- Synthmilk
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- Exalted Mythic Member
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You people really need to study programming, because I am getting tired of hearing this. For the last time:
Vista is fundamentally different than XP in execution of everything, Windows and Mac OS share a lot of features, and just as that doesn't mean their the same, so it is with XP and Vista. They have the same features, but they work differently in the background. Would you really want Vista to change all the stuff you know how to use in XP?
Vista runs graphics differently than XP, at the most basic level. The DX10 API takes advantage of this, and is so changed from DX9, that it can't work with XP, or, there would be no point in getting it to work with XP as it would not be any better than DX9 on XP as XP can't impliment the new functions.
The effort to write a patch for XP is not economically worth it, the graphics engine in Vista is entirely new code, there is no reason to try and stick it in an old operating system. Just because they were nice and made it so that Vista can use DX9 doesn't mean it works backwards.
As an example, let's say XP is programmed to make use of 9 values for processing graphics, and DX9 is therefore designed to put out 9 values.
Let's say Vista is designed to accept 20 values. Because a lot of the basic functions may work in the same way between DX10 and DX9, it can still work using 9 values, but obviously you won't get all the cool stuff, and so DX10 is designed to put out 20 values.
So now you want to make XP use DX10. But XP can only take 9 values from DX10, not the full 20, and so you have DX10 spewing out 20 different values into memory, and XP is only looking for 9, so it grabs 9, and uses them as it's designed, leaving the other 11 values unused. What you get then, is, at best, identical graphics to DX9.
But it's more than the API that's changed, it's also the graphics libraries, and the exact definitions of the functions have likely changed to make use of the increase in useable values, and so DX10 won't work properly, even though XP is getting values, because DX10 is also expecting the operating system to send it values back, which Vista does in a different way than XP, and so the functions don't work, and crash.
Changing XP to use DX10 would require changing the entirety of XP's graphics engine, while still making it compatible with the rest of XP. You will have to likely alter those parts a little too.
And in the end, you have, basically, XPsta. The cost of development to get it to work is pointless, that same graphics engine was put into Vista, the whole point of Vista is that it's the next generation of Windows, with all the new stuff that's been developed since XP, released to cover the costs of that development and future development.
It makes no business sense to wase resources updating an old operating system to nex-gen standards when you can release all of next-gen at once. To the minimal user, who just uses the computer to wright things and fire-off e-mails, they can just use Win2000, to the corporate user or more advanced user, Vista can be a lot more useful than XP, and to the Gamer, Vista will be a big improvement over XP.
I don't think many people considered XP a big gaming improvement over Win98SE at launch, but now it's as good as or better. Give people time to get software out for Vista, and stop -blam!-ing about DX10 not being on XP.