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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.'"
...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?
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
like it wasn't bleeding obvious.
(the idea)
Wrong. It's based on Postscript. Replace 'most pics' with 'every widget, animation and icon' and you'll realize that Quartz Extreme is really just a marketing gimmick with a way to sidestep the problems of writing a fast 2D engine (OSX just treats each window as vectors, with all the widgets, icons, backgrounds etc as a texture on top of it, which mean's its fast for dragging windows around, but terribly slow at resizing them (because it has to redraw _everything_ on the screen)). The changes required to make OSX be a fully vectorized OS like Longhorn will be are very significant indeed, mainly because all the eyecandy is due to the amount of bitmaps it uses.
OSX used to be leet, but 'sadly' it's being tailed with Longhorn, very fast indeed. Linux is going to post a threat to it aswell, and GNOME and even KDE are starting to shape up. Slowly, but surely.
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1) No, but I'm clever and witty anyway!
2) And the majority of consumers don't use NT. Consumer technology is exactly what we're talking about here in large part.
3) Right. Got it. I think.
4) Hey, I'm not an elitist Slashdot snob - I'm an elitist Mac user. Suck it.
Become less angry - your days will pass more quickly.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!