oudeis on 26/3/2006 at 22:52
l don't know, if someone like tim sweeney thinks it's good l'd have to say it's probably pretty good.
Aerothorn on 26/3/2006 at 22:58
Well, yeah, Gamespot may be mainstream but they aren't a Microsoft subsidiary or anything: I'm guessing there are peole OTHER then Microsoft backing up that statement, making it at least theoretically true (if not practically - those kind of numbers are always "worse case scenario vs. best case scenario"). It does sound like the drivers have actually changed things a fair amount, though - I'm not enough of a techie to get all this elastic pipeline/dedicated geometry shader/etc stuff, though.
Swiss Mercenary on 28/3/2006 at 00:53
That 6x performance boost is only on new thingy-ma-doodles that were even handled by the hardware under DX9.
Holy shit, when you use the GPU, rather then the CPU for graphics, it gets you a performance boost!
You won't be seeing your frame rates multiply by 6x, just thanks to DX10.
jer on 28/3/2006 at 04:56
Most of the DX10 claims are a bit overstated, due to hardware changes in now and then. Yes, DX10 will offer huge improvements over DX9.... with new hardware. Typical marketing ploy, though that’s no excuse. I'm somewhat worried about the performance tuner user at this point with Vista. The number of unnecessary background services is huge, with the new search system, performance monitoring, health services, web interaction services, etc. I just don't see Vista as being a lean tuned OS useful for high power applications (here being games, not number crunching). However, I'm sure MS will convince game developers to move to the new vista platform. The biggest problem with the latest MS operating systems (from an MS standpoint) is convincing people to upgrade. What better way to get the hardcore PC crowd then moving the gaming platform forward to vista?
Aerothorn on 23/4/2006 at 20:05
Which is weird, cause I just got my article of PC Magazine where they were just going bonkers over how great it was. So bonkers, in fact, that I was deeply suspicious of the idea that they got their 'unauthorized information' from a 'Microsoft mole'. That article focused on all the great things Vista would have; this article focuses on all the things Vista is missing. Seems like they are two parts of a whole, and neither one should be taken for granted by itself. The guy mentions all the things that were dropped or changed for the worse. And yeah, sounds sucky. But it's hardly all the features - he didn't mention the ones that weren't made worse. The removal of the GDI, for instance, sounds like it will be a major boon for gamers, offering an instant major performance boost (some say up to 40%).
But yeah - I have no opinion on Vista yet (having not used it) but I don't think it's the open-and-shut case the haters are trying to make it out to be.
Fig455 on 24/4/2006 at 09:23
Just like everything, what's wrong w/wait and see? I am not going to get disappointed/excited over features that may or may not be implemented next year....
(aerothorn, I have that mag too, and that's pretty much the same impresssion I came away with)
BUT, if this is the kind of hurdles we'll have to jump for even the simplest of tasks
Quote:
Windows Vista February 2006 CTP (Build 5308/5342) Review, Part 5: Where Vista Fails
Let's look a typical example. One of the first things I do whenever I install a new Windows version is download and install Mozilla Firefox. If we forget, for a moment, the number of warning dialogs we get during the download and install process (including a brazen security warning from Windows Firewall for which Microsoft should be chastised), let's just examine one crucial, often overlooked issue. Once Firefox is installed, there are two icons on my Desktop I'd like to remove: The Setup application itself and a shortcut to Firefox. So I select both icons and drag them to the Recycle Bin. Simple, right?
Wrong. Here's what you have to go through to actually delete those files in Windows Vista. First, you get a File Access Denied dialog (Figure) explaining that you don't, in fact, have permission to delete a ... shortcut?? To an application you just installed??? Seriously?
OK, fine. You can click a Continue button to "complete this operation." But that doesn't complete anything. It just clears the desktop for the next dialog, which is a Windows Security window (Figure). Here, you need to give your permission to continue something opaquely called a "File Operation." Click Allow, and you're done. Hey, that's not too bad, right? Just two dialogs to read, understand, and then respond correctly to. What's the big deal?
What if you're doing something a bit more complicated? Well, lucky you, the dialogs stack right up, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending display of stupidity. Indeed, sometimes you'll find yourself unable to do certain things for no good reason, and you click Allow buttons until you're blue in the face. It will never stop bothering you, unless you agree to stop your silliness and leave that file on the desktop where it belongs. Mark my words, this will happen to you. And you will hate it.
then that really sucks. I hope this gets changed.
Myoldnamebroke on 24/4/2006 at 12:24
Magazines always hype everything up - PREVIEW OF THE BEST THING EVER sells copies, PREVIEW OF SOMETHING MILDLY DISAPPOINTING doesn't. Games are particularly bad for this sort of thing - everyone wants to imagine they've seen something new and spectacular, and it's easy to extrapolate from a few random jumps from a soldier to this is REVOLUTIONARY NEW AI - especially if you want to believe it is.
Testers always hate whatever it is they're testing. It's a combination of being made to use/play it over and over, having your great ideas not implemented by the designers and knowing all the cool stuff that didn't make it. You can get a heavily negative distorted view of something you're testing, as that's your job - criticise and break this product so we can make it better.
dracflamloc on 24/4/2006 at 12:39
Quote Posted by Live
I mean, what am I going to do? Use Linux? I think not... :nono:
Sounds like a good idea to me? Linux is pretty easy these days and supports pretty much any hardware.
Kyloe on 24/4/2006 at 12:53
About those hurdles: it sounds like Application Control in power user mode, which is something for enterprises. Normal enterprise users will be in server-controlled mode and therefore not allowed to install new software anyway.
The power user mode, where you can authorize new applications on the fly, should best not be used at all, because it's a security risk, hence the warnings. Normally, there's a central authorization mechanism, which you use on double-checked install files only.
