Hacked DX10 for Windows Appears

Oddscurity writes "According to The Inquirer someone managed to write a wrapper allowing DirectX 10 applications to run on platforms other than Vista. The Alky Project claims to have reverse-engineered Geometry Shader code, allowing Windows games to run on Windows XP, MacOSX and Linux. The Inquirer is understandably cautious about these claims, urging readers to investigate the releases themselves to ascertain whether or not it's a hoax."

Re:just buy Vista...

[eviloverlordx]

No thanks. I'd like to be able to use my computer without needing five top-of-the-line graphics cards just to run the OS.

DMCA??

[Pompatus]

Even if he really managed to do this (which I doubt, look how long wine has been around and it still doesn't run everything), won't he get sued immediately for something like this?

Re:just buy Vista...

[brunascle]

well, you're going to need those cards to run DX10 anyway.

Re:just buy Vista...

[ivan256]

The article claims to have a software implementation of DirectX 10 Geometry Shaders, so no, you wouldn't.

Are we sad yet

[willie_nelsons_pigta]

We are hacking Windows apps to run them on Windows OS's.

Let the sadness ensue.

Re:just buy Vista...

[Blahbooboo3]

I can't ignore this comment as it seems Slashdot keeps perpetuating this myth...

Why do people keep perpetuating this misnomer?? If you don't use Aero and instead switch to Windows Classic Appearance, Vista works great on a wide variety of machines.

Now, if you had said it as below you would have had a point:
"No thanks. I'd like to be able to use my computer without needing five top-of-the-line graphics cards just to run the OS in 'fancy graphics' mode.

If only windows were like Linux

[CastrTroy]

If only windows were like Linux. I don't really mean in the open-source way, but more in the separate projects way. If DirectX was a separate project from the windows OS, then it would work on windows XP without us having to go hack it. There's no reason why DirectX 10 can't work on windows XP. It's just an artificial limitation that MS through in to get people to buy Vista. MS does this a lot, with IE, IIS, MS Office, DirectX, and many other tools. I don't see why people put up with it.

Re:just buy Vista...

[Beau6183]

So rather than a top-of-the-line GPU, you'd have to compensate with a top-of-the-line CPU to handle the load brought on by software rendering.

Re:just buy Vista...

[shaitand]

'Why do people keep perpetuating this misnomer?? If you don't use Aero and instead switch to Windows Classic Appearance, Vista works great on a wide variety of machines.'

A variety of machines with really fast processors and boatloads of ram.

Re:Free Information!

[CaseM]

Kinda how no one sued DVD Jon [slashdot.org]?

Re:Are we sad yet

[beset]

Not that I understand anything about DirectX but wouldn't this be the first step to getting something functioning in WINE?

Might be just me . . .

[OverlordQ]

. . but this screams "Getting gullible people to give me $50 for mostly snake oil"

why buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if so many tools out there weren't mindless lemmings, having to have the latest PC games and thus buying an OS they dont need, we could all send a message to M$ and the game writers that we're not interested in buying into their planned obsolescence.

M$ has functionally taught us that security is going to be something that's left up to us.....so OK, no sweat, redmond......BTW, I won't be needing the OS you spent many many millions developing, thanks.

Re:just buy Vista...

[toQDuj]

I'd be the first to agree that the UI in Mac OS X is quite limited in terms of customisability.

If you like the OS X GUI, great! If you don't, you'd be forced to use third party apps to change even the most basic elements.
Me, I'm happy with the way things are, but if there was an easier way to change the appearance, I might consider changing. All in all, it doesn't play that big a role though, the increase in productivity has been well worth the decrease in UI customizability.

B.

Re:If only windows were like Linux

[ipjohnson]

I'm sure if they wanted to they could get it working on XP but if they did that one of the big incentives for upgrading to Vista (To play DX 10 games) goes out the window.

Re:It shouldn't work...

[Anonymous Coward]

do you even know what you are talking about? ;) what exactly do you think the ms coders added at the os level that makes vista so much more graphically "powerful" than XP?

Re:didn't work for me

[Pulse_Instance]

It may be because I just started my first coffee, but as far as I can tell from reading that you only need a validly licensed copy of any windows operating system. It says absolutely nothing about only installing it on a validly licensed copy of any windows operating system.

Re:If nothing else...

[MetalPhalanx]

This is the start of the market's reaction to Vista, made manifest.

Agreed.

It's great to see that at least some people are fighting back against Microsoft's nasty move. If it's possible to implement DX10 on any other OS than Vista, it's just proof that M$ was just trying to force everyone else out of the gaming market. Of course, most of us already know about how slimy they are... but it's always nice to see a reminder.

Re:didn't work for me

[BlueTrin]

So if I have a Windows Licence, I can use it even on non-Windows OSes, isn't it ?

Actually the opposite would be in contradiction with EU law.

Re:didn't work for me

[Nephilium]

And totally illegal as well. All Microsoft EULAs for their free stuff (or stuff which is not sold, like DirectX) forbid installation on non-Windows platforms. I don't see how this is different from pirating Windows in the first place. Here it is, from the EULA for DirectX: NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A VALIDLY LICENSED COPY OF ANY VERSION OR EDITION OF MICROSOFT WINDOWS XP MEDIA CENTER EDITION, MICROSOFT WINDOWS 95, WINDOWS 98, WINDOWS NT 4.0 WINDOWS 2000 OPERATING SYSTEM OR ANY MICROSOFT OPERATING SYSTEM THAT IS A SUCCESSOR TO ANY OF THOSE OPERATING SYSTEMS (each an "OS Product"), YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO INSTALL, COPY OR OTHERWISE USE THE OS COMPONENTS AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS UNDER THIS SUPPLEMENTAL EULA.

