Beacon of hope for Xenon ~ '360 having Xbox compatability ?

[Megadrive1988]

More Xbox 360 Technical Info
XBOX Scene NewsWe've spent today doing a little more digging. It seems the Xbox 360 will use AES Encryption (XeCryptAesCbc), executable files are XEX and not XBE (xshell.xex) and after studying the kernel there is everything in place for backwards compatibility.

It can all change of course but interesting all the same.

http://www.teamxecuter.com/index.ph...amp;sid=160&mode=&order=0&thold=0

I would not mind not having Xbox compability in Xenon / Xbox 360, but it might be nice if Xbox production winds down, and the DVD-ROM drive in my Xbox fails. I've recently had a few GD-ROM drives die in my Dreamcasts :/

 

[Tagrineth]

Even if it's there in the kernel, will the hardware be able to handle it?

 

[Qroach]

Well it is direct x... so I wouldn't be suprised if some games did and didn't work. However there's a way around everything. if someon could write an xbox emulator for PC, surely MS would be able to do a better job.

 

[jvd]

The only thing i would really think the xenon would have problems with is that special nvidia shadow tech .

Other than that it should be fine. I'm sure the r500 will have hte brute strength and feature set to mimic the nv20a and i'm sure the xgpu is powerfull enough to emulate a x86 700mhz processor

 

[Qroach]

what special nvidia shadow tech?

 

[jvd]

whats it called ultra shadow or something . I believe its been there since the geforce 3 and is in the nv20a

 

[ERP]

what special nvidia shadow tech?

The fact that reading a depth texture returns the result of the depth test rather than the depth value.

There are a few other things -- W buffering leaps to mind (ATI hasn't historically supported it), and some of the other more bizarre Depth modes that Nvidia support.

 

[Qroach]

hmmm interesting, but I don't think that is the same things as ultra shadow. I'm sure thee's a few tricks you can play withthe drivers to get it to return the correct information. (however supporting W buffer may be a strange one.)

 

[Inane_Dork]

I bet MS will not support it, then hackers/programmers will figure it out for a few games and then everyone will complain that MS was too stupid to include it as a feature.

 

[pegisys]

I wonder how they get the bios to study the kernel so early

 

[Titanio]

This made me wonder something:

With the ATi part, will MS have insisted that it comply 100%, no more no less, with the DX spec?

Putting in "extra features" that might be nice for games could feck up future backward compatibility attempts if MS falls out with ATi. So I guess we can expect there to be no ATi-specific extras beyond the DX spec? Or they'll be there, but MS will encourage against their use in games?

And what does that mean for "SM3.0+" - is that "+" defined in the spec? Or will we see a console specific version of DX that defines that "+"? Because if they do start defining what that "+" means, the other manufacturers would have to ensure their own "+" falls in line with it (though perhaps inventing even more "+"s beyond that "+" to accomodate their own specific features).