AMIGAONE.... isn't it an obsolete technology already?

[bloodline]

dylansmrjo wrote:

People who like eye candy like the Mac OS X and Vista way should be banned from using or looking or even thinking about computers. Period.  :-P

I suppose you think that all GFX chips should only be used for games?

Yes! We should all go back to the horrid BIOS text shell of the IBM PC...


Come on, If my computer has a chip that can pump a billion pixels around the screen per second, I damn well want to use it in every application where it can be used! :-D

[dylansmrjo]

Nope.

It's wasting my CPU cycles :-o´

It requires more work from the CPU to draw windows and widgets.

It should require less work. It's about time systems STOP getting bloated with non-functional elements dragging the computer back to the stoneage.

Vista has nothing in regard to eye candy that I want, and couldn't get with an operating system from 1995 (Like OS/2 2.0)

In regard to functionality Vista has nothing. Only bloatedness in regard to eye candy.

Eye candy is evil.

REPEAT after me: Eye candy is evil!

 :-P

[Cymric]

I for one am looking forward to an OS that finally uses the 3D hardware in my computer.  It seems like a logical and well overdue progression.

Pray tell, how would you like the 3D features to be used? Rotating windows, putting them sideways, or displaying directory trees in 3D is cool, but from a usability point of view, absolutely horrible. Put another way: how is Joe User going to benefit from the truckloads of raw processing power lurking in his GeForce InsaneVersion or the ATi HahaCaughtUpAgainVersion? Keep in mind what Joe User does: email, process words, do a bit of accounting, view movies (pr0n or otherwise), rip songs, and perhaps a bit of computer-supported hobby about cars, motorbikes, outdoor sports, terrorism, programming, collecting, that sort of thing.

Oh wait, there's an interesting app already: a fully nude genuine 3D deskmate, 'helping out' when Joe is stymied by a computer error. Were it not for the fact that such apps already exist---do a Google search for 'virtual girls', for example.

[Tigger]

dylansmrjo wrote:
Nope.

It's wasting my CPU cycles :-o´

If you aren't using the clock cycles, they are wasted too, you waste alot more clock cycles on your computer reading email then Vista can dream of wasting drawing pretty pictures.

In regard to functionality Vista has nothing. Only bloatedness in regard to eye candy.

No, Vista has a much faster IO system then XP Pro, its taken from 2003, which is already fairly fast on my system, since I usually mix 3 or 4 streams of uncompressed video realtime on my system.  I personally care less about eyecandy, but frankly looking at the excitement 256 color icons on OS4 & MorphOS drew on here and other sites I am in a minority on the subject.  Vista runs faster then XP, that means it runs Lightwave, Mirage, Modo, Messiah Studio and VT faster, thats better in my book.
     -Tig

[seer]

It requires more work from the CPU to draw windows and widgets.

It should require less work. It's about time systems STOP getting bloated with non-functional elements dragging the computer back to the stoneage.

Let's see... Lets draw everything on screen using the GPU or using the CPU ? The whole idea of LDDM is to take even more of the GUI from CPU to the GFX card.  

Win32 is out, GDI is out. Vista is going to be the biggest change for Windows since Windows95/98 > NT4.

But all everybody sees is the "eyecandy". The 3D rotating windows are a "showcase". The are to show what  the new GUI could do. If you haven't used Vista how can you comment on "non-functional elements" ?

In regard to functionality Vista has nothing. Only bloatedness in regard to eye candy.

What eyecandy ? Again, have you used Vista ? XP was Windows 2000 + Eyecandy. The "eyecandy" in vista is functional. If you haven't used Vista you won't know what it means. Visually Vista looks prettier (IMHO) then XP but it's visual  functional. Files are better displayed, menus work better. Having directories with a few hundred (thousands) files are far better organized or can be by the user.

I dislike the GUI in Windows 2000. I turned the XP bubbly gui off to the plain looking 2000 gui and to get a nice speed increase as well. In Vista the theme was as fast or faster then the 2000 Gui.

The "current" Vista theme work great even without a super GFX card (The VMWare only has a 16Mb Gfx card emulated...) and is very useable in it as well. So much for just eyecandy..

[seer]

Rotating windows, putting them sideways, or displaying directory trees in 3D is cool, but from a usability point of view, absolutely horrible.

