Vista release date announced

[JediSanf]

Thanks to TGDaily (http://www.tgdaily.com/) for the Vista release date story (http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/02/28/vista_launch_in_october/).


Sources told TG Daily that Microsoft is aiming for a global rollout in the first week of October (2 - 6 October). At launch date, Microsoft will also introduce DirectX9L (formerly named Windows Graphics Framework 1.0), the Vista upgrade for the multimedia driver, as well as DirectX 10 (WGF 2.0) and the Media Center Edition (MCE) of Vista. An update for DirectX (v10.1) will be released in the second half of 2007.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

They also announced that the various (and many) patches/updates/"service" packs that make it actually work will follow a year or two after release.

[JediSanf]

Indeed.

Note to the editor: You misspelled "release". :D

[askheaves]

Just good to finally see some dates on this. I guess we can start planning around it now.

[fitbabits]

Indeed.

Note to the editor: You misspelled "release". :D
Ur kiding mE ryte? :)

[Jukey]

2 versions of DirectX on the same day? :confused:

[Mr.Green]

How. Much.

[NoName]

How. Much.
If you have to ask then you can't afford it ;).

[Mr.Green]

If you have to ask then you can't afford it ;).
More expensive than your mom?

Yeah. I went there. :o

[Rirath]

Longer than I'd like to wait, yet nothing very surprising.

[Paranoia]

Will we see an MTV show featuring Windows Vista?

[Zeal]

Can we get an .iso leak, please.

[GrinR]

Jesus f'in christ!!! OCTOBER???

The big :( in my mind is how I know it's not going to be any better than XP.

I love XP with all my little heart. I put ribbons on it and we play 'teatime', that's how fucking much I love XP.

[Cyotik]

Woah, that's some pretty serious XP loving there. I wasn't aware a person could be so in love with an OS. Wait, nevermind, I just had an image of Apple and Linux fans. To be fair I'm a big fan of XP, maybe not a big enough fan to play teatime with it but its pretty good. Can't wait for Vista though, I wonder how game performance will be affected.

[OUX]

Heres hoping it doesn't look like tonka toys again.

[Deadend]

Meh, I will probably wait on Vista. DRM gets no love from me.

[Mason]

Where are the DX10 cards and the public documentation? The last two DX9 SDKs have had some goodies, but not enough. At this pace, we won't see more than a few proper DX10 games until the next Windows refresh.

[Grimgrock]

...and woe unto the World came the Beast. ..and the World did tremble. Beware the Beast.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Will we see an MTV show featuring Windows Vista?

Even more important: will Paris Hilton get a free copy?

I refuse to buy it unless Paris Hilton tells me that it is cool!



In all seriousness, can you guys imagine what will happen if the PS3, the Revolution, and Vista all come out around the same time? We'll see dozens of PS3, Xbox360, Rev, and Vista commercials and ads everywhere. Nerds the world over will have one large simultaneous orgasm, Zeal's head will explode, and life as we know it will cease.

[Busted_Astromech]

Moving on to serious matters, has anymore info been released on DX10? Last I heard were murmurs that it would have some sort of occlusion tool allowing for a geometric increase in objects in a scene, but that was a while ago.

Can anyone give me anymore detail than what the Wikipedia entry goes into?

[Cyotik]

I heard DX10 can cook dinner, do your taxes and program your VCR! In all honesty though, I'm curious myself what new features DX10 brings to the table.

[Klade]

DX10 does not go hunting, because that implies possibility of failure, DX10 goes out killing people.

[Phades]

So there's a MCE version of Vista as well? I thought that I'd finally be able to stream movies to my 360 when that came out. This fills me with rage... unquenchable rage.

[Mason]

Moving on to serious matters, has anymore info been released on DX10? Last I heard were murmurs that it would have some sort of occlusion tool allowing for a geometric increase in objects in a scene, but that was a while ago.

Can anyone give me anymore detail than what the Wikipedia entry goes into?
DX10 does have a form of hardware predicated occlusion. There's a simple example implementation, but that's not terribly informative.

Try this (http://wangdaniu.cnblogs.com/archive/2006/01/18/319399.html) site for a bit of explanation on the sample. Ignore the chinese. It's a nice little feature, but not DX10-defining.

