Hm, according to netmarketshare, perhaps. But as Bean0 pointed out earlier in this thread; XP usage is down to about 7% percent according to Valve. Who probably has a better representation of gamers' PC rigs than any other source.
(You can click on the "Windows Version" row to expand it.)
I'm not saying that LFS should drop XP support. I just don't want to see crazy figures in this thread.
Yep values are working now. Left is positive yaw, looking up is positive pitch, and rolling my head anti-clockwise (or tilting my neck to the left) is positive roll.
A small update on the Oculus Rift. I wanted to order the dev kit, but then I realized: What if I get it now and then they release the consumer version around Christmas? So I sent them an email and their reply was that they don't plan to release anything before the end of this year.
Targeting DX11 (and not 9) would probably still mean the game should work on DX10 hardware, just without the DX11 pretty (or some of it running in software, I dunno how DX fallback works these days).
Either way, there's not a lot of point aiming for optional DX11 components in the near future. DX9c/Shader Model 3 would be a much bigger step than tessellation IMO, and should take a lot less effort to target. Also, you are correct in that 37% can't run the DX11 specific features anyway (but the game would still run for 90-96% if those features are optional).
If you add up the legend, you get 89.76% fully DX10/11 capable, a further 6.38% are running DX10/11 hardware on XP (which is most of the XP userbase).
That leaves <4% on DX9 or lower hardware.
Unfortunately DX10 is not the same as DX11. I don't know why you add these ones together. Furthermore, Scawen already said he personally prefers XP for an unknown period of time and a friend/ex-colleague recommends DX9 to work with. I don't know how people can think it's possible to convince here on the forum to do something different, the last five years show that is pretty much impossible.
I did say that I thought XP was still the best, in my opinion so far with Windows 7.
I am shocked that you can't go full screen, using two monitors as a single surface. It is really awful to pay a lot of money for an operating system, to then find that it has maliciously disabled your hardware's capabilities. I simply can no longer race in LFS using a two monitor setup. And someone cannot, for example, use 3D mode (SBS, full) on a double screen setup, sent to twin projectors with polarising filters, unless they have XP.
Also, what happened when I tried to install a printer? On XP, I could download the driver and install it, job done. Now, no, you cannot do that, you must use Windows 7's automatic driver installation system. And what does it say? There is a problem, failed to install driver. Nothing I could do to solve that, but go to different programs and try to print from them, in which case I was told "there is a problem, would you like us to solve it?" and one by one these so called problems were solved, over about half an hour. Absolutely ridiculous time wasting pile of crap.
Agreed. Everything since XP and DX8/9 has been about making computers "cleverer", which means wizards that don't work, and bling that impresses idiots (including geeks). XP is my favourite Microsoft operating system.
I think this is the good moment to make a test patch for DX9 with ofc 3D support .
agreed with you about windows XP, but you must going forward not only for you but for all community because majority of people have no enconter probleme with moderne windows and we stille waiting for serieuse modernization of lfs ( proper shadows, advanced shaders..... ) this is not a reason to stille working with old XP's technologie..
I got Windows 7 deliberately so that LFS doesn't get stuck in the past. It needs to work well on the latest operating systems. But that doesn't mean that LFS should not run on XP, as it still offers the best possibilities for multiple monitors, and other things (like installing printer drivers).
There is absolutely no possibility that we will release a version of LFS that doesn't work well on XP at any time soon while it is still commonly used. So let's not consider that ridiculous possibility, that would alienate 90 thousand users for no reason whatsoever. We aren't jumping on the rampant capitalism bandwagon.
Windows 7 is just weird. For example, "Sorry, you can't overwrite that file because you would need administrator privileges. Would you like to give yourself administrator privileges so you can overwrite that file?"
I've disabled almost all of those annoyances from my W7 installation, assisted device installations and UAC can be disabled with just a few clicks.