This is not what the GUI in vista is about, and Vista doesn't do this. (Sure it can do it but you need to turn it on, it's not part of the default features). The movies / pictures that show these things are just to show it truly is 3D and fast. Not just 2D bitmapped windows.

Besides, doesn't OSX use the GPU to speed up it's gui ?

Put another way: how is Joe User going to benefit from the truckloads of raw processing power lurking in his GeForce InsaneVersion or the ATi HahaCaughtUpAgainVersion?

A fast responsive GUI ? Why do people go on how slow Windows is in the GUI department and as soon MS does something about it, it's bad. Sure the current Beta can still be improved but it sure got a lot better since XP. IIRC the OS4 devs were also interested to use the GPU for GUI operations.

Also, if you have the hardware why not use it ? Or should Amiga OS never have used its custom chips to draw the GUI but the CPU and only used the custom chips to play games ?

[seer]

2 GB RAM, DDR-RAM2
Graphics card with no less than 256 MB RAM and support for DirectX 9 (this is just to show the desktop and the standard theme, mind you).

This is recommmended minimum, not nescessarily the lowest possible minimum.

Looks more like the "optimum requirements" as quoted on some tech sites. And are for the "glass" theme that is only standard if you have the hardware that supports it. On WinHec it was said Vista should run good on todays hardware but also on older PC's

Also can you tell me why Vista on a VirtualPC with 512MB Ram and a 16Mb (emulated) GFX card almost looks and feel identical when it runs on a 256MB Geforce7800 ? (Except for offcourse the "glass effects")

[minator]

Besides, doesn't OSX use the GPU to speed up it's gui ?

Yes.
It does some fancy tricks but some of them are very useful and add to the functionality of the system.  Expose is immensely useful and is largely made possible by the 3D hardware, it would be much more processor intensive without it.  Transparent terminal windows can also be surprisingly useful.  In other cases the "eyecandy" is just visual cues - i.e. they are there to enhance usability.

Also, if you have the hardware why not use it ? Or should Amiga OS never have used its custom chips to draw the GUI but the CPU and only used the custom chips to play games ?

Exactly, if there's hardware make use of it.
There has been experimentation in 3D user interfaces but it's largely unsuccessful for the desktop itself or desktop apps (I think that's what the previous poster was complaining about).  I think they'll become more useful when we get real 3D displays - some of which on the market already.


If someone really doesn't like eyecandy, open a shell and kill the workbench.  On Linux (or other Unix) kill the X server.  If it's early 1960's* UIs that float your boat, have fun...


*Like most modern computer tech, GUIs originally started their life in the late 60's.

[Cymric]

seer wrote:
Let's see... Lets draw everything on screen using the GPU or using the CPU ? The whole idea of LDDM is to take even more of the GUI from CPU to the GFX card.

As I recall, many 2D-operations are accelerated to begin with, so already a large portion of graphics operations is handled by the GPU. Back in the heydays, when Diamond, Matrox and 3dfx were the things to have, all they cared about was 2D-performance. That same performance is still lurking today in the corners of the modern videocards, albeit largely forgotten. Nowadays it goes without saying that straight blits are faster than the eye can follow. Or have you forgotten the times when window dragging was done by XOR-drawing the outline...?

In addition, you cannot offload anything to the GPU. It doesn't draw on its own, not even with all those fancy shader languages. The CPU still needs to supply it with the information it needs to work with. There is one concept of modern GPU's which will improve performance even without actual 3D performance, namely the Z-buffer. Overlapping windows are simply sorted according to their 'depth', and the GPU takes care of the rest, including clipping. There is no need for a separate layers-like library anymore where the CPU handles buffering and clipping and what not. The CPU is just responsible for creating the 'texture' of each window on the fly, and shipping it to the GPU to be rendered. Internal clipping is a thing of the past. The use of the alpha channel comes free of charge. However, there still needs to be some sort of rudimentary layer heuristics to determine which windows would need to be actually drawn in the first place---otherwise you are just wasting Z-buffer bandwidth.

Of course you get to play with a few extra's, namely textures nearly free of charge, and vectorised graphics nearly free of charge (at bloody long last). All new and useful features, granted, but not of the sort you need the latest in GPU performance for. Unless, of course, your fancy runs to eye candy. That was the point I was trying to make.

