The End Of DirectX As We Know It

Wonderful by randomized · 2004-09-06 01:48 · Score: 4, Funny

And after WGF 9.0 they'll finally release OpenGL compatible standard! WOOHOO! :)

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Re:Wonderful by SoSueMe · 2004-09-06 01:56 · Score: 0, Troll

Maybe I am over-exposed to acronyms, but I saw "WGF" and thought: "Who Gives a F***?"
Re:Wonderful by jonsmirl · 2004-09-06 02:30 · Score: 4, Informative

Does anyone have a pointer to more detailed technical specs on this? Like the reference manual for writing a compatible driver?
Re:Wonderful by r3dx0r · 2004-09-06 02:33 · Score: 1, Insightful

nope, more likely they'll adopt opengl, add plenty of windows only features, rename it to microsoftgl and patent it.
Re:Wonderful by Ayaress · 2004-09-06 03:28 · Score: 1

What I'm wondering is, will this even be different? I can think of a few different things, in order of how likely I think they are:

1. Same thing as the old DirectX, but it includes a nifty remote function call that leads to a swarm of new worms.
2. Same thing as the old DirectX, but every game and driver released before will stop working.
3. Same thing as the old DirectX, but even the new games won't work anymore.
4. Same thing as the old DirectX, just with a new name. Everything works the same.
Re:Wonderful by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 04:43 · Score: 0

What do you need more detailed technical specs for? It's just a new marketing name for the same old technology.
Re:Wonderful by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 06:41 · Score: 0

Does anyone have a pointer to more detailed technical specs on this? Like the reference manual for writing a compatible driver?

You're from ATI, aren't you?
Re:Wonderful by timts · 2004-09-07 04:45 · Score: 1

openGL extensions are not compatible with each other, not to mention so many different shader script stuff

well, change of name from directX to WGF is just like changing to windows CE to pocketpc OS then to windows mobile edition 2003, I still see same interface, basically.
Re:Wonderful by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-07 08:39 · Score: 0

Heh, actually, no, they probably won't. :)

hmm...might this be the point of time... by scheuri · 2004-09-06 01:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

...where developers have a glance at the new OpenGL?

such changes are perfect to look around instead of hurrying to the next "standard"-MS-stuff....with some luck game devs might see, that OpenGL is neither dead nor old-fashioned!

well, there is hope...even if it is just a little!

Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 01:56 · Score: 0

I think OpenGL and SDL have a very bright future not only for open platforms. After all blizzard has been a long time known user of opengl. I think there are plenty of titles that use opengl
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Ford+Prefect · 2004-09-06 02:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think there are plenty of titles that use opengl

Doom 3's probably the biggest - and even if you hate the game, its very existence means that graphics card manufacturers can't even think about dropping OpenGL support, at least not without alienating a good number of potential purchasers.

Thanks, John Carmack, for keeping OpenGL alive!

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Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by ackthpt · 2004-09-06 02:04 · Score: 1

...where developers have a glance at the new OpenGL?
One can only hope. It's bad enough shelling $$$ for graphics cards without seeing them incompatible not for bruteforce reasons, but for software.
Probably will happen anyway as developers are among the first to turn against old hardware, wanting more of this more of that to play with.
"Look! 8192 new shades of dark gray for d00m 4!"

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Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by pVoid · 2004-09-06 02:13 · Score: 4, Interesting

Man, today, it doesn't matter what API you use... The days of backward archane APIs are gone. Every API is just as good, and you know why? Because every API has the goal of allowing access to the underlying structure of the GPU.
Besides, developers today aren't 1 man teams pent up in their basements working against Big Brother, they are billion dollar industries (EA, id, whatever...) who have top of the line programmers who could make *any* API work regardless (because they have the budget to do so), who only really care about the performance and capabilities afforded by the API. Microsoft - like any other big company tending a big market - tries to please them, not piss them off!
IMHO, the time of the underdog syndrome is past... Let people use whatever friggin API they want. It's not like the gaming industry is in the middle of a standards battle.
On a different note, the really amazing thing about Avalon, and you gotta commend Moft for this, is that they're actually moving the graphics driver to User-mode. Just imagine what a gi-nourmous task that is... Let's you appreciate how they can have so much programming going on in there.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by tesmako · 2004-09-06 02:14 · Score: 4, Funny

Yes, when libraries change name it is an obvious reason to go to another library. Not to mention logotypes, I can never feel comfortable with foundation technologies changing logos, you never know where you stand then.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Jason_says · 2004-09-06 02:39 · Score: 1

Does that mean that any game made with the Doom 3 engine will be OpenGL?
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Warped-Reality · 2004-09-06 02:49 · Score: 1

Yes, yes it does.

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Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by ergo98 · 2004-09-06 02:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

On a different note, the really amazing thing about Avalon, and you gotta commend Moft for this, is that they're actually moving the graphics driver to User-mode.

Do you have a source for this? My impression of Avalon is that it's a library and version of Explorer.exe that sits on top of DirectX - of course the video card driver would still be ring 0, and the GDI+++ library (the new Avalon graphics library) would be user mode, just as GDI or GDI+ are today. Avalon represents a new interface application and set of tools for third party applications to use, but it isn't a tremendous plumbing change.

Funny thing about Microsoft software - invariably it hits the market as is dramatically less of a schism than people imagined it to be.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by sh0dan · 2004-09-06 02:56 · Score: 3, Informative

Does that mean that any game made with the Doom 3 engine will be OpenGL?
Yes. Most probably they will.

As a historical note, Halflife added D3D support at some stage, even though it was based on Quake1/2, which was also OpenGL (and Glide & Software) based.
That being said, it was probably a lot easier to add at the time than with current engines, which implement a lot more features.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by sh0dan · 2004-09-06 03:08 · Score: 5, Informative

Thanks, John Carmack, for keeping OpenGL alive!

And he almost decided to kill it off. According to Carmack, the "godawful interface" for OpenGL pBuffers/Render to Texture, made him be "the closest ever to switching over to D3D".

If you are interested in listening to an hour of video-graphics supergeeky stuff, download the one hour video of his keynote from Quakecon 2004.
It contains an hour of tech-talk from John C. about the doom3 engine, and what he's working on now.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 04:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

"The days of backward archane APIs are gone."

That's exactly right, because DirectX is the only API people use. Why? Several reasons.
1. It drives all hardware development. There is no hardware built for SDL or OpenGL or what have you. Every feature--bad or good--is built to conform to Microsoft's latest DirectX rather than the other way around. And you thought Microsoft's monopoly was just in software! HA! And wait til you see what Longhorn itself brings to hardware!
Meanwhile, how do you even do Vsync on X11? Can it even be done?
2. Direct3D has pushed the envelope while OpenGL stagnated. Part of me hopes OpenGL 2.0 will turn this around, but you can't ignore reality that the ARB was sitting around on its collective arse for years, growing moldy a la XFree86, with only a hodgepodge of bolted-on extensions backported from DirectX 7, 8, 9. The GL shading language is even the newest shading language on the block---possibly too late for its own good.
3. DirectX, while updated every few years or so, is actually stable and consistent across Windows platforms, and even attempts to be backward compatible. You can play a DirectX 7 game on DirectX 9.0b system and have a pretty good chance it will work 100%. For example, 3Dmark2001SE still runs fine today.
4. DirectX is all-encompassing and isn't a moving target. It's more than Direct3D, but a standard way of getting input, doing sound, etc. That's alot more than the hodgepodge of ever-changing SDL,OSS/Alsa, devfs/udev, new Xorg Xinput extensions, etc. You can't even guarantee consistency across Linux *distributions*, let alone cross-OS, until Linux supports DirectX. Believe it or not, change and choice are *not* always good. You can't build a house if you're always ripping apart the foundation.

"Every API is just as good, and you know why?"

With games costing as much as they do, developers don't want to use every API. They only want to learn 1 and be done with it. That's why there is only 1 PC platform (and XBox) and 1 different console platform allowed to thrive (PS2).
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by AliasTheRoot · 2004-09-06 04:13 · Score: 0

Halflife was completely reengineered. There wasn't a whole lot of Quake, or more to the point OpenGL in it.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2004-09-06 04:38 · Score: 1

Yes, when libraries change name it is an obvious reason to go to another library.

Yeah, I used to browse Slashdot with this thing called Firebird, but then they changed its name, so I thought I'd better switch to this other thing called IE. Thanks for the advice -- it's good to know I made the right call on that one.

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Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by lowe0 · 2004-09-06 04:50 · Score: 1

While I certainly respect the talents of Carmack and the entire id team, there's a whole raft of professional applications that depend on OpenGL - with or without Carmack, GL would continue on.

Now, if you were to say Carmack single-handedly kept OpenGL relevant in the gaming industry, I'd agree.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by ivan256 · 2004-09-06 04:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

Man, today, it doesn't matter what API you use...

Yes it does. Some APIs have implementations on multiple platforms, and some don't.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Corngood · 2004-09-06 05:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

And those platforms are so different that you either have to write a whole bunch of platform specific code, or settle for a least common denominator situation.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by k98sven · 2004-09-06 05:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

The only people who would be affected is OpenGL elitists

No, the only people who would be affected would be everyone who wants to play Doom 3 on their video card. That's a significant number of people.

Remember that Microsoft created PC gaming as we know it.

What the heck are you smoking? Microsoft was a pioneer in writing flight sims. But that's about it. You must be too young to remember what PC gaming was like before Microsoft ruled the universe.

There is nothing wrong with DirectX, except that such a brilliant idea came out of Microsoft.

There are plenty of things wrong with DirectX. One is that it is a proprietary standard created by MS to stop OpenGL. And unexpectedly, DirectX is locked-in to the Windows platform, unlike OpenGL.

It is not a 'brilliant idea' by any stretch of the imagination. It's was a mind-numbingly obvious idea. When DirectX was developed, essentially all PC apps had moved off DOS to Windows, except games. Obviously, Microsoft needed to get game developers to start using Windows. DirectX was an obvious solution. But they could, had they been less 'evil', just as well integrated OpenGL support into Windows instead.

Which I suspect is the real reason that certain people are as pro-OpenGL as they are. It's just more anti-Microsoft sentiment.

No, it's because OpenGL is a non-proprietary, cross-platform standard. DirectX is a proprietary API locked to the Windows platform.

That said, I'll concede that DirectX is better than OpenGL. It must be better than OpenGL to ensure its survival, because no developer wants to lock himself to a single vendor and platform if there is an equally good option.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by paradizelost · 2004-09-06 06:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Every API is just as good, and you know why? Because every API has the goal of allowing access to the underlying structure of the GPU."

That is not what makes the API just as good. if the code were done with opengl, then people on macintosh, linux, etc... could easily port the game, without having to pay fee's to M$ for the use of the new libraries on the respective platforms.

For example. RTCW, Enemy Territory, WWIIOnline, etc... use opengl, so i can play it on all the machines i own, rather than only on 1.

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Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by t0y · 2004-09-06 06:19 · Score: 1

I think he means that the DX (or whatever it's called) driver will be running in user mode just like OpenGL drivers do today. This way, many of the API calls that don't require direct hardware interaction won't be forced to jump from ring 3 to ring 0 everytime they are invoked, thus reducing the call-overhead in DX apps.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by egoots · 2004-09-06 06:28 · Score: 1

Do you have a source for this? ...

I am not sure if these provide the details you want, but there are some WinHEC power point presentations which provide further details. In particular, check out the one entitled "Avalon Graphics - 2D, 3D, Imaging and Composition" and the one entitled Avalon Graphics Stack Overview" for further details.

A couple of salient points from these presentations:
GDI and Avalon dont mix in the same window
Mixing Avalon and DirectX requires a child window
Avalon uses DirectX under the covers but doesnt share its DirectX device
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by DWIM · 2004-09-06 07:28 · Score: 3, Informative

Microsoft was a pioneer in writing flight sims.
After purchasing SubLogic's pioneering efforts.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Jorkapp · 2004-09-06 07:29 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually, Half-Life is still Quake 1 at heart. If you've flipped through the source code in the SDK, you'll see alot of things that still relate it to Quake 1:
/*** * * Copyright (c) 1996-2002, Valve LLC. All rights reserved. * * This product contains software technology licensed from Id * Software, Inc. ("Id Technology"). Id Technology (c) 1996 Id Software, Inc. * All Rights Reserved. * * Use, distribution, and modification of this source code and/or resulting * object code is restricted to non-commercial enhancements to products from * Valve LLC. All other use, distribution, or modification is prohibited * without written permission from Valve LLC. * ****/
Thats the standard comment header in most if not all SDK files.

Though it has been reengineered over the years, its BSP files are still almost Quake 1 compatible, its SPR files can be recompiled in Quake 1 compilers, and many other things.

or more to the point OpenGL in it.
wtf are you on? More than 50% of people use Half-Life's OpenGL renderer over its D3D or Software renderers. Namely due to its better performance on most cards, and that the D3D Renderer is unstable and causes crashes in some instances.

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Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Sheriff+Fatman · 2004-09-06 07:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

"You must be too young to remember what PC gaming was like before Microsoft ruled the universe."

Um, yeah. Different boot disks for every game, being able to rewrite CONFIG.SYS from memory just to get Wing Commander II to load, the joys of HIMEM.SYS and the differences between extended memory, expanded memory and high memory, manually setting the command-line IRQs for assorted soundcards and trying to find a real-mode DOS mouse driver that loaded in less than 5K of RAM.

Windows 95 (and to a lesser extent, DirectX) made it feasible to run games in the same environment as your 'normal' applications. They meant you could buy any Windows-compatible soundcard, video card, mouse or joystick and be fairly certain it would work. They also turned TCP/IP networking into a mass-market commodity. In that respect, I'd say Microsoft made a pretty substantial contribution to PC gaming as we know it. Created? Perhaps not. But I'd say PC gaming as we know it owes at least as much to Microsoft as it does to anyone else.

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Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 07:41 · Score: 0

i think the only thing a developer absolutely wants to have is to get paid. If the choice is to lock him/herself to a single platform and get paid big bucks, and using opengl with so so bucks, which do you think he/she would choose?

