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Hacked DX10 for Windows Appears
Oddscurity writes "According to The Inquirer someone managed to write a wrapper allowing DirectX 10 applications to run on platforms other than Vista. The Alky Project claims to have reverse-engineered Geometry Shader code, allowing Windows games to run on Windows XP, MacOSX and Linux. The Inquirer is understandably cautious about these claims, urging readers to investigate the releases themselves to ascertain whether or not it's a hoax."
Even if he really managed to do this (which I doubt, look how long wine has been around and it still doesn't run everything), won't he get sued immediately for something like this?
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Squirrel
well, you're going to need those cards to run DX10 anyway.
The article claims to have a software implementation of DirectX 10 Geometry Shaders, so no, you wouldn't.
If nothing else, this can be a call to others to create similar projects. If the Alky Project is real (which it is by all accounts so far), then even if it is shut down, their work will continue. If it can't meet it's goals in some way, then it's full promise will remain as a focus for the great need to NOT 'upgrade' to Windows Vista, drawing in a large number of developers. It is also the promise that applications made for DirectX 10 may live beyond their operating environment.
This is very much a more direct refection of the same phenomenon that allows entire hardware systems to be emulated against the wishes of console, arcade and computer manufacturers.
This is the start of the market's reaction to Vista, made manifest.
Ryan Fenton
We are hacking Windows apps to run them on Windows OS's.
Let the sadness ensue.
I can't ignore this comment as it seems Slashdot keeps perpetuating this myth...
Why do people keep perpetuating this misnomer?? If you don't use Aero and instead switch to Windows Classic Appearance, Vista works great on a wide variety of machines.
Now, if you had said it as below you would have had a point:
"No thanks. I'd like to be able to use my computer without needing five top-of-the-line graphics cards just to run the OS in 'fancy graphics' mode.
yup. from what i gather, many who entered the program are pissed because they payed $50 and have seen nothing come out of it yet. and this release seems to be nothing more than him trying to prove that he's actually working on it. it's not very functional.
i really hope he does succeed though. we really need something like this.
I downloaded it and everytime I start up a Direct X 10 tutorial it crashes out, the file sizes 400k also seem a little small.
I'd also like to know how he implemented Vertexs and Indexs since in DirectX 10 you allocate one buffer and it can be any type but under DirectX 9 you have to choose the type of buffer when you create it. Copying all that stuff into memory so you can allocate the buffer in the DirectX 10 drive at render time is going to slow things down a hell of a lot.
Still if it worked it would be very interesting for the wine project.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
If only windows were like Linux. I don't really mean in the open-source way, but more in the separate projects way. If DirectX was a separate project from the windows OS, then it would work on windows XP without us having to go hack it. There's no reason why DirectX 10 can't work on windows XP. It's just an artificial limitation that MS through in to get people to buy Vista. MS does this a lot, with IE, IIS, MS Office, DirectX, and many other tools. I don't see why people put up with it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
So rather than a top-of-the-line GPU, you'd have to compensate with a top-of-the-line CPU to handle the load brought on by software rendering.
'Why do people keep perpetuating this misnomer?? If you don't use Aero and instead switch to Windows Classic Appearance, Vista works great on a wide variety of machines.'
A variety of machines with really fast processors and boatloads of ram.
With the (arguably) poor reception for Vista from the press and user communities and the (GPU) Hardware and Games writers obviously wanting to push DirectX 10 to help sales (ooo shiney AND blured!) is MS under non-trivial pressure to bring DirectX10 to XP? What are the chances of this happening?
Will we end up with a backlash where OpenGL is updated to include features parity of the DirectX10 cards and developers switching to using OpenGL as the driver layer so they get the XP market?
I think it's a perfectly cromulent word.
Realistically, to run any likely dx10 app, you'd need at least 64 top of the line cpus to handle the software rendering load.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Kinda how no one sued DVD Jon?
Even if it did, XP (the primary OS this would be desired for tbh) doesn't have the necessary resource management necessary to fuel the power needed for the graphics processing that DX10 takes advantage of. Sure, you might get it working, but it would be slow as heck.
