My prediction is that Windows 9 will be really great for a Microsoft product. I heard that they're doing a tick-tock product cycle over there, and have every intention of building a system that is more "power user" friendly. The guys/gals in Redmond are not completely out of touch. They use this shit too!

From what I've read and heard from people that work there, a lot of the retarded design decisions in their products are a direct result of culture issues. Microsoft has been undergoing a culture shift, and it's going to be more dramatic in the coming years. That's what I hear, anyway.

RE: DX9
Until LFS looks like this, we don't need to worry about which version Scawen is using.

Quote from Matrixi :

Guess you've never used Bluetooth in W8 then. Select BT from the desktop and it brings you in to the metro interface devices list, there's no more desktop equivalent control panel for it.

Available BT settings in W7
Just a devices menu in W8

rubbish
http://www.drwindows.de/attach ... ndung-mit-windows-8-3.jpg

Quote from Shotglass :

rubbish
http://www.drwindows.de/attach ... ndung-mit-windows-8-3.jpg

Guess they've added that in the last 3 months then, because it wasn't there before.

Edit: How it used to go. https://www.youtube.com/watch? ... age&v=-mhNQ03CDQs#t=7

Quote from Matrixi :

Guess they've added that in the last 3 months then, because it wasn't there before.

Edit: How it used to go. https://www.youtube.com/watch? ... age&v=-mhNQ03CDQs#t=7

yeah... except that screenshot is from a thread from may last year
http://www.drwindows.de/window ... dung-mit-windows-8-a.html

but lets not allow facts to get in the way of a perfectly good "microsoft is so evil for changing the way some things behave" narrative

This functionality was _not_ in W8 when I tried it. Seeing how MS have backtracked to bring it more and more back to desktop rather than touch after their abysmal sales, it wouldn't surprise me if they added it back.

Windows 8 has plenty of good features, but touchscreen designed metro makes them all void. As long as that part of the OS can't be uninstalled completely to offer a 100% legacy desktop experience, I'm not interested in 8.

AMD supports potential DirectX ... ne Mantle's future at GDC

So AMD sees the movement in the industry around graphics APIs as validation of its own approach with Mantle. I'd say that's warranted.

Quote from Matrixi :

This functionality was _not_ in W8 when I tried it. Seeing how MS have backtracked to bring it more and more back to desktop rather than touch after their abysmal sales, it wouldn't surprise me if they added it back.

the w7 style control panel was always still fully functional in its entirety in w8

I did try it when I was on W8 full time. Control panel BT settings, notification bar BT icon, start screen (eugh) BT devices, all went to the metro devices list before. If that is Microsofts idea of user friendliness, they're going in the wrong way.

Also tried it in VMWare this morning, and this does still happen. No matter how you look at it, that is terrible, terrible design. What is the reasoning for the touch UI jumping in your face when you just want to quickly connect a BT device from your desktop notification bar?!

W8 as a desktop OS is badly schizophrenic. I mean it runs two completely separate of UIs (metro touch and desktop) at the same time, as two different instances no less.

I guess you're talking about Win8. Maybe there's difference with Win 8.1. I never tried Win8 because I know the desktop experience is terrible, 8.1 is something different tho.

Quote from Matrixi :

Guess you've never used Bluetooth in W8 then. Select BT from the desktop and it brings you in to the metro interface devices list, there's no more desktop equivalent control panel for it.

Available BT settings in W7
Just a devices menu in W8

That doesn't look like the standard Bluetooth stack in Windows 7 to be honest. I don't get anything like that window, and I can't imagine Microsoft ever using rounded buttons like that.

Quote from PeterN :

That doesn't look like the standard Bluetooth stack in Windows 7 to be honest. I don't get anything like that window, and I can't imagine Microsoft ever using rounded buttons like that.

Might be because of his ugly VS, but I also doubt that's default in W7.

Only installed the Asus BT drivers for this motherboard, same driver for both W7 and W8.

Anyway, this is pretty far offtopic now.

Quote from majod :

I guess you're talking about Win8. Maybe there's difference with Win 8.1. I never tried Win8 because I know the desktop experience is terrible, 8.1 is something different tho.

The core of both 8 and 8.1 is good but the UI is just a dog. Why force RT, that stupid start screen and charms on desktop. They should have left the desktop like 7 and allowed you to switch to RT when you wanted it. 8.1 still feels like the bastard combination of two things that don't belong with each other.

Some like it but for many people it is just a fail

I say this with a month of 8.1 use as forced by new laptop.

