Longhorn DCE

Well IMHO the screenshots look very similar to those from older builds (hence boring and nothing innovative in them (did only a thourough visual comparison with what i remember from the older build), the interesting part may be the DCE video which i haven't see yet, because our dumb uni's net admins can't even install codecs on these PCs :/
 
"Sorry, you do not have permission to view this directory or page."

is it need to register ?
 
Not really, I can get to that page just fine and I haven't registered there (neither have i visited that web before).
 
Rambler said:
Well IMHO the screenshots look very similar to those from older builds (hence boring and nothing innovative in them (did only a thourough visual comparison with what i remember from the older build), the interesting part may be the DCE video which i haven't see yet, because our dumb uni's net admins can't even install codecs on these PCs :/
Click to expand...

DCE video will not alter what videos you can and cannot play, it will merely change the way in which videos are displayed in the desktop. Instead of using overlays MS are trying to move everything to go through the 3d which will allow various features such as wrapping video onto 3d objects, pixel shader programs could be run on the video. This does put a requirement into the 3d hardware that they should be able to handle 420 video formats in some manner .

CC
 
Overlays suck anyway, it's a cheap-ass solution thought up when blitters were so slow there was no other reasonable way to get scaleable video in a window, but they've long since outlived their usefulness.

Overlays will shine through graphics using the overlay color, and they can't be made transparent either. Also, graphics chips typically provide only ONE overlay.

The quicker they go the way of the dodo, the better...
 
Guden Oden said:
Overlays suck anyway, it's a cheap-ass solution thought up when blitters were so slow there was no other reasonable way to get scaleable video in a window, but they've long since outlived their usefulness.

Overlays will shine through graphics using the overlay color, and they can't be made transparent either. Also, graphics chips typically provide only ONE overlay.

The quicker they go the way of the dodo, the better...
Click to expand...

It wasn't just because of the blitters. It meant that you could turn on the overlay, turn on a video capture card and point it at the overlay. Very minimal CPU cycles are then required to display the video, as the video capture is all done in the video capture card and their is no need for any format conversion as overlays typically can display 422 and 420 data which is the general output of video capture cards.

If colorkeying is not being used then an overlay can be blended with the desktop (of course due to the fact that color keying can be turned on at anytime this is not very useful).

Theortically Neon250 was capable of displaying multiple overlays, unfortunatly we were limited by the bandwidth available.

CC
 
Glad to see Microsoft continue on their quest to rid me of all my screen real estate. One of these days they'll actually make some genuine, real improvements, rather than taking up 3/4 of the explorer window with graphics and logos.

cho said:
"Sorry, you do not have permission to view this directory or page."
Click to expand...

You need to turn HTTP referrers on. If they're already on, make sure you're going via the main page rather than visiting the images directly from here, for example.
 
Captain Chickenpants said:
It wasn't just because of the blitters. It meant that you could turn on the overlay, turn on a video capture card and point it at the overlay. Very minimal CPU cycles are then required to display the video
Click to expand...

But the overhead to make the blitter paint the graphics into the window can't be THAT much more that it really matters, provided the blitter has the "oomph" to do the task... Anyway, if the overlay is doublebuffered, the CPU still has to fiddle a bit to flip the buffers at vertical blank. :)

If colorkeying is not being used then an overlay can be blended with the desktop (of course due to the fact that color keying can be turned on at anytime this is not very useful).
Click to expand...

Well, WinXP won't make windows with overlays transparent, nor will it make other windows ON TOP of an overlay transparent with my GF3. Maybe some other graphics card can do that, but how common is that really?

Theortically Neon250 was capable of displaying multiple overlays, unfortunatly we were limited by the bandwidth available.
Click to expand...

I thought overlays were just displayed instead of the regular desktop image and hence didn't requre extra bandwidth, but do they actually consume bandwidth in ADDITION to the desktop?


Anyway, nice informative post, thanks for the reply! :)
 
But the overhead to make the blitter paint the graphics into the window can't be THAT much more that it really matters, provided the blitter has the "oomph" to do the task... Anyway, if the overlay is doublebuffered, the CPU still has to fiddle a bit to flip the buffers at vertical blank.
Click to expand...
Don't forget they were chosen when every CPU cycle counted.

Well, WinXP won't make windows with overlays transparent, nor will it make other windows ON TOP of an overlay transparent with my GF3. Maybe some other graphics card can do that, but how common is that really?
Click to expand...
Sorry I meant that it is possible to do it in hardware, but this isn't necesarily exposed to a higher level (due the the limitation I mentioned).

I thought overlays were just displayed instead of the regular desktop image and hence didn't requre extra bandwidth, but do they actually consume bandwidth in ADDITION to the desktop?
Click to expand...
Yes, at the point that the overlay is being displayed you have to read both desktop and overlay data to decide if the colorkey color is being displayed on the desktop and thus you have to display the overlay rather than the colorkey.

CC
 
..

If it was on PDC build 4051 or the newest leak, 4053, I might try it, but the build before those two were just pain to use, so at least I'm not too interested in this..
 
the only interesting part of this to me was the video's and the effects they are using for minimizing windows and such looks interesting. But I cant stand that bar on the right hand side... just plain idiotic.
 
I feel the same way, but then I couldn't stand the Microsoft Office bar which appeared down the side of the screen in Office 97, but the users where I worked loved it.
 
vrecan said:
the only interesting part of this to me was the video's and the effects they are using for minimizing windows and such looks interesting. But I cant stand that bar on the right hand side... just plain idiotic.
Click to expand...

Luckily, the sidebar can be disabled ;)
(and actually, to prevent memleaks, you have to do it in current versions afaik)
 
Could someone explain to a non-windows-head what the main differences are between DCE and stuff like Quartz Extreme/DisplayPDF, or to go further back, DisplayPostScript.
 
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