Of the major gaming platforms (PC/Xbox/PS2/NGC) which one uses opengl as the dominant graphics api? how many use proprietary api's? If I am not mistaken PS2 and NGC are examples of the latter not the former. PC/XBox are DirectX. So by "locking" oneself to DirectX you can develop for two platforms. Is that such a crime?
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by yeremein · 2004-09-06 07:49 · Score: 4, Insightful

Um, yeah. Different boot disks for every game, being able to rewrite CONFIG.SYS from memory just to get Wing Commander II to load, the joys of HIMEM.SYS and the differences between extended memory, expanded memory and high memory, manually setting the command-line IRQs for assorted soundcards and trying to find a real-mode DOS mouse driver that loaded in less than 5K of RAM.

Lest we forgot, we have Microsoft to thank for all of that too. :)
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by rd_syringe · 2004-09-06 07:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

even though it was based on Quake1/2

Just pointing out, this is a common mistake. Half-Life was based on a heavily modified Quake 1 engine. Not 2.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 07:59 · Score: 0

1. Umh, you're not part of the industry, obviously, Microsoft is important, but it doesn't call all the shots, at all. 2. OpenGL's extension system is the way to go, it's even rumoured that MS will tack it on its own API. But what really gives you away is your comment on the GL shading language... it's so advanced that there isn't a single card that supports it 100% yet! Of course you can just avoid those features (like with Cg). 3. D3D (you do know D3D != DX, right?) is anything but consistent, its backward compatibility is a horrible kludge in which older versions are included with newer versions. Can you say bloat? OpenGL on the other hand *is* backward compatible, any OpenGL 1.0 program will run in a later OpenGL version. In fact learning OpenGL 1.0 before moving to more advanced versions is quite common. In MS Windows OpenGL is stuck at 1.1 thanks to Microsoft, but it doesn't matter thanks to the extension mechanism. 4. It's not a moving target?? You're definitely not a 3D programmer... Why do you even bring Xorg to the comparison? It's not like DX exists on anything but MS Windows. I have never used an XFree86 or Xorg extension. Linux supporting DX? Ok, I thought you were serious, I got caught by a troll.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by rd_syringe · 2004-09-06 08:00 · Score: 1

It was reported on Slashdot. They are moving the graphics in Longhorn to usermode and even enabling sharing of 3D resources, so you could have multiple 3D-accelerated applications accessing the GPU at the same time. The idea is to make it so driver crashes don't affect the usability experience--they mentioned restarting the GPU drivers after a crash without the user even knowing something went wrong.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by pVoid · 2004-09-06 09:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

My source would be what the Microsoft PR guy is stated to say in the article:
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. [...]
To that end, Microsoft is investing considerable development resources into ensuring that crashes will be very rare, and that when they do occur (and they will), the graphics subsystem can do a snap-reset so that the user will hopefully not be aware that the subsystem even had a problem.
It's in the article man. One of the most important points made actually. I don't know how much of a divergance there can be from such a statement. If they say "no more graphics driver related BSODs", the *only* possibility is that the driver now sits on ring 3...
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by pVoid · 2004-09-06 09:47 · Score: 1

. It drives all hardware development. There is no hardware built for SDL or OpenGL or what have you. Every feature--bad or good--is built to conform to Microsoft's latest DirectX rather than the other way around. And you thought Microsoft's monopoly was just in software! HA! And wait til you see what Longhorn itself brings to hardware!
Buddy, that's just a flat out lie. DirectX 9 was a 'save' made by microsoft to actually let programmers be able to use all this radically new techonology that nVidia and ATI both on their own terms created.
Do you not remember the days on slashdot when articles were being posted on how nVidia was claiming they could now render real time cinematics? All those articles were based on a new techonology that nVidia created on its own.
The perfect proof that DirectX is *not* driving hardware development is the radically different structures in ATI and nVidia cards.
I agree with your other points mostly... Except about change. DirectX changing *is* a good thing specifically because it is perfectly backwards compatible. Every new release, there are features programmers have been salivating over in their dreams that becomes accessible to them.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by pVoid · 2004-09-06 09:50 · Score: 1

Wow man, I gotta say, not a single post defending, or being vaguely on the same hemisphere as DirectX got moderated up.
Meanwhile, jackasses that make totally useless points, about how OpenGL should have saved us from Ebola and the Plague get moderated 5+ Insightful.
I agree so 100% with your point that I just have to quote a chapter title from a book which I use as a development bible... it goes:
Portability is for canoes
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by FxChiP · 2004-09-06 10:06 · Score: 1

Or do both, or actually *gasp* use efficient code.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by ergo98 · 2004-09-06 10:09 · Score: 1

It's in the article man. One of the most important points made actually. I don't know how much of a divergance there can be from such a statement. If they say "no more graphics driver related BSODs", the *only* possibility is that the driver now sits on ring 3...

I guess I mistakingly base my knowledge of Longhorn on the accumulation of technical information I've read, rather than a random quote in a sparse posting. For instance http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/graph ics-reqs.mspx#XSLTsection126121120120. Here the reliability improvements are categorized as some basic new functions in the display driver, including the ability to reset the video card (who hasn't had a game crash out leaving the otherwise stable desktop in a visually unusable state), as well as some other basic improvements. If a driver fulfills these requirements, it gets the Microsoft seal of approval. I fail to see where the magical switch to ring-3 is mentioned.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by vranash · 2004-09-06 11:17 · Score: 1

Damn straight, anyone remember Flight Simulator for the Commodore 64? ;-p
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Lisandro · 2004-09-06 11:56 · Score: 1

That said, I'll concede that DirectX is better than OpenGL. It must be better than OpenGL to ensure its survival, because no developer wants to lock himself to a single vendor and platform if there is an equally good option.

I humbly disagree. If you refer to the 3D rendering part of DirectX (D3D), OpenGL is much more polished in my humble opinion - not to mention portable. For everything else DirectX, SDL does a fine job, and stays portable aswell.

As a whole, it's a neat solution, but only if you're running Windows. This is my only grief with DirectX; otherwise it's generally good.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 12:00 · Score: 0

It's no lie, dude. There's a little give and take politics between Microsoft and the big hardware companies, but that's it. Once Microsoft sets the standard that's what has to be supported by the hardware guys. Only occasionally do you see deviance from this--such as Nvidia's 16-bit floating point precision debacle from NV30. Sure, the architecture of your sound chip or GPU may vary, but the features supported are dictated by DirectX. For example, you don't come up with random willy-nilly newfangled texture compression algorithms. You use DXTC. Period. Until Microsoft standardizes willy-nilly algorithm for you.

Now just imagine what the hardware guys will have to go through if they dictate "trusted computing"...
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by the_truk_stop · 2004-09-06 12:44 · Score: 1

It's not like the gaming industry is in the middle of a standards battle.
It should be. DirectX and whatever else comes out of the Microsoft camp only serves to lock people into the Windows operating system. It isn't portable to MacOSX or Linux if Microsoft decides it doesn't want it to be.
Yes, developers can use whatever API they want, but using something permanently restricted to Windows discriminates against users who don't use Windows.
Wake up.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by psetzer · 2004-09-06 12:50 · Score: 1, Interesting

That is more of IBM's fault for choosing the chips that they did than Microsoft's fault for not writing a virtual machine on top of IBM's choice. Because of the choice of processor and associated chips, Microsoft's hands were tied. Yeah, in retrospect, having more than one maskable interrupt level would be nice, but that would have meant more pins into the CPU and a redo of the bus controller. The I/O was for the most part memory mapped, so they had to sacrifice memory to be able to interact with the outside world. When Gates talked about 640k, it was because he had to shove all the other stuff into the upper 384k of his address space.
Yes, we can go through the whole damn mess and find all sorts of ways to save a bit of space. There's easily 128k of crap that in retrospect wasn't needed, but Bill Gates didn't have any Slashdotters around who would kindly look into the future for him, so he made a decision and went with it. You'd still mock him if he said that 768k is enough for anybody. Blame Intel's 20 bits of address space should be enough for anyone attitude instead.
Game programmers really did their best not to play nice with the OS, and since there wasn't any memory protection, DOS couldn't do anything about it. In order to save a couple of instructions, game programmers simply redid OS services and just made sure to not let the OS do anything while they had the memory nice and mangled. Put in multiprogramming, and of course, all of the old games won't work anymore.

--
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Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 13:44 · Score: 0

Wouldnt we want to thank the person they bought DOS from?
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by qbwiz · 2004-09-06 14:52 · Score: 1

Yeah, in retrospect, having more than one maskable interrupt level would be nice, but that would have meant more pins into the CPU and a redo of the bus controller.
The 8086 (and later, probably) had a daisy-chainable interrupt controller, with 8 interrupts per chip, with a possibility of 8 chips - for a possibility of 249 hardware interrupts (each additional chip needs an interrupt line to itself). That wasn't Microsoft's fault either, but it seems that we could have had a much easier time with just one or two more interrupt controllers.

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Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by NuclearDog · 2004-09-06 15:05 · Score: 1

"wtf are you on? More than 50% of people use Half-Life's OpenGL renderer over its D3D or Software renderers. Namely due to its better performance on most cards, and that the D3D Renderer is unstable and causes crashes in some instances."

I have to agree with that. When I run Half-Life in OpenGL, it runs much faster than when it's run in D3D.

ND

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This statement is forty-five characters long.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by prockcore · 2004-09-06 15:06 · Score: 1

1. It drives all hardware development. There is no hardware built for SDL or OpenGL or what have you.

Right... that's why NVidia has said time and time again that they design cards specifically for John Carmack's needs.. and John only uses OpenGL.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Photo_Nut · 2004-09-06 19:40 · Score: 1

>> Man, today, it doesn't matter what API you use...

> Yes it does. Some APIs have implementations on multiple platforms, and some don't.

So what you're saying is that Linux and Windows and Mac OSX can run the same application just because it's compiled and linked against OpenGL? No porting involved?

Lets face it, different versions of Linux with different libraries are different platforms. Different versions of Windows and service packs are different platforms. Heck, even the WORA mantra of Sun's Java is a different platform on Windows than it is on Unix, and that platform changed several times.

So which platform is it that is supposed to be the right one? A graphics library is NOT a platform. The reason that DirectX is popular is because it's decent, and comes with the Windows platform. So companies deploying DirectX games are more likely to have an audience capable of running their game without much trouble of additional setup. The game developers will use whatever they need to build the game. Remember that MS Mantra: "Shipping is a feature." If you make games, and you don't ship them, then you don't make games.

Do you need DirectX on Windows to ship a game? No. You don't. But if your game relies on some technology not available in OpenGL, and the graphics cards in your user's machine don't support OpenGL, theny ou have little recourse. This assumes that your users are running Windows... What percentage of the market is that?
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 20:42 · Score: 0

Pffft. You obviously have no interaction with the average PR guy.\

The PR guy could say that Microsoft has adopted MacOS X source code and is making x86-native-but-PPC-source-compatible Win32 code and, I swear, the PR guy would not only believe it was true, but parrot this information to every news agency he could possibly, ever, contact.

PR guys have as much knowledge of how the software works as the Whitehouse's spokesman has influence over Whitehouse policy. They're just a flunky. Nothing more. Nothing less. And flunkys routinely flub instrinsic details when they attempt to go in over their head (e.g. "Should I have a meatball sandwich today? Or should I eat tuna?")
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by julesh · 2004-09-06 21:47 · Score: 1

If they say "no more graphics driver related BSODs", the *only* possibility is that the driver now sits on ring 3...

No, one possibility is that any exception that occurs while executing graphics driver code is caught and handled cleanly, possibly by reverting to a "known safe" driver (e.g. VGA mode).

Linux framebuffer devices run in ring 0. When was the last time you saw Linux completely suspend operations and require a reboot because of a bug in a display driver?
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by julesh · 2004-09-06 22:03 · Score: 1

It isn't portable to MacOSX or Linux if Microsoft decides it doesn't want it to be.

There's nothing stopping these operating systems from implementing a compatible API.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by pVoid · 2004-09-07 02:53 · Score: 1

Ahh, well. There you have it. Some information I didn't know, and didn't really check on. Thanks.
(sorry if I appeared standoff-ish, I was responding to the hords of knee-jerk anti-microsoft replies).
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by pVoid · 2004-09-07 03:00 · Score: 1

Portability is for canoes: you wake up.
It would cost a gaming company almost *twice* the money to implement a game for two operating systems. They may be able to avoid coding everything twice, but they gotta make sure it works twice (QA), and they gotta make sure it's compatible and the same looking on both.
The graphics library doesn't have as much to do with it as you might think.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by pVoid · 2004-09-07 03:02 · Score: 1

Yup, you're 100% right. =)
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by pVoid · 2004-09-07 03:08 · Score: 1

The Windows kernel structure isn't like that. A bug check, or BSOD isn't because something has erased the entire kernel, it's because something *might* possibly have begun to go amiss... It is that policy that makes that an uncought exception by a any code raises a BSOD. As well as running at an IRQL that is not appropriate. In fact, those two reasons are the most common BSOD reasons.
And yes I'm aware of the way some code behaves in linux, and I personally am happy about the fact that you cannot be allowed to seg fault in kernel code. That's a disaster waiting to happen man.
On a side note: is it still that way in linux now that the kernel is pre-emtible/interruptible (like NT has always been) ?
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by ivan256 · 2004-09-07 03:10 · Score: 1

So what you're saying is that Linux and Windows and Mac OSX can run the same application just because it's compiled and linked against OpenGL? No porting involved?

No, that's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that if you use an API with implementations on multiple platforms your port is considerably more simple than a rewrite. It's a lot easier to rewrite some platform specific elements than to rewrite to a different I/O API when you do a port.

Lets face it, different versions of Linux with different libraries are different platforms.

That's what static linking is for. It's considerably easier to support multiple versions/distributions of linux than it is to support the multitude of windows variants... assuming you know what you're doing.

Heck, even the WORA mantra of Sun's Java is a different platform on Windows than it is on Unix

Tell that to all the developers that have successfully written WORA applications in Java. Especially the games developers. I'm not limiting that comment to applet developers either.

This assumes that your users are running Windows... What percentage of the market is that?

100% if you're using DirectX. Why would you eliminate potential sales from the rest of the market when you could potentially run on other platforms with minimal effort though? Targeting the platform with the most market share may seem like a no-brainer strategy, but it's not that simple. If your port is easy enough it's more than possible that your sales to people on minority platforms will generate profits far in excess of the porting cost.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by a1englishman · 2004-09-07 04:22 · Score: 1

Microsoft was a pioneer in writing flight sims.

