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Vista Not Playing Nice With FPS Games
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Feb 12, 2007 05:54 PM
from the shoot-em-up dept.
from the shoot-em-up dept.
PetManimal writes "Computerworld is reporting that gamers who have installed Vista are reporting problems with first person-shooter titles such as CounterStrike, Half-Life 2, Doom 3. and F.E.A.R. (Users have compiled lists of games with Vista issues.) The complaints, which have turned up on gamers' forums, cite crashes and low frame rates. Not surprisingly, the problems relate to graphics hardware and software: 'Experts blame still-flaky software drivers, Vista's complexity, and a dearth of new video cards optimized for Vista's new rendering technology, DirectX 10. That's despite promises from Microsoft that Vista is backwards-compatible with XP's graphic engine, DirectX 9, and that it will support existing games. Meanwhile, games written to take advantage of DirectX 10 have been slow to emerge. And one Nvidia executive predicts that gamers may not routinely see games optimized for DirectX 10 until mid-2008.'"
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[+]
Technology: Software Missing From Vista's "Official Apps" 288 comments
PetManimal writes "Microsoft has just released a list of 800 applications it says are 'officially supported' on Windows Vista. What's special about this list, however, are the programs that are not included: 'Popular Windows software that is conspicuously missing from Microsoft's list includes Adobe Systems Inc.'s entire line of graphics and multimedia software, Symantec Corp.'s security products, as well as the Mozilla Foundation's open-source Firefox Web browser, Skype Ltd.'s free voice-over-IP software and the OpenOffice.org alternative to Microsoft Office.' Another area in which Vista has found to be lacking is gaming, as discussed earlier on Slashdot."
[+]
Valve To Support DX10 With Episode 2 96 comments
In an interview with Game Informer from last week, representatives from Valve confirmed that they'll be supporting DirectX 10 functionality in the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2. This will be the case even for those folks who haven't upgraded to Vista yet. No worries if you don't have a DX10 card, though. They've got functionality nailed all the way back to DirectX 8, and are trying to push it all the way back to 7.
[+]
Ask Slashdot: Will the Lack of DX10 on XP Spur OpenGL Dev? 168 comments
Sparr0 asks: "Microsoft has announcement that DirectX 10 will not be released for Windows XP (which means no Shader Model 4.0 and no Geometry Shaders). I have since been waiting for news of game developers switching to OpenGL, in order to get the best graphics on the best hardware on the most popular gaming OS, however there is nary a whisper of such. Will such a shift occur, even if only in small amounts? When? Why not? It is probably safe to say that Unreal Tournament 3 (AKA UT2007) will have OpenGL as an option in Windows, but that is both unsurprising and also a long way off. Ditto for Quake Wars, and most other games that are planning a native Linux clients. Where are all of the other big names with Windows-only offerings? Why haven't we heard from Valve, Blizzard, Sony, or EA, to name a few?"
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People Were Right! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:People Were Right! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:People Were Right! (Score:5, Funny)
You're right. It's because they're stupid. Game developers don't do Mac versions of games because they're too stupid. It's not because the PC games market is pretty small compared to consoles, so the much smaller Mac market is objectively tiny. And you don't ever see games that run on more than one platform. And game developers are never beholden to deadlines or budgets that make producing a Mac version not only uneconomical but also a pain in the neck.
No, it's because game developers are stupid. And probably lazy, too.
Thanks for your piercing insight.
Parent
Re:People Were Right! (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end I guess it's a numbers game. If you're targeting a specific platform, you code whatever is native for it. This is changing due to the vast landscape of consoles with PPC chips and ATI/NVidia chips in them. I'm betting that in the future alot more devs will turn to OpenGL to make their games extra-portable for PC as well as next-get consoles.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:People Were Right! (Score:4, Insightful)
When I first installed vista, ET, Quake 3, RTCW and several other quake 3 based games would not run. They do work on my iBook G4. I only get 13fps in ET on that iBook and yet it was faster than Vista on a Pentium D. Funny how that works.
By far the worst issue with vista is nvidia and ati. They can't seem to ship stable drivers for it. My audigy card sometimes drops audio after several hours of use but its still working better than my video card. If you haven't gone to vista, wait until there are drivers. I don't know how OEMs are shipping computers with vista yet. The drivers can't be working right on those systems.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:People Were Right! (Score:5, Insightful)
By "mid-2008", I'm hoping SP1 or SP2 includes the abandonment of DRM, and I assume that by then there will be plenty of web sites that will tell me how to run a "trimmed" version of Vista the same way I do right now with XP Pro.