. . but this screams "Getting gullible people to give me $50 for mostly snake oil"
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
> The Inquirer is understandably cautious
Wow, now there's a sentence I never expected to see in print!
Or is that exactly what the project is?
I'd be the first to agree that the UI in Mac OS X is quite limited in terms of customisability.
If you like the OS X GUI, great! If you don't, you'd be forced to use third party apps to change even the most basic elements.
Me, I'm happy with the way things are, but if there was an easier way to change the appearance, I might consider changing. All in all, it doesn't play that big a role though, the increase in productivity has been well worth the decrease in UI customizability.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
It's a lovely word, isn't it? I really think it's use embiggens the English language.
He said _useful_ projects.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I kind of went along with that too, but have now re-installed XP out of frustration.
I'm using a Dual 8800 GTX video card (the Dell XPS H2C system: http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetai
I have 2 fast disks striped w/hardware raid and things like file copies felt sluggish and slow. (Moving files around the hard disk).
Using the windows explorer was numbingly frustrating.
The Video driver would crash frequently, even after disabling SLI (I know, it's nVidia's problem, not MS's...) But, the driver would recover and then it would go into a chain of driver crash warnings.
The BSOD's would occur not hourly, but seemingly about 1-2x per week.
The AERO didn't seem to make the system sluggish, but I'm running the fastest video cards on the market..
I'm sure if your running a simple system, integrated graphics card and AC97 audio, your disk configuration isn't complex, or has good drivers.. you might be ok, but some of the subtle problems of vista don't show up until after a month or two of using it. (I've been using since Beta 2 off and on, including RTM and bought a copy at launch).
Funny enough, my wife got my old computer (dual core 3600+ AMD, 2 gigs ram and ATI Radion XT1800), and I put a copy of vista on that machine and it works fine, but all she does on her computer is open the web browser and play solitaire. She has FAR from high end hardware, and she runs it in the high graphics desktop mode without a hickup. the issues I've described on my machine doesn't bother her, she doesn't do things like open the file explorer or copy large files around.
We ordered a batch of dell low end desktop for customer-service reps here at our office, they are running Vista. They have integrated video cards (probably Intel) and it seems to be fine with Aero running, 1 gig of ram. But the only app they use is Mozilla.
I personally regret not buying a Mac Pro after spending 3 or so months fighting with Vista on my new machine, I've concluded that XP will have to work until it's EOL'd and I can feel I didn't completely waste my money on that Dell and buy another Mac to replace it.
A quick google results in "ShapeShifter" http://unsanity.com/haxies/shapeshifter
I've had good fun with ctrl scroll-wheel-up and ctrl scroll-wheel-down though. So that might be a way to go for visually impaired.
It doesn't solve the menu bar problem though. Whilst annoying at times, I've recently seen a widescreen windows notebook with adobe reader within a browser. My word! There was hardly any space for the text left due to the sheer number of toolbars present.
Good luck.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Hopefully the most of the bugs will be worked out by the the time SP1 comes out. Personally, except for pure test beds, I always wait until the first SP comes out to install any OS. I remember fighting with a couple Macs when the first version of OS X came out. Same with Windows Server 2003. But i wouldn't completely write Vista off yet, especially in your case with a complex setup, the drivers may take a bit to all get working in unison.
"But this one goes to 11!"
How does Vista give you any less control over the software you run than XP? I've been seeing a lot of vague claims about how Vista is so much worse than predecessors, and I'm really not finding anything conclusive to back that up. Windows Genuine Advantage and some HD-DVD stuff are hardly the end of the world if you've already bought into the notion that proprietary software and encrypted media are OK. And if you are really into controlling your software, why would you want to wrap DX10 anyway? The games in question are undoubtedly closed-source.