[seer]

Of course you get to play with a few extra's, namely textures nearly free of charge, and vectorised graphics nearly free of charge (at bloody long last). All new and useful features, granted, but not of the sort you need the latest in GPU performance for. Unless, of course, your fancy runs to eye candy.

Like Minator said better then I did "In other cases the "eyecandy" is just visual cues - i.e. they are there to enhance usability."

Offcourse this could have been done with plain 2D/bitmaps but vectorised graphics, as you point out, is one of the other reasons to make it 3D. I might be wrong but I believe GPU are faster at drawing 3D then 2D. (You know what I mean)

But like I said, Vista is faster (at beta stage) then XP is. And that is compared to XP without the themes service running. Sure it stil is windows but it I find Vista much nicer to work with then 2000/xp

I guess I come over as a Windows fan boy but honestly, I never really liked XP. It's as bad as most Amiga user make it out to be IMHO but Vista I like to use.

My "beef" is that people shout eyecandy OS, while it's hardly that at all. If anything, XP is the eyecandy windows with al its bright colors... :lol:

[coldfish]

by Cymric on 2005/11/22 2:01:33

Pray tell, how would you like the 3D features to be used?

I'd like to see a versatile interface that is highly configurable and visually appealing that gets the most out of the technology.  

While the majority of us can look forward to computer technology advancing onward, others can stick with good ole' 2D.   :-)

That's perfectly fine with me.  

[Cymric]

coldfish wrote:
I'd like to see a versatile interface that is highly configurable and visually appealing that gets the most out of the technology. While the majority of us can look forward to computer technology advancing onward, others can stick with good ole' 2D. :-) That's perfectly fine with me.

Of course, that was not an answer to my question, but since this discussion is going way off-topic, I'm not going to pursue it here.

[Waccoon]

dylansmrjo:  It takes a fast machine (like a P4 @ 2.4 GHz - it's still a fast machine - and far away from lowend machines - remember - clockspeed hasn't got higher on x86 for a few years) to run Vista reasonably.

I take it this is from personal experience.

I've read that Vista works fine with 512 RAM, with or without 3D.  2GB RAM is probably for the early beta, which had a lot of debugging services enabled.

Note that minimum specs have to account for what apps are going to run on the OS, not just the OS itself.

What point is there to making an OS that runs in 4MB of memory when a web browser happily swallows 50+ MB just to render a CSS web page, and 512MB of memory is less than $45?

Microsoft has special versions of Windows to deal with lower spec systems and embedded hardware.  Vista is designed for desktops which have high-end hardware.  That's all there is to it.

For Vista (and Mac OS X) to become decent systems requirements for 3D MUST disappear.

Have you really thought about how much legacy junk can be thrown away by switching to 3D?

It's been a long time since I've used an S3 VergeDX.  :-)

It adds NO functionality at all.

Maybe you just lack the creativity to see beyond old-fashioned desktops.  Granted, OSX-style eye candy is a waste, but moving to vector graphics has huge advantages over traditional bitmaps.  Just look at what Flash has done for animation and games on the Internet.  It's outright killing Java, and is a hell of a lot smaller and uses less memory.

Whether 3D in a desktop environment is a good idea has more to do with implementation than concept.  I don't like the way OSX does it, and haven't really used Vista, but banning 3D altogether is a very rash idea.

If Amiga had a 3D desktop before Windows, what would your opinion be?  ;-)

You'll just have to live with the fact, that what your computer could do in 10 minutes in 1985 still takes 10 minutes today. Just with hardware much much faster

In 1985 we used floppy disks.  Trust me, functionality was not faster back then.  Maybe you're spending a bit too much time using ADFs.  ;-)

It requires more work from the CPU to draw windows and widgets.

Today's CPUs aren't just faster, they have special instuctions that do that stuff much better.  It never ceases to amaze me how fast Flash can render anti-aliased vector graphics with gradients, and all I can think about is, "I wish GUIs could do that."

Also, I think you're underrating caches and LOD.  You don't always have to render things over and over again.

In regard to functionality Vista has nothing.

One word:  thumbnails.

C'mon, man, you can't judge Vista before it's released.

I am disappointed the new shell (meaning, the CLI), isn't going to appear in Vista.  I've really been looking forward to that, because I've quickly found out that Windows is next to useless without Perl (and trust me, Perl is one big piece of bloat).

REPEAT after me: Eye candy is evil!

