Gaming Post-Vista — Myths and Realities 57
Ant writes "An article at Ten Ton Hammer answers personal computer/PC gamers' question on what's coming their way with Microsoft's newest operating system/OS, Windows Vista. With the PC primed to be the primary distribution platform for certain gaming categories (MMOGs in particular) for many years to come, it's important to know exactly what we're getting into when Vista rolls out worldwide on January 30, 2007. Jeff 'Ethec' Woleslagle offers a quick, non-technical rebuttal to several of the more ambitious PC gaming rumors cropping up around the internet." From the article: "Games which seek to take advantage of DirectX 10 high-end features like Shader Model 4.0 (which the graphically revamped version of EVE Online will aspire to use) will require a computer fully compatible with DirectX 10. This in turn requires a GPU fully optimized to work with DX 10 (such as the first-to-market NVidia 8800). The Microsoft requirements for a DX10 'optimized' GNU and system are fairly strict, so jaded gamers take note: this phrase is more than a marketing maneuver. For those among you that can't afford a major hardware upgrade anytime soon, don't fret (yet). Microsoft's XNA framework enables developers to easily develop parallel versions of a game for DX 9 and DX 10. Here's hoping that developers and publishers will be equally accommodating in releasing XP / Vista compatible games in the same box."
Article error (Score:5, Funny)
Try GPU. Are there no editors anywhere?
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You must be-
ooh, the heck with it
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OpenGL - Where's OpenGL? (Score:2)
The ONLY important question on Vista is - WHEN DO WE GET REAL OPENGL SUPPORT
As is, OpenGL support is flat-out broken on Vista. Boycott Vista until they provide REAL openGL support.
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When you install the card manufacturer's drivers? Vista only uses the OpenGL->DirectX translation layer with the out-of-the-box drivers. Installing manufacturer drivers will give you proper OpenGL support.
At least in the short-term. (Score:2)
Let's see. WoW still supports Windows 2000. Eve-Online just stopped supporting Win98. I think, if this is any indication, that we'll be okay if we don't upgrade rights away.
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Bad analogy (Score:1)
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I'm under the belief that the the announced vista-only games are just marketing tools to get people to upgrade.
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GNU? (Score:1, Funny)
Is this part of the MS acquisition of SuSE?
Shader Model 4.0 in EVE (Score:1)
Minimum requirements (Score:2)
BTW. I'm not saying that no developers are interested in the f
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Of course, with Microsoft being the publishing warhorse for many gaming companies, you can bet there will be pressure on game studios to at least use the features, but not require Vista.
Side note: despite
Re:Minimum requirements (Score:4, Informative)
A couple of years later as a tester with a very large publisher, I got stuck with the job of verifying (and helping to set) minimum specs. The marketing guys had all kinds of statistics on average machine and how doubling the minimum RAM reduced our target market by X%, etc etc etc
Very rarely did any technology less than 3 years old even figure into the discussion on what the minimum hardware was that we absolutely HAD to support to have a chance of selling enough games to keep the studio afloat. And there was a lot of pushback from the developers to try and add any technology (rendering, sound, etc) that wasn't supported on the minimum machine just because that meant there was all kinds of complexity involved (essentially they wound up writing two complete, parallel games - Software Renderers vs. Hardware Renderers for 3d is one fine example)
MS has lined up a couple of high-profile "exclusives" to try and hype gaming on Vista. But I'd be willing to bet that most video game developers/publishers are going to continue to target WinXP/2k users for years to come, simply to maximize their market.
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If there was a speed (or quality) increase by running different versions of a game (that used all the same game assets) then I'm positive that developers would produce 2 versions of the exact same game (which would involve re-writing a small portion of the engine) inorder to take advantage of the benefits.
On the other hand if there is little benefit of producing
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Hah!
In my experience, as a system administrator, developers are *only* interested in fancy new features...
(And are the bane of my existance, especially since our systems are primarily Debian).
Hey, I just offended developers *and* Debian fan-boys in a *single* posting
I can do without games that..... (Score:2)
IMHO by 2008 we get Vista only games (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista? Direct X 10? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And we are talking about computers here, not consoles. Each console has its own development system, so studios that want to write their games for every platform use various solutions, and certainly not one that involves various open s
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As for programmer's productivity, it is the #1 problem in today's programming world, either in business, scientific or multimedia applications.
OpenGL? (Score:2)
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I'm no graphic programmer myself, but at first glance, it does seem like DX would be easier to use, so if real game programmers feel that way too, that would explain it right there.
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http://www.motherboardpoint.com/t87377-technical-p s2-info-from-gdc--rsx-based-on-nv47.html [motherboardpoint.com]
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If you're saying nobody's using opengl for their Playstation 3 games and rather write to the hardware because of optimization (because we all know we can't optimize our games if we using opengl.. right...) you're saying nobody's gonna use direct3d for the xbox360.
And stop spreading fud about opengl... "opengl is still getting it's act together".. ffs!
If you're doing a vista-only game you bend over to get a hard pounding and nothing else... gladly not everybody
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Not according to a previous slashdot article linking to gamasutra - the order should be Wii, Xbox 360, PS3.
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Not true. Most people use OpenGL...it's just that it's the enterprise users who do. Big CAD/CAM/automotive/aerospace etc etc etc all use OpenGL.
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On Windows, SDL uses DirectX.
Forget Graphics, Think Audio (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenAL bypasses this limitation, but anything that uses DirectSound3D(which is most older games and some modern games) now gets neutered on systems with high-end audio cards. Of course this mainly screws over Creative since EAX3+ is a closed spec anyhow(and you won't find much love for that), but since no one is or will be working on a competing standard anyhow, it's just going to make things harder for everyone since it breaks the only modern standard.
The graphical changes due to DX10 won't cause much trouble, MS has thought this through both forwards and back, but there are going to be a lot of angry EAX users once Vista comes out.
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Hmmm (Score:2)
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Cute, but that's no longer a valid point. Consoles have ceased to be simple, plug the disc in and it just plays machines.
Nowadays, consoles come in different configurations, have or don't have HD's, need expensive ass monitors (and all the differences in 480/1080/i/p isn't helping), the games need patches, the conoles get bricked (hard crashes) and you have to navigate a
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Don't believe that! GNU's Not Unintentional. GNUs are very deliberate, indeed.
I'll pass. (Score:2, Insightful)
"it's important to know exactly what we're getting into when Vista rolls out"
Who says we're going to get into it, Zonk? What I find amusing is that Microsoft tries to say it will be better/faster/stronger/smarter. Faster? Definitely not. If you want to run games on it, you'll be running the game AND Aeros. I heard something about Vista possibly disabling Aeros while you're playing a game. Um, no. I'd like to play online games while windowed so I can do other things too, and that would require both