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Gamers React to Vista Launch
As cranky as IT folks are about having to roll out new Vista installs, support them, update them, etc, gamers are matching them in irritation. Ars Technica recommends you dual-boot XP and Vista if you want to keep gaming on your PC. Voodoo Extreme explores Vista's crappy audio setup, while Computer and VideoGames reports that some small developers think Vista will ruin PC gaming (a comment we've heard before). C&VG does have a slightly more hopeful article up too, talking about the future of Vista gaming and what the new OS could mean for games ... once all the kinks are worked out.
/me yawns wide enough to drive a truck through.
/me goes back to sleep.
What's that? Vista? Oh well, SWG and WoW still run on Linux.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Maybe now that Microsoft has a console, we are supposed to stop gaming on PCs?
Existing/in development Windows games are most easily ported to the Xbox, provided they use DirectX (which most do), so Microsoft doesn't really have much to lose if developers start to write fewer games for Windows.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
One of the articles says that hardware acceleration is no longer available in Vista, but doesn't say why (aside from the fact that MS didn't include it in their sound layer rewrite). Is this mainly a DRM thing?
Might be a bit ironic if these sound cards target MS operating systems only to have Linux (and Mac?) being the only ones that support the hardware acceleration.
And my reaction is that Vista is going to have to offer a whole lot more than DirectX10 to get me to switch. There's far far too many items on the minus side, and only one on the plus (for my purposes, at any rate). At this point, I've decided that unless the landscape has drastically changed by the time games start requiring DX10, I'll just be living without those games.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
It breaks WildTangent stuff? Cool. There's a good reason to upgrade to Vista now.
There might be some other positive aspects. For one, I noticed last night a demo wouldn't install on my PC running Vista x64, because it's crappy copy-protection (and what morons put copy protection in a freakin demo?) couldn't install it's drivers because they were unsigned. Maybe at the least, if we're going to have to live with obnoxious copy protection in games, the developers of the crap will have to be a little more responsible and careful before just crudding up someone's PC.
I already use Vista and I still game. I have absolutely no issues, albeit everything's still a little bit slower at the moment (nVidia never had mature G80 drivers for XP, why would I expect mature Vista drivers ;)). For me, Vista isn't just about my gaming experience, I want my entire PC experience to improve and I think Vista does that well. I could easily throw my old hard drive back in (with the XP partition still available) and go back, but I don't want to. Vista may have its oddities (UAC stopping programs from saving their settings, etc), but overall I'm satisfied.
Do I think people should upgrade? Maybe, if they really want to. If someone's building a new gaming rig, I'd say to just upgrade now and get it over with. Unfortunately, I planned my new rig a couple months ago when Vista was coming out. Then it was delayed and I ended up having to purchase a copy of Windows XP to put on it. So I now wasted $120 on Windows XP that I don't even use anymore. Why would anyone want to do that (keep your piracy comments to yourself)?
Just thought I drop a link to this article that actually looks at current gaming performance on Vista for both NVIDIA and ATI:
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http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=
Voodoo extreme has nothing to do with this article. They are only pointing to it.
The real article is at IGN:
http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/759/759538p1.html
Please, skip the redirections and ad views...
And I must say that this decision (no hardwrae acceleration) will badly hurt Creative Labs. Maybe, just maybe, this screw up will restart some competition in the sound card market?
Assuming you have the HD space, why would you install a new OS that you have never tested before, and not keep your old, working one? Especially with all the rumours revolving around Vista, its just common sense.
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The completely spin-doctored reaction by Microsoft didn't help much. Be sure to read the comments on that one..they're basically getting slaughtered on their own weblog.
Just a highlight I'll quote here: Says it all for me, really.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
As in the spyware company WildTangent that gets packaged with a number of apps including AIM? Wish a CREDIBLE developer would have said that, and not them, being from the bottom of the barrel.
...in one single post. my head is spinning.
First, I find it extremely disturbing that Taligent wants to automatically install their stuff without consent from users.
Second, Making DirectAudio flow through CPU is not such a bad move. Hardware based audio made a lot of sense in the old days when the genereal processors had low performance compared to dedicated audio processors. Modern processors are more than capable for providing great audio at a tiny fraction of available CPU cycles. Games now advertise hardware audio for marketting reasons. Nothing stops you from generating EAX type effects using current APIs available in the system.
Moreover Creative has been bypassing the OS audio layers completely using OpenAL for quite sometime and they have been actively prompting it.
Once Creative creates the proper drivers for Vista people will get back their EAX support.
I seem to remember a similar thing being said about the latest version of Windows around about 1995.
It's not going to happen. Windows and the gaming industry rely on each other far too heavily for either to allow this to happen. Much of what continues to prop up Windows's dominance of the home market is the one home computing activity for which Windows is still undeniably the better choice - gaming. Meanwhile, I seriously doubt that the gaming industry wants to return to the days of market segmentation when they couldn't write games for only one platform while maintaining access to 95% of the market.