What? Microsoft marketed Flight Simulator. It was originally created by a company called SubLOGIC, and later by BAO.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by AliasTheRoot · 2004-09-07 23:47 · Score: 1

If you ever have the time and inclination, truss half life. The OGL calls are basically wrappered DX calls.

Also while you have this time do a diff on HL source vs Quake source. Report back when you find anything other than iD software copyright headers matching.

There are similarities in the file structures and bsp format, primarily because iD BSP allows you to make a game without rewriting editing tools and BSP is a fairly simple format that is well suited for indoor games. The internals of Half Life beyond those simple comparisons are very different to iD's code.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by julesh · 2004-09-08 00:19 · Score: 1

The Windows kernel structure isn't like that. A bug check, or BSOD isn't because something has erased the entire kernel, it's because something *might* possibly have begun to go amiss... It is that policy that makes that an uncought exception by a any code raises a BSOD. As well as running at an IRQL that is not appropriate. In fact, those two reasons are the most common BSOD reasons.

Actually, that's pretty much my point - they can prevent BSODs by changing the way the kernel behaves when it detects the conditions that cause them.

On a side note: is it still that way in linux now that the kernel is pre-emtible/interruptible (like NT has always been) ?

I think so, yes. I've not done much kernel development since the switch, but it didn't look like the changes were too major.
Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... by pVoid · 2004-09-08 11:47 · Score: 1

I understand your point, but I personally believe that would be a step backward... Especially since in a fully interruptible, fully pre-emtible environment, you don't really have a 'context'.
What I mean by that, is that when the ISR for the video driver fires, the processor is just simply put at that position in code, there is no context switching that occurs... and so you might be running in the thread context of user Joe's command line... that means that there would be no way of determining 'where in the kernel' you are, or whose ISR is firing... or even if it *is* an ISR at all, and not a Dispatch routine (DPC).
Now, I personally believe kernel code should not throw an uncought exception: it is an indication that the code behaved in an unexpected way, and thus an indication that the kernel might not be stable anymore. Really though, it doesn't matter what I believe - it seems the honchos at microsoft believe this too. I personally am happy with it: I'd prefer a BSOD and have to reboot than rebooting a month later to find out my MBR and all files I've written for the past month have been irrecoverably corrupted by an unstable kernel.

WTF 1.0 by flux · 2004-09-06 01:51 · Score: 5, Funny

I think the name has a nice ring to it.

Re:WTF 1.0 by Konstantinos · 2004-09-06 01:58 · Score: 1, Funny

it's short of "We Got F*cked"
yeah, definitely a MS name...
Re:WTF 1.0 by Abundantes · 2004-09-06 02:10 · Score: 1

i sense some prior art here....

--
This is good for nothing. Ignore it or send it to the Customer Care Dept.
Re:WTF 1.0 by kenthorvath · 2004-09-06 02:44 · Score: 1

Yeah, but WGF could be "Who Gives a Fuck?"

DirectX by pommiekiwifruit · 2004-09-06 01:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

What is this DirectX? On most games today it says "runs on either Nvidia card xxx or ATI card yyy". Portability doesn't exist. I bought a new PC and new games won't run on it. Heck, old games won't run on it either:

"Requires Nvidia TNT2 or better. Must be running as admin. Don't press alt-tab." (ok the last bit is in the readme not on the box). So my non-nvidia card won't help me even though DirectX 9.0c claims to be running fine.

(old coot) I remember when Windows 95 came out and Microsoft claimed that this would let games run on more than a couple of graphics cards. It seems they've given up on that recently (/old coot).

Re:DirectX by woodhouse · 2004-09-06 01:57 · Score: 0, Flamebait

No offense, but that's just because you're crap.
Re:DirectX by FullMetalAlchemist · 2004-09-06 02:00 · Score: 5, Informative

No, it's the gamedevelopers that does that for you by checking for if your card supports the features it needs to be playable.
It's not MicroSoft's fault, by any extension, it is however silly that you are not allowed to check if it is playable according to _your_ standard; and it's the gamedevelopers you should blame.
I guess it's easy to point at something big, like MS if you want someone to blame, people tend to do that.
Re:DirectX by gowen · 2004-09-06 02:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

What is this DirectX? On most games today it says "runs on either Nvidia card xxx or ATI card yyy". Portability doesn't exist. I bought a new PC and new games won't run on it.
Well, the long and short of it is, if PCs are meant to compete with the PlayStation 2, then they're going to have a narrow band of hardware. The sort of performance needed for a PC game to be equivalent to a PS2/Xbox means having a top end graphics card, and using most of those top end features. Sad, but if you want cutting edge, thats just simply the case. Deal with it.

Me, I just play Nethack and Minesweeper, and use my processor for running calculations in the background.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Re:DirectX by Tim+C · 2004-09-06 02:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

On most games today it says "runs on either Nvidia card xxx or ATI card yyy".

Well, on most of the requirements I've seen recently, it'll list something like "Graphics card: 100% DirectX 8 compatible, 64MB RAM". Just because in today's hardware market that translates to "a recent card from NVidia or ATI" doesn't make that MS's fault.

So my non-nvidia card won't help me even though DirectX 9.0c claims to be running fine

Chances are, DX 9 *is* running fine, but your card lacks support for certain features used by the game. Now, the game devs could fall back to software, or even just disable those features; not doing so is not the fault of DX or MS.

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It's official. Most of you are morons.
Re:DirectX by gl4ss · 2004-09-06 02:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

actually it's the fault of the 3rd party gfx card makers that just adhere to buzzwords, but don't deliver(real performance & etc, even if you had them in mind when coding).

so they put in just enough features that they can dub it as directx9 compatible... and slap it to the retailers with a package that claims it'll run games fast and that it is directx9 compatible - and that it is cheaper than ati/nvidia offering claiming similar things.

remember when virge dx was dubbed as 3d accelerator card?

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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:DirectX by dave420 · 2004-09-06 02:19 · Score: 1

It lets card manufacturers produce cards that will work with developers games, without either party having to talk to each other to ensure compatability.
Without it, your card would have to be specifically coded for, to enable the game to run. As it is, most cards from most manufacturers work with most games, as opposed to a few cards from a few manufacturers work with a few games.
Your card not being able to play those games isn't microsoft's fault. Of course, this is slashdot, where logic never impedes an anti-MS argument.
Re:DirectX by lsmeg · 2004-09-06 02:19 · Score: 1

What is this DirectX? On most games today it says "runs on either Nvidia card xxx or ATI card yyy". Portability doesn't exist. I bought a new PC and new games won't run on it. Heck, old games won't run on it either:

Please... Any modern game will work fine on any modern card using DX or Open GL. Any game that says "works best with nvidia/ati" is either fulfilling a marketing deal or trying to cut support issues (having problems with the game? oh you're running a matrox, sorry we only support ati/nvidia..."
About the only issue that can arise between different brands is with the latest cutting edge features that haven't been incorporated into DX or Open GL yet. But even with those kinds of issues, it's a far cry from not being able to run today's games on other cards.

--
It's OK! I'm a limo driver!
Re:DirectX by 1qa2ws3ed · 2004-09-06 02:41 · Score: 1

if a feature is not available on a certain card, the one that should fall back to software is directx, not the devs.
Re:DirectX by abb3w · 2004-09-06 02:58 · Score: 1

Please... Any modern game will work fine on any modern card using DX or Open GL.
The key being how you define "modern". As a not-at-random example, City of Heroes will not work with a ATI 7500 -- a card less than three years old. I'll grant the 7500s are far from state-of-the-art. But if you're defining "modern" as "less than 18 months on the market", I believe you've been hanging out with Humpty Dumpty too long.

--
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Re:DirectX by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 03:09 · Score: 1, Insightful

Really. If it takes a $2000+ PC to "compete" with a $200 PS2, why the fuck even bother.
Re:DirectX by Tim+C · 2004-09-06 03:13 · Score: 1

I've not done a lot of DX programming, but iirc you can query to see what features are supported by the current hardware. I don't know, but I'd imagine that in this case the game is querying the available featureset, finding it lacking, and refusing to start.

I've seen that with the Deus Ex 2 demo, which refused to run on my gf's PC due to lack of hardware support for T&L. That was the demo saying "no, sorry, won't play", not DX.

--
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Re:DirectX by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 03:13 · Score: 0

Good question. And mind your language, kid.
Re:DirectX by lsmeg · 2004-09-06 03:25 · Score: 1

The key being how you define "modern". As a not-at-random example, City of Heroes will not work with a ATI 7500 -- a card less than three years old. I'll grant the 7500s are far from state-of-the-art. But if you're defining "modern" as "less than 18 months on the market", I believe you've been hanging out with Humpty Dumpty too long.

You can't expect PC hardware to be able to run current games forever, especially when that hardware started as a value/midrange card.
But this is really more an issue of a new game not supporting older cards as well as it should, rather than a game being written for nvidia or ati and excluding other cards...

--
It's OK! I'm a limo driver!
Re:DirectX by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 03:29 · Score: 0

Playstation graphics are ass. Look at how crappy the PC versions of GTA or VC looks when compared to any real PC game. (And the PC ports supposedly have better graphics than the playstation original.)
Re:DirectX by Dopescuzz · 2004-09-06 03:47 · Score: 1

CoH is, however, built around NVidia to the detriment of those of us that have ATI cards. I've seen more people (myself included) with new ATI cards bought for this game, that can't get this card to work with downloading several different beta drivers and trying each of them. This game is good enough to warrant spending the time to do it. But its a damn bit frustrating when I went out and bought a video card specifically for this game (an ATI) that was recommended on the box, only to have to run around to find beta drivers, and come to find out that what they REALLY meant when they said "NVidia and ATI" was just "NVidia (and ATI if you have patience, time, and luck.)" As a Joe Sixpack, I can tell you that this SUCKED, and that this game is written to exclude cards other than NVidia.
Re:DirectX by abb3w · 2004-09-06 03:55 · Score: 1

But this is really more an issue of a new game not supporting older cards as well as it should
Actually, I'm not even bothered by it being unsupported. I'm merely objecting to the imprecise definintion of a "modern" video card when claiming "any modern card will run any modern game". For the emphasis you wish, a better phrasing might be "any modern game is playable with cards using chipsets from any current video chipset manufacturer."

--
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Re:DirectX by ExoticMandibles · 2004-09-06 04:20 · Score: 1

Honest, DirectX does allow you to write portable code. I've been working on a game for two years, and my game is totally platform-agnostic. Don't blame DirectX, blame the game programmers, and/or the box designers.
But DirectX also allows you to write part-specific code, if you so choose. DirectX provides a rich set of diagnostics that let you peer into exactly what capabilities the card provides. If you really cared about compatibility, your renderer would examine this information then include/exclude rendering features to get the prettiest graphics by using the best features of the card. However, if you were under time pressure, and/or just lazy, you could ignore this information, and just code one rendering path that worked well on the card(s) you had handy. Or code two paths, and only enable the good one on parts that meet your requirements (which happen to conform to one manufacturer's parts but perhaps not the other's).
Anyway, I suggest to you that a) when "most games" specify specific parts on the box, they'll run fine on the next generation of cards from any manufacturer, and b) the reason that "most games" specify parts is because consumers don't know the innermost secrets of their cards' abilities. Consumers are more likely to understand "GeForce 1 or better" than "must support hardware T&L".
As for Windows 95 letting games run on "more than a couple of graphics cards"... they did claim that, and hey! that's 'cause it was true. Writing your game for Windows 95 was way better than writing it for DOS. You didn't have to understand each graphics card and sound card for yourself, Windows 95 would abstract it away for you. But it still gave you a low-level and pretty fast way of blitting onto the screen (see the WinG library). Remember telling Doom what sound card you had? Sure, we all do. Remember telling Doom 95 what sound card you had? Oh, that's right, nobody had to.
Re:DirectX by Corngood · 2004-09-06 05:32 · Score: 1

Not practical anymore, for drawing pixels at least. Chances are if even one feature has to be emulated at the pixel level, the game will be unplayable.

DirectX will fall back to software for vertex programmes, and it provides a nice 'effect' system which you can use to provide fallbacks for all your rendering techniques.
Re:DirectX by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 05:37 · Score: 0

Not real sure how relevant this is, but didn't Microsoft decide to rip Avalon out of Longhorn.
Why support a spec that won't be used for many years to come.
Re:DirectX by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 05:38 · Score: 0

"Requires Nvidia TNT2 or better. Must be running as admin. Don't press alt-tab." (ok the last bit is in the readme not on the box). So my non-nvidia card won't help me...

This is a troll. Pommiekiwifruit, please identify one single mainstream game which runs on an NVidia TNT2, but refuses to run on a recent ATI cart. Just one would do...
Re:DirectX by pommiekiwifruit · 2004-09-06 05:56 · Score: 1

But my graphics chipset is an S3 :-)
The TNT2 desiring game (neverwinter nights) did have some ATI card listed on the box but not S3 or other manufacturers. The alt-tab restriction was from another game that I got a demo of this week (which also requires to be run as admin, since it stores its save files in the Program Files directory tree).
Re:DirectX by DarkMantle · 2004-09-06 06:12 · Score: 1

That is irrelivant. Both cards support DirectX x.y which is what the game developers used. If you use OpenGL it still works with both, but better on nVidia.

The issue I have is if you use OpenGL it's easier to port your program to Linux/Mac/BSD/other OS because it's not a Programming base that's limited to M$ Windows

Also while it is well done DirectX is a layer between the game and the GPU which is similar (although faster) to a JRE or JavaVM, where OpenGL does not have an extra Layer... a properly coded OGL game is faster and smoother then any DirectX game.

--
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
Re:DirectX by cgenman · 2004-09-06 06:46 · Score: 1

Direct X is an underlying graphics standard that is owned and controlled by Microsoft. Games are displayed using one of two technologies (generally), Direct X and Open GL. This lets the programmers do things like tell the game to display a polygon with XYZ corners and N bitmap stretched to M size with a global light of F, without actually having to program that stuff themselves.

As for 3rd party graphics cards... Games are developed on Nvidia and ATI cards. I've worked on a few games, both PC and console, and we've never tested on anything other than ATI or Nvidia. I've seen publishers that test on-board graphics cards, but unless the required tweak is minor most on-board graphics cards are (rightfully) assumed to be junk. Most on-board graphics cards claim DirectX 9.x or Open GL 1.x compatibility, but most are several orders of magnitude slower than real cards.