Roll on 9, lets hope they bring back a true desktop

Quote from Scawen :

As I understand it, Microsoft deliberately stopped providing a debug version of DX9 in post-XP Windows, to force developers to be unable to develop software that supports XP. We do want to support XP because we have thousands of people who bought an LFS license and do not yet want to be forced to "upgrade" .

I am aware of the extra difficulties of win7/win8 which are supposed to make it more secure and better. I am also aware of nasty M$ tactics to try to force uawea to new OS. Currently, M$ currently tries to move everyone to WIN8 via some very nasty tactics.

New versions are indeed not always better. I like rhel5.x more than rhel6.x. rhel6.x has to many dynamic and yet suddenly not so dynamic features to compensate for doing everything as dynamic as possible. Still, I need to move on since rhel5.x support is ending and rhel6.x has some serious improvements. Yet I am not angry about it, why.. therei s a roadmap telling for many years rhel5.x support will end on a specific date. Microsoft also has such road maps.

How to anticipate on it and make it clear to all buyers support will shift with the support of the operating systems. You can't stay on old OS because people bought your product in 2002 while running W2K. So how to plan ahead, make roadmaps so you know when you need to move to newer versions and when old OS's or directx versions are no longer supported.

Off course, this will not solve the new added difficulties of the Vista/Win7/W8.x. Someday you will need to face it and solve the problems, in computer-technology it is always best to wait too long.... and you already waited several years. How likely is it Microsoft will suddenly enable debug functions on win7/win8? Directx10 is available since 2006, that is nearly 8 years ago!

My opinion:
Clinging to ancient technology will put most IT company's real quick out of business!

Later this month Microsoft will announce DirectX 12.
So be aware of a next version coming in

Quote from Scawen :

You are saying that as if there is some kind of problem with DirectX 9.

That is a really strange thing that some people seem to believe that I am only recently starting to notice. There isn't actually anything wrong with it!

It's only now occurring to me that people think there is some kind of compromise or issue in staying with DirectX 9. But there isn't, it's really good!

There isn't a problem here! DirectX 9 runs on XP and later Windows and in Wine / Linux. I get to use my dual monitor setup for racing so I'm happy too! There's no problem, we're all fine!

There was no "problem" with Commodore 64 graphics, that's not really the point. XP usage is minimal in games (less than 6% of steam users) and WINE is not actually Linux support. I don't understand why you're keen to embrace this new Virtual Reality headset technology but stick to your guns in using 10 year old graphics tech in a game that is presumably years away from being finished? Did you support computers this old when LFS started? It seems an odd thing for a simulator game to not want to use new technology.

Because DX10 and DX11 do not offer us anything that we need.

I guess you are just believing in marketing hype, if you think that moving to a later version of DirectX magically endows your graphics with super powers.

Imagine you are a car racer, and someone says, "Use this new steering wheel! It's really good but you are only licensed to use it on certain tracks." So you say, "No, my steering wheel with just as good features and works on all tracks is just fine. There's nothing wrong with it". And they say, "How can you use that steering wheel, it's years old". You might say "But... there's nothing wrong with my steering wheel. I feel it's more important to get some better tyres and work on my cornering skills".

I'm the guy with the perfectly good steering wheel. I'm working on things which are important - not randomly changing, entirely pointlessly, to a system that works on fewer computers. For some unknown reason, which I would still like to know, some people think that it's a bad idea. It's just odd, I can't understand where you are coming from. DX9 has absolutely loads of great features (same as later versions of DX basically) and I have got nowhere near the capabilities of it.

That's fine, use DX9 (for LFS' user market and hardware, that's fine). But to criticize newer versions of Windows for properly supporting multiple monitors (and virtualizing them, so that I can swap displays, with 3D applications open, without them going tits up) is absolutely ridiculous.

The fact is that Windows XP doesn't have "better" multi monitor support, it simply has NO multi monitor support. It has no concept of the boundaries of each display, so to have them work in any sane manner, you need software such as MultiMon or nVidia's GPU drivers which jack the maximize operations so you don't get a useless browser window that's 5760*1080 wide.

It's just absolutely ridiculous to not make it work in a more compatible (and more future proof) manner by supporting newer versions of Windows. XP market share isn't going to wildly increase. So why wouldn't you move towards supporting what people will use for the next 10 years, and not the last 10 years?

I agree with you that it's a little bit redundant that you send geometry to the same GPU for each display, but that's not always the case (in case of multi-GPU setups) so making it less prone to blowing up by forcing developers to be verbose with their inputs seems to make it more reliable.