At least you can still turn it off in Vista, in pieces.  OSX doesn't give you much choice.  :-)

Cymric:  Pray tell, how would you like the 3D features to be used? Rotating windows, putting them sideways, or displaying directory trees in 3D is cool, but from a usability point of view, absolutely horrible.

That's becuase people have no imagination (especially GUI programmers).  Vista is important not because of 3D, but because the whole drawing system is being rethought.

seer:  Let's see... Lets draw everything on screen using the GPU or using the CPU ? The whole idea of LDDM is to take even more of the GUI from CPU to the GFX card.

Yeah.  Funny, I would think that hardcore Amigans would appreciate this kind of coprocessor-driven design.

minator:  There has been experimentation in 3D user interfaces but it's largely unsuccessful for the desktop itself or desktop apps (I think that's what the previous poster was complaining about). I think they'll become more useful when we get real 3D displays - some of which on the market already.

It could also be argued that most control devices are 2D.  I think every mouse should have a zoom axis, not just a scroll wheel.  Keyboards could also be a lot more versitile.  Most people don't use the keypad for entering numbers, anymore, so I'd replace it with a good set of configurable zoom/undo/redo/history buttons.  Hotkeys and other multi-key sequences should be bannished.  They are difficult to memorize in a lot of cases, are largely architecture dependent (key combos differ on each system).  The Mac doesn't have "better" key combos than the PC -- they're just different.  I have my Microsoft keyboard media keys remapped to the back and close buttons on my web browser, and it's a million times easier to browse the web, now.  Using my Mac, that has no support for media keys, and extremely limited support for action remapping, is a real pain.

There's plenty of interface design books on the subject of "failed" interface concepts, including ZIP, or the Zooming Interface Paradigm.  People just aren't thinking beyond the input devices that have been with us since the 80's, let alone the graphics techniques.

If someone really doesn't like eyecandy, open a shell and kill the workbench. On Linux (or other Unix) kill the X server. If it's early 1960's* UIs that float your boat, have fun..

God, I really wish we could have a new shell.  With UNIX, you have to wait for things to finish before you get a response, thanks to all the piping the commands are designed to handle, thus limiting what you can send to STD_OUT.  Maybe we should have a STD_STATUS or something.  We could abolish a lot of libraries and APIs that way.

seer:  I guess I come over as a Windows fan boy but honestly, I never really liked XP. It's as bad as most Amiga user make it out to be IMHO but Vista I like to use.

I use Win2K.  I don't need XP's features as I use apps like ACDSee to keep my photos organized, and I don't obsessively collect MP3s or movies.  My big beef with XP is that it complains big time whenever you swap hardware.  Win2K doesn't care.  I don't suppose Vista does this better, no?  :-)

coldfish:  While the majority of us can look forward to computer technology advancing onward, others can stick with good ole' 2D.

Microsoft does deserve a lot of credit, here.  Windows is very configurable and allows you to do things the old-fashioned way.  I'm finding it difficult to get used to OSX compared to my OS8 days as a Mac sysadmin.  New versions of Windows, however, don't bother me at all.  I mean, so long as they don't BSOD when you swap your motherboard.  XP is a real pain how it outright rejects new hardware, while Win2K will dilligently eat anything you throw at it.  :-D

[seer]

My big beef with XP is that it complains big time whenever you swap hardware. Win2K doesn't care. I don't suppose Vista does this better, no?

Well.. I never had any problems with XP and swapping hardware.. I even swapped my motherboard and CPU and GPU to a different model and XP just needed to install the mobo drivers. It was only when my harddrive died I had to reinstall and reactivate.

Still I heared but never experienced that XP needed to be reactivated after adding something trivial as a extra HD ??

[Waccoon]

Still I heared but never experienced that XP needed to be reactivated after adding something trivial as a extra HD ??

I've added new drives via parellel ATA with no issue, even on the same cable, so long as you have the correct boot drive selected in the BIOS.

I did have issues where I got a BSOD when adding a SIIG ATA 100 card.  I put it into several PCI slots and Windows just wouldn't take it.  I tried a Promise card later, and that worked fine.

I've never really been able to swap a mobo, though, even after uninstalling the drivers, first.  Windows still has a pretty pathetic way of managing drivers.

[Eclipse]

Isn't one of the new consoles using the PPC?