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A First Look at 3-D Support in Avalon | |
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| Time: 00:00 EST/05:00 GMT | News Source: ActiveWin.com | Posted By: Robert Stein | ||
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The new graphics system in Longhorn, code-named "Avalon," provides excellent graphics facilities enabling high-quality, resolution-independent user interfaces to be constructed without requiring heroic efforts from software developers. As well as providing a rich repertoire of two-dimensional drawing primitives, it also supports three-dimensional drawing. | ||
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| #1 By 6859 (206.156.242.39) at 6/24/2004 10:34:16 AM |
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Ok,....
So, the OS will understand the concept of a primitive natively. Along with the idea of depth and camera focus point and position along with yaw, pitch, and roll. Do we need this? I mean, really, what good is this to anyone to have a cube on the desktop as your file folder?... |
| #2 By 1643 (64.73.227.129) at 6/24/2004 2:13:45 PM |
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Plus, you can turn off the rendering for a classic mode. It's just makes it easier for us humans which are 3d biased, so imagine putting that document in the first folder on the top left :)
humor |
| #3 By 1643 (64.73.227.129) at 6/24/2004 5:10:03 PM |
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"The only difference is now we will have perspective, but how would it help us to measure depth on cues on a screen where we use a 2D pointing device such as the mouse? "
It obviously won't be a hologram, but interacting with three dimensional objects allows us to interact with the computer natively. "Also for humans to organize data it is better in 2D, notice how spreadsheets don't have a 3rd axis, just rows and columns? " That's because we have adapted to computing limitations (2d)...but i only know summary data of UI studies...you will need to search the net for the specifics. Sorry for my ignorance in the subject. humor |
| #4 By 1643 (204.210.30.241) at 6/24/2004 10:34:19 PM |
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"What's with the buzzwords? If you want to interact with a computer natively learn to use a debugger and code the CPU's instruction cache in realtime! "
I think that's your problem...i'm talking about a typical end user...not a developer. Get out from that dark little cube and 21" monitor and see the sunshine. It's a 3d world out there kiddo. "Moving from handwriting to typing is evolutionary. Moving from 2D to 3D should be revolutionary, not evolutionary. 3D doesn't have a killer app yet and so far MS's GUI designs haven't really revolutionized anything lately other than hiding system tray icons. Longhorn just looks to be a lot more eye candy than usual." Well, everything is evolutionary. Why can you say that it's not revolutionary (who defines revolutionary?). This is the first time their is a handheld computer that is powerful enough to use almost every app out there...but light enough to be used as a tablet and has really good hand writing recognition (albeit not perfect...but better/equal to anything out there)...and selling at a decent volume (i.e equal to about the same as all macs shipped...notebooks and desktops). Sales haven't been what was hoped...but it's picking up steam. There are so many computers out there...and things take time...it's not an overnight process. (Similar to Iraq...but I digress). I'm a younger guy though, and have been brought up to type instead of writing. "#14 sounds like OS X has the lead right now... I guess we'll see in the future what it will be. " Try XP with objectdock, same app compat and speed...refreshing new flavor. http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.asp?library=29 (btw - don't use the systray cmdlet, it crashes OD once an hour instead of once every two days) "Everyone and their uncle has been programming some sort of 3D desktop ever since someone used DOOM to manage system processes. It didn't work well, but people have had some sort of fascination with it. I think unless anyone can actually think of a way 3D can improve our lives significantly, 3D will be purely an evolutionary step... and will be no more useful than killing a process with a shotgun instead of an "End Now" button. " Well MS is trying, trying to make it compelling, trying to make it easier for developers, trying to integrate legacy apps...but I guess if they succeed in making it mainstream...OSS zealots will say they stole it from the PS2. PS - Thank you for having a thoughts and analytical brainpower behind your views...I was beginning to believe that every OSS user thought like MSucks. humor This post was edited by humor on Thursday, June 24, 2004 at 23:14. |
| #5 By 1643 (204.210.30.241) at 6/25/2004 4:05:13 AM |
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"Well.... You really don't offer any good reason for 3D to be used on the desktop. If you have a good concept or something I might be inclined to agree with you, but so far there isn't really any good reason to have a 3D desktop... "
