendor; disables Vista eyecandy

* new Vista-only 3rd party vendor driver: openGL all way up to 2.0+ depending on what exactly is implemented by vendor; works with the eyecandy and everything

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Originally by: Virida

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Vista will not support OpenGL 2.0 and do not support extension to openGL. So, from my knowledge, the openGL who runs, do it with an penalty to performance, and isnt "up to date" with the latest version.

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Originally by: Splagada

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Edited by: Splagada on 22/04/2006 01:24:04
ah come on... ms is bad etc...

if linux had the same interface as windows,as intuitive and all, it would probably lag at least more than windows...

(more because some of the MS common low level routines are hardcoded in intel and AMD chips eh)

edit : i was a huge linux fan, then xp came and ... why bother...

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Originally by: Fierce Deity

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Edited by: Fierce Deity on 21/04/2006 21:32:56
Edited by: Fierce Deity on 21/04/2006 21:32:26
maybe, but if ccp is trying to step up their game it would free up a load of cpu power to use in other areas. and cpu is were eve is a hungry beast. missles at actually fly like missles ships that actually rock in shockwaves like they are supposed to and real looking explosions with bits bouncing off your ships. i think it would look great and cost proformance little to nothing, for those the the 300$ to buy the chip.

edit: now that i look the list up most of the games supporting physx are mmos like COV COH vangard ect..

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Originally by: BurnHard

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Edited by: BurnHard on 21/04/2006 08:03:37

Originally by: damicatz

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A lot of Windows users practice the idiotic habit of running as an administrator account. And programmers don't help by writing programs that require an administrator account for no real purpose. The only programs that should require an administrator-level account are system-administration related utilities. Nothing else. When you learn Linux, one of the first things you are taught is not to run as root. Ever. Run as a regular user and su/sudo etc. over to root when you need to do something as root.

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Well firstly with respect to the "Standard" you are technically right. OpenGL is a standard, whereas DX 10 is a specification.

You are right about administrator accounts - Vista will fix this issue I think. I don't think you are right about Windows XP being sub-standard. It's got issues, mainly due to IE being so deeply embedded into it and the various technology choices MS made to try and outsmart the competition and make it easier to use, which of course have been completely undone by the virus writers.

My copy of XP never blue screens and doesn't crash. I haven't had to shut down my work PC for two months and last time I did it was to install a new USB card. And of course, knowing that XP is on the majority of desktops makes it much easier for me to develop software for the platform at work. Just some of the positives.

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Originally by: damicatz

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A lot of Windows users practice the idiotic habit of running as an administrator account. And programmers don't help by writing programs that require an administrator account for no real purpose. The only programs that should require an administrator-level account are system-administration related utilities. Nothing else. When you learn Linux, one of the first things you are taught is not to run as root. Ever. Run as a regular user and su/sudo etc. over to root when you need to do something as root.

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Originally by: MysticNZ

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Originally by: damicatz

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Edited by: damicatz on 20/04/2006 21:18:31
Consumers are harmed by being forced to use Windows, a sub-standard and inferior operating system. My Apple IIE's operating system was better and didn't crash half as much as this crap. And it is 25 years older than Vista.

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I don't want to get into an os argument, but gererally, Windows dies due to user problems or badly coded software.

I look after a bunch of Windows 2003 servers and never have issues, but I know what i'm doing.

I'd say that's generally the rule for most operating systems. I do use Linux, but only for gaming servers (Less memory).

If Linux had the market share that Windows does I bet my life it would have the same issues, the same amount of security flaws, only difference is the Linux community would release a fix faster.

Most Viruses, Exploits, Spyware is written for Windows, just due to it having market share.

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Originally by: BurnHard

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Originally by: damicatz

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DX10 is not a standard and never will be. Standard implies that it can be used ubiquitously. DX10 only works on Windows. I would be more open to DX10 if it could be implemented on any platform like OpenGL. But it can't. Microsoft created DirectX to lock-in multimedia to the Windows platform. One of it's creators, Alex. St John, admitted as such.

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It's a standard as far as the hardware developers are concerned and as such, it was designed in partnership with them - a Windows PC standard obviously. It cannot be otherwise because the hardware makers are the innovators, the developers (CCP among them) request the features - Microsoft just make sure DirectX can use them and, where the ATI/NVIDIA roadmaps take them, support whatever will be the Next Big Thing in future.

Originally by: damicatz

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And having a fixed-feature set dictated by a single company that does not have the interest of consumers at heart is bad for the PC. The PC is not a console and should not be treated like one. Crap like fixed feature sets may work for consoles but not for PCs. I fail to see the benefit of forcing all GPU vendors to only add features to their GPUs that Micro$oft wants.

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I think when it comes to the interests of consumers, it's better to judge each case on it's merits. With DX 10, I can see the merits. I don't think it's a good idea to be a purist about technological stuff. Of course MS wants to lock in Multimedia - but DX is implemented using COM, ie. not CORBA. In a way, going back in time, MS decided to create COM rather than using the existing CORBA for exactly the same reasons: ie. it's platform dependant. Nothing new there really.

