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Longhorn's Windows Graphics Foundation Examined
Matt J writes "Dave Salvator at ExtremeTech goes over some of the graphics designs for Longhorn. 'David Blythe of the DirectX development team gave a very interesting talk about the upcoming 3D graphics architecture in Longhorn, the next major revision of Windows. Called Windows Graphics Foundation (WGF), this new architecture will usher in some major changes to how 3D graphics operations get handled by Longhorn. These changes extend well beyond Longhorn's Avalon technology, which will render the Windows Desktop using a GPU's 3D graphics processing power rather than the traditional 2D blitter. WGF will instead define the core 3D operations themselves.'"
What's with the sickening new theme on here?
An intelligent GUI would be settable to any virtual resilution, with elements that are fully scalable, from icons to "system" fonts. This is an inevitable feature on the desktop, and I wonder if any proposals are in the works.
Looks good for your age..
Wow! This makes me jealous... I wish my Powerbook running OS X could do thi.... Oh.... wait....
One of the first orders of business is to "fix busted stuff," as Blythe put it. These items include no more blue-screens (hard crashes) caused by the graphics driver, and moving more processing into what's known as user mode.
They're calling this thing WGF (Windows Graphics Foundation). Perhaps instead of blue GPF's it can generate pretty pink Windows General Faults.
...remember in Win 3.xx when an app would not let go of the processor? Should we get ready for a lot of solid grey windows and one actively redrawn one until the third revision of the OS?
OS X seems to have no problem with it. Then again Longhorn's implementation could be completely whacked.
It's just like OSX's Aqua, rendering the GUI in the graphics card and all...?
Good innovation.
Is this like Keith's Getting X Off The Hardware plans, where he suggests that having your xserver running on top of openGL instead of having to talk to all this messy hardware stuff will make it nicer and faster?
Sounds like Microsoft is once again taking from Apple. Core Image uses the GPU to process data and not the CPU, watch the WWDC on apple.com
Copying or evolving? What the article talks about is a hell of a lot more than just a 3d shell.
"Derp de derp."
That sounds nice, but that one part stating crashes will happen is still unsettling. It's one thing to make a system that restarts instantly, another thing to make a system stable.
And if it does restart instantly (which I'm skeptical of) I hope I'm notified.
Cairo
Wish I had a doller everytime some mentions this.
We have cairo.. same kind of thing, and people are modifying stuff to implement it everywhere.. Theres also many other technologies to make up everything that Microsofts new one will do (the difference is though that we are much closer to getting a stable version)
http://www.freedesktop.org/Cairo/Home
Just dont take all of Microsofts noise too seriously, just be aware that by 2006, linux will have completely equivilent technologies (in many cases we already do), and just cause we dont make much noise about it, dont think that they dont exist, or aren't planned for the near future.
Honestly, the stuff which I have seen for longhorn so far hasn't been mindblowingly amazing, and are really just things where they are trying to catch up to MAC OS X, or linux
This article makes it unclear if WGF 1.0 is basically DirectX 10.0 or a Longhorn-specific system. If it isn't available to users of older versions of Windows, there is little incentive to rewrite code specifically for it. I think the adoption of Longhorn will be slow as I haven't heard any really compelling reasons to shell out the money for the upgrade.
How many years will it take for OSS people to stubbornly claim there is no need for 3D desktop acceleration before they finally begrudgingly clone a half-assed version of it several years too late.
It irks me when Microsoft, KDE, Gnome, etc. build expansive GUI's that are lush with eye candy yet fail to provide an upgrade in functionality. I seriously do not understand the mindset of developers when they attempt to impose system requirements that include a GPU to complete day-to-day tasks. Thanks God for midnight commander/emacs/vi.
That was the dumbest joke ever.
You, sir, are an idiot.
Even if this comes from Microsoft, this is pretty amazing stuff. The OS-level ability to use the 3D acceleration features of the card by more than one application at a time may prove to be as important to future computing as the ability to create 2D windows at the OS level. What *should* be more amazing is the response of the open-source community. I think we should all unite in an effort toward a new advanced graphics architecture. Maybe this is something IBM or SGI could reasonably invest in.
samrolken
Speaking of outdated and poorly designed, see my parent comment. This is what I get for reading Slashdot at freakin' one in the morning.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Oh, moving some stuff to user mode? Well, um, better late and half-baked than never and not at all?
Seriously, putting stuff in the kernel that should have been in user space is one of the more serious architectural botches in Windows. It has caused massive stability problems. Now it seems that Microsoft is recognizing this, and is starting to undo it. (What they need is to completely undo it, but they have to start somewhere. What they don't get to will continue to bite them until they do.)
I know I am! With the hype machine running flat-out this far before the launch date, Longhorn is starting to sound like Microsoft's version of Copland...
0 1 - just my two bits
Y-Windows. A replacement for X that is fully hardware-accelerated and can upgrade its own drivers without a restart.
If people want to beat Microsoft with this technology, Y is the place to go and help out.
Pay new Direct X books.
Learn new technology.
Rewrite all the win32 graphics code.
$$$ the Microsoft way!
Is this a new section? Or have I just never been here before?
Ah, well, better than the games section I spose.
If there were more people aware of what usability this would create for the end-user, and how much simpler it would be to design graphic interfaces for the coders, I think people would jump on board. And there are sooo many talented OS developers, so it doesn't seem impossible that GNU/Linux could leapfrog MS in a field that they are only matched (beaten?) by Apple's interface. All it takes is a rallying of the people.
Looks good for your age..
...if they would just let me move a window around while the application is loading.
Microsoft is going to integrate Office into the Kernel.
Big & Buggy kernel news.
The difference is that one is a "suggestion" while the other is a company actually getting off their asses and implementing it system-wide. Where is that happening in OSS right now?
I've been saying this since Longhorn's features were announced, Linux desktops will be severely behind if they don't hurry up and move into the modern age that Longhorn and future versions of OS X are competing in. But no, we're still stuck with deskop emulators hacked on top of an ancient X protocol server with no unified development API. Hell, not even a way to install and uninstall things, because it's not really a seamless desktop but a cludging-together of 20 different projects in order to emulate a desktop operating system instead of actually being one.