This isn't a slander against non ATI, non Nvidia cards. Check out Tom's Hardware guide to XGI graphics cards. They're as fast as the other companies, but their output is terrible. I think we'd all be happy if another company came up to unseat ATI and Nvidia, the way that Nvidia unseated Voodoo. But that really hasn't happened yet... and with the specialized knowledge required for good image processing, that won't happen easily.

Unless your new PC was specifically a "gaming PC," it probably didn't come with a real graphics card. If you plan on playing any games, new or old, I'd plunk down the 80 bucks for an ATI 9600. It's well worth the investment.

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The ______ Agenda
Re:DirectX by pommiekiwifruit · 2004-09-06 07:07 · Score: 1

S3/VIA used to be a well-known manufacturer :-/
Well, I was hoping that DirectX 9.0 cards with fancy features (unlimited length pixel shaders) would come down in price and have a reasonable life-span. Not as long as a console perhaps but more than a year anyway! It didn't come with a decent graphics or sound card but I will move my old sound card into it and look at buying a new gfx card if any games merit the expense.
I've not done engine code recently on PC but some of those GeForce 6 features look tempting, if expensive.
Re:DirectX by cgenman · 2004-09-06 07:17 · Score: 1

Alt-tab is a pretty common restriction. Dealing with the logic of threaded game elements is hard enough without the player arbitrarily stopping it at any second. Remember when the windows key was actually the crash-me key?

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The ______ Agenda
Re:DirectX by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 15:41 · Score: 0

Flamebait? Come on now. We all know it's true.

If Microsoft were to come out tomorrow and publish the whole Win32 API and all the required details for alternate OSs to implement it and successfully run windows programs, we all know that all of Slashdot would be up in arms claiming something evil, such as Microsoft releasing purposely false data, or Microsoft doing this to gain X, etc. etc. Even if it was true they were releasing the API so that when they implemented the *nix API it wouldn't be as monopolistic, Slashdot would STILL cry foul.

Of course, that is a purely hypothetical situation so I have no solid facts, only the past behaviour of the majority or Slashdotters to tell me that.

I say it again: Flamebait? Wake up and smell the fucking maple nut crunch already.

Cheers,
Anonymous Coward

(Posted Anonymously so I don't worsen my already terrible karma.)
Re:DirectX by NuclearDog · 2004-09-06 15:48 · Score: 1

"Please... Any modern game will work fine on any modern card using DX or Open GL. Any game that says "works best with nvidia/ati" is either fulfilling a marketing deal or trying to cut support issues (having problems with the game? oh you're running a matrox, sorry we only support ati/nvidia...""

Splinter Cell (Original) for PC.

I had a 64 MB video card that was apparently completely DirectX compliant, and it would crash before even playing the cinematics.

I was very lucky and my dad bought me a 128MB ATI Radeon, put that in and started the game up and it worked like a charm.

ND

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This statement is forty-five characters long.
Re:DirectX by pommiekiwifruit · 2004-09-07 12:16 · Score: 1

(Having just attempted to play another "PC" game demo - thief3):
The standard method used by PC games if they detect a non-nvidia non-ati card is to crash the application. Mind you, according to the readmes, they probably do that anyway if you dare to press ALT-TAB while a game is running (you have to be admin, naturally).
Perhaps when microsoft got up to DirectX 8 or so they thought "nah, this multitasking thing will never catch on, lets go back to single-tasking".
Re:DirectX by Tim+C · 2004-09-07 20:08 · Score: 1

Thief 3 (or any other game) only supporting (newer) NVidia and ATI cards is absolutely nothing to do with MS or DX. Bitch at the other card manufacturers for not keeping up with supporting the latest DX features (and DX9 has been out a long time now), and at the games devs for not handling the lack of support gracefully.

Perhaps when microsoft got up to DirectX 8 or so they thought "nah, this multitasking thing will never catch on, lets go back to single-tasking".

From the Direct X Developer FAQ:
How do I disable ALT+TAB and other task switching?

You don't!
If the game crashes or fails to minimise succssfully when you switch back to the desktop, blame the developers. UT2k4 for example, minimises perfectly. Same with requiring admin rights - blame the developers, or quite often, the publishers for forcing some crappy, broken copy prevention tech on them that requires admin access to work.

--
It's official. Most of you are morons.

I don't care... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 01:53 · Score: 1

...if just I can play HL2.

Re:I don't care... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 01:58 · Score: 0

Buddy, I've been playing HL2 for over a month now. It's great! Oh, my bad. I meant Doom 3.

A little early to celebrating? by Dogers · 2004-09-06 01:54 · Score: 1, Interesting

Seeing as Avalon probably isnt going to make it to LongHorn, which is due out, oooh, some time 2007!?

--
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.

Re:A little early to celebrating? by dave420 · 2004-09-06 02:21 · Score: 2, Informative

Avalon is going to be released to XP before Longhorn is released, so in fact it'll pre-date Longhorn.
Re:A little early to celebrating? by myster0n · 2004-09-06 02:57 · Score: 2, Informative

Then why is avalon being dropped from longhorn?

--
Nobody believes the official spokesman, but everybody trusts an unidentified source. -- Ron Nesen
Re:A little early to celebrating? by Corngood · 2004-09-06 05:39 · Score: 1

Microsoft also announced that the Windows WinFX developer technologies, including the new presentation subsystem code-named "Avalon" and the new communication subsystem code-named Indigo, will be made available for Microsoft® Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 in 2006.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/Aug0 4/08-27Target2006PR.asp
Re:A little early to celebrating? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 05:45 · Score: 0

Then why is avalon being dropped from longhorn?

It isn't. According to everyone except the Register. Please come back when you have a trustworthy source to quote.
Re:A little early to celebrating? by hedge_death_shootout · 2004-09-06 06:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

Seeing as Avalon probably isnt going to make it to LongHorn, which is due out, oooh, some time 2007!?

I see this is modded 'interesting'.
Interesting, I have to presume, in the way that the statement "spider monkeys built the Great Wall of China" might be regarded as interesting.
Re:A little early to celebrating? by hedge_death_shootout · 2004-09-06 19:57 · Score: 1

Okay, who modded that interesting? Whoever it was, I chuckled.

WGF? by ticklemeozmo · 2004-09-06 01:54 · Score: 4, Funny

Microsoft has had some great innovative technologies, however their naming department isn't working all that hard.

Microsoft Windows
Windows Graphics Foundation
(B)it(M)a(P)
Microsoft Proxy Server
Exchange Server
Windows Update Server
Microsoft Word
and many more...

--
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.

Re:WGF? by dasmegabyte · 2004-09-06 02:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

As opposed to the OSS world, where naming is working overtime.

Tell me -- just from the names -- what the following programs do:

Apache
Firefox
Thunderbird
Mono
BitTorrent
Grep
Putty
(and the fucking stupidest ever) Script-Fu, part of The Gimp

The idea, I guess, is to glamorize the program name like a brand name, and I suppose it works for some things (Apache, for example). Most of the time, however, it only serves to confuse people who have never heard of a program before. Microsoft errs on the side of shit you can understand, because when they use funky names (like BackOffice), they spend a lot of time explaining what the damn program does.

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Hey freaks: now you're ju
Re:WGF? by WWWWolf · 2004-09-06 02:53 · Score: 5, Funny

Apache

A big honkin' helicopter.

Firefox

Propels Fox upward (or whevever you tilt the stick) while frying everyone nearby on the ground.

Mono

It only plays from the other speaker, or if you're lucky, same stuff from two speakers. So, it's probably ancient.

BitTorrent

Hey, I know this one! It moves tons and tons of bits from one place to another! Am I right?! What did I win? Tell me!

Putty

Turns perfectly working Linux server into a blob of clay, probably. Remotely. From a Windows desktop.

(and the fucking stupidest ever) Script-Fu

"-Fu" probably refers to martial arts, so... um... "Script-Fu's Name that could be understood is not the true Script-Fu's Name." Or something.
Re: WGF? by Some+Dumbass... · 2004-09-06 03:14 · Score: 1

As opposed to the OSS world, where naming is working overtime.

Tell me -- just from the names -- what the following programs do:

Since when were program names supposed to be nothing more than bland descriptions (cue "in Soviet Russia" joke...)? They're for branding for chrissake! It would be incredibly irritating if every program were named that way ("Do you have 'internet browser'"? "No, I have 'internet navigator'. Or maybe that was 'internet explorer'?")

Okay, so I'm exagerrating for laughs :). However, MS has run into some problems with trying to trademark its more generic product names (e.g. "Windows"), so there is some truth underlying the grandparent post's joke. It is just a joke, though. There are plenty of counterexamples. For instance, "Excel" is not the first word which comes to mind when I think of spreadsheets. Is it a pun on "x-cell"? Who knows?
Re:WGF? by GuyFawkes · 2004-09-06 04:18 · Score: 1

apache, dunno, a patchy something or other...

firefox, the clint eastwood browser.. "I know what you're thinking punk, did I install 5 IE updates or all six?"

thunderbird, international rescue data recovery

mono, a budget sb16 sound card, new for linux

bittorrent, modem accelerator

grep, the prequel to shrek

putty, (easy one) what you use to stop (memory) leaks in windows.

script-fu, I am still meditating and seeking enlightenment on that one.

no you want silly, try these

microsoft autoroute, nope, won't even route simple single layer pcb with a dozen components

adobe acrobat, doesn't even do the parallel bars

nero burning rom(e), doesn't combust anything

teleport pro, doesn't move my coffee cup an inch

etc

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http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Re:WGF? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 04:41 · Score: 0

BitTorrent

That one's actually pretty descriptive.

Grep

global regular expression print. If you're capable of using it, you know what it means.

Putty

Capitalized correctly, PuTTY, this isn't that bad either assuming you know what a TTY is.
Re:WGF? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 04:59 · Score: 0

BitTorrent is easy, as is PuTTY (when capitalized properly). Regarding the rest, point taken.
Re:WGF? by solios · 2004-09-06 05:32 · Score: 1

Out of everything on the list, BackOffice and BitTorrent are the only two with syntax-deferrable functionality.

Though as a graphic artist, I do have to say that The Gimp is very aptly named. ;-D

As for the rest, I'm biased because I already know what all the soft does....
Re:WGF? by AndroidCat · 2004-09-06 07:11 · Score: 1

I kind of liked WinG before it turned into DirectX. I always pronounced it whinge. WinCE was pretty good in that respect too.

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One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:WGF? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 11:01 · Score: 0

Firefox

Renames itself.

I'm sorry. by porkchop_d_clown · 2004-09-06 01:55 · Score: 5, Funny

Did you really say I should look for WTF compatibility?

Hrm. I can hear the slogan now....

If it doesn't make you say "WTF" it isn't from Microsoft!

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Clear, Dark Skies

I don't think so by Quasar1999 · 2004-09-06 01:56 · Score: 5, Informative

This is a boat load of hogwash. DirectX is here to stay. DirectX is the damned core, Avalon, or whatever the heck they end up calling it is simply a layer on top of DX. But don't take my word for it, google it. There is enough info out there, that anyone that knows how to program for DirectX will immediately realise that it is being modified with the new UI in mind. It's being done to help it hook into DirectX, and if you examine the DX API closely (especially the latest SDK release), you'll notice a trend to add APIs that allow features that are required for a fully integrated UI. And at the end of the day, game developers will still be using the DX api.

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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.

Re:I don't think so by Have+Blue · 2004-09-06 02:06 · Score: 1

The functions in the API may remain the same, but the classification and implementation may change. This is just like Apple changing the Mac Toolbox to Carbon.
Re:I don't think so by TheRaven64 · 2004-09-06 03:35 · Score: 3, Informative

Not so. I attended a talk on WGF at Eurographics '04 last week. The disparity between GDI and DirectX is being removed (as DirectDraw and Direct3D were rolled into one around DX8). Avalon will be built on top of WGF, and any Avalon application will be able to exploit 3D capabilities directly without having to use two APIs (if you've ever written a an app that uses GDI and DirectX you'll know that there are a few cases where the two don't exactly play nicely with each other).

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I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:I don't think so by Quasar1999 · 2004-09-06 04:56 · Score: 3, Interesting

Perhaps you misunderstood what was explained at the conference, or they did a poor job of explaining it. Either way, GDI and DX should never, ever be used to access the same screen realestate. The same app can use them at the same time, but never in the same screen area. Now with that said, the avalon interface will support the basic 2D/3D stuff as a superset of what GDI does currently for 90% of the apps out there. If you want to get fancy and use vertex/pixel shaders (or common shaders as they will be called), then you will need to fall back to the DX api... completely... you won't call Avalon for some rendering and DX for the rest, it's either all avalon or all DX, if you try and mix the two, you will have serious issues, probably similiar to the ones you run into with GDI and DX currently.

There are early versions of the API's floating around if you know where to look... trust me when I say this isn't the revolutionary be all and end all of windows graphics API's... It's just a minor evolution of DX, and a wrapper ontop of DX (think d3dx functions currently) that simply makes UI tasks easier. Perhaps that Eurographics '04 talk you attended was a lot of hype with little substance? Did they back up any of their claims?

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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Re:I don't think so by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 07:21 · Score: 0

This is nothing to sweat or yell about. MS does this every few years. They rebrand everything.

Anyone remember OLE? I mean COM, oh I mean DCOM, oh I mean COM+, oh I mean ActiveX... All basicaly the same thing just variants (hehe) of OLE.

I am all for them dragging the DX stuff over to the GDI side. Maybe it will be a tad slower. But we could get some interesting effects in GUI's. Maybe even a few new usable controls! For some reason the COM way that they implemented directx rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed like an extra layer to get things done. Which I know game programmers tend not to like. But they seem to be living with it I guess...

Nice... by pVoid · 2004-09-06 01:58 · Score: 0, Redundant

moving [the graphics driver] into what's known as user mode...(page 2)

They seem to be moving the graphics drivers into user-mode.

I really want to see how this is going to turn out, what with Graphics being an uber high bandwidth thing and all...