[aversion2k]

...In all seriousness, can you guys imagine what will happen if the PS3, the Revolution, and Vista all come out around the same time? We'll see dozens of PS3, Xbox360, Rev, and Vista commercials and ads everywhere. Nerds the world over will have one large simultaneous orgasm, Zeal's head will explode, and life as we know it will cease.

HA we dont get ads for gaming stuff in NZ. Well maybe 1 or 2 ads a year.

[H.Bogard]

has anymore info been released on DX10? Last I heard were murmurs that it would have some sort of occlusion tool allowing for a geometric increase in objects in a scene, but that was a while ago.


It can also breastfeed babies....

ah crap someone already beat me to it :(

[Banacek]

Thanks to work and our MS licensing agreement, it'll be free for me :)

[drakkarim]

extremetech has a really nice writeup about vista without all the marketing hype. i suggest people read it to at least get a good idea of the (serious) new features. i'm lookin forward to it myself.

and quite frankly you'll be running on it sooner or later anyway, whether at work, home, or even school :)

save the OSX/Linux drivel, i only care about gaming friendly os'es.

[Heretic Machine]

Isn't DX10 supposed to be HIGHLY incompatible with games based on previous verseions of DX? I could be wrong, but it sees like that's what I heard.

[DeadlyDonkey]

extremetech has a really nice writeup about vista without all the marketing hype. i suggest people read it to at least get a good idea of the (serious) new features. i'm lookin forward to it myself.

and quite frankly you'll be running on it sooner or later anyway, whether at work, home, or even school :)

save the OSX/Linux drivel, i only care about gaming friendly os'es.


Post is worthless without a link :)

[Nintendo Revolution]

Well, i'm kind of undecided on my support for Vista. It seems incredibly overdue, but even this still, it doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of new features in the future for it. It's also quite amusing that there still is really no point to the whole clock/space whore on the sidebar. That's been there since the initial longhorn releases, and it's not looking any better or useful.

I did like some of the features like auto-defrag though, which could come in handy. Ideally, everything important should have the option to be scheduled, even shutting down.

[Gel214th]

Uhh...ran through the article at ExtremeTech.
http://www.extremetech.com/slideshow/0,1206,a=172305,00.asp

It's been around for a while now, I skimmed it before. If these are the reasons why one should purchase Vista then they aren't very convincing.

1) Performance 'control' panel that tells you how your PC performs? As a gamer I do that myself with 3DMark2005/6 and checking the Framerate in my games. What the heck does this do for me as a gamer that makes it a must have feature? A similar utility can very well be retrofitted with a Service Pack 3 release. There are similar utilities available now over a web browser.
2) Auto Defragger...I can Schedule the Defrag tool right now. So this one runs whenever it thinks my system is Idle. And I suppose it also promises instant recovery if it is defragging and I want to use the PC. Or my AntiVirus starts up in between.Yeah. Right.
3)Power Settings Control Panel - Same thing we have now dressed up in a new interface.
4)Saving date to FLash Memory. Well, we don't have that currently unless you invest in an expensive nand flash peripheral, I believe Gigabyte sells one. I also believe that performance tests revealed negligible system speed increases using this Flash memory, which was a very different result from what we were expecting. So exactly how much faster does using this Flash Memory make the system? Why haven't we seen any quantifiable statistics of system performance With Flash Memory and Without Flash Memory?
5)Network Center - New interface and better usability
6)Speech Recognition- if you ever want it, you can install Microsoft's Speech software right now. Thing is...most people don't use it, don't want it and probably still won't use it in Vista.
7)Calendar App- Most people that need this have MS Outlook and use that instead.
8)Games Folder - err...new interface. Better usability.Maybe
9)Windows Media Player - New interface, probably better usability and some new features.
10)Rolodex Windows - A true and utter waste of graphics resources.File this under new interface features and stop.

oh and lets not forget the Stardocks Widgets stuff that is built into the OS. Big flipping deal. And Meta tags on files? Where's the completely new file system we were promised that would have been really revolutionary for Windows? Oh right...after 4 years or more it still can't be done.

Which one of these features makes Vista a must have?? None of them. Most of them take existing systems, tweak them a little, add one or two minor features and splash lots of sparkly interface elements over them. Bloody hell, we could have this right now in XP.

So is the mantra for purchasing this new OS again going to be : "It's more stable" and "It's more secure". Yeah, until the bugs start showing up and then we'll be told the NEXT iteration will be even MORE stable and even MORE Secure and so on and so on. Yeesh. I don't see anything here that provides a reason that Vista will not suck compared to MacOSX, Windows XP if patched with some new features,or various Linux distributions.