Aw man, now I'm going to have to finally spring for a 3D accelerator.
Just dont take all of Microsofts noise too seriously, just be aware that by 2006, linux will have completely equivilent technologies (in many cases we already do), and just cause we dont make much noise about it, dont think that they dont exist, or aren't planned for the near future.
Really? 2006 is just two years away. Where are these mysterious technologies you talk about? Yeah, I can name random projects like Cairo all day long. What desktops use them?
I'd sure love to see Linux having implemented all these technologies before Longhorn. Sadly, I know that will be far, far from the truth. Hell, we're still busy moving our distros over to an XFree86 fork. I'd love to see all this technology you speak of magically write itself in time for 2006. Linux has dozens upon dozens of never-completed projects, but Microsoft is actually getting these things done and in a unified manner. I don't find your reassurance very...reassuring. This is the community that still thinks a taskbar and start menu is a neat idea to rip off from Windows 95.
Because it's not just hard accelerated compositing. It's an entire revamp of the DirectX graphics architecture. Did you read anything about the Common Shader Core model or the GPU-sharing driver model? This article is about more than Avalon. In fact, it hardly mentions Avalon.
Windows Longhorn is far, far more than just vector-based drawing. Rattling off OS X and beta X.org releases because they use the GPU to blit 2D graphics doesn't invalidate what they're doing.
Didn't you get the memo? DOS is dead. No, really this time. Windows NT is not DOS. Windows 2000 is Windows NT. Windows XP is Windows NT. Windows 2003 is Windows NT. Longhorn as well will be Windows NT. None of those have anything to do with DOS. Do you perhaps mean that Microsoft is still using DOS's command.com-style batch scripting and console interface? (cmd.exe is not DOS, but it emulates the interface passingly well.) That's set to change. Unless you're still using Windows 98 or ME (both of which have been end-of-lifed), you are no longer using DOS when you use Windows.
1.) Typing "M$" doesn't make you clever or witty.
2.) NT isn't based on DOS at all. Nobody knows what you're talking about there.
3.) Select HTML format next time.
4.) This technology is not "unimpressive." Only to elitist Slashdot snobs who think XFCE is still a cool idea. The rest of the world wants to move to a modern, 3D-based compositing architecture. Where is that happening in Linux? 2006 is just a year and a half away. Well?
This sounds like a good idea. GPUs routinely make miscalculations (try overclocking), and yet they still maintain a consistent envelope of stability (don't push it too far). It's interesting to note that they intend to rely on the graphics routines to recover from crashes. This hints of a revolution: the gap between GPUs and CPUs have narrowed somewhat (at least) with the new shader and its level of integration with the OS. Virtualizing memory of the GPU also sounds like another step in that direction--people can play Doom 3 on Ultra Quality with a 128MB video card that has, say, 1GB of theoretical memory. I know, it still won't be anywhere as fast as 512MB onboard, but I believe, for certain applications (like having razor-sharp, as-you're-reading-this-post-right-now text appear at different angles and stuff) that will be enough. I am bothered by the ability of the new shader to have the GPU on multiple applications. Can you imagine a popup with an extreme level of pixel shading that is taxing the hell out of your top-of-the-line ATI or NVIDIA card because you're also trying to play Doom 3? Yes, Longhorn, through its GPU integration and subsequent possibility of cool Windows graphics, also creates room for BLOATED graphics and EXPLOITS. Driver upgrades without reboot are cool--you can have multiple drivers heavily optimized for different kinds of programs, and when you run each the appropriate driver is loaded. The "enhanced boot experience" sounds nice. MAybe it will be highly customizable. You could have it display each dll as it's loaded all fancyful, with useful displays of RAM and virtual memory tucked in a 3D display. And "high dynamic range lighting?" A necessity, I bet, to have different apps running at the same time. But this all sounds very bloaty and resouce intensive. We'll definitely need those 30GHz procs running in tandem with NVIDIA's Geforce 69420...excuse in 2005 to buy a high end video card is that you want word process at 60 fps while looking at pron, quickly hiding it away from view (at 60fps).
Remember the article about the projected system averages for a Longhorn PC? That takes care of the lag at least...
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
As an MS intern working in the Avalon (the presentation layer of Longhorn) group (with no particular love for MS), I just gotta say that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Not only is what we're doing incredibly powerful, the ease at which one can use the technology is just amazing. You can sit down and start writing your own Longhorn applications in literally 5 minutes. A hello world program with the "hello world" in gigantic text spinning and getting smaller and larger is a 5 line program.
It's really quite amazing.
Besides the fact that it's not the same as OS X or "Debrix"...
Microsoft has the unique advantage of being able to drive hardware specs in the industry. That means they can ship this thing and have it work wonderfully on new PCs (their main channel), whereas Apple is at the mercy of the PC hardware market, and therefore OS X is still sooo sloooowww at certain things.
Actually, OS X lags a lot. If Steve still allows it on your hardware, boot into OS 9 and see.
The Longhorn thing is significantly more complex than what Apple is currently shipping anyway.
So dragging windows now would get ~5fps on my TNT2.
is it just me or is this a lot of Acronyms with a lot of theroy and ideas an no real proof its going to work or not. Longhorn is still in development and still a way off things tend to change and it may be good or bad. the way i see this article is a marksmen shooting at a target years away and truely its luck if he hits the bullseye or not.
The last thing I want is another big Microsoft API. Let me know when the Windows API gets smaller, or when Windows implements the Single Unix Specification in any meaningful manner. I have better things to do than to waste my time trying to write programs against a cumbersome toy OS API.
glitz and Cairo, to name 2 related efforts.
I read the article. And many other like it. I also read the comments. And ran Longhorn 4072 for a while.
Everyone's getting excited about the compositing. Which will not be in production for ages, and doesn't do anything we've not seen before.