Re:Nice... by Tranzig · 2004-09-06 02:07 · Score: 4, Informative

Actually the whole graphic subsystem was in userland in Windows NT 3. It was bulletproof but slow and it did not allow the low level hw access needed for DirectX, so they moved it into kernel with NT 4.0. And I'm quite sure it will stay there.
Re:Nice... by pVoid · 2004-09-06 02:24 · Score: 1

I know about how it used to be, but if you read the actual article, it says they are moving it to "user-land"... hence my saying "I really want to see how this is going to turn out, what with Graphics being an uber high bandwidth thing and all..."
How much more explicit can it be man? Give me a break and RTFA.
On a side note, I am sure in the 15 years since NT 3.5 came out, there has been some developments in the kernel, and programming know how to allow for better performance than what we had back then.
Re:Nice... by Lank · 2004-09-06 04:46 · Score: 1

Well, if memory serves, it actually wasn't moved up to the highest priority level. NT was one of the only operating systems to use the four ring priority architecture that Intel provided. Most (all?) unices only use 0 (kernel) and 3 (user-space). NT used 0 for all kernel stuff, 1 for the graphics driver, 2 for all other drivers, and 3 for user-space programs.

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Gotta get me one of these!
Re:Nice... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 05:32 · Score: 0

No, NT uses only ring 0 and ring 3.

I have my old copy of 'Inside Windows NT (2nd Edition)' around here somewhere....

Is it just me.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 01:58 · Score: 0

Or is DirectX/WGF just about Microsoft's most valuable intellectual property? I myself would have bought a Mac years ago if it weren't for the fact that I wouldn't be able play many games on it.

By extending their 3D domination to the desktop itself with Avalon, MS is poising itself to get the same API-level lock on desktop applications that it has on games.

Re:Is it just me.... by AndroidCat · 2004-09-06 07:14 · Score: 1

Sure, all the Fortune 500 would have scrapped their Windows machines years ago if they hadn't needed them for games.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:Is it just me.... by mgcarley · 2004-09-18 14:39 · Score: 1

I bet the appropriate PHBs in most Fortune 500s don't realize that most distros of Linux - no matter which Desktop you choose to use (KDE/Gnome, mostly) - come with more games. Like Tux Racer - which is way more fun than solitaire. Though, last I looked, it came with solitaire and a bunch of other games, too.

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So many changes... by JoeShmoe950 · 2004-09-06 01:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

I hope that by the 2006 Longhorn release, either most game companies also release their games for Linux, cause Wine is in for a really hard time.

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Re:So many changes... by gl4ss · 2004-09-06 02:20 · Score: 1

but then again, wasn't avalon already slashed from longhorn, or are they still saying it'll be in it at release time?

it's still too early to speculate what will really make it or not..

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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Re:So many changes... by dave420 · 2004-09-06 02:37 · Score: 1

They said Avalon would be released for XP, before longhorn's release...
Re:So many changes... by _Spirit · 2004-09-06 02:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

When I read the explanation one of Microsofts developers gave of what Avalon is, I got the feeling that is an additional layer on top of DirectX, not a replacement. Their relationship sounded a bit similar to the way Quartz and OpenGL work on Mac OS X: Quartz (the engine that renders the desktop and UI elements) runs on top of OpenGL.

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beauty is only a light switch away
Re:So many changes... by dave420 · 2004-09-06 03:17 · Score: 2, Informative

Avalon is the name given to the window manager, effectively. DirectX (or whatever it'll be called then) will provide the interface for the hardware and drivers to achieve it. So yes, Avalon==Quartz (but not as advanced as Avalon), and OpenGL==DirectX :)

of course by wobedraggled · 2004-09-06 02:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

M$ knows full well that Wine now has a pretty good hold on DirectX, so of course they are gonna change things around... "rolls eyes"

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Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.

Re:of course by dasmegabyte · 2004-09-06 02:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yes, I'm sure the API changes have nothing at all to do with restructuring a terse and complex API or adding changes from user and deveoper requests to improve on the GUI. I'm sure it has everything to do with breaking WINE.

--
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Re:of course by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 03:15 · Score: 0

I bet it's a bit of both.

It's painfully obvious how seriously Microsoft takes the threat from Linux, and pushing WINE back a bit certainly fits into their business plan.

Pretending that Microsoft ignores things like WINE is somewhat disingenuous.
Re:of course by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 05:23 · Score: 1, Insightful

Remember the old saying: DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run?

Well, MS now has a new one: DirectX ain't done until Wine won't run.

Cos let's face it, it's not as if Microsoft is above this sort of locking out behaviour, is it?

curious by ivano · 2004-09-06 02:04 · Score: 1

for Apple people is DirectX = OpenGL and WGF/Avalon the same as CoreImage/CoreVideo

I found this one of the most interesting things for Tiger but no-one really commented if it was anything really new

ciao

Re:curious by Bohemoth2 · 2004-09-06 02:14 · Score: 1

Nobody's gonna buy this Longhorn/alvalon any way. i know i won't.
Re:curious by IamTheRealMike · 2004-09-06 03:14 · Score: 1

No, not exactly. DirectX is huge and encompasses sound, input (mouse/keyboard/joystick/gamepads), music, media pipelines (think gstreamer), network gaming etc etc. People tend to think "DirectX == 3D graphics" but they're wrong.
Re:curious by TheRaven64 · 2004-09-06 04:00 · Score: 3, Informative
Not really. DirectX includes functional equivalents of:
- OpenGL (Direct3D)
- OpenAL / CoreAudio (DirectSound)
- Quicktime (DirectShow)
- OpenPlay (DirectPlay)
- HID Manager (DirectInput)
I may have missed a few things. WGF is roughly equivalent to OpenGL / Quartz Extreme and everything else that DirectX does at the moment, while Avalon is equivalent to Aqua / WindowServer. Of course, the differences in architectural designs mean that these equivalencies are only very approximate.
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Re:curious by msh104 · 2004-09-06 08:15 · Score: 1

don't worry, it will be shipped on every pc there is for sale... after that it all the companies will upgrate because they have service contracts and stuff or need feature xyz. longhorn will come, and people will use it. if it would only be for the eye candy. (the main reason 99% of the people i know like xp so much.)

Re:Makes perfect sense. by Seoulstriker · 2004-09-06 02:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

What are you talking about? OS X has native support for OpenGL capability. It just so happens that some desktop graphics functions such as windows are offloaded to the GPU. OpenGL is the equivalent of DirectX. In fact, now that the ARB finally made a decision on shading languages, OpenGL's OGSL is superior to what Microsoft has to offer.

It's just that Microsoft is finally catching up with Apple in [b]using[/b] GPU functions to control more than just games.

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Re:Makes perfect sense. by intx13 · 2004-09-06 02:05 · Score: 2, Informative

Oh yes, because opengl in OSX doesn't use up all a low end mac's memory or anything. If Longhorn is going to go for the whole "devote the systems memory to good looks" style, no wonder it requires 1GB ram!

As a poor college student, ram is hard to come by. I don't want my desktop using it all to generate spiffy little icon effects. And seeing as Microsoft isn't going to ship multiple desktops, I hope Longhorn keeps the graphics simple for us poor kids.

Misleading title: DirectX is more than Direct3D by jrest · 2004-09-06 02:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

What about the parts of DirectX that are not about 3D? The article is only about the Direct3D part of DirectX.
I'm using DirectShow a lot myself actually. Are changes expected there too?

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(Score:5, Not Funny)

Re:Misleading title: DirectX is more than Direct3D by Naysayer · 2004-09-06 05:37 · Score: 1

DirectShow has been deprecated because damn, it is a crappy API. It'll probably be around for a little but but undeveloped and unsupported (see what happened to Direct3D Retained Mode).

Other more reasonable parts of DirectX (DirectInput, DirectSound, etc) will still be there...
Re:Misleading title: DirectX is more than Direct3D by ConceptJunkie · 2004-09-06 10:47 · Score: 1

Crappy API? Just because it takes a thousand lines of code just to put a video up on the screen? Just because the a lot of the documentation consists of:

IInterface::VerbObject

This method verbs the object.

Just because most of the methods can fail without returning an error code?

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You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

mixed feelings by andr0meda · 2004-09-06 02:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

It's not a good idea to replace an API when that API is one of the major libraries people use to display fast graphics.

It is however a good idea to force people to use a new standard when the old one has limitations that start to pop up. Sometimes it's necessary to cut the cables and start over.

Personally I think Dx9 is still all valid and good, it has no issues concerning shader support or other. I would not have replaced this API at this point, because I would consider the WGF as a surplus, something extra alongside DX. I guess doubling up the internal library is too cumbersome for the ones writing the video card drivers, which is why they replaced everything at once.

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With great power comes great electricity bills.

Re:mixed feelings by canadian_right · 2004-09-06 05:12 · Score: 1

You are all aware that you DX is backwards compatible. I wrote a wrapper for DirectDraw, and DirectSound that uses Dx8 features. It works fine under Dx9 because DX8 (and Dx7, 6,5, ...) are all included. You have to add a few extra defines when compiling because the default DX headers assume you are using the latest version.
Old games using old version of DX should work just fine if they are not doing anything wierd. I have run ino a few old DX games that have glitches, but most run just fine.

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Anarchists never rule
Re:mixed feelings by Corngood · 2004-09-06 05:50 · Score: 1

And this is compile-time compatibility. It's even more backwards compatible at run-time.

MS memo by corpsiclex · 2004-09-06 02:18 · Score: 5, Funny

I propose the following changes, which will result in clarity and increased initial understanding of the product:

Microsoft Windowbird
Bitthunder Mapping Format
Proxyfox
Microsoft WordBird

For every day use, the following abbreviations should be adopted to referring to the product as simple as possible:
MWB
BMF
PFX
MWD
Any more suggestions?

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eBayDig 1s a typo saerch engien

Re:MS memo by tindur · 2004-09-06 03:27 · Score: 1

MWB = Minor W Bush
MWD = Mass Weapons of Destruction?
Re:MS memo by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 10:54 · Score: 0

BMF=Bad MotherFucker?

Part of the "tools for Jules"

WGF? by c0p0n · 2004-09-06 02:19 · Score: 2, Funny

WTF!!!

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Your head a splode

Re:hmm...might this be the point of time... MOD UP by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 02:21 · Score: 0

Thank you, you made my day =)

Retro NT 3.51 by anti-NAT · 2004-09-06 02:21 · Score: 1

From memory, apparently they moved them into Kernel mode in NT 4.

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The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf

In other news.. The end of Windows as we know it. by plams · 2004-09-06 02:23 · Score: 2, Funny

After Windows Longhorn, Windows is no more. In name only. The next OS from Microsoft will be integrated into the core of WMG 9.0.

Seeing that graphics cards exceeds standard desktop computers in both processing power and memory capabilities, it was the logical choice to have the graphics do the OS, and not the other way around., says Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.

Look out for WMG 9.0 compatibility on the back of that next generation graphics card's box.

Reader in put required ... by Savage-Rabbit · 2004-09-06 02:27 · Score: 3, Funny

WGF=Windows Gone Funky
WGF=Windows Graphical Frustrater
WGF=Windows Gore Functionality
WGF=Windows Glitch Factory
WGF=Windows!!! Go Figure?!?!

Excersize your imagination:
WGF=______________________

Sigh! If only they had called it WTF!

--
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow

Re:Reader in put required ... by Sponge+Bath · 2004-09-06 02:57 · Score: 2, Funny

Excersize your imagination: WGF=______________________
Wife or Girl Friend?

I guess that's more hopeful thinking than imagination.
Re:Reader in put required ... by simonecaldana · 2004-09-06 03:37 · Score: 5, Funny

Won't Go Fast
Re:Reader in put required ... by kryptkpr · 2004-09-06 06:09 · Score: 1

Wide Girl Friend

You know, the kind that eats lots of.. cpu cycles :)

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DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!

Ending at Direct X 9.0??? by BTWR · 2004-09-06 02:32 · Score: 4, Funny

Ending at Direct X 9.0??? They could have at least waited for the 10th version: the awesome name "Direct X, X"

Re:Ending at Direct X 9.0??? by plams · 2004-09-06 02:38 · Score: 4, Funny

or direct x_x
Re:Ending at Direct X 9.0??? by Jugalator · 2004-09-06 02:47 · Score: 0, Redundant

They could have at least waited for the 10th version: the awesome name "Direct X, X"

Version 10 would of course be powerful enough to be labelled as "Extreme".

That would make DirectX 10 eXtreme = Direct XXX.

Surely enough to grab any gamer's attention.

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Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Re:Ending at Direct X 9.0??? by spektr · 2004-09-06 03:45 · Score: 4, Funny

They could have at least waited for the 10th version: the awesome name "Direct X, X"

I think they rename it before they reach 10.0 to make it less obvious that they wanted to avoid version Direct-X11.
Re:Ending at Direct X 9.0??? by jlebrech · 2004-09-06 04:50 · Score: 1

Yeah even windows xp was a bit too close i recon. good job x.org dropped the windows name i think just X is cooler, and most of us have been just saying that anyway. and applications dont have to be in windows do they, they could be in orbs, spheres, atoms, cubes, pyramid shapes, whatever.
Re:Ending at Direct X 9.0??? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 08:53 · Score: 0

At Direct-X 11 the will begin to send take down notices to X11.org because of trademark infringement.

Re:Makes perfect sense. by Emil+Brink · 2004-09-06 02:37 · Score: 4, Informative

OpenGL is the equivalent of DirectX

Just to pick a nit: this is not true. DirectX is a family of APIs, and not limited to graphics like OpenGL. The latter is roughly the equivalent to Direct3D, however. Or at least it used to be back around DirectX 3.0, heh. But I think it's still the case.

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main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}

please them? are you sure? by 1qa2ws3ed · 2004-09-06 02:37 · Score: 1

"Microsoft - like any other big company tending a big market - tries to please them, not piss them off!" http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/windoze/OpenGLvsDir ect3D.html

Re:please them? are you sure? by Tim+C · 2004-09-06 02:42 · Score: 5, Informative

Two things:

1) that page, judging by the date at the bottom, is 7 years old - that's plenty of time for the situation to have completely changes
2) judging from the logo on it and the URL, the guy is particularly anti-MS; you might want to cite a source with a little more objectivity

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It's official. Most of you are morons.
Re:please them? are you sure? by dasmegabyte · 2004-09-06 02:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not to mention that the reasons the article states for DX sucking HAVE been improved upon my Microsoft, and in most cases, greatly so.

Meaning that this article serves as a shining example of MS listening to developers.

