The new Windows 2006, the benefits?

[Karlos]

riccofl wrote:
Other than that, what in the world can you use this feature for?

So that they can say "look, we have a 3D accelerated graphical user interface engine too." to all the MacOS X users :lol:

Other than that it is completely pointless, I expect.

The principal benefit of as 3D accelerated desktop is user interface speed. So much time and effort has gone into pushing the 3D hardware envelope this last decade that not using their 3D capabilites for conventional user interface rendering is a waste.

Of course once you have such an underpinning, the eyecandy people get hold of it and insist on doing the above mentioned gimmicky bollocks that I usually strive to get rid of within 30 seconds of starting a system :lol:

[Karlos]

adz wrote:
@NoFastMem

TPG?

Exactly what I just thought. I hope so anyway :-D

[Karlos]

Trev wrote:

The principal benefit of as 3D accelerated desktop is user interface speed. So much time and effort has gone into pushing the 3D hardware envelope this last decade that not using their 3D capabilites for conventional user interface rendering is a waste.

Well, just about every chipset since the Voodoo Banshee has included features for accelerating 100% of the Windows GDI API, and full DirectDraw support (now part of Direct3D, I think) followed soon after. I don't see any benefit to a 3D interface on a 2D surface--unless someone comes up with a substantially different mode for controlling productivity applications.

GDI sucks in extremis. DirectDraw is much better of course (performance wise, that is) but overall the featureset is still quite basic IMO.

My earlier point is that modern "interfaces" are hell bent on 2D effects that the existing 2D acceleration does not support too well - transparency, shading, fast resampled scaling etc etc. These functions are, of course, well catered for by 3D chipsets.

Heh, try comparing basic drawing operations provided by AmigaOS graphics.library to the same things performed using Warp3D ;-)

[Karlos]

@Waccoon

Aye, true. I was commenting on the general reasons for using a 3D based UI engine. I never commented on any specific implementation of one. Leave it to MS to produce something that consumes more resources than the basic 2D one would have ;-)