I don't have time at the moment to fuss with all the production software I use to get it running on XP. Sonar, Premiere, Steinberg Wave-lab, Pro-Tools, etc. I've got oddball little directx plugins for all those programs that I rely upon. I can't afford the time or energy right now to play with all this just to keep MS' quarterly earnings healthy.
I don't remember XP's rollout being this much trouble. I remember being elated at how it just seemed to have drivers for everything I was running and and there was a significant improvement over Win98 and NT (which most of the music software didn't like).
Maybe Microsoft will decide to focus on the Xbox and Zune and Dynamics (whatever that is) and leave the operating system to people who care. Sort of like Apple, who seems to be edging its way out of the computer business and into the much more lucrative "entertainment industry" (are THEY in for a shock). And I just don't buy the idea that computers are all going to be embedded and consoles and set-tops, etc etc. As long as there are people who want to be creative (and scientists) there will be a need for some type of general purpose cipherin' box onto which you can impose your will (to some extent) and make do what you want to do.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I don't remember XP's rollout being this much trouble. I remember being elated at how it just seemed to have drivers for everything I was running and and there was a significant improvement over Win98 and NT (which most of the music software didn't like).
Thats because XP was nothing more than a repackaged version of windows 2000 with a different GUI. The kernel was essentially the same so a few very minor changes in the code (or sometimes none at all) were enough to port the drivers. Vista on the other hand, is a completely rewritten kernel. I don't know specifics, but there are probably massive changes in the driver structure in the kernel especially since the drivers must now support DRM, driver signing, etc... Not like I care, I am quite happy running G
Damn DirectX... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Damn DirectX... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
SDL, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the main problem is that most games don't do their own engines. This is a good thing, but then, most games end up using engines written for DirectX...
As for the games which do create their own engines, I'm guessing many of them don't see portability as an issue, or if they do, would rather be easily portable to the Xbox 360 than to anything else.
Here's hoping QuakeWars continues to ensure OpenGL is well supported -- the Doom 3 engine is alive and well, I hope...
Parent
Re:Damn DirectX... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Damn DirectX... (Score:5, Interesting)
But for better or worse*, this is the way things will go. Creative is living on borrowed time unless they can convince developers to use OpenAL themselves, or they convince FMOD/Miles to put in two paths to support both groups. I don't think they'll be successful without a great deal of bullying.
* Worse, IMHO. I use cans for gaming and good head related transfer functions(required for 3D audio over headphones) are not done in software due to the heavy performance hit. There's still a distinct advantage to using hardware here(the X-Fi in particular)
Parent
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
You exchange a series of well known bugs and security problems (that have work arounds and policies to protect yourself) to being put into the unknown. Personally, I'm going to let everyone else rush to be the lab rat and only upgrade when I'm forced to.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
To bitch about microsoft apparantly. Hello, I am running software on a platform it wasnt designed to run on using new and unstable drivers and I am surprised things are not working as well as on my xp sp2 system! Now I shall submit this grievance to slashdot!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, and they use Vista as a selling point, encouraging people to upgrade to it, instead of warning them off as they should if they actually cared about the experience their customers were going to have. They should be waiting at least until the first service pack is out.
I'm putting mine in a safe deposit box! (Score:4, Funny)
Therefore, I've got a few backup copies of my w2k pro install disk, and I will be putting the original in a safe deposit box at the bank next week.
I didn't see a damn thing in XP that warranted the time spent, much less the money spent, on upgrading. Vista is no different.
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm thinking about it now... it's... it's so beautiful...
Parent
Nothing surprising (Score:5, Funny)
Now, off topic, I must confess that I no longer even read the Slashdot paragraph, but I just read the headline and then go straight to the comments to see what the controversial parts were.
Re:Nothing surprising (Score:5, Funny)
You must not be new here.
Parent
Minimal OS always best for max stability and speed (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that an OS is just for running applications, managing files and providing base services. They have to provide more and more features to make the upgrade justifiable. Games are better to stick to a dedicated XP install with all the bloat removed for now.
What??? (Score:4, Funny)
Since when has gentoo had DirectX 10?
Cheers,
Roger
They even copied THAT from the Mac (Score:5, Funny)
[And yes, this is a dig at *both* sides, so let's see how that goes down
Simon
Thats all right (Score:5, Funny)
Tips for Vista Gaming: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tips for Vista Gaming: (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
NVidia certainly dropped the ball (Score:5, Informative)
In my youtube video.. just using windows can cause the machine to spazz out randomly. For example.. I can't hit control-a to select all my icons.. it crashes the driver? WTF nVidia?
To make matters worse, nvidia appear to have thunked the 32 bit drivers into 64 bit address space... so there doesn't seem to be a true 64 bit driver out there for vista at all. Can anyone comment on this??
