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Microsoft Windows Games

Microsoft Unlocks Framerates For Smoother Gameplay On Windows 10 (pcper.com) 96

Posted by msmash from the good-news-of-the-day dept.
An anonymous user writes: Back in March, Microsoft's Phil Spencer addressed some of the concerns over the Unified Windows Platform and PC gaming. He noted that Microsoft would "plan to open up VSync off, FreeSync, and G-Sync in May" and the company would "allow modding and overlays in UWP applications" sometime further into the future. Well, it appears that Microsoft is on point with the May UWP update. According to the MS DirectX Developer Blog, a Windows 10 update being pushed out today will enable UWP to support unlocked frame rates and variable refresh rate monitors in both G-Sync and FreeSync varieties. Today's update won't automatically enable these features in UWP games like Gears of War or Quantum Break, they will still need to be updated individually by the developer. Microsoft states that Gears of War and Forza will be the first to see these changes, but there is no mention of Quantum Break here, which is a game that could DEFINITELY benefit from the love of variable refresh rate monitors.PCWorld has more details.
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Microsoft Unlocks Framerates For Smoother Gameplay On Windows 10 More

Microsoft Unlocks Framerates For Smoother Gameplay On Windows 10

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  • "oday's update won't automatically " whats the use of win10 if not the automatically part.

  • UWP just seems like another stupid layer of bloated crap between the game and the hardware.

    • Re:Why would you ever write a game as a UWP? (Score:5, Informative)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2016 @05:24PM (#52086691)

      As its primary purpose is to siphon money off to MS, what do you expect? This is basically an attempt to force the console-model on any PC running Windows 10.

    • Uhhh... you mean like XOrg, Win32 or Cocoa? Every OS needs a GUI layer/API to handle application execution.

      UWP also handles installation/uninstallation which if anything prevents bloat and definitely prevents installation rot.

    • Microsoft, still trying to leverage their monopoly to the detriment of all.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      UWP just seems like another stupid layer of bloated crap between the game and the hardware.

      That's incorrect. UWP isn't "another layer". If you write a DirectX UWP app then it goes through the same DirectX APIs as it would if you were doing a regular win32 app.

      UWP has some replacement APIs -- e.g. it removes the gdi32.dll drawing APIs from win32, replacing them with faster rendering that's more hardware-accelerated, and it bypasses the user32.dll window-managed APIs from win32 replacing them with its own model. But those things are irrelevant to games.

      UWP has a couple of new entry-point APIs, e.g.

  • UWP is not the right solution for every problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10, 2016 @05:36PM (#52086749)

    I get where Microsoft is going with UWP - It's replacing the legacy overall application framework that's been cobbled together since DOS/3.11. Every windows desktop application has a bit of baggage that's a holdover from DOS, and can in theory interact and work with legacy DOS systems (USB floppy drive? and sneakernet? Add an old DOS hard drive via a USB cable?)

    UWP is a different beast. Sandboxed applications that come through a managed app store - Yeah it's tablet like but it's easy and safe for users. Bad applications can't root your system and getting new ones, updating them is easy as hell.

    Of course, conveniently, Microsoft gets a piece of the pie or has their hand in every UWP application in some manner or another.

    Trouble is UWP is tied to the shitfest that was windows 8 "Metro" and got an astoundingly bad start. It's also got serious issues. Ask any developer that wants to code something more complicated than an online photo browser or "App" that that replaces a web page for some simple service.

    Huge pain in the ass straight jacket that makes porting legacy applications near impossible.. Limited access to system resources. Interface issues that make it a complete nonstarter for any serious productivity application. And as we see now, really really really poor and forced choices for games that make it useless for anything that's not a port of a tablet/mobile game.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        No one is ever going to get a decent game of of a app store. You're going to get simple tablet/phone like games that don't need performance.

        I think Valve would disagree with it, considering they ran one of the very first "app stores" on the internet... and their games aren't simple ones either.