What the heck does it really offer for the high price?

Vista also represents the start of DRM on people's machines, whether they like it or not. So it represents the true beginning of total loss of consumer rights and circumvention of Fair Use policy through Technology by the Corporate Monopolies of the world, RIAA, MPAA and others, and you can get ready to purchase all new Monitor hardware if you want to watch HD content.Oh, if we'll even be allowed to put DVDs and CDs into the computer drives under the DRM system anymore.

Vista is also a vehicle for forcing us down Microsoft's graphics path, stunting the rapid pace of growth in the Graphics industry and hamstringing the OpenGL standard.

Vista is equalling nothing more than an incremental, visual release with 'new' features that we should have had in XP, stability we should already have and security that will have to be tested in the wild before it is believed.

[Roman]

Post is worthless without a link :)
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1931946,00.asp

[bapenguin]

Isn't DX10 supposed to be HIGHLY incompatible with games based on previous verseions of DX? I could be wrong, but it sees like that's what I heard.

Right. There is an emulation layer though.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

Isn't DX10 supposed to be HIGHLY incompatible with games based on previous verseions of DX? I could be wrong, but it sees like that's what I heard.

Yeah, Microsoft's support for legacy gaming has been seriously lacking. I don't see any reason why that won't continue in Vista, and it will probably get worse.

I got on a huge nostalgia trip recently and tried to play several of my old favorites. Many didn't work at all and gave me wonky errors. Alpha Centauri... :(

[Steele Johnson]

I heard that vista has built-in 3rd party ad support.

[drakkarim]

Post is worthless without a link :)

if its too difficult (or you're too lazy) to make the mental jump from "extremetech" to "www.extremetech.com" then the article would've probably been too 'techy' for you anyway.

dang, need my coffee...

[Serapth]

Yeah, Microsoft's support for legacy gaming has been seriously lacking. I don't see any reason why that won't continue in Vista, and it will probably get worse.

I got on a huge nostalgia trip recently and tried to play several of my old favorites. Many didn't work at all and gave me wonky errors. Alpha Centauri... :(


HAHAHAHA... thats a joke right? Microsoft has been FAR better at supporting legacy gaming then any software company in existance. The simple fact you can play a DOS 5 game on Windows XP is simply staggering. Granted some things will get lost as they move, but Christ, whats the history of OSes here??!?!?! DOS 16 bit -> Windows 16 bit (3/3.1/3.11) -> DOS with 32 bit extenders -> Win 95 -> Win95 R2 -> Win 98 -> Win 98SE ->WinMe -> ( these two were parallel until 2000 ) NT 3.5 -> NT 4 -> Windows 2000 -> Windows XP

The fact anything runs from version to version is a pretty amazing accomplishment. Also, if its a win95 game under xp, try right clicking and doing a Run As -> Win 95. If its an old dos app, try Dos Box.


As to Vista being very un backward compatible, thats frankly not true. Thats the reason for the two DirectX releases at the same time. I have already been playing a few games on Vista ( HL2 and GuildWar ) without issues. What the major difference is they have re-architected the video driver subsystem ( moved it from the kernel to the user space ) and required every driver meet WHQ standards. This move makes going forward a very complex thing, but directX 9L is already 100% backward compatible.

The issue is actually forward compatibilty. DX10 will require the changes they made in order to run. Thus, games supporting DX10 will only run under Vista and according to Microsoft, DX10 CANNOT be backported to XP. So, in summary, if its a DX10 game, it wont run on anything earlier then XP. So, get used to DX9, we are going to be using it for a long long time.

[Mason]

Isn't DX10 supposed to be HIGHLY incompatible with games based on previous verseions of DX? I could be wrong, but it sees like that's what I heard.
The whole purpose of DX10 is to strengthen the definition of what "DX#-capable hardware" means. Right now a polite game must query the device in many ways just to determine if it supports very basic operations, as there are no assurances of that support for a DX9 device. As games support more and more techniques, the need for acceptable fallback paths for mixed-capability devices adds a lot of overhead.

DX10 isn't a silver bullet, but it moves PC graphics towards a more strict model, which over time will help keep PC gaming competitive with its fixed-hardware competitors.