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Hey freaks: now you're ju
Re:please them? are you sure? by 1qa2ws3ed · 2004-09-06 03:01 · Score: 2

1) after 7 years, microsoft still doesn't provide opengl as an official api, as requested by developers. 2) the original quotes in that page are not of particularly anti-MS guys but of higlhy regarded professional 3d programmers, they make up most of the page, and looks more than objective to me. if you know of some of those facts to be false, your input is welcome. my opinion is that at least regarding 3d api microsoft historically prefers the "lock in" tactic to the "please the developers" tactic.
Re:please them? are you sure? by Phragmen-Lindelof · 2004-09-06 04:03 · Score: 1

"the guy is particularly anti-MS"
It is always easier to "kill (or criticize) the messager" than to look at the message. Has Microsoft been a "good citizen" or continued using its monopoly on the desktop to bully game developers? Does it (completely) support industry standards (e.g. opengl)?

I get really tired of "MS fan boys" complaining. FOSS software has flaws - some people developing games hate X. Microsoft does a few things well. Overall MS is an evil empire but this could change. Imagine if MS followed open standards so that each person could choose her/his favorite OS and have her/his applications/games just run.
How about this: MS supporters attack the arguments of the FOSS supporters when they are wrong instead of whining "they hate Microsoft"?
Re:please them? are you sure? by BasharTeg · 2004-09-06 09:20 · Score: 1

How about this: MS supporters attack the arguments of the FOSS supporters when they are wrong instead of whining "they hate Microsoft"?

How about this: FOSS supporters and Linux fanboys attack Microsoft on it's technical merits rather than on it's business practices?

How about we compare the stagnant and limited UNIX API (or the proprietary extensions which reinvent the wheel here and there) (or POSIX extensions half supported here and half supported there) with the Win32 API which not only supports more functionality overall, but supports fundamental concepts like true multi-threading, thread local storage, semaphores, mutexes, critical sections, atomic operations, and more easily accessable to the application programmer so they can develop truly scalable applications without having to resort to what Apache foundation was forced to do, that being the implementation of the Apache Portable Runtime project, which exists not only to properly support Windows and UNIX, but to support the million different unique fragments of UNIX that exist?

How about we compare Microsoft's C/C++ compiler and wonder why to this day they're still turning out better code than gcc? If the open source development model is so superior, why haven't the millions of C/C++ programmers out there made gcc into one of the finest compilers ever created? I mean, it is the fundamental core that creates binaries from all of the hard work of all of the open source programmers.

And since you're so ready to tell people how they should complain, how about Linux fanboys carry on some kind of technical discussion about Microsoft and Linux's merits without saying M$, Micro$oft, Microsloth, etc etc etc. I mean are we professionals here or not?

And as for this "easier to kill the messenger" shit, consider that if someone is making a statement comparing two things, it is important to consider the biases of the person making these statements. That's why your entire statement doesn't make sense. The author of that site isn't the "messenger" (meaning he merely carries news of some undeniable facts or that he bears the words of others), he is the person writing the message. Therefore, considering his biases when considering his message is not only appropriate, but quite important in this type of debate.

Microsoft's business motives aside, DirectX is a completely legitimate abstraction layer that has a lot of merit. It allows people who lack certain hardware to not only have it emulated, but have it emulated with extended instruction sets like MMX and SSE for the highest performance software emulation. This allows developers to write games that take advantage of newer features while still providing a playable experience for those using older hardware. It also obviously abstracts the entire picture of video game programming, from input to sound to video to networking. OpenGL is not to be compared to DirectX as a whole, because OpenGL lacks so much of what DirectX is. DirectX is a gaming platform. Direct3D can be compared to OpenGL, but again it lacks much of what Direct3D is. It's more than an interface to a video subsystem. It's a dynamic linkage of multiple optimized implementations of functions to allow the maximum potential of your computer system to be used, rather than relying on the merits of your GPU alone.

In short sir, your entire argument is full of shit. You make a quite poor representitive of the open source community, and as a member of the open source community, I invite you to leave the debates to those who are more qualified to engage in them.
Re:please them? are you sure? by pVoid · 2004-09-06 09:35 · Score: 1

after 7 years, microsoft still doesn't provide opengl as an official api, as requested by developers
Wtf?? After 12 years, Linux still doesn't implement the win32 API. So fucking what? Oh, and on that same note, does any other platform implement DirectX (aside from wine)? No. So why should Moft implement other people's APIs?
Re:please them? are you sure? by 1qa2ws3ed · 2004-09-06 10:52 · Score: 1

because opengl existed before direct3d
because opengl was used before direct3d
because opengl was preferred by develpers
because opengl was tecnically superior at the time
basically for the same reason that ANYBODY else implemented opengl.

now please tell me why, apart from the obvious lock in strategy, microsoft had to reinvent a completely new 3d api when there was already a good, stable, used, more advanced api that developers asked for?
Re:please them? are you sure? by 1qa2ws3ed · 2004-09-06 13:04 · Score: 1

"The author of that site isn't the messenger, he is the person writing the message."

90% of that page is made of quotes, most if not all comments by the author are not necessary

"I mean are we professionals here or not?"

no, i'm not a professional 3d programmer, nor a professional windows programmer, and i don't care what tecnical merits may have some microsoft product, i'm just not interested. i care about microsoft just when their business strategy affects me. d3d was NOT a tecnically superior api, as usual it was only the best way they found to get rid of an open and portable standard from the consumer level instead of adopting (and possibly improving) it as the rest of the world did.
Re:please them? are you sure? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 13:06 · Score: 0

To scratch an itch?
Re:please them? are you sure? by BasharTeg · 2004-09-06 13:11 · Score: 1

no, i'm not a professional 3d programmer, nor a professional windows programmer, and i don't care what tecnical merits may have some microsoft product, i'm just not interested. i care about microsoft just when their business strategy affects me. d3d was NOT a tecnically superior api, as usual it was only the best way they found to get rid of an open and portable standard from the consumer level instead of adopting (and possibly improving) it as the rest of the world did.

You state:

"no, i'm not a professional 3d programmer, nor a professional windows programmer, and i don't care what tecnical merits may have some microsoft product"

Then you state:

"d3d was NOT a tecnically superior api"

By your own admission, you have zero knowledge of the subject you speak of. You completely avoid the fact that the software emulation with optimized x87, MMX, SSE, 3d-Now!, SSE2, 3d-Now! Extended, and SSE3 implementations of missing hardware features provides greater performance and compatibility under D3D, whereas under OpenGL games, unless the game itself includes a software emulation of said graphical feature, you're out of luck. Again, you don't know what you're talking about, you admit you don't know what you're talking about, and most importantly, you're WRONG. Take your Microsoft business strategy bitching somewhere besides a technical discussion. You're a little out of your league to make statements like the one above.
Re:please them? are you sure? by 1qa2ws3ed · 2004-09-06 14:10 · Score: 1

"By your own admission, you have zero knowledge of the subject you speak of."

while i'm sure i have little knowledge on the subject, in fact i was mostly giving credit to people like john carmack and brian hook, quoted in that page, i'm wandering what your knowledge on the subject is (i hope you program 3d engines for a living since 7 years).
please note that i was referring to the 1997-1998 situation, when opengl was clearly ahead, and basically all the good looking games where either glide or opengl. i have no doubt that with the backing of microsoft, years of times, millions of money and several revisions of development direct3d evolved into a very competitive api, in many aspect better and/or more complete than opengl. but again, i can't refrain to quote:

"I'm sure D3D will suck less with each forthcoming version, but this is an oportunity to just bypass dragging the entire development community through the messy evolution of an ill-birthed API."

ill-birthed is particularly well suited.
why not adopting the more mature and used opengl, working to extend and improve the standard, instead of simply killing it in favour of a non portable and proprietary api, that took years to exceed the former, not welcomed by many relevant developers, if not for mere business strategy decision?

"you're WRONG. Take your Microsoft business strategy bitching somewhere besides a technical discussion."

this was NOT a technical discussion. we were discussing the fact that microsoft is used to please developers, it didn't sound too technical for me, thus i pointed out a case in which developers (simply quoted) where absolutely not pleased (but i'm sure there are a lot more...).
so, "technically", YOU are wrong. :)
Re:please them? are you sure? by BasharTeg · 2004-09-06 15:09 · Score: 1

Again, the problem with your entire argument is that you're making uninformed statements about the Direct3D API. The design of the Direct3D API was actually far superior in a couple important ways than OpenGL at the time for the reasons I've already enumerated more than once for you. The Direct3D design allows for software implementations of any hardware function using the newest processor extensions and other compensating hardware advances to be used to their full extent. OpenGL on the other hand is more of a general API that addresses the functionality of the hardware and the process of displaying 3D graphics. Some people may consider it a rich and powerful API, but from a design perspective it lacks part of what the Direct3D and overall DirectX abstraction layers are all about. Not just the hardware abstraction of equivalent feature sets among multiple video card vendors (which is what OpenGL is), but *optimal* software emulation of lacking features providing game developers the ability to write games using the newest features without leaving the older systems behind (ideally of course).

It has nothing to do with Direct3D catching up to OpenGL in terms of implementation performance (which really had more to do with the D3D driver implementation situation than the need for the D3D API design itself to "mature"). It has to do with the design goals of Direct3D being broader and more robust than the simple functionality achieved by OpenGL.

Despite the fact that you accept that you aren't technically knowledgable on the subject, you still make assertations about Direct3D (your perception of periods in which it lacked quality / performance) which aren't supported by the reality of the situation at the time. Was Direct3D and DirectX a wedge for Microsoft to drive itself into the gaming arena when gaming was looking to be one of the most profitable businesses on the horizon? Absolutely it was. But it was more than that. It was an abstraction layer in an area that absolutely needed an abstraction layer, because CPUs were starting to implement SIMD extensions, and with the AMD cpus, certain methods using x87 vs integer were faster on certain CPUs, and the greater abstraction layer allowed these optimizations to be taken into account in many areas (video, sound, etc). There's no doubt that awesome programmers like Carmack can roll their own SSE usage with inline assembly and write excellent engines using OpenGL, but we all know that most video games being released today don't have that kind of talent. What I want (and what MS provides) is a way for excellent and enjoyable games that AREN'T written by geniuses like Carmack to still take some advantage of ALL of my hardware, from my contemporary CPU with multiple SIMD instruction sets to my EAX sound card to my nvidia GPU, no matter how vanilla the video game programmer is. No matter what your opinion about the reasoning for originally introducing the API is, DirectX (and Direct3D) provides that power so that I can squeeze the power out of the hardware I paid for.
Re:please them? are you sure? by Phragmen-Lindelof · 2004-09-06 16:10 · Score: 1

"In short sir, your entire argument is full of shit. You make a quite poor representitive of the open source community, and as a member of the open source community, I invite you to leave the debates to those who are more qualified to engage in them."
I'll go out back and shoot myself. Will this satisfy you?

Being a little more serious, you say "your entire argument is full of shit." What argument? I said quit whining and point out the flaws in someone else's arguments. I also asked a question (or two). For example,
"Has Microsoft been a "good citizen" or continued using its monopoly on the desktop to bully game developers?"
I do not think there is any need for you to answer (but feel free to do so if you like); the answer is obviously "Microsoft has continued using its monopoly on the desktop to bully game developers (and everyone else)." Of course, it is funny how you argee with me
"How about this: FOSS supporters and Linux fanboys attack Microsoft on it's technical merits rather than on it's business practices?"
at the beginning and then say "your entire argument is full of shit" at the end. I take it that logic and math are not your strong suits?

You write:
"And since you're so ready to tell people how they should complain, how about Linux fanboys carry on some kind of technical discussion about Microsoft and Linux's merits without saying M$, Micro$oft, Microsloth, etc etc etc.
I guess either using MS for Microsoft is objectionable to you or reading is not your strong suit either; I do not see "M$, Micro$oft, Microsloth" or anything else offensive in my post. Are you complaining about some other post which is not even part of this discussion?
If you want to talk about the technical merits of DirectX, be sure to include ALL of them, including the security holes related to DirectX.
Re:please them? are you sure? by julesh · 2004-09-06 22:00 · Score: 1

now please tell me why, apart from the obvious lock in strategy, microsoft had to reinvent a completely new 3d api when there was already a good, stable, used, more advanced api that developers asked for?

Because they couldn't buy an existing implementation of it and call it their own, which is exactly what they did with DirectX.

Because it didn't fit with the 'everythings a COM object' programming model they were openly moving towards

Because they couldn't trademark it and use it as a differentiation between their product and everyone elses

Because they felt that if they were in control, they could eventually produce something better.

All of these are good reasons.
Re:please them? are you sure? by pVoid · 2004-09-07 02:55 · Score: 1

To add to that: because they started with DirectX 1, and they are at version 9. Had they tried to do something like that with OpenGL, they would have been shat on by any openstandards advocate for "embracing and extending".
Re:please them? are you sure? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-09 15:30 · Score: 0

What I want (and what MS provides) is a way for excellent and enjoyable games that AREN'T written by geniuses like Carmack to still take some advantage of ALL of my hardware, from my contemporary CPU with multiple SIMD instruction sets to my EAX sound card to my nvidia GPU, no matter how vanilla the video game programmer is.
Just curious.. but wouldn't it be sensible for this to be implemented on top of OpenGL, thus allowing a vanilla programmer to use Direct3D and a genius to use OpenGL and thus everybody wins?

Wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 02:45 · Score: 0

Quoth the idiot: Actually the whole graphic subsystem was in userland in Windows NT 3. they moved it into kernel with NT 4.0. And I'm quite sure it will stay there.

From the article: "no more blue-screens (hard crashes) caused by the graphics driver, and moving more processing into what's known as user mode. "

Informative? nope, just wrong.

Re:Wrong by IamTheRealMike · 2004-09-06 03:00 · Score: 1

Moving "more processing" doesn't necessarily mean moving the entire graphics subsystem into user mode.

Or by Whatsmynickname · 2004-09-06 02:45 · Score: 5, Funny

wait for DirectX 20

DirectXXX

Re:Or by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 02:50 · Score: 0

Bah, two minutes before me :-)

M$ is the only one to blame... by mangu · 2004-09-06 02:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

...for inventing their own standard, instead of collaborating with the OpenGL group. That's a typical micro$oft tactic, create a new, incompatible, standard and keep changing it, to force people to upgrade.

I have the same problem the grandparent post mentions. I used to like a game by Electronic Arts, "Need for Speed - Porsche Unleashed", which was released in 2000. Then in 2003 they released "Need for Speed Underground", which required a card beyond my Riva TNT2, so I got a GeForce FX5200. Now NFSPU doesn't play in the FX5200. Unfortunately, the newer NFS sucks, it's a game designed for an arcade experience, while NFSPU was designed more like a simulator.

