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The People Behind DirectX 10
ThinSkin writes "In the first of a three-part series covering the people behind the new DirectX 10, ExtremeTech interviews Microsoft's David Blythe and Chris Donahue to discuss the development, decisions, and future of the new API. They answer several questions such as how different it will be than DX9, why it will only be for Vista (and not for XP), and when we might be able to see it."
Seems more like a bunch of pre-approved PR junk... Some sample 'questions':
A lot of people are complaining, "Oh, why won't we have DirectX 10 for Windows XP." There's a good technical explanation for that, where it's really not possible to do what DX10 does in the Windows XP driver model."
So if the decision had been made, "Yes, we're going to try to make all this work on XP," you'd really have to sort of hamstring DirectX 10. You'd have to say, "Then we can't do this, we can't do that..."
You could even see the graphics card having a big hand in doing some of the stuff that was traditionally done on the CPU. Things like collision detection, or calculating obscured geometry so you don't have to render it. You start to see a lot of flexibility in how developers can use both the geometry shader and the stream-out-to-memory function together.
Video is another area where you're starting to see the graphics card manufacturers doing a lot of fun stuff with their video processing using the power of the GPU. And you could see DX10, especially with the reduced overhead, enabling more powerful video processing on the graphics unit.
"Supporting two different driver model means more complexity and less things added to DX10 in the same timeframe."
Yes but, I don't really consider time frame a "technical reason" as far as this goes. Thats more of an economical reason, wouldn't you agree?
From the comments so far, it seems that people feel that Microsoft is somehow failing in a sacred duty by not making DirectX 10 available for Windows XP.
Why should Microsoft make DirectX 10 available for old versions of Windows? How many new video drivers released for Linux in 2006 support early 2.4.x kernels?
Sometimes making progress means saying "sorry, we don't support that; you'll have to upgrade to something newer".
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Why have we had lawsuits about media-players and the like, while something like DirectX has been left alone? I mean, DirectX (or more precisely: Direct3D) is replacing OpenGL, especially in games. And DirectX runs only on Windows. Doesn't that mean that porting those games to other platforms would end up being very difficult, and if you wanted to play games on your PC, you practically needed Windows (well, that's true even today, but the reasons for that are elsewhere).
In short: authorities were concerned about Microsoft dominance in the web-browser market. And they have been worried about Mcirosoft dominance in the media-playback market. Yet they are not concerned about DirectX and the dominance it gives to Microsoft? How come?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
What's really "funny" is that people (slashdotters and their ilk) criticize Microsoft when they backport tech from Vista to XP, saying, "Well, there's no reason to buy Vista then". Yet when Microsoft doesn't backport tech from Vista to XP (like DirectX 10), you guys still bitch.
Which is it? Do you want Vista tech backported to XP or do you want Microsoft to keep Vista tech exclusive to Vista?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
I mean really? What obligation are they under? You have a copy of an operating system that runs everything it's supposed to now and in the immediate future. There was nothing in the deal that said "Your copy of Windows XP will continue to support the bleeding edge games for 10 years after we release it".
Come on.
How many programs only run on Mac OSX and don't run on OS9?
I hardly see how a finger is being given at all here... and it's not like you haven't had fair warning that Vista is coming out.. hell it's late, late, late... so there's no big 'whoops I bought XP because I didn't know Vista was coming out'.
The main deal is that Vista will still run all the XP stuff, so you haven't had the 'finger' given to you for buying XP, because when you do upgrade to Vista down the track you won't have to upgrade all your software as well if you don't want to... that would be giving the finger... kinda like how Apple did with OSX not really supporting old OS9 programs.
Man, Microsoft can do no right by some people, no matter how hard they actually do try.
Why don't MSFT simple submit a proposal to extend OpenGL in a open way?
Why *should* they? And don't answer with some ideological doctrine, give a *practical* reason why Microsoft should do what you propose. DirectX has been wildly successful without any submissions to extend OpenGL.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Basically, DirectX is meant as an Interface between Windows and (Video) hardware. It says "if you call my function xxx, I will translate that to a certain call to the hardware". It is terribly easy to make DirectX 10 compatible with XP. You just take DirectX 9, add the new calls, and let them return "sorry, I cannot do that". Then game developers will simply add an option "activate advanced DirectX 10 features" to show off the cool stuff, but any XP user will still be able to play the game. So there is no good reason to exclude XP from the new games market, as Microsoft is trying to do.
