itching to try irrlicht on vista...

lug · Post by **lug** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 1:56 am

I'm very tempted to try out an SVN build on vista rtm (been messing around with the rc1/rc2 builds).

But i guess someone needs to add a directx10 or directx9L (or both) to irrlicht for it to support vista natively (even if there's no graphic card available yet that supports native dx10) and i think in one of niko's blog he stated that won't happen until next year or something.

But we want it now, niko! b-(^_^)-b

Anyway, I'll probably mess around with the SVN build with vista just to see how the dx9 build runs on it compared to winxp and winxp x64.

Anyone else excited about doing irrlicht stuff on vista? I'm a bit bias since I like new things. Let's face it, winxp has been around for 5 years! I was glad when they brought x64 out. Now not only 32bit vista but also 64 bit vista. ;/|

Halan · Post by **Halan** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 3:10 pm

erm ... directX9.0L is downward compatible (or how you say it)

in fact im using irrlicht with windows vista. im having absolutly no problems with it

edit: and i dont think anybody here needs one of the new features directX gives us... but nico allready statet that it will be easy in his opinion to implent directX 10. just wait

greets,
Halan

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 11:42 pm

The GF8800 supports DX10.

CmdKewin · Post by **CmdKewin** » Thu Nov 30, 2006 4:50 pm

Yep. Both DirectX9 AND OpenGL work with the lastest ati drivers.

The *only* problem, is getting MingW to work... other than that, compiled exes from previous versions of windows, work like a charm.

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 4:59 am

why?... won't really be in use for awhile.

changing an OS is like repainting your house even when its done it takes awhile to finish and the nieghbors still gotta do it.

bgsteffens · Post by **bgsteffens** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 4:41 pm

I've gotta agree with Midnight here

by the time Vista is even at 10% of the Windows market share, Irrlicht will probably support DX10 twice over

All DirectX is backwards-compatible though. Even in DirectX9 or 10 you can still access and write entire programs in DirectX7 if you felt like it. So I'd say go ahead and install Vista and play with it. You'll probably have little or no problems.

linkoraclehero · Post by **linkoraclehero** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 6:54 am

<NUBRANT> OMGWTFMINGWWERK </NUBRANT> Simply put, MingW is a PAIN in Vista. #1 problem: File Not Found. It fails to even try to find the said files. A fresh install of wxDev-C++ Shows this, by creating a hello world and getting, simply nothing but, missing file errors. Once you get past the missing EXEs, you have missing headers. Once you get past those, you ahve missing std*.o files. Once you get past that, you get an unsurpassable, missing WinMain error. Vista is a GREAT OS overall, atleast from what I hear, RC1 is, as RC2 and later is said to be insanely strict. Problem is, they're trying too hard to get you to NEED their software (The VC++ compilers). But yes, Vista killed OpenGL anyway, and amazingly somehow renders in DirectX 10. This is done with DX9 and 8 apps anyway, as backwards compatibility is always alive!

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:29 pm

Vista did not kill OpenGL. You just can't use the Aeroglass stuff with newer versions of OpenGL. Making a comment like that, makes one wonder how much you actually know about Vista.....

sRc · Post by **sRc** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:37 pm

Spintz wrote:Vista did not kill OpenGL. You just can't use the Aeroglass stuff with newer versions of OpenGL. Making a comment like that, makes one wonder how much you actually know about Vista.....

probably off an old statement from Microsoft that OpenGL would run on top of DirectX, which would in turn make it perform less than straight OpenGL. that was changed later on

as far as if hes having problems running OpenGL on a RTM installation, he probably doesnt have anything more than builtin video drivers (both nVidia and ATI builtin drivers didnt have good OpenGL support)

TheRLG · Post by **TheRLG** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 4:21 pm

... quick question:

Why are you using MingW on Windows Vista? I don't see the benefit of doing so.

kburkhart84 · Post by **kburkhart84** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 4:28 pm

I use Vista with Irrlicht. I have close to the same frame rates with OpenGL and DirectX, so no, Vista doesn't kill OpenGL. In fact, in fullscreen mode, you wouldn't have any problems anyway. And yes, the NVidia 8800 is the only DX10 card available right now, but I don't think anyone needs it yet. DX9 and SM3.0 should be plenty for realistic games right now.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 5:58 pm

Our game does use also use OpenGL and so far it seems to run very good on Vista.

I didn't know about the MinGW problems, but i hope they get resolved soon. As for RLG's question: I'm sure it _is_ possible to develop on VisualStudio on Windows and GCC on Linux (irrlicht is doing so...) but it's more work if you have to care about two different compilers. Also MinGW seems to provide the only free c++ development environment on Windows which is complete (including stuff like profiler and debugger).

TheRLG · Post by **TheRLG** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 7:38 pm

... VisualStudio Express is free and complete, and works on Vista. Don't let the "Express" fool you, it's pretty much the same exact product.

As for making it work on different compilers, I would hope this would be worth the extra effort for the developer to offer truly full optimizations for the user.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 9:53 pm

I just checked express docu. Seems you can debug with it (not profile, but maybe you can do that with external tools). Still i guess it's simpler just using MinGW if you want to work for multiple platforms.

It offers more features than just all the gcc tools (which do already offer more than most people know). For example i have a lot of shell scripts embedded in my toolchain which i could often (not always) port to MinGW just by using the same scripts than on linux. And i would have no idea how to do that stuff otherwise in windows (but probably i'd learn python and would use that).

The optimization of VS is better than that of gcc, but it depends on the game if this will help you. In many 3D applications the bottleneck is the rendering anyway, so you won't get more FPS by using VS.

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 10:32 pm

Just as an FYI, the profiling/memory leak checking in Visual Studio 2005 Professional stinks anyways. 3rd party programs are MUCH better, only ones I know of cost money, like Memory Validator and GlowCode.

Visual Studio 2005 memory leak checker only works for C memory calls( malloc, etc. ). It only provides useful information for debugging new memory leaks in MFC.