Direct X 10

[Jeremy Priest]

I think that most of the games problems have the Direct X 10 architecture,
and it's no-DirectX8 compatibility.

 

[Dale White]

What are you talking about ? What game(s) are you having a problem with ?

I've played older games like Quake 2 and Warcraft 3 with no issues, at least
none that jump out at me. So DX8 compatibility is there.

 

[Jeremy Priest]

for instance, when i try to play Half-life 2 (i know it's DX9) the screen
flickers a lot and does not load.

another game is The "Juast Cause" demo. the loading bar goes up, then it
goes back down. is that vista, or is it just the game's reliability on
steam?

 

[Nonymous]

I think that most of the games problems have the Direct X 10
architecture

There's no such thing as a DirectX 10 game yet.

 

[Jeremy Priest]

Aero uses DX10.

if you have vista, go to the search box and type dxdiag.

check the DX version on general.

 

[Dale White]

Actually Aero uses DX9. You can't use DX10, unless you have a DX10 video
card. Technically, there are a couple of DX10 games out (Supreme Commander,
Flight Sim X), but they require patches to make them DX10 and those patches
aren't going to be release for a while longer. So they are out, but not
really at the same time

The base DirectX installed is DX10, but Vista also have DirectX 9.0L
installed for backward compatibility. They are two completely different
installs.

As for HL2 not working, It might be a video driver issues or some other
issue. I've played almost all of HL2:EP1 under Vista (Vista 64 at that)
Valve official supports Vista now as well, So My guess is that you have a
video driver issue.

How about some system specs and we'll go from there

 

[Chuck Walbourn [MSFT]]

Technical clarification: Windows Vista's runtime supports Direct3D9,
Direct3D9Ex, Direct3D10, and older interfaces. DXDiag reports it as "version
10" for simplicity, but that number has been meaningless for a few years
now. The Windows Vista runtime also supports all the other usual DirectX
9.0c interfaces except DirectPlay Voice and Direct3D Retained Mode which
were removed. When you run the DirectX End-User Runtime installer or a game
uses the DirectSetup REDIST on Windows Vista (or XP SP 2 for that matter)
nothing in the runtime gets updated or installed. Only the SDK optional
components like D3DX9, D3DX10, XACT, XINPUT, etc. get installed.

The new Aero desktop uses Direct3D9Ex. This API requires Windows Vista, a
DX9 card, and a WDDM driver. It does NOT require Direct3D 10.

The Direct3D 10 API requires Windows Vista and a Direct3D 10 video card. No
released game creates a Direct3D 10 device at this time, although a number
of them have been announced as coming in future products and/or patches.

Driver quality is still an active area of development for ATI and NVIDIA so
if you are having issues, check their websites for updated drivers.

 

[Jeremy Priest]

thanks for clarifying this, oh-so-smart MSFT man

 

[Slap]

There's no such thing as a DirectX 10 game yet.

They will come... and very fast and furious. Better upgrade. This computer
stuff has a short life. Soon DX11.

 

[Darkelldar]

In testing games in Vista and I have had success with games back to DX6,
DX5 and earlier do not want work properly.

Download the latest DX runtime library and the Application Compatibility
update from MS download center. Fixed quite a few programs for me.

 

[Jeremy Priest]

thanks

 

[Chuck Walbourn [MSFT]]

Many games tend to fail for other OS compat issues than DirectX. If a game
uses DirectX 5, it is probably written for Windows 95, 98, or NT 4.0. As
such, it probably needs a compatability mode enabled before it will run. I
believe the oldest version of Direct3D supported by Windows Vista is
Direct3D version 3.

A rare few games use Direct3D Retained Mode which was deprecated after
DirectX 5, and that is not available on Windows Vista. This would manifest
itself by getting an error about missing "D3DRM.DLL".

 

[Mark]

I know some "legacy" Direct3d operations were removed from DirectX10. I
suspect you have encountered a game that used them.

According to:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb219721.aspx#ID0ETIAA

DirectSound was updated to expose the capabilities of the new Windows Vista
audio driver stack, which supports multi-channel software buffers. The
legacy Direct3D Retained Mode API was completely removed from Windows Vista.
DirectPlay Voice was also removed, as well as DirectPlay's NAT Helper.

A possibility may be to install a virtual copy of XP or win95 inside of
Vista and run the game in that. Check the Microsoft VirtualPC website...you
never know, it might work ;-)


Mark

 

[Jim Carls]

I think that most of the games problems have theDirectX 10architecture,
and it's no-DirectX8 compatibility.

One other thing that may cause trouble (at least it did for us on
Company of Heroes) is that a game may auto-detect and select Direct3D
10 as the shader (maybe because of running in Vista). It took me
quite a bit of experimenting before I realized that this was the cause
of the abysmal frame rates we were getting, even with other options
set to "low" or "off". After I set the shader to "High" instead of
Direct3D 10, the graphics became excellent. It's strikes me as
peculiar that the game (at this point) had this setting available at
all.

 

[Chuck Walbourn [MSFT]]

One other thing that may cause trouble (at least it did for us on

Company of Heroes) is that a game may auto-detect and select Direct3D
10 as the shader (maybe because of running in Vista). It took me
quite a bit of experimenting before I realized that this was the cause
of the abysmal frame rates we were getting, even with other options
set to "low" or "off". After I set the shader to "High" instead of
Direct3D 10, the graphics became excellent. It's strikes me as
peculiar that the game (at this point) had this setting available at
all.

The latest Company of Heroes patch is the first commercial game to support
Direct3D 10. It defaults to Direct3D 10 if it is available. Drivers are
still being actively optimized for Direct3D 10, so please try the latest
driver for your board.