I do not have a signature
Thanks for the flamebait, but seriously since you appear to doubt the uselessness of porting DX10, consider this. Of the many changes in DX10, one of them is a more focused set of requirements for DX10 compatible cards. When a game developer is writing a DX10 game, they are writing it with these specifications in mind. Do you think for a second that Crysis, Alan Wake, Shadowrun, UT3 or whatever other DX10 game in development is going to run worth a crap in a software DX10? I wasn't aware there was such a demand to run the DX10 sample apps. This to me is the main reason for calling this project useless. There's also legality issues, the question of whether this is even real or not, and assuming it is real, to what degree of support is to be expected in the absence of Vista. In fact, like most rewrites of software projects, particularly in the gaming area, most of the focus and attractiveness of DX10 comes from its refactoring of some of the problem areas of previous DX versions in order to provide large speedups. For example, in DX9 and below, draw calls are very expensive, and a game can easily start choking and performing very badly on just a couple thousand draw calls. Each draw call has very large CPU overhead to it. It doesn't take much to hit this draw call cap and become CPU limited. DX10, due to the new API and driver model has been written with this in mind, resulting in a huge reduction in draw call cost. OpenGL already has pretty cheap draw call cost. I'll agree that marketing probably played a huge role in DX10 Vista only, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was in part due to the engineers getting to a point where they just had to say "Look, there's some big foundation level problems with DX that we can't improve much on without rewriting it." Any software engineer should understand the need to refactor sometimes, and sometimes you can't keep backward compatibility. Vista naturally provides a target for such a rewrite. It wouldn't make sense to have XP Service Pack 2 or whatever replace the XP driver model and whatever other parts of the foundations of XP is needed just to get DX10 on XP. DX10 is a major rewrite to the entire API and how it interfaces to the hardware. Could they have ported it to XP? Probably at huge cost, which in business terms mean hell no. It just isn't worth it. So marketing gets to use it to pimp Vista too. It's a win all around for MS, and for gamers and developers who do run DX10 there is potential for alot more over DX9. It's unfortunate it comes at the price of the turd formerly known as Vista.
okay, the video is crap; but we have tested the preview, and it does provide (limited) DX 10 for WinXP! So it works for real, no hoax, but only for DX SDK demos, maybe some more apps.
My favourite operating system is ReactOS; binary compatible to WinNT series
I know everybody wants to believe that Microsoft arbitrarily decided that DX10 would be Vista only so they could "force" people into buying the OS, but, as usual, it's a tiny bit more complex than that.
DX10 relies heavily on graphics card memory virtualization. The new Windows Display Driver Model, WDDM, introduces this feature. In order to accomplish this, it required a lot of low level kernel changes. So many, in fact, that back-porting it to XP would basically make XP's kernel into Vista's kernel.
There comes a point where you just have to say that a particular feature is only available in Vista. DX10 fits that bill.
Anyone can sue anyone. I can sue you for ... umm... parking your car on my lawn.
You don't have a car? So what, I don't have a lawn.
Doesn't matter who sues who. Who wins the suit matters.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here's a little contextual usage. Let's see if you can spot the word you're looking for:
Calling Wikipedia a dictionary is a misnomer.
Wikipedia's reputation for reliability and accuracy is a myth.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Why do people keep perpetuating this misnomer?? If you don't use Aero and instead switch to Windows Classic Appearance, Vista works great on a wide variety of machines
If you have a capable video card (and if you don't, $30ish to get one is not really a big ask), you're far better off leaving Aero turned on and offloading it to the GPU. Going back to "Classic" mode can actually be slower, because the CPU is now doing all the work the GPU would otherwise be doing.