I don't know about cairo state, like waimea it seens stoped.
But The enlightenment team is doing a nice job with a lot of nice libs and the DR17 will be relased this year.
The #1 reason for the lag (via resizing) is a 2d operation that cannot be accelerated. Also ATSUI (the text system) is incredibly powerful and yet very, very slow.
That is the lagginess you are seeing. Nothing to do with the 3d stuff.
If you read (and fully understood) the article, you would realize that a fully hardware accelerated windowing system is not all that Microsoft promises with this new stuff.
The other stuff I see as being BIG are the changes to DirectX such as removing a lot of the fixed function pipeline features. They are pushing the GPU to be more generalized which is a good thing.
Microsoft is really hyping up Longhorn and none of the meat of Avalon has made it into the technical previews. Judging by the Ctrl+Alt+Del animations, the smooth color fades in Explorer, the few existing vector graphics, the other random programmer art in the technical previews, Avalon is going to be IMPRESSIVE.
Whether you like MS or not (which you don't, this is slashdot), they have the programming and graphical resources to pull this off in a very big way.
http://brandonbloom.name
Whaooo....
a new reason to upgrade my graphics card to some thing upto date instead of being content with always using crap that's 3 years old.
Now when I upgrade to Longhorn I'll just have to buy an new *eww* pre-built computer just to be running the latest and greatest OS on the Market.
I mean Windows. I shall now go throw out my 15 versions of Linux on CD's (like MandrakeMove and P.H.L.A.K.) and go pay Microsoft every penny they deserve for 4 years of hard work the put in to making this wonderful OS
I make it most of my life giving new life to old hardware. I use Windows 2000 Professional as an OS of choice. I personally use a 700mhz Intel Celeron (Coppermine) processor( though I prefer AMD) and a ATI Radeon 7500 Dual-Head. I get most of my hardware for "free". I've paid for a graphics card and a hard drive for my own personal machine. All the extra hardware i get i refurbish and give to those know need a computer.
This just burns me when I know that I have to upgrade to be anywhere near safe. Scratch that. Unless a firewall and common-sense about network security doesn't protect me in 2006 on the internet, I don't know why I'll even use it casually except for "Google"ing whatever, placing Holds on books at my local library, and updating my drivers/software/OS
Yah gotta love oligopies and near-monopolies
This was brought to you buy the Department of Redundancy Department
Hopefully the x.org guys will do faster work than the XFree86 guys. I mean, the end result is pretty good, but it just moved way too slow.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
MS Research is an open research group much like Xerox PARC was (with some of the same people). They publish papers and have been working on stuff like this for years. So it isn't so easy to say who stole which idea from whom. All you can say is that Apple beat them to market with it.
1 &PostID=14275#14275
check out:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PageIndex=
For once I agree with Be-fan. The talkers are talking about what needs to be done, while the doers are ahead of the talkers. This is why most developers don't give credence to what most talkers say. Maybe if all the talkers turned into doers Linux would even be more ahead than just the present mixed bag.
OK, after commenting, I went back and read the article. There's a couple major improvements over the current Windows:
+ It sounds like they are getting rid of the old single-threaded event model, which was brought over for Win3 compatibility. (No more GUI locks while Windows probes your CD-ROM, etc.)
+ The processing will be moved to user mode as much as possible (ie, no more "GUI in the Kernel")
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Keep in mind, those of you defending MS and their extravagant piece of vaporware called Longhorn, that Apple may not be at the stage that MS is shooting for, but then, by most accounts, Apple has another 2-3 years to keep working on their ALREADY FULLY IMPLEMENTED and CURRENTLY WORKING graphics system. What on earth makes you think that Apple won't be able to keep up with whatever amazing piece of shit MS plans to drop out its collective ass in 2008 or 2009 or whenever? Please be real. MS is still choking on Apple's dust as far as harnessing the power of graphics card for the GUI, and don't doubt that whatever is impressing you with Longhorn today will pale in comparison to whatever Apple manages to pull out of its sleeve by then. Did any of you watch the presentation that Jobs gave at WWDC? Did you notice the shit that Apple is building right into the system? Users of 10.4 and on are going to have a virtual array of Photoshop filters built right into the system. You tireless Windows shills better hope that what looks impressive today won't look a little behind-the-times a few years from now. Cross your fingers. You'll need it.
NOOOO you bastards. The RADIOACTIVE BEIGE OF THE END TIMES is back? Why must you torture us with this disgusting IT section? Make it go away.
Longhorn and its graphics suck and so does this color scheme.
Keep in mind that the final Longhorn UI is under development. All the current UI and schemes are temporary.
Ah, but the difference is that Microsoft can get the acceleration support they need.
You would think that offloading of the graphics work could have been done years ago. It's not like 3D accelerators are something new.
http://raplyrics.blogeasy.com
like it wasn't bleeding obvious.
(the idea)
What windows lacks more then a snazier-then-OS-X-GUI is decent fucking command line.
I can't beleive that all those programmers at Microsoft can't come up wiht something better then BASH?
I mean it can't be that hard.
Of course most fools will scoff and go "command line 1s teh suk!", but until you actually get used to having one that is actually REALY usefull you won't ever know what your missing.
Think about it. Macs were anti-command line. Now we have Apple helping fix bugs and deficiences in Bash.
Why? Why the f--k do you think? Because until OS X came along with a decent command line and robust unix underpinnings the only thing that Macs were good for were running photoshop and making people feel comfortable in front of a computer.
I am not knocking a good GUI interface. OS X rocks, but think about it.
REALY. Why would apple be switching over to BASH? Because 1. people are familar with it, 2. It's realy freaking usefull.
Otherwise, what is the point?
So until Windows gets a decent command line enviroment going with the ability to do pipes, redirects and loops without asinine syntaxs it will always be inferior to Linux and other Unix-like OS's.
So what's Slashdots excuse for this colour scheme, it would insite anyone to hate anything.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
That's exactly the reason why they forked, so I would hope so too!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There has already been major progress in the Xorg. The next release - going to be released Aug 25 - just went to feature freeze and it will have some fancy stuff like real transparency. There has also been some serious discussion about moving X on top of OpenGL.
