13th November 2007, 8:38 AM
Indeed I have. I've played the demo on my own machine. One thing though. The highest graphics settings are greyed out. So... yeah. Second highest is playable but only barely. It is only smooth when I set it at something nice and low.
I know why those highest graphics settings are greyed out though. They utilize features of DX10. Mind you, my graphics cards don't support DX10 features anyway even if I had Vista, but there it is.
The more I read about Vista though, the more I realize just how much I don't ever want to upgrade to it. It just removes way too much. I mean, DX10 has utterly removed hardware accelerated sound! That's nuts. Bioshock plays fine on my machine but I can imagine if I turned off the X-Fi acceleration I'd see a small dip in frame rates. I got that nice sound card for a reason MS! Meanwhile, Creative has been working with all sorts of game companies to show them how to code in hardware accelerated sound alongside DX10 support. It is just annoying to have to program like that instead of using the same layer for everything, and I have to wonder what methods Creative is showing them to use... The point of an abstraction layer, well one point among others, is backwards compatibility so long as that abstraction layer exists. That's why every single one of my old games that actually uses DirectX (or OpenGL actually) still works flawlessly in XP, and it's the pre-layer stuff often needs tweaking. Then again, if it's just coding for Creative's driver set then that could work too. Creative did murder every other sound card competitor in the early 1990's, so as long as their new drivers continue to support the old X-Fi calls these games will be as compatible as ever.
It's just annoying though that MS has flat out abandoned a lot of DX features that are really pretty useful. I mean it was one of the big advantages that DX had over OpenGL. GL was just for graphics (you had to get some seperate projects for audio support) but DX had that, audio, something called Direct Input so people didn't have to worry about controller input methods too much (well, actually they sort of did, but everything was still tied together in the same layer which made some things easier), and net access on top of all of that. I had hoped they would actually load it with even more support, DirectPhysics for example, not strip stuff out. Seriously, even if they needed to "streamline" it, deciding that their new sound system would be done ENTIRELY in software was nuts.
I can see a certain logic mind you. Most people don't have the X-Fi. Most people get these amazing computers with nice processors and graphics cards but a cheap SB16 clone for a sound card (are sound cards still that out of date, or do they do SBLive clones in most machines now?). By doing it in software, you can get the same effects as the latest X-Fi. The problem is that there's a performance cost. If you don't have a decent sound card, it's worth the cost, but if you DO have one? Well then you just wasted your money. What you have is a piece of hardware that COULD do that work itself, but instead is just sitting there forwarding the processed sound to your speakers. I think MS needs to rework DX. Their idea of software based sound is "sound" for the low end but I think they need to dynamically switch between software and hardware based depending on the user's hardware configuration. They could even use the software based stuff to EXPAND on X-Fi's capability alongside the board, rather than their current method of expanding by totally replacing the board.
Anyway, the worst offender from what I've been reading is that Vista's DX9 support (DirectX 9.0L I believe it's called, L for Light) is crippled in the same manner, removing, among other things, the existing audio layer that XP supported just fine. This kinda breaks some old game's support for the acceleration.
This is on top of things such as what ABF notes. Namely, the lack of full screen DOS support. This actually stems from one important thing, specifically that Vista has no support for DOS based screen modes, so it can't do any of the old DOS resolutions, thus it can't do any full screen DOS.
Oh, let's see, what else. Ah yes, Vista 64-bit lacks support for 16-bit apps. I understand what's going on there, and they did find a way to get proper 32 bit support in there, but my question is if they had 32 bit support, couldn't they boot strap 16 bit support INTO that 32 bit support, since that's how they got 16 bit apps working in 32 bit mode to begin with? I'm not expecting it to be resident in memory the entire time, but rather just a subsystem that can be put into resident memory only when one attempts to load a 16 bit app. That said, I don't know how difficult coding such "on the fly" loading would be in an OS, as I have zero OS coding experience.
I understand MS wants to move on and not have an OS crippled by legacy any more, but they can make a new OS not really designed for legacy and at the same time still program legacy solutions that can be loaded only when needed, can't they?
I'll also note a few hardware incompatibilities, like no ISA slot support any more, but I expected that, and the one stickler I had (no Game Port support) can actually be resolved by installing a legacy driver. Further, they lack the old help system software, but that too can be installed into Vista for viewing old help file documents. These are examples of what they can do to add support for things, optional components.
This isn't just me the classic gamer wanting a "universal gaming machine", though that is a big part of it. These sorts of incompatibilities actually matter to companies that want to upgrade whole sets of networked computers.