[Citizen Philip]

I was under the impression that PC gaming was already competitive. If Vista provides a "cock-block" that stops people from making terrible uninformed decisions without
A) consulting for their needs
B) do any research
and then blaming everyone else for their ignorance. I'm cool with that.

I know nothing about cars, but I sure as hell am not going to walk into a dealer and believe anything they say, and buy the car they think is "right for me". I do MY RESEARCH FIRST.

[Serapth]

I was under the impression that PC gaming was already competitive. If Vista provides a "cock-block" that stops people from making terrible uninformed decisions without
A) consulting for their needs
B) do any research
and then blaming everyone else for their ignorance. I'm cool with that.

I know nothing about cars, but I sure as hell am not going to walk into a dealer and believe anything they say, and buy the car they think is "right for me". I do MY RESEARCH FIRST.

Your referring to the video card market arent you? Well frankly, I dont blame consumers for being confused as frankly video card companies come fractions of an inch from out right lying. Lets see...

Calling a card "Direct X 9" when it doesnt have a full feature set.
Claiming to be HDMI capatable and arent.
Misleading numbering... see GeForce4Mx for example.

On top of that, its a pretty screwed up industry and how well are you going to know the difference between product lines? PCI vs AGP vs PCI-E vs onboard. SLI, DDR, DDR2, Pixel Shader 1 1.1 2 2.1 3, CG, etc. 32,64,128,256,512mb, mip mapping 2x 4x 8x AA, blah blah blah.

Its one thing to have to do research before making an informed decision ( on in your example a 25K + purchase, not a 100+ $ vid card ), its another to using a car example, have to know the fuel burn ratio, valve angling and timing or risk getting screwed.

Buying a video card these days is WAAAAYYY harder then it should be. MS enforcing a baseline standard and actually enforcing it ( in DX10 a video card wont be able to say what It can do... it either works, or doesnt ) is a very very good thing.

[Pluvious]

Vista also represents the start of DRM on people's machines, whether they like it or not. So it represents the true beginning of total loss of consumer rights and circumvention of Fair Use policy through Technology by the Corporate Monopolies of the world, RIAA, MPAA and others, and you can get ready to purchase all new Monitor hardware if you want to watch HD content.Oh, if we'll even be allowed to put DVDs and CDs into the computer drives under the DRM system anymore.


THIS is the reason I won't be upgrading to Vista. No one tells me what I can or can not do with my media. DRM is BS.

[Citizen Philip]

An IGP that is in your name brand PC and probably your laptop. Which is not made for gaming, don't think it is made for gaming. This includes Nvidia and Radeon based IGPs.

If you bought a name brand PC (Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway, etc) You are probably PCI, unless you knew better and got a better mobo. Otherwise you probably already know you can use AGP or PCI-E. Lucky for you, they mostly don't make proprietary hardware anymore and you can salvage your parts.

Direct X 9 = 2 things. Software (which anyone can have 9.0c) and Hardware.

Your video card is Direct X 9 compliant or it isn't. If you are not sure, be very specific when you go to purchase it: if a store can't tell you if a card is DX9 or not, you are probably in the wrong store.

Your card is not Direct X 9. Either your card is DX8 to 8.2 or lower. 8-8.2 is pretty reliable and is probably only missing pixel shaders, which are mostly optional. FX cards are the most irksome of the 8-8.2, 7000-9250 Series Radeons are also iffy.

Your card is Direct X7 or lower. You are facked. These cards do not have standard TnL/Transform and Lighting/Texture and Lighting. And have the most problems. Geforce MX series, I AM LOOKING AT YOU.

..

So like I said. A cockblock. All the other stuff you mentioned is window-dressing for the enthusiast not someone who wants a video card to get a game working.

[DoubleUranium]

Amen to the DRM comments. Since all drivers will be required to be signed by Microsoft, I'll stick with my XP machine for as long as I can.

[Serapth]

Ahhhhh... poor little pirates may have to actually pay for their games??? :)

[Citizen Philip]

Ahhhhh... poor little pirates may have to actually pay for their games??? :)

Troll. You know why people don't like DRM. Or you should know.

[Serapth]

Troll. You know why people don't like DRM. Or you should know.

Well, yeah, frankly it was a troll.

Sorta...