Does anybody notice that most of the computing industry would be redefined according to Longhorn?
Now I know they need to build something really different, but are all these differences really worth the hassle?
Maybe it's just me tired of hearing about software that won't be in use for another 3-5 years as if it's the best thing since sliced bread...
Blogging because I can...
And really quite useful too... I can see a new world, full of 3D spinning things!
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
There have been widget libraries built on top of OpenGL for years. See GLOW, for example. It's straightforward to do, and works reasonably well. Works on any OS that will run OpenGL.
Microsoft patented the Apple?
compatability is.
I mean this is such a worm-like mentality. Back up for a minute and ask yourself if MS seriously has the option of just cutting off backwards compatability with the installed user base.
If it was so easy to just dump all that old crap, then FOSS would certainly control the desktop market. Why would you give credit to MS for doing what they have to do to stay afloat? They're not doing anybody any favors here.
With a GPU centric shell, any video driver or hardware problem (eg. from overclocking) would be a lot harder to solve - how would they display the error messages properly without resorting to a text-mode bluescreen?
Conceptually this is all good, just like the Windows NT security model. How they actually pull it off is another thing altogether.
You'll also notice if you RTFA, which you did not, it explained that IF a crash does happen, you won't even notice.
So, we should use WGF instead of MS DNA or XNA, or, whatever comes after DirectX, except that all the commercial companies are using DirectX, which used to be WinG, but then everyone said OOP was the best way to program, so... awww FUCK IT.
...which will render the Windows Desktop using a GPU's 3D graphics processing power...
Microsoft, finding new ways to waste processing power every day.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Sounds neato. Thanks for the info, I guess I should check the news on the official website more often.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
"One of the first orders of business is to "fix busted stuff," as Blythe put it. These items include no more blue-screens (hard crashes) caused by the graphics driver"
Yeah, that just pushed Longhorn's release back to around, oh, 2020.
Slashdot sucks
Embellishing your own works in progress is HYPE.
Downplaying other peoples works in progress is FUD.
to get rid of color scheme: remove it from the link. I.E.: it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=203975204375upowiu to
slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=203975204375upowiu
Voila!
EOF
Quartz Extreme and Core Video?
Redmond, start your copiers!I completely agree with you! Putting focus on the GUI also makes scripting/automation/remote admin etc more complex.
Ever seen anyone make a comment next to a setting in a GUI? Thats why text based config-files in many cases are superior. And you can backup the configuration easily.
What annoys me is that all eye candy tend to make people beleive that "computers are so much better and powerful nowadays", when in fact, building real functionality is not easier at all. More layers and more dependencies add complexity that in the end damages stability and correctness.
You should not be moderated Troll!
A fundamentally 3d rendering system, based on the gpu not the cpu, would certainly have a deep effect on the way I work with vim. For instance...
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Do you know why this isn't funny anymore? Because this is the joke most people make who have not tried Windows beyond the 95 and 98SE1 days.
Do you REALLY want me to bring up how 'good' the Linux kernel was in it'x 1.x days?
"We're breaking out the ramen noodles. . . "
"Really? Is it someone's birthday?"
well, you've really done your research..
For starters, MS didn't invent the start menu, it was Apple, all MS did was market it in a way that disillusioned people who didn't do much research thought that it Microsofts idea
Now.. where to start: http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/
Composite/Xdamage: One thing that has kept us behind Microsoft for a while graphics wise. These allow real transparencies. they are 1 month off..
Enlightenment 17: This has amazing graphics already (try entrance.. it works already), and blows away anything I have ever seen. The people who code enlightenment are also well known as technical geniuses and are excellent at optimisation, so they can do high quality graphics VERY fast, and very efficiently.
Dashboard: While Microsoft is bragging about their integrated search technologies, unknown to many, this is already available in linux too.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard . In fact, Microsoft stole the idea from that...
Full hardware accellerated window: The accelleration system is being changed now, and I'm guessing that within 2 Xorg releases, there will be nothing left that isn't accellerated.
"DirectX shading" Let me ruin your disillusions about the magical directx.. Its behind, its always been behind, and whatever it can do, opengl can do a lot easier.
XUL: Our new XAML like thing.. Its being developed for Mozilla. Do you even know what that is???
And about your comment about no desktops using the new features.. do more research!!! You'll notice that everyone has been migrating to SVG type graphics already and cairo is the most likely method that will be used to accellerate them. You obviously haven't noticed this though.. Because I bet you haven't touched CVS though, so have no idea whats really going on.
Now, heres the thing you prove you haven't done your research on.. What about stuff like SElinux that Linux has but Microsoft doesn't eh. Microsoft is bragging about the new stack smashing protection in SP2, but just about every Nix distro/type has had it for years.
And what about stuff like gdesklets and superkaramba?? I'm not sure exactly, but I think that we beat Microsoft on those things...
Come back after you've tried Entrance from E17.. http://xcomputerman.com/pages/entrance.html . Those kind of effects already I can honestly say beat longhorns by a long shot (at least what I've seen). After you tried that.. You'll get a taste for the future.
And about integration, you have no idea about dbus, shared-mime-info, etc obviously, because that stuff is already making a massive difference integration wise..
Cool thing is that theres already stuff that can use the new Xdamage and composite extensions too.. Mainly stuff like skippy-XD at the moment..
eye gas sumbodIE has to do it?
.com (froogles) away from some disabled person? yuk. eye gas every pennIE couNTs when you're becoming soul DOWt.
what about those googlers, trying to steal the
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... using newclear powered crystal 'vision' since/until forever. see you there?
& by the way, lookout bullow. the creators' planet/population rescue initiative remains on high crisis alert. many are saying that unprecedented evile et AL, may have peaced off the creators/finally be doomed?
They had to wait for Apple to do it first, of course!
A number of benchmark tests have proven that, CPU cycle-for-cycle, a well configured UNIX or Linux server can outperform a Windows server in just about every server task there is.