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Originally by: damicatz

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DX10 is not a standard and never will be. Standard implies that it can be used ubiquitously. DX10 only works on Windows. I would be more open to DX10 if it could be implemented on any platform like OpenGL. But it can't. Microsoft created DirectX to lock-in multimedia to the Windows platform. One of it's creators, Alex. St John, admitted as such.

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Originally by: damicatz

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And having a fixed-feature set dictated by a single company that does not have the interest of consumers at heart is bad for the PC. The PC is not a console and should not be treated like one. Crap like fixed feature sets may work for consoles but not for PCs. I fail to see the benefit of forcing all GPU vendors to only add features to their GPUs that Micro$oft wants.

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Originally by: damicatz

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OpenGL does not make assumptions about the renderer. For example, Direct3D assumes that you have a 3D Accelerator. OpenGL does not. To an OpenGL application, there is no difference between a software renderer and a hardware renderer. It would be possible to run Doom 3 with a software renderer if it supported the required extensions, though you would be lucky to get 1 FPS by doing such. It is up to the driver to determine how the rendering is actually done. OpenGL is designed for a wider variety of tasks, not simply just for gaming. Therefore, in the strictest since, it is not OpenGL that supports fixed-function pipelines but the driver implementations. Pipelines are indicitive of graphics hardware, which as stated earlier, may or may not be present.

When and if fixed-function pipelines are removed from graphics hardware, the new driver implementations will simply have predefined pixel and vertex shader routines that it can send along to the GPU performing the equivilant of the old function.

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Originally by: damicatz

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As for implementation, I've always found OpenGL to be easier to work with than Direct3D. Yes, ARB can be slow at implementing features but their are vendor-specific extensions and non-ARB extensions that are more or less standerdized. Right now, only ATI and NVidia make GPUs that have any features that wouldn't be supported by ARB. And most extensions function as functions that you call, no different than say if Microsoft allowed custom Direct3D functions. And I've always found Microsoft's hungarian notation to be confusing and I find pure C to be cleaner than C++ code using the COM model and that hungarian notation nonsense.

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Originally by: BurnHard

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Edited by: BurnHard on 20/04/2006 18:38:53

Originally by: damicatz

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I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. You were saying that if the DX10 LoD scheme used Geometry Shaders the DX 9 fallback might have to be CPU based. With OpenGL, there would be no need for two paths or a fallback. You simply call the functions to do the geometry calculations and if your hardware supports geometry shaders, the driver routes the computations to your GPU or (in the future) PPU. If not, it routes it to the CPU.

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Okay, yes thats right. My only worry with that is the ARB taking two years to decide on the interfaces and only then will the card manufacturers roll them into the drivers. They would I assume exist as extensions until then. However, GL has to carry around a lot of legacy stuff, including a whole heap of FFP (fixed function pipeline) functionality, which is basically being wiped from DX 10. So, I think DX 10 will be the cleaner implementation, driver-wise and probably a lot more efficient overall than OpenGL.

Eventually the manufacturers will no longer want to support fixed function on the metal - so expect to see DX specific cards on the market, with GL support back in specialist hardware, as it used to be 15 years ago.

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Originally by: BurnHard

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Originally by: damicatz

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Coincedentally, OpenGL solves just that problem. The allocation of resources (such as wether to use the CPU or hardware acceleration) is up to the driver/implementation and not the application so the application developer does not have to worry about that. That's why OpenGL games were able to take advantage of hardware T&L when the Geforce 256 came out while with Direct3D, a rewrite was required to make use of the new functions.

Originally by: BurnHard

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Originally by: j0sephine

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"It's starting to pain me to consider how you manage resource between two client versions; this is actually quite a complex undertaking."

file -> import plugin -> generic internal format for content type

... then you have render engine-specific converters to grab whatever content they can utilize from generic data (and maybe optionally store this 'compiled' input in cache files for future use to speed things up on subsequent runs)

It's overall easier than it seems, and pretty fun when you get it to work... and allows to maintain just single version of game content files (3d data in whatever format you use, textures, material descriptions) ... then everything else happens on the user end, done through whatever render engine they pick.

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Yes, but I was really thinking more about managing the creation of the content. Technically it's "easy" and "doable" to write to code of course. But then think about something simple to implement, such as a good LOD scheme. Will DX 10 allow you to do that in a geometry shader? If so your DX 9 fallback path has to be CPU based - and perhaps your model format slightly different. Multiply this by every model you have and the tool makers are in for a few long weekends at the keyboard.

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No, it doesn't, it just does it differently. With OpenGL I "bind" an object and get back a token, which to all intents and purposes is a pointer to the object. With DX I create and object and get back a pointer to an interface. I still have to manage the lifecycle of all the many tokens and pointers, so I can't see what difference there is. Honestly, lets not get into the OpenGL v DX debate, it's been done a million times all over the web before.

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