Who knows? It's in alpha...give developers (MS/ISVs) time. "The way you install applications by just copying a file somewhere," Setup.exe too hard to click on? With proper MSI installs by the SW ISV eliminates the pains of the past. But it still is cool approach...MS just does it differently. "the way you can set up each piece of hardware by just dropping it in (most of the time)" Windows pioneered plug and play...and now downloads drivers from the web automatically if they pass WHQL. "that you can compile BSD-compatible applications which opens up a whole new world of powerful apps," Cool, I didn't know that. (Still small % compared to Windows...of course I'd throw that in :) "true pre-emptive multitasking" Windows, check! "legacy is done away with but emulated very well" Windows check! "Apple is very innovative and OS X is leaps and bounds better than Mac OS 9, and it is amazing that they were able to successfully commercialize and build an OS without spending so much development yet improving it so much, and opening a more familiar development environment that automatically grants it a repository of applications that are already compatible or made easily compatible, and opens a lot of developers to the platform without changing the way they work." Windows always has focused heavily on back compat...it's actually an amazing feta if you think about it. "It's as if Linux was suddenly 90% Windows compatible without any work necessary." But not close to Win32/.Net app varieties "But the OS X platform remains easy to use, intuitive, uniform, they were able to innovate over their predecessor and justify all of their improvements. " I agree Just showing you the similarities... humor This post was edited by humor on Friday, June 25, 2004 at 04:47. |
| #6 By 1643 (204.210.30.241) at 6/25/2004 11:15:02 PM |
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"hyping 3D"
I don't see any TV commercials...just developer previews. If MS says anything, opens up the flow of information...there hyping to you. "A lot of people don't know how to install/uninstall an application" No kidding, but it's MS's fault when they don't patch there box. </sarcasm> "people don't even know how to write good installers" People aren't perfect...so of course there will be problems. There are tens of thousands of apps for windows. BTW, .Net FW solves all these problems (including xcopy deployment)...perfectly IMHO in VS 2005 with the http app deployment...with autoupdates over http disto point...and with offline capability. "You still actually have to go through a wizard which is even more than you have to do on another system" Your wrong, in XP (I don't care about earlier OS's unless comparing to linux 1.0), HW installs automatically if the driver was included on the XP distro...and I'm pretty sure on windows update.com to. "If you drop in an Ethernet card it's automatically behind the firewall" It will be with XP SP2, prior to that most customers would have been pissed off about applications not working over the network. Remember...most people don't understand computers...and MS has a lot of people's issues to consider. "if you have a new video card it still knows what your monitor is and tries your preferred resolution + color settings first, etc. " That decision is left to the Video card maker...but since MS has to support crappy 10 year old x brand monitors that would flash like crazy and the tech couldn't see the screen if set at the wrong res...so maybe setting it to 800x600 is the best decision. "I find in Windows the only devices that are treated truly like plug & play are USB. " Except for your "video card resolution"...eveything else just works...including USB. ... |
| #7 By 1643 (204.210.30.241) at 6/25/2004 11:15:59 PM |
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...
"It is but then you end up with COMDLG32.DLL which you can't improve/fix otherwise almost every app is broken" You can improve and fix it, you just can't break the API...that is a vague way to through some FUD in there. I've deployed, managed, or architected over 300,000 desktops for dozens of companies...all those machines work just dandy. "In Windows you can keep backward compatibility but that means you have to keep adding new layers " There called shims...and people will take a 1% perf hit so that there critical business app (autocad, quicken, or quake) will run. "You might as well break compatibility and support the older apps the best you can. " No. your wrong, and there is no debate for this. You can move to a new platform that solves these issues (which is .net), but a majority of my legacy enterprise apps better run perfectly (unless there security issues)..and coexist with the new architecture (.net)...that's the MS platform. That's their success. "the same version they each load a copy of the DLL into memory anyway" 1% perf hit (or say 10%...i don't care)...so that i can run all my legacy apps...and there only linked up when i run those legacy apps. "DLL Hell" Windows never had "DLL hell" as much as the apps that used shared dll's...just wanted to make that distinction. "The compatibility isn't implemented very well" It works EXTREMELY well...do you know it's like 80-95% of the apps out there from NT to 2k..and there was a lot of changes/improvements in 2k. It was rocket science back in 1995...they didn't have a time machine to see the future. "held back by the architecture " and "too late to change because so much depends on it, they should've broken it with Windows 2000" It coexist with the new architecture perfectly... .Net, meet COM/Win32...pleasures all mine. I know you would like a lean, mean, orderly machine (so would I)...but 97.4341% of users out there that would prefer something that works great, coexist with the next generation apps/framework, and runs there apps they have already invested in. And it's the 97.4341% that pay me :) humor |
| #8 By 1643 (204.210.30.241) at 6/25/2004 11:42:37 PM |
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d post This post was edited by humor on Friday, June 25, 2004 at 23:43. |
| #9 By 1643 (204.210.30.241) at 6/26/2004 12:57:41 AM |
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It's just not easy to do these things in Windows [to patch your box]. On Mac OS it is."
