pouët.net

I did not follow the tech news and the upcoming MS stuff for quite a while, so my questions might sound quite n00bish for some of you :)

- Are there any particular implications for the demoscene with Windows Vista?

- Will OpenGL still be supported without having to download extra stuff? If so, OpenGL 2.0?

- Will demos/4k/64k made for Xp and 2000 run directly on Vista without modifications?

- DX10 mandatory from what I have understood. Will DX9 applications run anyway? (backward compatibility?)

- Any cool new feature we should be aware of? :)

Any other hint, advice, news is welcome :)

you are a brave man to say this on pouet. in fact i think you are so brave that i have reconsidered being the first to answer this invitation for pouetization :-)

havoc: I expect lightspeed pouetization of the thread indeed, but I also expect a few interesting answers as well, hidden among the pile of nonsense that will probably follow.

Ryg? Kb? Smash? BoyC? Skrebbel? Ah, no, not Skrebbel! ;)

I'm not the ultimate source of information here, but here's what I've gathered:
- Vista should run most normal exe-files, unfortunately not all. This probably means that some intros won't work.
- DX10 is not mandatory, in fact the accelerated Vista UI is based on DX9. So yes, DX9 is supported. Not sure about DX8 etc

zzzzzzap! instant poetization ;)

anyways.
- What I read was that you have only emulated OpenGL1.4 (through DirectX) if you don't install a ICD. If you do so, Aeroglass won't run anymore... Thank you M$!
- Graphics cards need to be fully DX9 to run Vista.

rarefluid: I read somewhere that the issue with Aeroglass + ICD had been resolved...

Oh, and no, the graphics card doesn't need to be DX9 to run vista, It needs to be DX9 to run Aeroglass.

well... mkay then...

Should be easy to fix though - Crinkler is already said to be Vista compatible, and kkrunchy is prolly a few bytes away from it at most if not already. In the worst case, most groups can just repack their things.

Aeroglass will be turned off as soon as the ICD is _used_, not when it's installed. But perhaps the GPU vendors have already found a way to fake around that problem.

Oh, it's DX9? Good to know, I really thought it was DX10.

Gargaj: that's what I was wondering, each prod will have to be recompiled or repacked then :(

it's dx9 yes, and you dont even need a very fancy dx9 card cos you can turn half the posh viewing shit off (transparent windows and crap like that) .. anyway, i came to a point where i think that i rather use linux/macos than vista. the whole 'let's turn your pc into a multimedia theatre with an interface/apps even a baboon can operate'-hype aint my forte. but let's stick with xp for now.

Can't somebody make a repacker? (I guess for crinkler or kkrunchy it might be awful though)

crinkler 1.0 already supports a /FIX option to do that

What's with the downward compatibility of future productions released on M$ Vista. I.e XP or perhaps still 2k (ok 2k's getting quite outdated now) ?

Maali: Rightly so, I just hope that the Ubuntu/XGL thingie will turn out to support more HW-configs (especially ATI mob. gfx boards)...the live- CD's were very promising.

HASTA LA VISTA BABY!

Yeah, how about the fact the many people might not switch to Vista? XP works good enough and the competition is getting more and more attractive lately.

sparcus: it's the same argument as "I won't switch to OpenGL 2.0", "I won't use pixel shaders" or "I won't use D3DX" and that was really not the point of my question :)

all kkrunchy executables i've tested under vista work.

keops: well, actually it is a point to consider because if people are not switching the scene will probably be running into compatibility issues.

And I don't think it's the same argument, Microsoft itself already said that XP will probably be Vista's biggest competitor, and some other people in this thread also already pointed out that they won't be making the switch. Also, I know plenty of sceners who already switched to Macs or Linux.

Personally I'm also not going to buy Vista. My hd crashed 2 weeks ago so I decided to finaly make the switch to Linux which I've been planning for years. I'll probably install Windows XP on a partition to be able to keep watching demos but I'm definately not going to buy Vista.

So seriously, I think that assuming that everyone will automatically switch to Vista is a bit premature.

I *NEVER* assumed or wrote such a thing, not even remotely. I'm simply trying to gather information about compatibility and upgrade issues, regardless of OS zealotism, people's belief or people's wishes.

And I'm just trying to point out that the "cool features" for which you did ask might alienate a lot of viewers if you don't keep compatibility with XP in mind. We both seem to care about compatibility except that you are wondering about XP demos running on Vista while I'm more interested in the other way around :-)

To be completely honest I was exactly this weary of XP as I am of Vista now. Who knows - the thing is still pretty virgin, it will take a couple of months until people can claim a final verdict over it. Take note that the majority of demoscene productions don't support W98 anymore.