Entice Designer 0.8.2 release

[Mike Parker]

Saaa wrote:


> How does 'making everything work nicely even though they didn't have to' 
> make you think they were willing to make OpenGL a 2th class citizen?
> The whole confusion started when microsoft announced the use of dx10 for the 
> ui and people expecting they would probably drop OpenGL as this seemed the 
> easiest option for microsoft.

The problem was that they initially said that Windowed OpenGL apps would 
automatically cause Aeroglass (or whatever they call it) to be shutoff 
upon launching. This caused a stir among OpenGL developers (and there 
was a lot of misinformation and speculation in the beginning) because 
they would be the ones getting support calls from clueless users ("Why 
does your app break Windows?") There was never any concern about OpenGL 
being dropped. All of this is well documented in a lengthy forum 
discussion at opengl.org.


> And in the end it still doesn't work like in XP: it is like wine does dx: 
> translating all calls.

That's just the stock drivers. Windows XP and earlier shipped with a 
software OpenGL driver that implemented version 1.1 of the 
specification. On machines with broken graphics card drivers (or no 
graphics card), this is the version that is loaded. Vista offers the 
same version as well as a new driver that implements the 1.4 spec (with 
no, or limited, extensions) and is implemented on top of DirectX. 
However, graphics card vendors supply drivers that provide raw OpenGL 
access so that apps can take full advantage of all of the latest OpenGL 
features and not worry about a DX translation layer.

So in practice, the majority of OpenGL applications will be running on 
OEM drivers and not the MS driver. Unfortunately, the driver 
architecture of Vista is supposedly a PITA to work with. It took NVIDIA 
several tries to get it right and AFAIK ATI is still having difficulties 
with buggy drivers. I've also seen evidence that, except for some 
popular applications that MS special-cased, many OpenGL games and other 
apps suffer a performance hit on Vista compared to XP. This might change 
as the graphics card vendors enhance their Vista drivers, but it isn't 
going to happen overnight.

The audio situation is atrocious as well. Any old apps you have that use 
DirectAudio/Sound/Music will no longer have functioning EAX or hardware 
acceleration. As far as games go, that's a lot of titles.

There's a lot to dislike in Vista. I personally won't be downgrading to 
it. When XP is no longer supported and becomes a PITA to use, I'll be 
making a more permanent move to Linux. I don't want draconian 
anti-piracy and security measures forced down my throat, nor do I want 
to upgrade my hardware just for an OS. I'll also be primarily targeting 
Mac and Linux for my software development. I don't need the support 
headaches that will inevitably come from non-tech savvy users when they 
see scary dialog boxes pop up and get the impression that my 
applications are spyware. Or when they are running buggy graphics 
drivers that they haven't updated since they first installed Vista.

If you're happy with Vista, more power to you. I have nothing against 
MS, but Vista is pile of crap.