Updates are downloaded and install on my computer automatically...or i can have them downloaded or notified. How is this harder then the Mac? If you really think so, your heading to the delusional world of Mr. you know who. "Bull. Before putting in a new video card, you have to change the driver to Standard VGA, shut down, put in the new one, re-set your color preferences and monitor (unless it auto detects it but it doesn't seem to work when you put in a new video card unless you want to reboot again but I always get stuck with "Standard Plug and Play monitor" instead of my real monitor's drivers) and you gotta reboot after it detects what video card you do. " No you don't you add the new card, (or an additional one for two monitors) and it just works. You have to boot via the f8 key to use the VGA driver until it installs the first time (only if this is a replacement and not an additional one, which would just boot normally). But your basing your "PNP stinks" theory on video card scenario...and that MS has to come up with solutions that work with a variety of a thousand as opposed to apple only approach of 50. And it's your only scenario thus far for thousands of devices. ... This post was edited by humor on Saturday, June 26, 2004 at 01:17. |
| #10 By 1643 (204.210.30.241) at 6/26/2004 1:16:34 AM |
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"In Linux, you shut down, take out the old card, put in the new one, start up. "
Same with windows, safe mode uses VESA which requires no drivers. Windows, Check! Want a GUI, in linux you have to reconfigure the GUI...MS, Nope...auto installs to smoooooth sailing. Your starting to be wrong a lot...maybe you should learn Windows instead of blindly bashing it. "This News.com article does an excellent job of explaining the root of a lot of Microsoft's security problems and why there are so many security problems. The basic idea is that old code at Microsoft is continually retro-fitted for uses other than what it was originally designed for and as a result problems which were originally annoyances and harmless bugs become gaping security holes. In particular, Microsoft's retro-fitting of all its legacy code to work with the INTERNET opened up a proverbial Pandora's box of problems." In the authors opinion. But I've already given my speech that .Net solves all this forward looking and appcompat is very important for customers. "This article talks about DLL Hell" I know what DLL hell means, I'm saying it's more an app thing than windows. For instance, say some snazzy version of some linux app had a dependency on a another app...if you change the Dependant app, it will break. This is common on all platforms...but it's better than coding everything yourself. "Yeah I agree it's amazing that it runs 80-95% of the software, maybe even 99% if you don't count DOS, but the problem is all of the sacrifices you make (DLL hell, security problems). It's not implemented well... not it doesn't work well. " DLL Hell, Application versioning problem, not windows but best practice in the day (the past). Security problems - I would say that MS Windows has increased in security in their progressive generations. It's implemented VERY well and works great...that's apple you must be thinking of. "But they have to keep the old crap around, and since Longhorn has to be able to default to crap graphics for safe mode, and you have to use legacy apps, and not everyone can use the new interface, it still has to keep the old crap around. " BECAUSE CUSTOMERS DEMAND IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
| #11 By 1643 (204.210.30.241) at 6/26/2004 4:58:25 PM |
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"You have to restart. "
Only if the file is in use...and t it can restart automatically...another example of bias due to ignorance of what your talking about. How can you make a statement that it's "easier to patch on the mac"? "Want a GUI, in linux you have to reconfigure the GUI... " No, I haven't but how can you upgrade your video card without configuring the gui before you "startx". MS can but using no video card drivers in VESA mode...whihc is default in safe mode. You don't have the facts...just out of context myths. "Yay, everything's in the future." .Net has been out for a few years...more FUD. "but they're built to hold different versions of the libraries from the beginning, the old ones die out and don't get used anymore but in Windows they keep them in, " Because you can still run apps from the 1980's...so yes, there there. I don't see your problems with that. Especially since they're only called when used. "and you end up not being able to modify them anymore without breaking applications that depend on the DLL working in very specific ways. Since things weren't always documented properly and there was no code, people automatically would code assuming they worked properly, so some applications depend on bugs to work properly. Fixing some bugs breaks some applications because they were designed to work with the buggy versions, and they were never made to detect different versions of a file or whatever. Now with all of these different versions around, applications would mix and match API calls with whatever libraries would suit their needs and you really can't get rid of any of them anymore. " Ummm, so, your argument is that the app still works and that's bad how. You can modify, tune, and fix the api...you just get change the documented functions. I don't understand your point here. "Way too many Windows PCs are infected, if this situation changes in the future then good. " Comes with the 90% market share to OSX/Linux >5% market share in the home. "Nobody I know " I can tell. But your experience is not the reality. This post was edited by humor on Saturday, June 26, 2004 at 17:53. |
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