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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.
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.
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=
It appears that Creative is writing a driver that will intercept DirectSound calls and translate them into OpenAL calls, which Vista WILL support.
Love sees no species.
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?
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?
Actually, MS pulled the API in vista and replaced it with one that did not run in kernel space, which is a good thing in general. The problem is they did not provide properly for backwards compatibility so games that used that API sound like crap. Other games that used OpenAL, still sound fine and at least one card manufacturer is providing a translation layer from the old API to OpenAL (sort of like WINE and DirectX). Some of the games that use the old, MS specific API are surprising. World of Warcraft, for example. I mean they had to write it for OpenAL to get the Mac and Linux versions working and they released the Mac version at the same time as the Windows version. Is support for OpenAL that poor on Windows? guess they implemented DirectX as well as OpenGL too. Is their toolset just built to do both anyway or what?
If you're playing WoW (and SWG for whatever reason), then we all know you have no time for sleeping.
Level 70 yet?
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But then why make DX10 Vista only?
If they didn't limit some of the new functionality to Vista, why would users move off of 2000/XP? Limiting the release of particular features can be a way to force users of your older products to your newer products.
Jim
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'
now that Microsoft has a console, we are supposed to stop gaming on PCs?
Nope. Apparently you haven't heard about Microsoft's efforts to revitalize PC gaming. Well, now you have.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Either way, the impact of this trend on small-time and independent project/home studios will be interesting. I don't think anyone from the project-studio world is going to be touching Vista for a long time (if ever).
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Exactly.
Windows will have a place in the business world for some time, and certainly on the desktop in commodity PCs. Microsoft is in no danger of losing what is arguably their flagship product (though some would argue that Office is their bread-and-butter).
Now they want market dominance in consoles. With PCs as gaming systems, they are competing with themselves for dominance (Xbox vs PC), and they flat out don't get any royalties for games sold on the PC. They know that they have dominance on the PC even without gaming, so the easiest way to gain console dominance is to try to move people off of the PC and onto the Xbox.
Now I don't think they'd blatantly sabotage gaming on Windows--certainly, they're using gaming as leverage for Vista upgrades via DirectX 10. But they probably won't work to maintain it as a viable platform for that much longer. DirectX 10 represents the start of a merger between the SDKs for Xbox and PC. I suspect that soon, we'll see the SDK for the Xbox start to become more advanced than the PC version. Eventually, the main optimizations and improvements will go to the XBox.
Sneaky people, if this is their strategy, but effective. The PS3 is looking more and more like it's going to flop, and the Wii targets a completely different market (though it's catching up to the 360 in sales, regardless, and despite being released a year later). They've got a virtually clear path to hardcore console gaming dominance.
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!?
Actually, hunting around to find keys/buttons is something games like WoW are designed to minimize.
The very nature of the game is such that as you progress with your character the user-interface and the placement of all the icons/key-bindings evolves with you. Anyone else who sits down in front of Yendolf the Finger-Waggler will be baffled at the setup, and will hunt around for buttons. However, assuming you play good ol' Yenny the majority of the time, you'll pretty instinctually find what you're looking for.
It may look like a disorganized mess, but at least it's one that your wife won't organize for you when you aren't looking.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
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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World of Warcraft, for example. I mean they had to write it for OpenAL to get the Mac and Linux versions working and they released the Mac version at the same time as the Windows version.
Blizzard hasn't done jack for Linux, at least as far as development goes. They have worked with Transgaming to help Transgaming fix some issues with Cedega, and to restore accounts of Linux users that were erroneously flagged as bot-users. There is no "linux version" of the game, though. Cedega runs the Windows version of wow, and uses whatever audio driver the windows version uses.
They did implement both directX and OpenGL, and both can be used under Windows, so maybe it similarly has an OpenAL path on Windows.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.