Surely the base reason for this is that the UNIX pholosophy is not to waste valuable computing resource of GUIs and graphical processes when you don't need to. In other words, have your UNIX server running in a console mode, perhaps with a web server or X-Server running, and just do all your administration of that server either through the console or via a web interface or remote GUI session.
It's ridiculous the Microsoft still haven't released a non-GUI server variant of their OSes, especially when, in my experience, a large proportion of blue screens and crashes are as a result of something going wrong in the graphics sub-system somewhere.
The only logical conclusion I can come up with is that there is a conspiracy between Microsoft & hardware manufacturers for MS to constantly waste CPU cycles to ensure that everyone is forced to upgrade their hardware constantly.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I'm wondering what impact this would have on people who prefer to play their 3d games in a window instead of full screen. These games will probably take a hit to framerates due to the entire area is getting rendered unless MS puts in a way to halt rendering for inactive areas when playing games.
If that's a problem I'd expect a lot of gamers to stick with XP or maybe transition to Linux (esp the FPS crowd since many of those games are usually ported to Linux Doom/Quake.).
I am curious what the effect of this new architecture on notebooks will be. Nobody will use it if it cuts your battery life in half, so I wonder how Microsoft will put in the power saving features to reduce GPU load. Interestingly, the article is completely quiet on it. Somebody forgetting that notebooks are now half of the desktop market?
KEY: "summary of what it says (paraphrase, not an actual quote)" - what it means - what it means from a perhaps slightly biased POV
1. "Talk at Microsoft's Meltdown conference: DX Futures"
2. "Talked about Longhorn's 'Windows Graphics Foundation'" - quote from powerpoint: 'WGF is the "next Direct3D"' - a 3d architecture for both games and for the OS (and maybe for non-rendering tasks)
3. "Unifying vertex/pixel shaders; support multiplexing by multiple apps" - Microsoft is going to continue driving the process of specifying what next generation hardware's feature sets should be (only natural, since Talisman and Fahrenheit were such succesful designs ).
4. "remove fixed-function pipeline features; everything must be done by shaders" - Because obviously everyone wants to write shaders themselves for everything, even in the simple cases! Yes, please make me look up the Phong lighting formula every time I write a throwaway 3d app! Actually, the article doesn't make clear but the presentation above does that they're continuing to support the legacy DirectX interfaces, and improving support for OpenGL, so at least you can use those interfaces for fixed-function support. But the ppt above does seem to say that the hardware won't implement fixed-function stuff (which makes perfect sense--the drivers can supply an equivalent shader), and it states that a high-level shading language "will be the only methodology for Windows Graphics Foundation", with an example showing a shader iterating over multiple lights and computing the results itself.
5. "no more caps bits (capability bits)" - Hey, it's yet another of the things that OpenGL got right all along. Not sure what prevents someone from accessing a legacy D3D API and getting at the caps bits there, but at least there won't be any new ones.
6. "stability; if we're using 3d graphics hardware for basic desktop rendering, it's got to be super stable, and when it crashes, it needs to be able to reset trivially without the machine going down." - the ppt says the new architecture design is trying to reduce driver complexity. I am extremely doubtful about this.
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed how Microsoft R&D department have a tendency to use "grand" naming schemes for projects they work ok?
Everything is a "foundation class", or "xxxx foundation". It's sickening. Anyone remembers AFC? JFC? They didn't really survive, but MFC did. In any case, it's just some library, what's with the names? MFC should have been named BWL (Basic Windowing Library), or perhaps SWL (Shitty Windowing Library) would be more fitting.
Down with the ego crap!
It's also kinda funny how Microsoft copies technologies from Apple, and then gives it a name that sounds very "core" to their future business operating system...
Yours,
LSF (Linux Skaag Foundation)
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
Now, I though old Billy the Gates came from New Mexico, not Texas. If so, then why is he allowing anything to be named "Longhorn?" It sounds a mighty bit like the Univ. of Texas Longhorns.
What's the advertising slogan going to be? "Hook'em Horn?!" Or, how about, "Using this product will prove to the greater IT community that you're a Longhorn, yourself." Well, the latter may be more fun, but not a good avert.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Invention? I don't know. It seems like a common sense thing to do these days as more and more PCs are becoming equipped with better GPU's.
Keep in mind that XP already had transparency/dropshadow effects well before OS X arrived on the scene. I may be wrong - but I don't remember OS 9 having any of this stuff.
I am not saying that Apple copied M$. All I am saying is that if you've got enough power, why not use it to make stuff look pretty?
(Intel) Quick do something! People are gonna start to realize they don't need 4 ghz for e-mail!
(Gates) Don't worry, we have something cooking. >8 )
Actually, it's Quartz Extreme that renders the GUI via the GPU. Core Image is more of an add-on to that, applying filters and transformations using the GPU as well. Quartz Extreme has been around since Jaguar, and Core Image will appear in Tiger.
e me /
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartzextr
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html
why in the world are they re-inventing graphics to be 3D centric? the current 2D graphics look just fine. I don't want or need to upgrade my system, just so I can run an OS that needs a big expensive (read cheapass) graphics card. Only games need heavy 3D lifting, so let the game developers focus on that. the windows graphics system should just get out of the way and make it easier for game developers. I get the feeling, this is a huge mistake, because anything beyond the current look and feel is way over kill. Those who need color fidelity and better graphics use Mac, and you're not going to convince huge droves of graphic artists to switch. I'm not convinced of the value of WGF beyond marketing hype.
I hate the Windows command line.
OS X's is so much more useful via the addition of two simple (and completely obvious) features:
-I can copy some text from a GUI window and paste it into the CLI window.
-I can drag and drop an object from the GUI into the CLI, and have that object's full path appear as if I typed it in.
The lack of these two features in Windows is infuriating, especially when I need to do something command-line related to a file on the desktop. I am condemned to painstakingly type in that long-ass full path manually.
Kind of hard to believe that Microsoft didn't come up with either of those since they've had a CLI in Windows for a decade and a half.