Vista is just a conspiracy between Microsoft and the hardware companies to get everyone to spend at least $500 on hardware for an OS no one really needs.
Could someone PLEASE explain to me why it is that Aero NEEDS a 128MB video card when it doesn't do anything beyond what Stardock.com's Object Desktop has been doing for the past 8 years!?
I am totally 100% incorrect about this and I apologize. Back when the first DX10 betas shipped, we tested on Vista and found that we got all the HAL layers we expected. I have tested it intermittently over the past year with no problems; however, I just ran our tool again against the latest SDK and found that I get 'Emulation.' (We used to get WDM.)
Apologies again for jumping about 10 meters past the gun.
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Here's one reason: Microsoft dropped support for the gameport.
:)
Before I say why this means a lot, let me say that I've been playing a lot of Battlefield 2 lately, a game in which using a joystick makes it much easier (and more natural) to flying all the fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft in the game. I've dug up my MS Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro joystick to play the game and let me say it's every bit as good as it was when i first got it.
IMHO, the Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback joysticks are some of the best joysticks ever made. Their force feedback system used cables rather than springs and rubber bands so they are extra sturdy and hard to break. Anyone who's owned one of these joysticks knows what I'm talking about.
Obviously, the normal reply is "Get a new joystick!" Maybe it's just me, but I can't deal with the fact that all current joysticks look so ridiculous (*cough* Saitek), with all their colored plastic bits etc. Hell, owning a joystick is nerdy enough, but why does it have to scream "Don't come near me!!!" ?
Here's an interesting thing. So the gameport *is recognized* by Vista, and when it tries to find drivers for it, it locates "Creative Game port" (I have a Sound Blaster card) and starts installing it when it fails by saying that the INF file is incorrect.
Anyway, that's why I'm still dual-booting into XP
Actually, Red Steel is one of the worst games on the Wii. Most are 4 or 5 star out of 5 games, like Rayman's Raving Rabbids, Zelda, Trauma Center, etc. Don't judge a console by it's worst title. Just as we shouldn't judge the PS3 by the only good non-cross-platform game for it, Resistance: Fall of Man (the only good one so far).
Now, I admit the 360 is coming out with a bunch of games, but for some reason most of the good games are Japan-region-encoded. Which means not gonna happen.
However, this proves the point that WinVista is not needed for modern gamers - we have many decent platforms to play them on, ranging from Wii to PS3 to 360 to Mac to Linux/BSD.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I suspect you may be alittle rosey about this considering that you went in at midnight. No SLI, no hardware audio, tons of DRM and signed drivers. No way is this better than XP at this point for any gamer (or even most general users).
Well, I know it's intuitive, my 15 yo son just paid $1.99 for a two-week trial version for his Mac. But, you'd get more exercise, and avoid Cartman's fate if you actually could use Wii gestures to attack.
Given the amount of time that many people spend playing WoW, you'd be able to tell which ones were the Wii players by their ONE MASSIVE ARM.
Aside from Zelda? Quite frankly, the sword fighting in Zelda rocks.
Again, though, my point is that we who game are no longer forced to upgrade Windows to WinVista just to play games. Most games are now available on one of: Mac, Linux, BSD, Wii, 360, and PS3. The days when we were forced to keep up with Windows upgrades is over. Especially when, as is true with WinVista, we literally have no choice but to shell out $2000 or more for a new PC or laptop just to play. Instead, we can easily do just as well with one of the other choices - and we probably have one or two of them.
I've got a Wii (runs my old GC games), a Mac Mini (with a nice giant monitor from Sony), and some older xBox and PS2 consoles, so I've just decided to heck with Windows Vista. If I end up needing to buy an xBox360 or PS3 to play them, it will be later when the consoles are cheaper and I have to buy a new HDTV for $300 or less anyway in 2009. Even if I hold out until 2008, the price for an HDTV should be below $500 and a PS3 is likely to have a street value of under $400 (selling in Japan today for that). So why bother tossing my perfectly good WinXP machine?
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No need to spend 2 grand. A decent gaming PC costs $600-1000. Not top-of-the-line, but CERTAINLY good enough to play WoW, CS:Source, etc with a decent resolution, and decent settings.
Core 2 Duo 6300 - $180
Mobo - $130
2GB RAM - $160
7600GT - $120
320GB HD - $90
DVD burner - $30
Case - $40
PSU - $40
$790 for the parts listed above, if you buy from Newegg. And you could DEFINITELY cut back in some areas, like getting 1GB of RAM, or getting a different video card, like a 7600GS.
Here's the other factor: if you're going to spend money for a gaming platform, why buy a one-trick pony? Yes, the Wii, Xbox360, etc all have web browsers and such, but a computer (whether it's running Windows, Linux, Mac OS, whatever) is so much more versatile. I can build a gaming machine today for $800, and 2-3 years from now I can buy a new gaming machine, and use the current one as a server.
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