Nope, all that EULA says, is in order to install DirectX, I have to own a license to a Windows OS. It says nothing about not being able to install this on another OS. And I'm pretty sure that everyone here has at least a Windows 95 license somewhere...

Nephilium

Re:just buy Vista...

[Mister Whirly]

Hopefully the most of the bugs will be worked out by the the time SP1 comes out. Personally, except for pure test beds, I always wait until the first SP comes out to install any OS. I remember fighting with a couple Macs when the first version of OS X came out. Same with Windows Server 2003. But i wouldn't completely write Vista off yet, especially in your case with a complex setup, the drivers may take a bit to all get working in unison.

Re:that would be nice

[ichimunki]

How does Vista give you any less control over the software you run than XP? I've been seeing a lot of vague claims about how Vista is so much worse than predecessors, and I'm really not finding anything conclusive to back that up. Windows Genuine Advantage and some HD-DVD stuff are hardly the end of the world if you've already bought into the notion that proprietary software and encrypted media are OK. And if you are really into controlling your software, why would you want to wrap DX10 anyway? The games in question are undoubtedly closed-source.

Re:Useless?

[jswigart]

Thanks for the flamebait, but seriously since you appear to doubt the uselessness of porting DX10, consider this. Of the many changes in DX10, one of them is a more focused set of requirements for DX10 compatible cards. When a game developer is writing a DX10 game, they are writing it with these specifications in mind. Do you think for a second that Crysis, Alan Wake, Shadowrun, UT3 or whatever other DX10 game in development is going to run worth a crap in a software DX10? I wasn't aware there was such a demand to run the DX10 sample apps. This to me is the main reason for calling this project useless. There's also legality issues, the question of whether this is even real or not, and assuming it is real, to what degree of support is to be expected in the absence of Vista. In fact, like most rewrites of software projects, particularly in the gaming area, most of the focus and attractiveness of DX10 comes from its refactoring of some of the problem areas of previous DX versions in order to provide large speedups. For example, in DX9 and below, draw calls are very expensive, and a game can easily start choking and performing very badly on just a couple thousand draw calls. Each draw call has very large CPU overhead to it. It doesn't take much to hit this draw call cap and become CPU limited. DX10, due to the new API and driver model has been written with this in mind, resulting in a huge reduction in draw call cost. OpenGL already has pretty cheap draw call cost. I'll agree that marketing probably played a huge role in DX10 Vista only, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was in part due to the engineers getting to a point where they just had to say "Look, there's some big foundation level problems with DX that we can't improve much on without rewriting it." Any software engineer should understand the need to refactor sometimes, and sometimes you can't keep backward compatibility. Vista naturally provides a target for such a rewrite. It wouldn't make sense to have XP Service Pack 2 or whatever replace the XP driver model and whatever other parts of the foundations of XP is needed just to get DX10 on XP. DX10 is a major rewrite to the entire API and how it interfaces to the hardware. Could they have ported it to XP? Probably at huge cost, which in business terms mean hell no. It just isn't worth it. So marketing gets to use it to pimp Vista too. It's a win all around for MS, and for gamers and developers who do run DX10 there is potential for alot more over DX9. It's unfortunate it comes at the price of the turd formerly known as Vista.

Re:DMCA??

[inode_buddha]

How is this any different from when Compaq reverse-engineered the IBM PC-BIOS? I mean *way* back when.

Re:didn't work for me

[NightFears]

And I'm pretty sure that everyone here has at least a Windows 95 license somewhere...

Ah these self-affected Yankees, you never cease to surprise me.

Re:Very, Very Unlikely

[TFoo]

Why does DX10 rely on graphics card memory virtualization? What does it enable that I couldn't do in DX9?

Re:just buy Vista...

[d-rock]

I know what you're saying, but be careful about the blanket statements. I have an old IBM thinkpad that has 256MB of memory in it. XP runs like a one-legged dog even before I run any user apps, but Xubuntu (XFCE, pretty lightweight) runs great for Firefox, Thunderbird and most other things I need to get done on the family room computer. Of course, my dev Ubuntu box needs a gig or things feel slow with everything I need to run.

Derek

Re:If only windows were like Linux

[mgiuca]

Well if as you say I got my facts wrong, at least the principle was right... :/

Actually they moved GFX parts (and more) _out_ of the kernel, that's why they had so much difficulty doing it. IOW, with DX10 a large part of the driver is in user mode.

That isn't what I've heard. Their excuse is that they're putting more into the kernel. If it's all running in usermode, why can't it run in XP usermode?

You'er not asking the right guy here.

[anss123]

But a fast usermode to kernel interface is difficult to get right. It's in large part why microkernel based operation systems are so hard to get working fast. Then there's GDI to contend with, and making any changes to GDI is troublesome. I believe much of the work done with Vista have been in battle with GDI. In fact, I heard that GDI is emulated on Vista. MS must have said "screw it" at some point, and sent GDI headfirst out of the kernel and into some emulated environment. BTW, if you want to know how troublesome GDI is you should check out the Stardock people. They made a theming engine on top of it (no small feat). I heard from unreliable sources that MS ended up licensing theirs for XP.