Using Direct3D 9 for ongoing XP support is absolutely fine. Just dropping support would be a huge "f___ you!" to the customers, and losing hundreds of users for a new API without any visual improvement would be a stupid decision.

D3D 10+ may not be an improvement for the users, but for the programmers: D3D 10+ programs tend to have less code because
1) you don't need to handle corner cases like losing GPU context ("lost device" is impossible),
2) there is far less control flow (because a minimum feature set is guaranteed, no capability checking or workarounds for old GPUs or broken drivers), and
3) there is less code in general (instead of setting hundreds of render states one at a time, state blocks must be used).

So while I agree that D3D 10+ is currently useless for LFS and sticking with D3D 9 is totally right, I disagree with Scawen in that it's just a hype – if you don't have XP users, it can significandly reduce your code base and your test cases, which is a blessing for any programmer. It's sad that they had to drop XP support for D3D 10, but the decision was absolutely reasonable.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

It's just absolutely ridiculous to not make it work in a more compatible (and more future proof) manner by supporting newer versions of Windows.

That would be ridiculous! Luckily later versions of Windows do support DX9.

Quote from Krishty :

Using Direct3D 9 for ongoing XP support is absolutely fine. Just dropping support would be a huge "f___ you!" to the customers, and losing hundreds of users for a new API without any visual improvement would be a stupid decision.

D3D 10+ may not be an improvement for the users, but for the programmers: D3D 10+ programs tend to have less code because
1) you don't need to handle corner cases like losing GPU context ("lost device" is impossible),
2) there is far less control flow (because a minimum feature set is guaranteed, no capability checking or workarounds for old GPUs or broken drivers), and
3) there is less code in general (instead of setting hundreds of render states one at a time, state blocks must be used).

So while I agree that D3D 10+ is currently useless for LFS and sticking with D3D 9 is totally right, I disagree with Scawen in that it's just a hype – if you don't have XP users, it can significandly reduce your code base and your test cases, which is a blessing for any programmer. It's sad that they had to drop XP support for D3D 10, but the decision was absolutely reasonable.

Thank you for posting something about actual improvements in later versions of DirectX.

I was more speaking about the multiple monitor support. Microsoft isn't going to degrade their multiple monitor support any time soon back to XP levels of non- support.

Ah I see what you mean.

But it wasn't non-support in XP. I'm sitting here with two monitors now, quite usefully supported and when I go in LFS the two monitors is a good solution in cars where you are not central in the car. This is in XP so it's not "non-support" but a different kind of support.

I understand that there is something better in Windows 7 - that is if I want to go full screen in a video player, it uses a single screen. In XP it's pretty bad because the video image is half on one screen and half on the other. So if you want to watch full screen in XP you should first change the desktop settings to use a single screen.

But the Windows 7 solution for games on multiple screens is poor. It's really not good to have to download the textures and meshes once for every screen (D3D device) so they are in the video card memory 3 times over (for a 3 screen setup). There isn't a desktop setting in Windows 7 to allow the two or more screens to be seen as a single surface. That option which would solve the problem is simply not available.

So MS went from one type of support with advantages and disadvantages, to a new type of support with a different set of advantages and disadvantages. That's not really all that clever. It's best when you can improve things without breaking things at the same time. So this is my point.

It's quite complicated to modify the 3d system to do the multiple device support, quite a restructuring would be required and I wouldn't say it's ridiculous not to do it at this time. There are other things to do with a higher priority.

I guess it depends on your GPU. With my AMD card in my laptop, I could set it up to use 2 monitors for a triple screen setup. nVidia forces 3 equal surfaces for a multi monitor setup.

Valve Publically Releases &quo ... ; Direct3D-to-OpenGL Shim

Quote :

ToGL is the translation layer Valve uses to bring OpenGL support to their games, essentially emulating a limited subset of the Direct3D 9.0c API and translating those calls to OpenGL. It is implemented within the game binary itself (this isn't an external wrapper), so this is primarily a tool for game developers.

Maybe this could be interesting for Scawen. I get lost when things go too deep into technical stuff, but I think this may be a great step forward to support Linux natively.

Quote from Whiskey :

Valve Publically Releases &quo ... ; Direct3D-to-OpenGL Shim



Maybe this could be interesting for Scawen. I get lost when things go too deep into technical stuff, but I think this may be a great step forward to support Linux natively.

Again, supporting Linux is not just about the graphics. There's so many other components that are required that just don't work on Linux like FFB wheels.

Wine does good enough, and going native Linux doesn't add anything except more complexity to the end users experience (and break other shit).