If they can, I'd like to see Apple patent those features (yes, they're obvious, but since when does the USPTO care?)-- because I'm sure we'll finally see them in a few years in Longhorn, and Microsoft will be acting like they invented them.
Unfortunately, MS Research has one of the worst efficiency records around (according to this week's issue of The Economist). Despite the vast funds pumped into it, their record of innovation is abysmal. So maybe we can make some assumptions here about who invented what first.
Yes, Linux is "behind". It will always be "not as shiny" as Windows. It represents the commodity option, and Microsoft will collapse under it's own weight because of it.
Please stop spouting this "competition" crap, it is annoying those who actually work to make OSS what it is.
The first thing I do when I get a new profile at a customer or standalone host is go to "System" and turn off all the "effects" and switch the view and taskbar to "classic", set the color pallette to its lowest gamut and turn the stupid gradiations in the title bars to solid colors. Next is mount my USB thumb drive and strip the MS messenger from the registry.
I haven't found out how to remove this type of "cuteness" from my iBook (it is a test platform, not a real workspace) and I noticed that KDE has started to adopt this distracting and useless animation trend on their mouse pointers. No telling where it will stop in the never ending quest to "be like the others".
Every install needs a "simple" button added to the "typical" and "custom" ones to disable the nonsense.
I was incensed when MS removed the ablity to define a 16 color VGA without squirrelly rituals and required q 256 minimum. Color cues are nice, but I do not need 16 million of them on my desktop and for the most part 256 is overkill.
"Stop the Madness"
(OT: Has she put all that weight back on, is that why we never see her any more?)
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
*cough* Quartz Extreme *cough*
For years I've wished linux had vector based desktop so I could have a 3d scroll wheel embedded in irix window frames. You make the wheel turn by dragging over it with the mouse, and all icons in a window grow or shrink smoothly. I also like the way icons would shoot animated rays out for a few seconds after clicking to indicate the program was loading.
"Vector processors" do not accelerate the same kind of vectors that are involved in "vector graphics."
A vector processor works the kind of vector that is a data structure including many data elements. A scalar processor handles one piece of data at a time.
Vector processor
It's true that vector processing makes it faster to process vector graphics, but only because you can use it to process large lists of 3-D data very fast. Vectors (arrays) of vectors (quantities with both magnitude and direction).
The kind of "vector processing" you're thinking of is called a "transform and lighting engine." GPUs have that, the G5 does not per se.
Writing in Quartz 2D is yummy because Apple did the data type design pretty well, has some really useful calls, and you're surrounded by eyecandy.
Surely you realize that in order to render into 256 or 16 colors, the OS has to do an enormous amount of *extra* work to convert from the ordinary colorspace? Of course you do. You're trolling. Sigh.
The point is that 3-D card compositing is actually much faster than 2-D compositing on today's cards. The hardware is no longer super-optimized for 2-D... nobody cares about 2-D hardware anymore. The way Windows moves windows is insanely slow.
If I drag the window this browser is in on my 2.4 GHz machine with a Radeon 9800, I get tearing and it jumps around a bit. I have "display windows contents while dragging" on.
2-D on Windows is a fifteen year old setup, more or less. It's time for a new model, with less programmer complication.
If I run Quake III with vSync on, I get no tearing and I'm running at well past my monitors refresh rate... objects have apparent physical reality instead of this flitty flit windows nonsense.
Today if you turn off 32-bit colour for 8-bit color, you don't make your machine faster. It's slower because Windows stores internally as RGB. Turn to 256 color graphics and you have to set the palette all the time through BIOS calls. Yuck.
The same is true here... Windows is moving to a newer, faster graphics model. It's faster to have each application draw to its own framebuffer and let the 3-D card composite it. It's faster to not deal with actual blitting loops within applications that tie up the whole processor.
No more clipping calculations for the various windows, no more trouble with more than one video application trying to use the god-damned overlay mixer, no more trouble with overlays not working on the second monitor of a dual-monitor setup....
Don't think of it as 3-D bloat... that's inaccurate. Think of it as enabling the 3-D coprocessor that almost every computer will have at that time. You already know your P2-266 won't run Longhorn. 3-D doesn't make that more true.
+5, Insightful
But it's only recently that they're pretty much a) ubiquitous, and b) powerful enough in the lowest common denominator.
Hell, it's only Windows XP that dares to assume that your monitor can do 800 by 600; 2k and below still default to 640x480.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You've got to walk before you can run. When Mac OS X 10.2 shipped in 2002, Quartz Extreme was introduced. This used OpenGL hardware to accelerate the assembly of the display from window buffers.
The most interesting thing here from a technical point of view wasn't the accelerated compositing, but something a bit more subtle. With the introduction of Quartz Extreme, the window buffers were being made visible to the GL hardware acceleration system, and could be directly addressed by the hardware DMA engine.
This opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities, which I'm sure you will be hearing more about in the near future.
does this mean that Windows will finally not look like shite? gawd those awful icons, etc., they make me cringe. yes, i use OS X.
The article isn't about compositing. It's about the revamped DirectX and driver structure. GPU-sharing, snapback error recovery, and a unified shader model that removes the seperation between vertex and pixel shaders.
For the second time, Avalon is barely even mentioned. Why do you keep going on about the compositing? I don't see how you can say it's stuff we've seen before...where have we seen it for Linux? I'm talking a usable 1.0 release, not some 0.1 alpha project that has been sitting around for years.
The past several windows releases are named after ski areas in BC canada. Whistler is a ski slope, Longhorn is a saloon at its base. So is the forthcoming Blackcomb, a mountain.
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well, you've really done your research..
...while KDE stole the idea of start menus, taskbars, integrated filesystem/net browsers, and so on from Microsoft.
For starters, MS didn't invent the start menu
Did I say they did?
, it was Apple, all MS did was market it in a way that disillusioned people who didn't do much research thought that it Microsofts idea
Ah, yes. Because the Apple menu is so much like the Windows Start menu. So instead of ripping off Microsoft, we ripped off Apple?