Frankly, out of all of the people bitching about DRM and its evilness, I imagine it breaks down something like this:

20% actually had an issue with a game, sony rootkit, etc and have a legit beef with DRM
1% have a device that couldnt play X format because of a DRM issue
49% are bitching about how evil DRM is because its trendy and are frankly going to buy a PS3 anyways.
30% find it really annoying trying to pirate that starforce game, or find it annoying they have to run DVDShrink, etc...

Pretending people dont pirate is funny as hell.

And hey, im not keen on DRM, but frankly until recently ( starting with the Sony rootkit ) and until the stuff proposed for HD and BR, DRM has NEVER once been an issue for me with legit purchases. Microsofts media player and Genuine Advantage which are about as close as they have gotten to DRM todate, both worked flawlessly. Ditto for my iPod, ive never had an issue playing songs on it. Ditto for my DVDs and CDs, I have never had either fail to play in any device I own.

So really, to date, DRM especially Microsofts take on DRM are being blown waaaaay out of proportion.

The only really bad non sony rootkit thing Ive heard of is Starforce ( I believe ) causing CD Roms not to work. And frankly, nobody I know has been bit by that. It could just be an internet number phenom... aka a few people yelling really loudly.

[Slack3r78]

Direct X 9 = 2 things. Software (which anyone can have 9.0c) and Hardware.
Correct so far.

Your video card is Direct X 9 compliant or it isn't. If you are not sure, be very specific when you go to purchase it: if a store can't tell you if a card is DX9 or not, you are probably in the wrong store.
Correct to an extent. The problem you run into are things like the i915 in my notebook which reports itself as DX9 then happily goes on to emulate shading units in software, turning a card that would run fine on a DX7/8 path into an absolute dog attempting to run on a DX9 code path.

Your card is not Direct X 9. Either your card is DX8 to 8.2 or lower. 8-8.2 is pretty reliable and is probably only missing pixel shaders, which are mostly optional. FX cards are the most irksome of the 8-8.2, 7000-9250 Series Radeons are also iffy.
The FX series are DX9 parts. The problem is they attempted to use higher precision shaders before the hardware was really fast enough for it, meaning they pretty much ran like dogs on the same code as R3xx series hardware. For this reason, most software will push the FX series on a DX8 code path, but they're technically DX9 parts.

The DX8 spec includes pixel shaders. This is GF3/R8500 hardware. Maybe you remember when Morrowind came out and this was such a cool new tech? At any rate, it's DX7 cards that lack shaders.

Your card is Direct X7 or lower. You are facked. These cards do not have standard TnL/Transform and Lighting/Texture and Lighting. And have the most problems. Geforce MX series, I AM LOOKING AT YOU.
Everything from the GF2 series up has had hardware T&L. You have to go back to the TNT2 to get a card lacking it. What the GF4MX lacks is shading hardware. This is what makes it a DX7 part, as noted before.

So like I said. A cockblock. All the other stuff you mentioned is window-dressing for the enthusiast not someone who wants a video card to get a game working.
I won't disagree with this. While the DX10 thing should prevent things like Intel IGPs reporting themselves as DX9 capable when the shading stuff is emulated in software, I don't see how it will prevent SNAFUs like the GeForce FX which was a DX9 part that just plain wasn't fast enough to run most DX9 code paths. Or the aforementioned GeForce4 MX. Or the Radeon 9200 that was just a rebadged R8500. The list goes on.

[Mason]

I was under the impression that PC gaming was already competitive. If Vista provides a "cock-block" that stops people from making terrible uninformed decisions without
A) consulting for their needs
B) do any research
and then blaming everyone else for their ignorance. I'm cool with that.

I know nothing about cars, but I sure as hell am not going to walk into a dealer and believe anything they say, and buy the car they think is "right for me". I do MY RESEARCH FIRST.

Let me guess...not a programmer?

As the graphics pipeline continues to evolve, you've got to lock some stuff down when "choice" on the feature is no longer relevant. When the frontier of 3D graphics is moving on to PS/VS 4.0 and geometry shaders, while you're still having to check to see if cards support alpha blending and A8R8G8B8 surfaces, you're just piling up a big dumb irrelevant workload. Shifting over to tighter specifications for each hardware generation is a nice way of cleaning house.

It has nothing to do with consumer choice or the shit printed on the back of boxes, since most consumers never have a clue when they have a buggy or poorly-implemented driver. They just know a game isn't working, and they're going to scream about it until someone fixes it for them. Giving the people who design drivers and hardware less room to make arbitrary choices and mistakes in their implementation is good for consumers and developers.