As it stands, here's the thing. Should MS ever make a DX10 package for XP (maybe Service Pack 3 could rework the XP core enough that it could support it), I will see no reason at all to upgrade to Vista.
I know why those highest graphics settings are greyed out though. They utilize features of DX10. Mind you, my graphics cards don't support DX10 features anyway even if I had Vista, but there it is.
The more I read about Vista though, the more I realize just how much I don't ever want to upgrade to it. It just removes way too much. I mean, DX10 has utterly removed hardware accelerated sound! That's nuts. Bioshock plays fine on my machine but I can imagine if I turned off the X-Fi acceleration I'd see a small dip in frame rates. I got that nice sound card for a reason MS! Meanwhile, Creative has been working with all sorts of game companies to show them how to code in hardware accelerated sound alongside DX10 support. It is just annoying to have to program like that instead of using the same layer for everything, and I have to wonder what methods Creative is showing them to use... The point of an abstraction layer, well one point among others, is backwards compatibility so long as that abstraction layer exists. That's why every single one of my old games that actually uses DirectX (or OpenGL actually) still works flawlessly in XP, and it's the pre-layer stuff often needs tweaking. Then again, if it's just coding for Creative's driver set then that could work too. Creative did murder every other sound card competitor in the early 1990's, so as long as their new drivers continue to support the old X-Fi calls these games will be as compatible as ever.
It's just annoying though that MS has flat out abandoned a lot of DX features that are really pretty useful. I mean it was one of the big advantages that DX had over OpenGL. GL was just for graphics (you had to get some seperate projects for audio support) but DX had that, audio, something called Direct Input so people didn't have to worry about controller input methods too much (well, actually they sort of did, but everything was still tied together in the same layer which made some things easier), and net access on top of all of that. I had hoped they would actually load it with even more support, DirectPhysics for example, not strip stuff out. Seriously, even if they needed to "streamline" it, deciding that their new sound system would be done ENTIRELY in software was nuts.
I can see a certain logic mind you. Most people don't have the X-Fi. Most people get these amazing computers with nice processors and graphics cards but a cheap SB16 clone for a sound card (are sound cards still that out of date, or do they do SBLive clones in most machines now?). By doing it in software, you can get the same effects as the latest X-Fi. The problem is that there's a performance cost. If you don't have a decent sound card, it's worth the cost, but if you DO have one? Well then you just wasted your money. What you have is a piece of hardware that COULD do that work itself, but instead is just sitting there forwarding the processed sound to your speakers. I think MS needs to rework DX. Their idea of software based sound is "sound" for the low end but I think they need to dynamically switch between software and hardware based depending on the user's hardware configuration. They could even use the software based stuff to EXPAND on X-Fi's capability alongside the board, rather than their current method of expanding by totally replacing the board.
Anyway, the worst offender from what I've been reading is that Vista's DX9 support (DirectX 9.0L I believe it's called, L for Light) is crippled in the same manner, removing, among other things, the existing audio layer that XP supported just fine. This kinda breaks some old game's support for the acceleration.
This is on top of things such as what ABF notes. Namely, the lack of full screen DOS support. This actually stems from one important thing, specifically that Vista has no support for DOS based screen modes, so it can't do any of the old DOS resolutions, thus it can't do any full screen DOS.
Oh, let's see, what else. Ah yes, Vista 64-bit lacks support for 16-bit apps. I understand what's going on there, and they did find a way to get proper 32 bit support in there, but my question is if they had 32 bit support, couldn't they boot strap 16 bit support INTO that 32 bit support, since that's how they got 16 bit apps working in 32 bit mode to begin with? I'm not expecting it to be resident in memory the entire time, but rather just a subsystem that can be put into resident memory only when one attempts to load a 16 bit app. That said, I don't know how difficult coding such "on the fly" loading would be in an OS, as I have zero OS coding experience.
I understand MS wants to move on and not have an OS crippled by legacy any more, but they can make a new OS not really designed for legacy and at the same time still program legacy solutions that can be loaded only when needed, can't they?
I'll also note a few hardware incompatibilities, like no ISA slot support any more, but I expected that, and the one stickler I had (no Game Port support) can actually be resolved by installing a legacy driver. Further, they lack the old help system software, but that too can be installed into Vista for viewing old help file documents. These are examples of what they can do to add support for things, optional components.
This isn't just me the classic gamer wanting a "universal gaming machine", though that is a big part of it. These sorts of incompatibilities actually matter to companies that want to upgrade whole sets of networked computers.
As it stands, here's the thing. Should MS ever make a DX10 package for XP (maybe Service Pack 3 could rework the XP core enough that it could support it), I will see no reason at all to upgrade to Vista.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)