Composite/Xdamage: One thing that has kept us behind Microsoft for a while graphics wise. These allow real transparencies. they are 1 month off..
Transparencies and alpha-blending have been a part of Windows since 2000.
Enlightenment 17: This has amazing graphics already (try entrance.. it works already), and blows away anything I have ever seen. The people who code enlightenment are also well known as technical geniuses and are excellent at optimisation, so they can do high quality graphics VERY fast, and very efficiently.
Okay, so somebody made some nice bitmap graphics. What does that have to do with this?
Dashboard: While Microsoft is bragging about their integrated search technologies, unknown to many, this is already available in linux too.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard . In fact, Microsoft stole the idea from that...
It amuses me that you think Microsoft stole the idea from this project, as though this project was the first to do it. Displaying things in that way isn't a new idea. The way Microsoft is doing it is, though, and I guarantee their unified development model will mean more people will be coding for it than for some random Linux version.
Full hardware accellerated window: The accelleration system is being changed now, and I'm guessing that within 2 Xorg releases, there will be nothing left that isn't accellerated.
Always more reference to the future. That was my point--where is this stuff now? 2 Xorg releases?? Do you realize how long it takes for new Xorg releases to even come out?
"DirectX shading" Let me ruin your disillusions about the magical directx.. Its behind, its always been behind, and whatever it can do, opengl can do a lot easier.
Wow, I sure can't argue with that kind of research. "OpenGL is better, because I said so! So there!"
Did you RTFA? Do you have GPU-sharing? Do you have a unified shader model? There's a reason Direct3D won the battle.
XUL: Our new XAML like thing.. Its being developed for Mozilla. Do you even know what that is???
When did I even mention XAML in this discussion? And where else is XUL majorly being used other than in Mozilla? Are you saying in the future that KDE and GNOME will integrate XUL into their desktops? How many years will that take?
And about your comment about no desktops using the new features.. do more research!!! You'll notice that everyone has been migrating to SVG type graphics already and cairo is the most likely method that will be used to accellerate them.
Wow, "everyone" has been migrating? Who? What distros out there fully run on Cairo now? Where is this technology being used?
Like I said, we can point to half-finished alpha projects all day, but Microsoft is the one actually finishing things.
You obviously haven't noticed this though.. Because I bet you haven't touched CVS though, so have no idea whats really going on.
You have me so figured out. Actually, I've known about all the projects you mentioned. Like I said, the fact that these half-finished things exist in CVS doesn't mean a thing.
Now, heres the thing you prove you haven't done your research on.. What about stuff like SElinux that Linux has but Microsoft doesn't eh. Microsoft is bragging about the new stack smashing protection in SP2, but just about every Nix distro/type has had it for years.
Where is all that being implemented together in an actual desktop environment? You've basically pointed me to OSS vaporware. "In progress," as you put it.
And then you lie about not being able to try the in-progress Longhorn. I assume you've never heard of the PDC and how they gave out Longhorn builds to attendees.
It's a moot point anymore to argue who "stole" what from whom. Lots of people come up with these ideas. I'm sure all of us at some point in time have thought, "It would be cool if my entire desktop was 3D accelerated," or "They should keep track of all my running applications using buttons or something" (taskbar).
The point is who implements the the best. I say this because OSS has little room to complain, considering most of use desktop emulators running taskbars, start menus, and even integrated filesystem/WWW browsers. KDE even got the ability to draw shadows beneath icon labels on the desktop. Though the effect is so ugly, I prefer XP's much more.
This is different from Longhorn. I don't think people realize, Longhorn will sport a fully 3D-rendered interface codenamed "Aero Glass." The interfaces shown in today's alphas are placeholder interfaces. OS X uses the GPU for its compositing but does not render its interface that way. OS X uses PDF format for its interface. Longhorn will actually be using polygons and rendering its interface through the 3D graphics card, unless you don't want it to or you have a lower-end system. Then it will fall back to today's standard 2D compositing.
So the next time someone says, "B-but OS X already does this!" feel free to let them know there's a difference.
in second Netcraft tests? Hmmm. Cycle for cycle Windows beat the crap out of Apache/Linux.
-d
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Could not believe I was typing it myself :)
Blogging because I can...
Ha! All those people and businesses who wrote their graphics stuff in Direct3D are going to be relegated to programming the "compatibility API" of WGF, and everyone knows that compatibility APIs usually have plenty of wrinkles because the main effort is spent on the "true" API.
.NET Rapid application development bollox - cause he didn't know that once you get outside of GUI painting no tool can do all the work for you (hence his project is late by a factor of 2!). By the time he releases the .NET API will have moved on to 2.0 and he'll have to port deprecated bits to that.
However, anyone who wrote their stuff in OpenGL will still be sweet when 2.0 come out. They can just use the extra features without worrying that their core stuff is gonna break. That is the benefit of a stable API that doesn't get dumped every 5 years cause a company wants you to upgrade tools and platforms just to get a few extra features. That's the same reason why Unix (and clones) beat Windows, the APIs are vastly less prone to wholesale change by the vendors because they realise change for its own sake only excites those who uncritically swallow marketing.
A person at my work swallowed the whole
So, take the WGF for what it is. Interesting, but has downsides if you adopt it for any long term project. Use OpenGL instead.
I wouldn't worry too much: if you can hold out for a few more years, all that hardware will basically be free :)
The info for this stuff was on MSDN long before Apple debuted CoreImage/Video at the WWDC in June. It would be more accurate to say that CoreImage/Video is a copy of Windows Media Services, Direct X, and a few other things than to say that Microsoft is just now creating a technology to compete with Tiger's new stuff.
Again, the article does mention compositing, and does mention that its the thing everyone's hyping on about. Again, 95% of the comments here, to which I'm responding, are hyping up about compositing.
Which may not yet be finished on Linux but is, by everyone's measurements, further developed than Longhorn at the present point in time.