Even better, they could (and IMHO should) open up the source code of DirectX. I am dead certain that an XP version of DirectX 10 would be created in days.
But of course, they have great MARKETING reasons why they will not do that. Yes, it is all marketing. The rest of the argumentation is blah.
What's keeping MS from backporting some of the new Longhorn kernel/driver niftiness to XP? Oh, right. Money. There's no money in adding new things to an already-sold product. It's all about selling the new hotness.
So, one of the first complains I read over here about Windows is how they have been carrying a legacy of compatibility from Win 3.11 days. Now, they try to simplify the platform (didnt Mac did that when going from OS9 to OSX?, and from PPC to Intel?) and everybody starts whining.
What is keeping Microsoft from backporting is the complexity it would yield, Windows XP is a mess, thats why they had to restart the development of Longhorn to a new model. They decided to throw away the compatilibity and improve the technology.
I do not know how good or bad will vista be, I use Fedora anyways, but I think there is just so much bullshit people can throw at Microsoft, IMHO they are *trying* to do something fine, for a change.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
The changes to the Windows driver model have far more to do with DRM than any stability issues.
Yes but scroll down. These jokers think developers will be doing DirectX 10-only games within 2 years. Not only does that presume that Vista will actually be out in 2 years, it also presumes that Vista will be so massively successful in this timeframe that 90% of gamers will have it on their systems thus justifying a DirectX 10-only policy from publishers.
This is the stuff of which dreams are made. i.e. it's not remotely plausible. Look at the stats on w3schools, for example. Today, June 2006, 89% of Windows users are on XP. XP has been out for 4 years and it doesn't even make that much sense today to ignore Windows 2000 users. There are still as many W2K users as Mac users and the "port" from XP to Win2K is easy enough to make it worthwhile. Not many people would make an XP-only program today.
Two years ago, XP was on 57% of Windows machines - i.e. after 2 years it achieved 60% market share. No-one, two years ago, made XP-only software for end users.
Which OS to put DX10 onto is not a technical decision. The commercial realities forbid a Vista-only API unless MS want to wait five years for DX10 to be widely accepted by end-users.
In other words, they will put DX10 onto XP or DX9 is all we will get from most publishers until 2010. Few developers have the resources to target two versions of DX at once.
Since the display drivers have apparently been mostly moved to userland, there will probably be lots of stability issues (positive ones hopefully).
I'm not a Windows users as such (I only use it to play games every now and then) but since for once they did seem to make a good decision in that specific area, it shouldn't be downplayed... regardless of how much fun it is to diss Microsoft in general...
And wouldn't DRM be safer in kernel mode anyway ?
Keep the bashing for when it's justified, it's not as if there aren't enough occasions to indulge, especially with Microsoft.
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You make a point, and I wouldn't argue that you're wrong, because you're not. But in the software development world getting away from anything that adds more complexity is generally better for the overall health of the system.
Adding the ability to support two driver models would have a dramatic influence on the design of the project and would likely force them to go in a totally different direction. It's not that it's not possible to do, it's just that it would likely be quite detrimental.
Personally speaking I give them a salute for finally doing something right. They're evil anyway so why does it matter? Just consisently do what's best for the software and eventually people will be okay with the decisions.
They're evil anyway so why does it matter?
Because so many people here have tied their self esteem up in the success of Linux and the consequent failure of Microsoft that they have to bitch about everything.
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Re Closed GL...
David Blythe used to be an architect in the advanced systems division of SGI. Very sharp guy. (If I recall, he even fixed a couple of gl bugs I found on the (now old) infinite reality engine.)
Ian Ameline
> A Direct3D programmer doesn't have to know whether they're using an Intel, ATi or nVidia chip, for example, in order for their code to work.
HAHAHA! Best joke I've heard in a while. You obviously haven't been programming with D3D a lot.
It's absolutely vital that you check Vendor ID, Device ID, and Driver version in order to work around the countless bugs, quirks, and performance holes in all the well known broken systems out there (unless you absolutely want to slap a BIG 'only supported on Card X with (at least) Driver Y' STICKER on your packaging).
I'm not sure what you mean by "safer" but the DRM would work more effectively, which is why they're putting it there. The design goal is to have a "Trusted" kernel running on "Trusted" hardware, so that the system can disallow any software-based circumvention technique -- including device drivers that tried to save the framebuffer to a file. That's both the reason why most drivers are going to run in user mode, and why the rest have to be "certified" by Microsoft. Certification isn't about quality; it's about DRM enforcement.
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