        And until recently, it actually was quite difficult ot get onto their app store.

  • The joy of closed source, where you have to beg and wait for a feature and even a large community of users and/or programmers have no other recourse if the answer is either no or wait forever.

    That's part of why I like the flexibility offered by open source operating systems -- even if a feature is beyond the ability of some or most of the people who want it, if someone comes along who does have the ability to implement it then it will be done.

    That's also my beef with ostensibly open source Android -- I stil

    • I have all sorts of garbage apps that just show up by magic

      Get a Nexus phone. Just pure vanilla Android and no vendor apps or auto installed 3rd-party anything.

      • But if you value your life, do not get a Nexus 6, I heard they might turn against you.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PRMan ( 959735 )
        Yeah, you can't even share contacts with other Android users, who all can with their 3rd party extensions.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by amiga3D ( 567632 )

          It's for those of us who don't like to share. I'm selfish about all my data. If I want someone to see something I'll cut/paste it into an e-mail. It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

        • What are you talking about? In the stock contacts app, you can share a contact via Bluetooth or Android Beam. I have Barcode Scanner installed and it actually turns the contact into a vCard QR Code.

          Or do you mean share all my contacts? If I wanted to do this, I use an app called CardDAV-Sync to pull contacts from a CardDAV server. But I don't want to do this.

          You can install apps on vanilla Android, you know. You just get to choose.

  • Microsoft employees just wanted to have better frame-rates while snooping on their customers^D^D^D^D^D^D^D^D^D bitches.

  • reasons why they are doing this (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    1- They are only doing this because the xbone is failing hard to the PS4. If they had a dominant position on consoles, we wouldnt be talking about this.
    2- Again, to give the 360 and now the xbone advantages, they crippled DirectX gamepad tech. (DirectInput - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
    3- Trying to kill Steam,but given how dirty M$ will always be, they will kill Steam and with it, multiplatform releases (OSX and more important, Linux/Steam OS).

    Might be more, but perhaps you get the idea.

    Personally, I a

  • Playing catch up with a walled garden (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HalAtWork ( 926717 ) on Tuesday May 10, 2016 @10:24PM (#52088383)

    UWP is getting built up as fast as possible to match Win32, and when parity is achieved, UWP will have all the new API updates and Win32 will stagnate. Eventually MS will say it's not worth supporting Win32 as a development platform and will leave it to a virtual machine for compatibility. It will be deemed too insecure and out of date. UWP will be supported on more devices. Through MS's store, UWP applications have DRM containers and the Windows PC won't be as open as it used to be, allowing for community fixes and game updates like texture packs and mods. Anyway that's what it seems like.

  • CRT displays relied on phosphorous glowing for a short period after being blasted by electrons. You had to keep redrawing the screen to refresh the pixels. But modern monitors are based on LED technology - they don't need refreshing - you just turn them on and off. So why have refresh rates at all? Why doesn't the device simply send frames to the monitor as and when they are ready and the monitor just display what it's told. If I don't send a new frame for an hour the monitor should just sit there for an hour showing the same picture without any refreshing or switching or scanning or any of that.

    • So why have refresh rates at all?

      Legacy. The monitor technology changed long before methods of driving them caught up. Starting with digitising the analogue signal sent by the PC. The concept of refresh rates were firmly baked into the monitor technology and then it simply stuck with the move to digital. Unfortunately digital signalling was all about sending the required graphics to the monitor and interfaces weren't designed to be generic, i.e. data exchange was essentially limited to something similar to a low-rate I2C bus.

      Fast forward t

    • DVI is linked to analog computer graphics. In the early days, DVI transferred analog signals meant for CRTs. In this digital era, DVI still has blanking regions ment for CRTs. And as HDMI is derived from DVI, so does HDMI.
      Note that both Nvidia and AMD have variable framerate solutions that require specific hardware.
  • Once again Microsoft shows that paid operating systems are unethical. Limiting function and performance as they see fit.

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