Just because you're on the internet doesn't mean you need to act like a fuckwit. If you voiced a similar reply to someone in real life, they'd probably slap you.
Well, I am not so sure about that. Win32 is not my primary OS, hasn't been for the last 4 years or so. (Mandrake is)
..... win32 for the moment, waiting for MCAD applications to make a shift.
Switch to Apple? Probably would, if I could get decent MCAD applications. Before you say there is plenty, consider I-deas, UGS NX, Pro Engineer, Solid Works, Solid Edge, etc... These drive most of the industry. Since that is a big part of what I do (consulting, training, implementation), Apple is out for now.
FS / OSS provides almost all of my basic computing solutions. If I am going to buy an OS, it's going to (sadly) be a win32 one because of the MCAD stuff.
I also use SGI IRIX quite a bit. SGI and Apple have a lot in common with regard to their hardware/software combination. It costs a bit more to do things this way, but the results are clearly worth it. Apple is doing all the right things, just like SGI used to do with IRIX. Believe me when I say I would likely switch, it's just not going to do me any good at the moment.
Linux, IRIX and
Blogging because I can...
"Why was so much time spend copying Microsoft's old interfaces rather than advancing the state of the art? "
Browse the GNOME discussion again. Then ask your question.
"Similarly, Firefox is cool, but it's just Internet Explorer + 1. "
Not even close. You pine for something "state of the art" but you don't even have the capacity to recognize it when it's right under your nose.
No troll. The only reason it would be doing extra work is because programs are wastefully written to use these humongous colorspaces with useles eyecandy of gradiatians and similar crapola. When I was writing software (NT & OS/2 scanner driver & preview, mind you, which might have legitimately justified it) dialogs and other mundane UI stuff I stuck with a 16 color palette, the larger pallette spaces were created on they fly according to the current scan values. We are in desparate need of less cuteness and more functionality, I have had my fill of Clippy and animated mouse droppings^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpointers, thank you very much. How about they spend their time asking before overwriting my MBR, recognising ext2, ext3 and reiserfs partitions. How about creating a simple mechanism to allow the designation of drive letter/partition/volumeid at install time so I can keep consistancy across my test installs. The list of far more important deficiencies is extensive and far more deserving of attention than 3D Menus.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Anyone here old enough to remember Microsoft's new operating system code named Cairo originally scheduled to be released in 1992?
Same story, same hype, new code name.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
How is the OSS stuff any more vaporware than Longhorn? It's "in progress" just like Longhorn is "in progress." Or do you have a release version of Longhorn that nobody else does?
Vaporware is something that is promised but never relased. Longhorn has had several beta releases, including a major PDC build.
2) The new graphics stuff isn't in the PDC beta. The new UI was shown only in Bill G's keynote --- it was stripped from the 4051 build given to attendees. The new OSS graphics stuff is actually available for download.
Yes, it is. Avalon, Indigo, XMAL, and more are all in the PDC build. Enabling hardware acceleration in the beta is a simple matter of enabling a registry entry. What is not included in the build is the Aero Glass interface which will be replacing what is in the betas now.
The only reason it would be doing extra work is because programs are wastefully written to use these humongous colorspaces with useles eyecandy of gradiatians and similar crapola.
It's my belief that the vast majority of computer users do not feel this way. You're free to have this opinion, of course, but I think it makes sense in this case to write software with the assumption that most users are going to want to have access to 32-bit color -- if for no other reason than regularly view photos, video, and web sites. Those just don't work well in 16 color mode.
As far as performance goes, I think modern hardware is up to the task. Even mobile phones have 16-bit color (or more) nowadays.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Surely the base reason for this is that the UNIX pholosophy is not to waste valuable computing resource of GUIs and graphical processes when you don't need to.
I don't have details on the Windows stuff discussed here, but at least in the Mac OS X world, moving GUI stuff off of the main CPU and onto the GPU (using Quartz Extreme, starting in Jaguar/10.2) freed up the CPU to do more important things. The whole system was faster as a result.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Apple doesn't include a 3D card in its systems.
It uses 2D to simulate 3D
This is completely false.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Hmm, only took Microsoft 9 years to figure out that cap bits cause more problems then they solve.
--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/
Core Image has nothing to do with a 3D shell.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Yes, there is a wealth of mature critical apps for Linux, but there are a lot of things that just don't exist yet. And if an average open source project releases its first usable release today, it will probably be a year or two before that app is really ready for use by many. The real problem is there still isn't a truly user-friendly desktop that anyone can use. Perhaps a big part of this is no distro has tried hard enough to make this a reality, but I think a bigger issue is that we're just trying to do things right here. While it is a noble goal, it is also a slow and difficult one and that needs to be kept in mind. I have no doubt that there will be a Linux desktop that will be easier and more straightforward than Windows within the next several years, but don't claim it's here yet or just around the corner.
Please understand I am in no way discrediting what has already been done, as it is simply amazing, however it is still falling short in terms of consistency, simplicity, and overall coherence. I look forward to actually wanting to ditch OS X in favor of Linux on my Mac. When I feel that would actually be a smart idea for pretty much any reason, then I know that Linux is 99% ready for everyone.
I am feeling fat and sassy
Moore just takes the techniques from Rush, O'Riely, Hannity, and Coulter and applies them to his politics. Don't like it, well it's the world people bought into. No one likes the Lowest Common Denomonator, but nearly everyone is rushing headlong towards it. Must be a liberal conspiracy!
So when republicans claim that Bill Clinton may have as many as 70 people murdered, where are you denouncing them?
And that's the problem isn't it? There's too much bullshit for any person to denounce it all now. You can only pick what you feel is the most egreegious bullshit to denounce. And guess where that breaks? Along party lines. And that's the true evil "plausible deniability," by picking and choosing, we contribute to the bullshit. We're forced to let some transgressions against the truth slide because there just isn't enough time in the fucking day! When we let some lies lay, but picking and choosing the truths to champion, we're complicit in the bullshit of others. It corrupts us all. Welcome to democracy without a fourth estate. How y'all doin'? This is gonna suck!