The 97.xx drivers.. what Microsoft shipped with vista.. are probably the best and most stable drivers at this point. On some of the other forums the reviewers have gone back to "stock" drivers for Intel and nVidia hardware.. and this eliminates some of the apparent vista stability issues. Some people have had ok luck out of the 100.xx drivers..
The truth is, I think, no one expects the vista drivers for hardware we already have to be this amazing break through. What is a bit scary is that the driver support is apparently so poor at this point in time... and it is poorest on hardware supposedly designed with vista in mind. The RTM drivers for vista/older cards aren't that bad.. they're playable in a lot of cases.. A lot of people, myself included, are having problems with source engine games IF the settings are cranked up way high. 800x600? No problem. 1920x1200 4xAA 4xAF.. Heloooo Pink Checkerboard Textures!
I'm not too terribly miffed I can't game quite as well on XP SP2... I am more than a little disappointed the drivers are buggy for basic things like.. screensaver... overlay video playback... being up for more than 4 hours? Given the state of Vista and that the graphics subsystem hasn't really changed much since RC1 I would have expected much better drivers-- especially since there are all these vista techdemos floating around.. at least in the case of the 8800+vista.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's not a bug, it's a feature designed to engage the user emotionally.
Virtual memory randomizer (Score:4, Insightful)
Turn Down the FUD (Score:5, Informative)
1.) Crappy video drivers. (Especially nVidia drivers.)
2.) The game needs admin privs.
If you're a victim of crappy drivers, well, that's the price you pay for being on the bleeding edge, I guess. ATI's drivers are fairly good. They had WHQL certified drivers released before Vista's consumer launch. nVidia, on the other hand, is dragging their ass. They've had a long time to get these drivers done. If you want to blame somebody, blame them.
If the game doesn't run without admin privs, then blame the game manufacturer. How do you know ahead of time? Well, if it has the "Designed for Windows XP [microsoft.com]" logo on the box, you should be good to go. These games were certified by Microsoft, and as part of that certification, they couldn't do stupid crap like write to c:\Program Files. If your game doesn't have that logo, then who knows.
Luckily, games that require admin privs can still be run on Vista without too much trouble. Just right click the game icon and select "Run as Administrator". Even better, right click it, go to properties, select Compatibility, and check the "Run as Administrator" option so that it always runs as admin. This will solve 99% of most people's gaming issues.
But games that don't run on Vista have nothing to do with Vista's "complexity" (it's a freaking modern OS, of course it's complex...), and it has nothing to do with some DirectX 9 incompatibility (the Dx9 bits ship with Vista).
Not to mention the fact that other sites mention [extremetech.com] pretty good luck with running games on Vista.
As usual, compatibility issues have more to do with 3rd party incompetence than with the quality of Microsoft's OS.
Good timing! (Score:5, Insightful)
And one Nvidia executive predicts that gamers may not routinely see games optimized for DirectX 10 until mid-2008.'
That's about the earliest I'll consider an "upgrade."
Slowed by Security (Score:5, Funny)
Not vista's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
the 8800 gtx has terrible support at the momement with a number of users threating nvidia through www.nvidiaclassaction.org [nvidiaclassaction.org]. in general NVidia has been doing a poor job of supporting their hardware, for example under XP 64 the drivers are equally bad - barely implementing what is needed to perform well. at the vista launch a large portion of their motherboards (680a, 680i, NForce4)did not have WHQL drivers relased.
many software publishers have clearly not tested their software with vista as well making things less smooth.
vista has been under development for an extrodinarily long time - give then ease of aquiring the OS (CTP releases, RC releases), and wide availability of development tools that contain support for vista, the blame falls squarely on the hardware and software vendors who have not updated their software for this release.
Ironically, the upgrade to Vista on my AMD 4x4 [blogspot.com] has gone without incident. All of my games continute to work at roughly the same level as before. There are still some performance issues and a few interesting features of vista relating to multicore machines.
Only themselves to blame (Score:4, Informative)
I would suggest that those same people need to take some example from the majority of us using open source software who are *fully aware* that if you make a major update to your system, you may end up screwing up a piece of software that you were able to run fine previously.
I'm sorry, but whether you use Linux or Windows, you're a complete and utter fool if you always run the "latest and greatest" version of everything AND expect everything to run smoothly out of the box.