While it's sad that that some things in W7 have regressed from XP (like dual screen support for LFS) I do find it to be a much nicer OS to use day to day, especially when it comes to security. It still doesn't feel anywhere near as stable at the core as Linux or OS X does for actual critical work though.
Install drivers before connecting printer, problem solved.
An evil made necessary by Microsofts insistence to continue using a centralised registry.
In a way it's like doing su in Linux, Macs do a similar thing too. It's right that core files should be protected - but Microsoft made 3rd party software into "core" files which resulted in training people to click OK without really knowing if it was okay to do so because the default install path is considered protected. Absolute Madness.
I can't check full screen on multiple monitor support atm (after I've moved house). I would be very surprised if its a problem. It sounds like something which would have gotten fixed.
No it's a problem.. Can reproduce the issue, if you have LFS (or any other game/sim?) fullscreen on one screen and click on something on the second screen then you have a problem.
1) Fast boot up and shut down!
2) Dragging the top of a window up to the top of the screen sets the window height to maximum and sort of locks it there.
3) I *think* that task bar with only icons may be good, still getting used to it.
4) Some other things seem to work a bit better / smoother.
I don't like that "sleep" causes a blue screen crash and the only advice I can find on the internet is "that's how it is on 7, just don't use sleep".
Too obvious, but HP's website just told me the only way was to use Windows automatic updater. Then what I found is the only way to work through it was "try" to print things, so Windows could find a "problem" and "fix the problem". But it's like one problem leads to another problem, until this chain of problems is fixed, and finally you can print. Odd.
No, if you have two monitors, you just can't select a "real" desktop size of 2*width x height. You sort of have one screen as the main desktop and the other screen is an extension of it. Actually in normal use, as a desktop, this works well, because there is the concept of a "main" screen, so for example you can have the start button on the left of the screen in front of you, while your second screen is on the left and is an extended desktop with no task bar. However, there is no option to select the full double width as a real, single desktop as you could in XP, and also DirectX does not offer that double width resolution to LFS as a full screen option.
The reason I came to be installing Windows again (and therefore it was worth considering which version to use) was because my old SSD started to die and files were corrupted each day for about 3 days until finally Windows wouldn't boot. That SSD was always trouble, causing hangs and glitches all the time. Thankfully the technology has moved on (maybe the old one was faulty from the start) and I've got a new SSD and it seems to work well.
Also related to that: windows key + left right arrows resizes windows automatically to fill either half of the screen, found it pretty nice when I tried to learn to code some Java.
I did hear some SSD's have trouble going in to sleep with W7, haven't had problems on these OCZ and Samsung drives though.
There is a tool called SoftTH (Software Triplehead) that lets you do this. It does work for dual head as well. I imagine it's not quite as efficient as how XP handled it, though. With nVidia you can stretch across monitors as long as you have 3 identical screens.
You won't believe this, but I've never had that issue SINCE I left XP and went to 7 & 8
If it's a wireless printer, burn it - they almost always need reinstalling every time you use them and should be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Otherwise your experience is quite ... alarming.
That seems odd. So I imagine it must offer the extended screen as a different adapter? So you would need to open that too and create a second viewport there? Or does DX fall over when dealing with VP's across multiple adapters?
Combined with windows + up key and "throwing a window to the top with the mouse", the BEST thing to happen to Windows ever. It's the little things...
Some things I dislike though: Copy/Paste on a Windows touch screen well... Windows touch support is still only on par with iOS 1! Metro is nice if you only have 1 screen. Shame it doesn't do anything useful. It's diabolical on multiple screens and should be cast into the fiery pit of whatever deity you think is responsible for hot and painful places. Browser touch detection in javascript has alternatively been on/off in Windows 8 in every update. It has never yet reflected on whether you have a touch screen or not, it's just random depending upon who fixed their bit of code last... And updating to windows 8.1 killed all my hardware drivers for a week and the update removed all pre-8.1 restore points... Hardest week of my life!