[NEWS] Longhorn's Windows Graphics Foundation Examined

Slashdot

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Longhorn's Windows Graphics Foundation Examined |
| from the closer-looks dept. |
| posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday July 31, @00:42 (Windows) |
| http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/30/238200 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Matt J writes "[0]Dave Salvator at ExtremeTech [1]goes over some of the graphics designs for Longhorn. 'David Blythe of the DirectX development team gave a very interesting talk about the upcoming 3D graphics architecture in Longhorn, the next major revision of Windows. Called Windows Graphics Foundation (WGF), this new architecture will usher in some major changes to how 3D graphics operations get handled by Longhorn.
These changes extend well beyond Longhorn's Avalon technology, which will render the Windows Desktop using a GPU's 3D graphics processing power rather than the traditional 2D blitter. WGF will instead define the core 3D operations themselves.'"

Discuss this story at:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=04/07/30/238200

Links:
0. http://www.extremetech.com/author_bio/0,1589,a=234,00.asp
1. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1629295,00.asp

Click to expand...

interesting, thanks for the tidbit!

no prob - by the time it is out i just hope everyone has a good system to run it!

No kiding on the good system , i did some reading back ago and from what it said i need to combine both my systems together plus some extra just to run it

3D desktop

that's rediculous

greenman100 said:

3D desktop

that's rediculous

Click to expand...

IMO it is just the next evolution in computer. I will bet that when the first colour interfaces or desktops came around, there were people screaming that we did not need a colour desktop. Only people playing games needed colour.

As time goes on and computers get faster and faster, I am sure we will get to the point that going without all the bells and whistles would be imaginable. Could you imagine a life without a GUI.

Capt Fiero said:

IMO it is just the next evolution in computer. I will bet that when the first colour interfaces or desktops came around, there were people screaming that we did not need a colour desktop. Only people playing games needed colour.

As time goes on and computers get faster and faster, I am sure we will get to the point that going without all the bells and whistles would be imaginable. Could you imagine a life without a GUI.

Click to expand...

so all 2D cards are obsolete?

I sure hope it's an option, there are plenty of computers that don't have 3D rendering, like CAD workstations and stuff

greenman100 said:

so all 2D cards are obsolete?

I sure hope it's an option, there are plenty of computers that don't have 3D rendering, like CAD workstations and stuff

Click to expand...

I am sure they will have some sort of non 3D inteface for a while. But back to my original way of looking at it, when was the last time you say a 2 colour display on anything running any software remotly close to what windows is.

I am just trying to say that it is not a bad thing, it is just the next step up in the GUI that we all have grown to use. I remember back playing my Atari 2600 and oohing and ahing over the fact that I could move things on the screen. A 1 button joystick was high tech.

The only thing I can compare it to is when Windows started to move away from DOS apps. There were a lot of people stuck in the old DOS applications that simply did not want to run on XP, people had 2 choices stay with an old OS or upgrade there machines.

I cant wait for the day when moniters are gone all together and we just have a holographic desketop in front of us with some sort of Virtual Reality interface. (sp on several of those words, LOL) Gone will the days of keyboards and screens you will just sit down and talk to your computer or wave your hand to open and close things. Now that is going to be fun!!

Capt Fiero said:

I am sure they will have some sort of non 3D inteface for a while. But back to my original way of looking at it, when was the last time you say a 2 colour display on anything running any software remotly close to what windows is.

Click to expand...

I used to run a straight black desktop, no picture, to save system resources

"Could you imagine a life without a GUI"

i run in DOS whenever i can. i perferr it guis are bloated and slow. this one is just more bloated and uses more system resources than acceptable.

(edit) okay, not true dos, sadly i cant make it acess anything relatively new. but i use text mode whenever i can get away with it (/edit)

I notice the ones complaining about it only have 512mbs of RAM. I think it's related.

Hardin said:

I notice the ones complaining about it only have 512mbs of RAM. I think it's related.

Click to expand...

LOL, it might. But I hope I have not came across as rude, I dont mean to sound like it.

There will always be the people that want the simplest OS and the simplest interface. The least details and Pizzaz.

I personally like all the bells and whistles, all the cool shading effects. I am currently working on a total verbal interface with my computer. I hope some day we will be able to toss out keyboards and mice aside, in the same way punch card machines are no longer used.

I want to be able to walk up to my computer as it if I have any new email have it read it to me and then I will dictate any messages back to all while I am still laying in bed relaxing.

So I eagerly await any new software or hardware that makes the computer builders have to work just a bit harder to make the machines just that much closer to what I would want in a machine. Maybe a 20-30ghz CPU 10gig of ram and........................

Well you see where I am going with this. I honestly do believe that this will happen in our life time.

In the current issue of Maxium PC they mentioned there Dream Machine from 1996 that is only 8 short years ago, can you guess what it had in it.

Blazing Fast, First Look, Extreme Dream Machine

P200mhz CPU, and a whopping 32mb of RAM. Not even MMX CPU, and that was just 8 years ago.

Can you imagine if the comptuter age gains as much ground in the next 8 years.

I'm generally not one to toot Microsoft's Longhorn for them, but I can see where a 3d desktop, if done correctly, would be the next step in the GUI evolution. I remember back when some of the first games came out that used polygons for characters and enemies and I thought it was rediculous. Of course I thought it was rediculous because I didn't think we'd taken flat bitmaps as far as they possibly could have. But then as time goes by, and I age, I realize that waiting until you've completely run out of rope with a particular way of doing things to start doing things a new way is generally a bad way to do things. Did that make sense? It's generally not good to wait until you can't go any farther to start looking into a different way to do things. That's a little less congested.

As far as reccomended system specs go, let's wait until we have the product in hand. I don't know if anyone else noticed, but Windows 2000 ran 100 times better than Windows 98 on machines like Pentium 200mhz with 96 megs of 60ns 72pin RAM. (Anyone remember that stuff? And the good ole tin to tin vs tin to gold vs gold to gold debates? )

Capt Fiero said:

Blazing Fast, First Look, Extreme Dream Machine

P200mhz CPU, and a whopping 32mb of RAM. Not even MMX CPU, and that was just 8 years ago.

Can you imagine if the comptuter age gains as much ground in the next 8 years.

Click to expand...

Wow...Great minds think alike....And so do ours.

Well Samsung? or some comany has now come out with a "3d LCD" disaply

Its color not colour!!

3D is of course the next step. Yes I too like the console...and I have a dos 6.22 boot disk on my desk, but a 3d desktop sounds great. Remember we are talking about Desktops not linux servers.

White Star said:

Wow...Great minds think alike....And so do ours.

Click to expand...

Cool, I cant wait for the next generation of PC's.

as for you big baller, (evil grin) it is only you daft Amercians that spell it without the "U" in colour.

Open up google, especially www.google.ca and do a search for colour. NOT color.

Same thing goes for words like check as in the one you cash. It is really cheque, for the rest of the world. All this is comming from someone like me that cant spell worth a lick, but at least I know some things. Now lets go have a , if you ever make it up north to BC look me up. I am in Surrey BC, about 20min from the I-5 crossing into Canada.