Re:All Aboard the FUD Train (Score:5, Informative)
You!=everyone
Some gamers have experienced issues with their favorite games. And I'm sure some of them updated to the newest drivers as a first resort before posting problems on the internet. Really this was not unexpected. Every new release of software (especially a Windows OS) is not without problems. This only reinforces my opinion that if I were to get Vista it won't be until SP1 at least. The pattern for MS may still hold true:
Version 1.0: Buggy, unstable. Win95, ME, XP
Version 2.0: Some fixes, more stability. Win98, XP SP1
Version 3.0: More fixes, mostly stable. Win98SE, XP SP2
Version 4.0: There is no version 4. Start with another Version.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows 98 was a disaster compared to 95 in stability.
Windows 98 introduced brand new cutting edge levels of instability
Windows 95 was very simple bland and stable
Windows 95C added new features but was kept simple and a true stability upgrade.
Wheres 2k in your list?
1. Windows 95
2. Windows 95C
3. Windows 98
4. Windows 98SE
5. Windows ME
Tell me with a straight face the latest revision is always the best
That and (Score:5, Insightful)
Well when they do, they go and scream loudly about it on forums. It's never their fault, it's always the evil hardware manufacturer or OS maker or whatever. It's never the fact that they screw around with their software, overclock their hardware to the point of instability and so on, nope it's someone else and by god they are going to give them holy hell on a forum for it!
I encountered this with the 8800, nVidia's new card. I decided I wanted one, despite seeing people having tons of problems in forums. Well, I took the time to read the directions and make sure I had what I needed (such as a power supply that gave it sufficient power) and that I did what I should (such as using Drivercleaner to scrub the old drivers). Lo and behold, it works great. I don't have problems weird problems with it, my games don't crash, it's just a newer, faster card.
Basically I've found that you have to take any negative comments on the Internet with a grain of salt and check the source. If it's a tech professional who's done some proper testing, ok worth listening to (though a single point of data does not make a trend). However if it's a Computer Ricer, just ignore it. In all likelihood they caused the problems they are having.
Parent
Parent is spot-on. (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not going to say who I work for, but I will say I work on drivers for one of the big two graphics card vendors.
Driver development for Vista is a nightmare. We are forced to work within rigid and sensitive specifications, wherein violations cause Windows to shut us down or restart the video subsystem entirely. In the past, delivering content to the screen was relatively straight-forward and we were free to operate as we needed to get our job done. Today, it is entirely up to Microsoft and if you dare wander outside their edicts and trigger their damned “tiltbits”, you are fucked. Debugging this system is almost entirely blind so we are forced to play wack-a-mole all day. On the bright side, our driver code is receiving a thorough audit. In the mean time, you guys are getting the product of a rapid hackfast, intended to get something out the door to meet our marketing promises.
When Vista becomes dominant in the mainstream, all of you can expect loads of problems unless Microsoft learn to lighten up. Sure, they want to enforce standards on their platform. We all know Windows sucks largely because of how badly drivers are written, but they are doing it by screwing with us, the hardware vendors. My group knows what the hell we're doing. We would not be one of the top two if we didn't, but Microsoft are making our lives nearly impossible because they do not consider in the least what we need to make good products.
My advice: do not think you can buy either ATI or NVIDIA and expect Vista to work entirely as advertised. Wait a year. Stick with XP or buy a Mac.
Parent
Re:Parent is spot-on. (Score:5, Informative)
Which contains a much more authoritative response from Dwight Diercks - Vice President, Software Engineering at NVIDIA
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Stick with either XP until they force MS to remove the DRM paths and strict driver oversight... or simply push linux has a gaming platform and start developing not only drivers for linux, but also code to improve it as a desktop system.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While I blame Micros~1 for foisting this on the computing populace, a very large measure of blame rests upon you guys (ATI/AMD, NVidia) for going along with it.
When Microsoft presented their protected video path/DRM/copy protection suite and asked you to sign on to it, your correct response should have been, "Fuck off." (An ideal subsequent response would have been to get cracking on Linux and/or Mac support, since it was clear Microsoft was going
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well it's more like the prisoner's dilemma [stanford.edu] imho. If both ATI and Nvidia said "fuck off", MS would have a big problem. If only one of them said it however...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
People are so desperate to bash Vista that they'll take any ol' piece of information and twirl it around to create something entirely different. It's ridiculous. Why can't they just let people whatever OS they want in peace?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why?
I mean, I can run a reasonably modern game with support for in-game cameras -- say, Doom 3 (native Linux port), which can show me just as much detail on an in-game screen as I see in the rest of the game -- or Half-Life 2, where the demo showed someone tossing a camera around, and the screens behaving realistically.
So what's so hard about, say, showing an OpenGL game in a window? Is it trying to run two GL app
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Heck everyone loves cheap OEM parts!
Sucks to be a cursing Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What did you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What did you expect? (Score:5, Funny)
Damned. How will I watch my MP3s now?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)