Microsoft® Visual C#®
By John Sharp, Jon Jagger
I was skimming along and found an interesting little note and attached code: At first I was thinking. Maybe he did it as an example of what not to do in a loop. (referring to the "!=") but the next "note" states: Now, I don't know about you, but I don't know ANY programmers that would do this. What would happen if something happened to your hardware (surge, heat, solar flare, misbehaving thread, etc.) and during your precious array loop something happened and your computer mis-interpreted your array length. You could have yourself a very fun infinite loop. But no worries. When the world is perfect, this will never happen and you should be more concerned that the index coming out of the loop is exactly the Length of your array. That seems to be more important than a possible infinite loop. Granted, if you have one of these stray events dogging your memory, you might have greater issues, but we all know computers today are not 100% accurate all the time. I guess that's why this guy stressed using try/catch for everything
Now, I don't claim to know about Microsoft's internal programming staff, but if this guy is on the team... that would explain a lot of things in Windows land.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Sounds good. Tell me when you've finished protecting your code against, uh, solar flares. May I suggest using lots of comments? They absorb neutrinos.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
I think the real question we are all asking ourselves is: can our modded xboxes running linix to emulate a powerpc running WinXP use this wrapper to allow us to play DX10 games? I mean how else are we going to play Halo 2? Ohh... wait... right
Don't see why this is funny... my 64 arrived today... using them to build a Gentoo Beowulf cluster so I can play UT2004!
Self-referential Sigs are cool on /. these days...
54
This is kinda offtopic, but I'm always amazed with what you call "old"/slow hardware. If all you do is surf the web and play solitaire, what kind of hardware do you think you need? Win95 was enough to run web browsers and solitaire! A Pentium I and 64Mb RAM is enough! I assure you that most tasks you do on a typical computer require less than 800Mhz to run perfectly fine. Sure, if you want to run the latest and greatest games, you do need a highest end PC, but for most people, that's not the case.
I wonder how much of this is caused by marketing and how much is caused by "buying ability" (ie: you buy because you can or because marketing makes you believe you need it?).
In my country we don't have that much extra money to buy a pc every year. Normally we buy computers every 5 to 10 years... And I dare say that with the latest procs it will be even further between updates (updating from a P2 to a P3 or P4 was a big change, updating an AMD 3000 to a 3600 isn't much difference).
Just so you know, WinXP minimal requirements are a P2 and 64Mb of RAM. And it actually runs quite well (better than win98 on the same hardware). I guess marketing makes people believe that unless you have 1GB of RAM and the latest proc it won't run fine...
Funny enough, my wife got my old computer (dual core 3600+ AMD, 2 gigs ram and ATI Radion XT1800), and I put a copy of vista on that machine and it works fine, but all she does on her computer is open the web browser and play solitaire. She has FAR from high end hardware, and she runs it in the high graphics desktop mode without a hickup.
As far as most people are concerned, that's a pretty high end system. The processor is towards the low end for current retail products, but the graphics card is pretty far up there, and 2 gigs of RAM is certainly on the high end. That computer is much better than the average system at Best Buy. Microsoft wouldn't be able to sell Vista if a computer like that couldn't run it.
Commercial software vendors will make their apps available on Linux when more users migrate to the platform.
More users will migrate to the platform when the apps they need are available.
Chicken.
Egg.
WINE short-circuits the dependency loop by allowing people who still need this or that Win32 app to migrate to Linux if they want to.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
"The Inquirer is understandably cautious about these claims, urging readers to investigate the releases themselves to ascertain whether or not it's a hoax." So much for the rigor of investigative journalism.
I know what you're saying, but be careful about the blanket statements. I have an old IBM thinkpad that has 256MB of memory in it. XP runs like a one-legged dog even before I run any user apps, but Xubuntu (XFCE, pretty lightweight) runs great for Firefox, Thunderbird and most other things I need to get done on the family room computer. Of course, my dev Ubuntu box needs a gig or things feel slow with everything I need to run.
Derek
Don't Panic...
But a fast usermode to kernel interface is difficult to get right. It's in large part why microkernel based operation systems are so hard to get working fast. Then there's GDI to contend with, and making any changes to GDI is troublesome. I believe much of the work done with Vista have been in battle with GDI. In fact, I heard that GDI is emulated on Vista. MS must have said "screw it" at some point, and sent GDI headfirst out of the kernel and into some emulated environment. BTW, if you want to know how troublesome GDI is you should check out the Stardock people. They made a theming engine on top of it (no small feat). I heard from unreliable sources that MS ended up licensing theirs for XP.