But why, you will ask, is this micro$oft's fault, if Electronic Arts is the company that publishes the NFS series? Because of DirectX. OpenGL games, like "Grand Prix Legends", for instance, keep running in newer hardware and software. It's micro$oft's fault if the DirectX standard changes from one release to the other making older software incompatible. The newer release should be guaranteed to support every single feature in the older version.

Of course, Electronic Arts is also guilty in this case, if an open standard exists, they shouldn't adopt a broken monopolistic standard. Well, I guess I'll never buy another racing simulator again, I'll either get an open source alternative, or pirate the commercial games.

Re:M$ is the only one to blame... by kahei · 2004-09-06 03:13 · Score: 1

That's a typical micro$oft tactic, create a new, incompatible, standard and keep changing it, to force people to upgrade.

You're so right. They have no business creating a product and enhancing it as time goes on and new gpus become available. That's what a company that was trying to make a profit by filling a market niche would do! Ew! They should have donated all their efforts to some other product.

--
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Re:M$ is the only one to blame... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 03:27 · Score: 0

Yeah enhancing it by filling it with crap as time goes on...
Re:M$ is the only one to blame... by FullMetalAlchemist · 2004-09-06 03:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Actually, DirectX is fully backwards compatible.
It's probably driver problem causing this, because you normally need a new driver to match the DirectX increments; sucks, but that's what it takes.
It's actually the buyers market, if people didn't spend money on top of the line graphics cards with new features then DirectX wouldn't need to be updated to accomodate those features.

I do think that better game programmers would write a more dynamic gfx engines that are pluggable with the new features instead of demanding them; so that they don't have to be emulated by DirectX either; on the other hand it would mean less optimized inner loops.
Re:M$ is the only one to blame... by smcavoy · 2004-09-06 05:16 · Score: 1

I'll bite.
They have every to do whatever they can get away with, right?
Using their own "standards" to lock people to their platform, perpetuating their own dominance. It makes it much harder for competition to arise in this situation. The majority of games will never be ported to another system.
Sounds fair? Sounds like monopoly abuse to me.
Re:M$ is the only one to blame... by lowe0 · 2004-09-06 05:16 · Score: 1

Such as? Specific examples, please.
Re:M$ is the only one to blame... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 06:24 · Score: 0

You mean like particle shaders, new ligthing and shadowing techniques to make game more realisitc? Yeah alot of 'crap' there.
Re:M$ is the only one to blame... by Keeper · 2004-09-06 08:14 · Score: 1

What kind of nitwit troll are you? DirectX is fully backwards compatible with previous versions. The reason why the new games aren't supported on old cards is that the games will run at about 1/2 fps on your old card. You'd have the the exact same problem with games written using OpenGL (witness Doom III).

If you don't like the pc gaming upgrade treadmill, get a console.

Re:Makes perfect sense. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 02:48 · Score: 0

1GB of ram is nothing.

When longhorn ships in 2-3 years? Most people will probably have 2-3 gigs.

Re:Makes perfect sense. by swb · 2004-09-06 03:09 · Score: 1

I wonder if Intel's processor roadmap will extend 64-bit memory addressing to all their desktop line by then. At that point, I'd expect 2GB to be minimum, 4GB common, and 8GB "power desktop" configurations.

Oh I got a good one! by FatalTourist · 2004-09-06 03:11 · Score: 3, Funny

Windows... uh.. Graphics... Foundation!
Ha ha!
What?
Shit.

--

Escape Pod Films: Sketch Comedy and Web Series

[OT] Re:Nice... by Tranzig · 2004-09-06 03:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

I did not say you are wrong, I said the thing you quoted from the article is unlikely to happen.

You are right, much time have passed since NT 3.1. Those days microkernels was thought to be the state of art, the future of kernels. Smart people claimed that as the hardware evolve, the performance gap between monolithic kernels and microkernels will become negligible and the robustness of microkernels will make it superior.
But it did not happen. Today, monolithic kernels dominate the desktop market, the only exception is OSX with its Mach kernel. The quasi-micro NT kernel was turned into a bloated monolithic kernel, BeOS died, and Hurd... hasn't really born yet.
Conclusion: monolitic design is still the way to follow.

Now back to the original topic: I don't really see any reason for userland graphics except stability. It WILL decrease performance, which is cruical for the VGA cards, and might result in driver incompatibility I think. If I'm right, then it will take quite some time to write compatible drivers for older cards (assuming that nvidia and ati is willing to write for their own cards). And Microsoft does not have time, they already decided to leave out WinFS from Longhorn. They can't postpone Longhorn beyond 2006 because that would be too big pull for desktop Linux/BSD. And I guess by 2006 ReactOS will become a usable OS too.

Re:[OT] Re:Nice... by Naysayer · 2004-09-06 05:35 · Score: 2, Informative

Right now, a lot of high-end games using Direct3D spend a lot of time going through kernel traps because every time you call DrawPrimitive, well, there go a boatload of cycles. This is becoming a real bottleneck to how much can be rendered.

I don't know if that's the main motivator to them moving things to user-mode or not, but it seems so. I can imagine the drivers being built in a two-stage structure where the bulk of the driver is in user mode and a small back-end runs in kernel mode.

I am not sure what world Tranzig here lives in ... Nvidia and ATI are totally prepped for the move to WGF.
Re:[OT] Re:Nice... by videodriverguy · 2004-09-06 12:10 · Score: 1

Sorry - completely wrong. DrawPrimitive calls are batched at user level into a buffer containing drawing and state changes. This buffer is then flushed down to the hardware driver at appropriate times.

How do I know? I designed the interface between D3D and the NT kernel back in 1998, and it is still in use today, almost unchanged.
Re:[OT] Re:Nice... by cpeterso · 2004-09-06 12:59 · Score: 1

Today, monolithic kernels dominate the desktop market, the only exception is OSX with its Mach kernel.

Mach is microkernel, but technically Mac OS X is NOT a microkernel. The BSD subsystem is in kernel address space for performance.. just like NT. :)

--
cpeterso

Wait for it... by emarkp · 2004-09-06 03:14 · Score: 2, Funny

Since it is a MS product, be sure to wait until version 3.0.

(Yes, that is a joke.)

Re:Wait for it... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 03:29 · Score: 0

Since it is a MS product, be sure to wait until version 3.0.

(Yes, that is a joke.)

Of course it is a joke. Everyone knows that for a Microsoft product you need to wait for version 2000.

Re:Makes perfect sense. by Seoulstriker · 2004-09-06 03:20 · Score: 1

Yes, you're right: I meant to compare OpenGL and Direct3d. But you know what I mean. :-)

--
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.

Mod parent down by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 03:26 · Score: 1, Informative

..and me up:

"Microsoft - like any other big company tending a big market - tries to please them, not piss them off!"
Paul Hsieh's OpenGL versus Direct3D

Learn to link. While copypasteing is annoying enough, these anti-page-widening spaces /. inserts make it unbearable.

Windows Girl Friend by Krunaldo · 2004-09-06 03:29 · Score: 0, Offtopic

WGF = Windows Girl Friend. Does this mean i could get a girl friend if i run windows instead of linux? Is this Microsofts masterplan to make us geek migrate from linux to windows becuse they offer us the one thing we've been wanting since we learned what pr0n was? Geeks! We must prevent Microsoft from taking over the world through WGF! As one previously poster mentioned the open source camp is much better on the naming part, so our superior version of the Girl Friend protcol will have an much cooler/atractive/beutiful name then the MS version. We must start coding our version NOW if we're going to have any chance of opening up how girls actually work!

--
God,root what's the difference? I read slashdot, there for I errr... am stupid?

Re:Windows Girl Friend by BCW2 · 2004-09-06 03:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

"We must start coding our version NOW if we're going to have any chance of opening up how girls actually work!"

I'm sorry to tell you that this is the impossible dream. Having been married for 21 years and having 3 daughters I am an expert on how little men will ever know about women. The more you learn, the less sense it makes. Accept it and try to solve an easier problem, like the beginning of the universe, it will take less time and be achieveable!

--
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Re:Windows Girl Friend by pandrijeczko · 2004-09-06 04:01 · Score: 5, Funny

I quite fancy the idea of Windows Girl Friend, especially if she is modelled on "Clippy":
Would you like me to:
- Make your dinner?
- Massage your feet?
- Get you a beer from the fridge?

--
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Re:Windows Girl Friend by Krunaldo · 2004-09-06 06:01 · Score: 0

Irony? And did you see the reference to MS closed source development?

--
God,root what's the difference? I read slashdot, there for I errr... am stupid?
Re:Windows Girl Friend by rthille · 2004-09-06 08:18 · Score: 1

or
- Crash and distroy all your shit?

--
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Re:Windows Girl Friend by necro2607 · 2004-09-06 10:05 · Score: 1

It's hilarious this is modded insightful as opposed to funny... hahah

So true, though... no wonder there are so many computer geeks that never have girlfriends. Most girls are like the antithesis of logic itself, or something.
Re:Windows Girl Friend by necro2607 · 2004-09-06 10:11 · Score: 1

"Hi! It looks like you're cheating on me with another girl! Would you like me to...:

-Slap her across the face

-Kill her and hide her body where no one would ever find it

-'Forgive' you for it and then continue to bring it up in arguments intermittently for the next 2 years"
Re:Windows Girl Friend by BCW2 · 2004-09-06 11:45 · Score: 1

I'm surprised it's insightful too. Even though it is. I was aiming for funny but I guess reality overcame the laughs.

--
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.

Re:Makes perfect sense. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 03:33 · Score: 0

Considering that Intel is currently shipping x86-64 workstation chips, you can bet on it.

Vaguely on-topic by bairy · 2004-09-06 04:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

Does anyone happen to know how DirectX got it's name?

--

Get paid to search..It's geniune and

Re:Vaguely on-topic by mikael · 2004-09-06 04:37 · Score: 3, Informative

Back in the early 1990's, Microsoft saw the re-emergence of console systems, and realised the PC platform was under threat. After consulting with many game developers, the one complaint that kept coming up was the lack of a consistent interface to control hardware. Game developers had to write their own drivers to support all the different sounds cards, video cards and CPU's that were available. So Microsoft announced a set of of libraries that would give programmers direct control of the hardware without needing to resort to hardware programming. This set of libaries became known as DirectX.

--
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Re:Vaguely on-topic by nempo · 2004-09-06 05:09 · Score: 1

Yeah, except that dx wasn't from microsoft originally but from some other company that M$ bought. Go google for more info.

--
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
Re:Vaguely on-topic by mikael · 2004-09-06 05:26 · Score: 1

I should have mentioned at this time, Direct3D wasn't really around. Game developers were still doing 2D/pseudo-3D platform games. Then Microsoft bought out RenderMorphics, ripped out the core rendering libraries and repackaged them as Direct3D. And game developers weren't exactly too happy about DirectX retained mode.

--
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Re:Vaguely on-topic by GordoSlasher · 2004-09-06 06:59 · Score: 1

Around 1994 or 95 I used to have an MSDN CD called Microsoft Games SDK, the precursor to DirectX. They renamed it DirectX about the same time they came out with ActiveX.

The end? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 04:21 · Score: 3, Funny

K. Brockman : ... and it appears to be the end of DirectX ...
H. Simpson : Woohoo!!
K. Brockman : ... as we know it.
H. Simpson : D'oh!!

I did deal with it by pommiekiwifruit · 2004-09-06 04:40 · Score: 1

I bought a GameCube game instead (I was at the games shop for lunch, hence reading the system requirements). At least there is a better than 50% chance of it working once I get home.

And a couple of days ago I was at a conference where microsoft was telling games developers how to write for windows (not requiring admin rights to run, allowing ALT-TAB to work without crashing the PC, etc.). The afternoon of the conference was cancelled due to lack of interest (the speakers outnumbered the attendees).

Re:I did deal with it by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 05:41 · Score: 0

I bought a GameCube game instead (I was at the games shop for lunch, hence reading the system requirements). At least there is a better than 50% chance of it working once I get home.

Ah, so you didn't actually try this game, you saw the N-word on the box and assumed it wouldn't work?

You're an idiot. Sorry, but it's true.

Here's a hint: "NVidia TNT2 or better" means a card that's better than an NVidia TNT2. That set includes all recent ATI cards.

When you see a game that claims to require a Pentium III, do you put it back on the shelf because you've got an Opteron? I didn't think so.

The end of DirectX as we know it... by SlashDread · 2004-09-06 04:44 · Score: 0, Offtopic

and I feel fine..

"/Dread"

Way to go! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 05:25 · Score: 0

You've splendidly missed the point! I mean, I think it was accidental because there's no way you could have done that on purpose.

To recap:

He said "MS should make DirectX backwards compatible!"

You said "They're just trying to make a profit"

I mean, its a perfect non-rebuttal. I'm sure you think you rebutted it perfectly, but clearly, you missed the point so much the Russian Anti-Terrorist police will hire you soon.

Not so much a joke as... by solios · 2004-09-06 05:35 · Score: 1

MS operating practice. This is Known.

v.1 = SHIP! OUT THE DOOR!
v.2 = features MS wanted in v1, initial bugfixes, etc.
v.3 = where user feedback starts getting implemented.

90% of the CRAP in Windows is there because people want it, requested it, or bugged microsoft for it at some point, or MS had to slather it in to make something that people wanted actually Work (re: DOS compatability in NT4+).

Reminds me of Ford by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 06:22 · Score: 1, Insightful

Let people use whatever friggin API they want

...as long as it only runs on Windows. If Microsoft has forced itself in a position to be the only one to write gaming "standards," then those "standards" should be available for a platform other than Windows.

Understandably Microsoft won't ever do that because they'd lose a lot of money on the people buying new computers for the next new game; those people might use Linux instead. OpenGL will die off because game developers want to make money, not friends.

Re:Reminds me of Ford by pVoid · 2004-09-06 09:54 · Score: 1

Your point makes no sense man. None.
Why? Because DirectX is a perfectly published set of interfaces. You are saying, "why isn't ford building Mazda's cars for them, since they invented the fucking car, they should at least have the courtesy to build and deliver to others"...
Is that your point? or did you mean something much more realistic?
Re:Reminds me of Ford by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-07 00:52 · Score: 0

Daimler-Maybach, or modern day Mercedes-Benz, invented the car.

