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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
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.
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.
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
> The Inquirer is understandably cautious
Wow, now there's a sentence I never expected to see in print!
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.
You know that OpenGL has the same abilities as DirectX 10 (at least on DirectX 10 compatible hardware) thanks to some extensions added by NVIDIA. These extensions are available on Windows 2000/XP, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.
How come OpenGL can do it on those platforms, yet DirectX 10 can only do it on Vista?
RegardselFarto
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.