The Golden Opportunity

[Neil]

Is the low adoption rate of the DX10 Graphics Card / Windows Vista combination a golden opportunity for S-3D to capture the interest of game developers?

Do you think the low adoption rate of DX10 has more to do with the growing pains of a new operating system, or do you think Microsoft did indeed make a critical error in how DX10 was released?

Regards,
Neil

[Freke1]

Hmm I don't think none of that matters. The only thing that matters is if 3D will be compatible with DX10, 11, 12... and Vista don't You think? Few ppl are going to buy XP 32bit and a DX9 card just to play in 3D. Just my 2cents.

[sharky]

i think that the problem is that dx10 is only vista copatible.. people are afraid of changing to vista because they still remember the problems related to xp when it was new. and i think that the guys wich belive in stereogaming like we do, will fix with xp until vista has full support.. i think that noone, or just a little part will change to vista until stereosupport exists.. the thing i most likly think is that users who already have vista, will not go back to xp to TEST stereogaming. so NEW users aer limited to xp users.

bye

sharky

[gisabun]

For my thoughts, a big issue has been the actual number of copies of Vista sold to consumers [who cares about the enterprise as they aren't playing games]. Aside from various software compatibility issues, Vista has been slow to be adopted by the consumer community. It requires a stronger system than what a lot of people have now.

Not everyone can shell out $4000+ [US] for a system to play games on. Microsoft is obviously trying to push Vista by releasing Vista-only games.

The gaming community won't move to Vista AND DirectX 10 until they know there is a decent percentage of end users who are already using it.

As mentioned in the article, only 2% of gamers have a compatible video card. That ain't good.

Already DirectX 10.1 is in the works [it's in the DirectX SDK]. That tells you something as well.

[IN65498]

To me the major problem (thanks M$!) is that the introduction of Vista has made the drivers releases even worse, as if there weren't enough issues already.
When just playing with mainstream card setups/visual options is an adventure, you are torn between Vista RAM wasting, driver bugs etc., how can you expect a good support for 3d?
People don't want headaches, so they run away when you ask them if you want to become some sort of beta tester (that's how I always felt with stereovision) with the aggravating unreliability of the Vista environment.
Going for IZ3D is a big question mark, going for some projector setup is even more expensive and requires hobbyist skills; the former solution gives you another unpredictable variable, proprietary drivers; the latter means being at the mercy of NVidia who doesn't care too much.

The whole MS Vista versions scheme is taking these problems to another, far worse level, because now you need to come up with drivers fo Vista DX10 32bit, Vista DX10 64bits, XP DX9 32bits and maybe even more versions, each of them with its own share of unique (sometimes elusive i.e. due to some of the gazillion possibile pc configs) bugs...

I'm quite pessimistic about stereovision for the next couple of years, even though I'd really really want it to succeed.

To me the only good solution would be to make the most advanced platform the de facto standard.
Vista 64 must be the default platform. I bet I'm not the only one who wants that, and who would really be mad at companies not giving me drivers, thus forcing me to 32 bits (not! I'd rather trash their products).
DX10 sure is another important issue, but not as much.