Well by pommiekiwifruit · 2004-09-06 06:29 · Score: 1

I've bought several games over the years for PCs and quite a few of them didn't work. For starters the "copy protection" companies will knock out a significant proportion of PCs.

And since I have an AMD chip (which AFAIK do not support all Intel instructions, but have quite a few of their own extra instructions) I would be reluctant to spend money if it specifically claimed it required a pentium 3 chip (and didn't mention Athlon), when I could spend money on a game that will work (for PS2, GameCube or GBA), and doesn't require me to click on a huge EULA claiming that it probably won't. But the main thing discouraging me is that I tried a demo disk of another game recently (Medieval Lords) and it didn't work, so my mind was not in a positive mood.

When I buy a new graphics card, I will probably get a couple of (cheap) games and see if they work.

Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 07:13 · Score: 0

And since I have an AMD chip (which AFAIK do not support all Intel instructions, but have quite a few of their own extra instructions) I would be reluctant to spend money if it specifically claimed it required a pentium 3 chip (and didn't mention Athlon), when I could spend money on a game that will work (for PS2, GameCube or GBA), and doesn't require me to click on a huge EULA claiming that it probably won't.

AMD and Intel have access to each other's portfolios and are allowed to create chips that can execute those special instructions. It's been ages (if ever) that I've seen a Intel-only game or application. (I have 2 Intel CPUs, 3 AMDs and 1 VIA.)
Re:Well by pommiekiwifruit · 2004-09-06 07:18 · Score: 1

AFAIK no Intel chip supports the Athlon instructions (3dnow).
After just looking it up, it seems my new Athlon XP will run Pentium 3 instructions, but not all Pentium 4 instructions. If you had an Athlon or a Duron though you would be in trouble if you ran "Adobe Premiere", by at least one account on the net.
Re:Well by True+Grit · 2004-09-06 10:31 · Score: 1

And since I have an AMD chip (which AFAIK do not support all Intel instructions, but have quite a few of their own extra instructions)

FWIW, I've used AMD chips since their 286 clone (starting with MS DOS 3.1), and never found an x86 program that wouldn't work on them because they weren't from Intel, and since I rarely hear stories or claims like this, I believe that the overwhelmingly vast majority of software will work on either just fine.

The exception is the specialized commands, eg, 3DNOW (AMD) & MMX (Intel), but first, these are only significant for a few specialized applications (and the major specialized applications will provide support for both types, and latest versions of GCC support both), and with the Athlon64 it becomes irrelevent since it supports both MMX, 3DNOW, SSE/SSE2 (supported by both AMD and Intel, and is now preferred over 3DNOW/MMX, and is also supported by GCC), and legacy FP registers, basically everything except the latest additions Intel made to their last version of MMX just before the Athlon64 was released, and those new insns will probably get supported in future Athlon64 processors as well (or maybe not if most everyone moves to SSE2). In other words, AMD has completely caught up with Intel, and its now Intel thats playing catchup to AMD's AMD64 technology.

Anyone still buying Intel because they want to be "safe" is just falling victim to Intel's marketing BS, and will end up paying more, possibly a lot more, for (roughly) the same performance.

Force Longhorn down our throats? by yeremein · 2004-09-06 07:36 · Score: 0, Troll

I can't help but think the real reason for abandoning Direct3D is to force everyone to "upgrade" to the train wreck known as Longhorn.

At least we still have OpenGL...

$80? by pommiekiwifruit · 2004-09-06 07:43 · Score: 1

Boy I need to shop around more :-)

The first place I looked that card (ATI 9600 XT) cost £130-£140 (128M/256M) which is $230 to $250. It must be nice when you get stuff at a third the price.

Re:$80? by cgenman · 2004-09-06 14:15 · Score: 1

I had meant the SE, which ranges much cheaper than the XT.

Never buy the bleeding edge graphics card. It's cheaper to replace a second-best card more frequently, and involves less driver problems. BTW, XT's on this side of the pond are running about $150. Again, England gets the shaft in computer parts.

--
The ______ Agenda
Re:$80? by pommiekiwifruit · 2004-09-07 06:10 · Score: 1

I thought the bleeding edge graphics card is the Nvidia GeForce 6800 with its "unlimited" pixel shaders... but it seems nvidia don't make a decent mass-market card. So I guess the ATI one is sensible if I can find a decent price on it. It seems some internet companies i've never heard of sell them (for approx £75), but "high-street" shops don't seem to have much good stuff under £130.

Re:MS memo - embrace, dilute, and confuse by poopie · 2004-09-06 07:45 · Score: 1

Don't forget:

Windows - Not to be confused with X-Windows

Direct X - not to be confused with X-Windows

DNS - Dynamic Network Services - not to be confused with real DNS

Visual J++ - not to be confused with Java

.NET - not to be confused with anything relating to internet domains ending with .net

OpenGL in OS X by rd_syringe · 2004-09-06 08:04 · Score: 1

A lot of people have the misconception that the entire OS X desktop is hardware-accelerated. OS X just uses the GPU as a high-speed 2D blitter. The windows aren't being rendered as 3D objects--this is different from what will be happening in Longhorn, which will be an entire 3D experience (granted you must be running the highest tier).

People can't handle non-descriptive names by 0x0d0a · 2004-09-06 08:14 · Score: 1

Yeah, good point. People can't handle non-descriptive names. I should stop calling my buddy Dave "Dave" and go with "Balding Black-haired Jewish guy".

Let's be serious -- people are really good at handling names. And besides, you can only have so many "Notepads".

Besides which, I'd say the names there *are* pretty descripting:

* Apache. Okay, this one isn't, but if you use it, you know what it is.

* Firefox. Fair enough, but I think this has more to do with the name changing each week than with the actual name being difficult. I mean, the competition is, what, "Netscape Navigator" (Makes me think of a GPS package), "Opera" (Music software?), "Konqueror" (A video game, maybe?), Safari (Another video game?), and so forth.

* Mono -- Yeah, but is "Java" any more descriptive?

* BitTorrent -- Good *God*, man, that's about as descriptive as you can get.

* Grep -- Says what it does, and if you don't know what "global regular expression" means, you probably don't want to be using grep.

* PuTTY -- It's a virtual TTY program. What, "telnet" is more descriptive?

* Script-Fu -- a scripting system. I guess they could have called it Gimp-Script.

And come on -- nobody goes in for descriptive names. Are cars named descriptively? "Big Towncar", etc? We can cope.

--
May we never see th

Re:People can't handle non-descriptive names by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 09:29 · Score: 0

You're missing the point. He was finding fault with the initial statement:

"Microsoft has had some great innovative technologies, however their naming department isn't working all that hard."

You're saying programs don't need to be named in a way that describes what they do. In that way, you're agreeing with him, even though you saw fit to argue the merits or each of those names.

Also, regarding your friend Dave, try kike.
Re:People can't handle non-descriptive names by dasmegabyte · 2004-09-06 09:42 · Score: 1

The point is, when you take about Dave to people who don't know him, you rarely say "Dave." You say, "Dave Cardgage" or "That guy Dave with the brown jacket" or "This guy I know names Dave."

Software's the same way. If people would actually say "Firefox Web Browser," it would be okay. Instead they say things like "SSH via PUTTY to your Fedore Core 2 box with SCREEN installed and pipe MAN to GREP." For Joe Not A UNIX Administrator, this is impossible to understand through context clues.

Everybody understands the concepts of cars and they know basically what they want -- naming the car is something to make the Mazda mid-level sedan seem like something special. Not everybody understands the tasks covered by a specific piece of computer software, and very rarely do two packages fill the same niche. Therefore, describing the software is a good idea. If you are coming from a 0 knowledge perspective, which sounds better to you: Internet Information Server or Apache?

--
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Re:People can't handle non-descriptive names by 0x0d0a · 2004-09-06 11:49 · Score: 1

Software's the same way. If people would actually say "Firefox Web Browser," it would be okay. Instead they say things like "SSH via PUTTY to your Fedore Core 2 box with SCREEN installed and pipe MAN to GREP." For Joe Not A UNIX Administrator, this is impossible to understand through context clues.

Who says this to Joe Not A UNIX Administrator, though?

If you are coming from a 0 knowledge perspective, which sounds better to you: Internet Information Server or Apache?

The problem is that if you have zero knowledge, neither is enough to get you going. "Internet Information Server"? I guess it's some person that brings information to people. It's not enough to let you identify what's going on from just the name. There's some data there, yes, but not enough to be particularly useful.

Even take much more easily described things...say, Adobe Illustrator. Just hearing the name lets you probably know that this piece of software has something to do with art -- but not enough to let you know whether or not you need to buy it.

No, if I had to choose characteristics for a name, I'd be much more interested in the following characteristics:

* Not sounding like anything else. Open Source has a bad history of this, especially with puns and takes on existing software packages.

* Being easy for an English-speaker to pronounce and derive a pronunciation from a spelling. GNU, PNG, and so forth -- there are a lot of difficult-to-pronounce or oddly-pronounced projects.

* Not relating to specific technical characteristics of the project. These things change. "Lightweight FTP Server" may not always be so lightweight, and the "Linux Sound Server" may not always only run on Linux.

* Not conflicting with a trademarked name. It just causes problems down the line, and there are tons of good names out there.

* Not using potentially offensive names. SATAN may be a great tool, but it's really hard to use in a data center without raising CIO eyebrows.

* Avoiding useless words. "Advanced" should never exist in a software package name.

--
May we never see th

OT: is this a entry point for OSS by Stevyn · 2004-09-06 08:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

DirectX is a bunch of APIs that are intended to make game development easier for developers. While microsoft fiddles around with the name and marketing brochures on this for a while, would this be a good time to develop a set of standards for running games on linux? A combination of graphics, sound, controllers, and network handling might sound good for a developer trying to get games to run on linux, but is worried about the costs of trying to find each component and hope it works on most people's computer.

Then again, if wineX can fit the bill for now, maybe developers should just try to make sure their products work with that. It's cheaper and probably not the best for linux in the long run, but it takes care of the need now and at lower costs.

Any set of standards would have to work then with windows or else developers probably wouldn't be interested. Does anyone know of any projects that aimed to do this with some success?

Re:OT: is this a entry point for OSS by IntergalacticWalrus · 2004-09-06 15:22 · Score: 1

SDL? OpenGL? OpenAL?

All of the above were used in commercial games (ie. the current Unreal engine uses all three), and unlike DirectX, they are cross-platform, open standards.

I liked the title by lahna · 2004-09-06 08:31 · Score: 1

Too bad it didn't turn out to be what i wanted it to be. :(

Apple's Naming Department by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 10:09 · Score: 0

In contrast, I love the names Apple comes up with.

Quartz
Aqua
Cocoa (who doesn't like cocoa?)
Atsui (the font system; means "hot" in Japanese)
Exposé
Rendezvous
GarageBand
QuickTi me
Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger ...

I don't really care for the bland iLife names, but other than those...

WMD at Microsoft by Kaenneth · 2004-09-06 11:36 · Score: 1

Maybe they should rename DirectX

Windows Media Direct.

Mandatory notice by Lisandro · 2004-09-06 12:02 · Score: 2, Informative

I've noticed a lot of people referring to Direct3D as DirectX; given, it's the most visible part of the API, but DirectX is much broader and cover sound, networking, controllers, and so.

OpenGL is the multiplatform equivalent of Direct3D, and APIs like SDL are the multiplatform equivalent of SDL.

Just nitpicking here ;)

Re:Mandatory notice by Lisandro · 2004-09-06 12:04 · Score: 1

...and APIs like SDL are the multiplatform equivalent of SDL.

That came bad. I meant equivalent of DirectX as a whole.

That one at least is obvious by leonbrooks · 2004-09-06 12:09 · Score: 1

Putty

Plugs a hole in Windows?

Consider also: Cairo, Blackbird, Longhorn (now appropriately renamable "Shorthorn") - all ever-so meaningful.

--
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing

Watch out from the clone... by leonbrooks · 2004-09-06 12:41 · Score: 1

...because being Open, it will be called OMG.

--
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing

You forgot... by leonbrooks · 2004-09-06 12:46 · Score: 1

- empty your wallet into a clothing store? (the perfect companion program for Microsoft Wallet)

- bring home a new and interesting disease? (runs on MS-Windows, what can I say? :-)

- scream at you 'coz it's My Time Of Month? (ditto)

- announce that "we're having triplets"? (regular and expensive hardware upgrades)

- start speaking of "My House", "My Car", "My Alimony"... (did you know that the "My" in "My Computer" is one William Henry "Trey" Gates III?)

--
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing

Other types of sader.... by Performer+Guy · 2004-09-06 12:47 · Score: 1

Final framebuffer operation shaders perhaps? This is being introduced by 3DLabs and what has until now been a fixed function state based operation may become programmable, so stuff like ztest, alpha test blend etc may be replacable by a programmable unit.

Its all about the X by aardwolf204 · 2004-09-06 13:53 · Score: 1

No, keeping with the "everything is better with an X" fad that we see with Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux we should expect the next direct X version to be dubbed DirectX X.

Then We'll be able to play Final Fantasy XX, X-Men, and TuX Racer Xtreme with photo-realistic graphics at high frame rates.

I, for one, welcome our new DirectX X overlords... Or is that X.org overlords?

--
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the /.crowd.May ur days b merry & bright & may al

End of DirectX? by CrazyMalaysian · 2004-09-06 15:21 · Score: 2, Funny

Did linux just grab a large share of the market, and did Microsoft suddenly go broke?

Re:End of DirectX? by mgcarley · 2004-09-18 14:35 · Score: 1

No... Linux already had a huge share of the market. With their claims of "95% Desktop Market Share", what Microsoft didn't count on was that even though IBM/HP/CPQ/Dell/Packard Bell/NEC/Sharp/Acer/etc was/are selling Windows pre-installed machines, users are finally wising up and are re-installing X-Windows or even Linspire - (Linux, not Windows) straight after their new purchase.

Point being that they are getting their 95% market share from units-shipped (pre installed on PC's) - not actual usage :)

Or at least, thats how it was in my fantasy world.

--
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com) // t: @mgcarley

An hour you say? (nt) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 19:06 · Score: 0

nt

Just maybe by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-06 21:03 · Score: 0

Anyone still buying Intel because they want to be "safe" is just falling victim to Intel's marketing BS, and will end up paying more, possibly a lot more, for (roughly) the same performance.

Or maybe they already have a central heater?

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The End Of DirectX As We Know It

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