Vector Glass, DPI Scaling, Desktop Aurora - Where/When?

[Ryan L Masanz]

Hello All,

I have been doing some reading about Beta 2 and I hear people commenting
about the items mentioned in my subject, Vector Glass, DPI Scaling, and
Desktop Aurora. I am trying to figure out what exactly they are, my
thoughts:

Vector Glass: From what I read, the current builds released are based on
PNG Glass, so raster, but future glass is supposed to be drawn from the
Vector engine and it is unknown if this is going to make it into Beta 2. My
questions around this is, how different will it look, and any other details
someone wants to share!

DPI Scaling: I see this in the a few newer builds, but it seems broken. I
remember people talking about the extreme high-res displays coming out in
the next few years, and that dpi scaling could be used to "Scale" windows
larger, not just resize them. Has this changed to just a system wide
setting? In its current form graphics tear, and just looks bad.

Desktop Aurora: I read about this on a forum post, about new desktop
wallpaper like animations, and some explorer task bar animations, real time
pretty moving backgrounds - I like it! Is it coming back, it has been
removed since very early builds.

Thats all!

Ryan

 

[Andre Da Costa [Extended64]]

All of those things you mentioned are just speculation. It was announced by
two MS Employees at CES January 2006 that the current UI is complete. There
are still additional features such as final wallpapers, sound schemes
expected by RTM and the fit and finish that comes along with it.
--
--
Andre
Windows Connected | http://www.windowsconnected.com
Extended64 | http://www.extended64.com
Blog | http://www.extended64.com/blogs/andre
http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta

 

[Chris Altmann]

DPI Scaling isn't speculation. Question is, does it work and will it make it
into RTM?

I thought I saw mention of an Aurora screen saver in an article on one of
the recent builds (I only have access to 5038 from MSDN). Maybe the effect
ended up there?

I have no idea about vector glass. Seems kinda pointless.

 

[Zack Whittaker]

The vector Glass bit (the bit I suspect Andre was talking about), is
speculation at the moment. However, some people have said "true Glass is on
the way" being that the PNG's are being wiped out and it's gonna be dragged
from the vector engine... we just don't know.

But yeh, the teams said that the UI needed "tweaks" but other than that was
finished.

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--

 

[roman modic]

Hello!

Hello All,

I have been doing some reading about Beta 2 and I hear people commenting about the items mentioned in my subject, Vector Glass,
DPI Scaling, and Desktop Aurora. I am trying to figure out what exactly they are, my thoughts:

Vector Glass: From what I read, the current builds released are based on PNG Glass, so raster, but future glass is supposed to be
drawn from the Vector engine and it is unknown if this is going to make it into Beta 2. My questions around this is, how
different will it look, and any other details someone wants to share!
http://www.aeroxp.org/board/index.php?showtopic=3358&st=135&p=37356&#entry37356


I take back what I've said about vector glass, after doing a bit of digging today I've found evidence that it exists, and IS WPF
powered.

Specifically, DWM references the following keys when starting up. These keys aren't present by default in 5381, but you can create
them just fine. Toggling the values to various values seems to attempt to start something other than PNG glass, but fails. I'm
posting the code here, maybe somebody will know what the correct values to fill in are. If not, we'll have to wait til at least the
22nd to find out.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics]
"EnableDebugControl"=dword:00000000
"UseDX9LText"=dword:00000000
"BreakOnUnexpectedErrors"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics\DISPLAY1]
"PixelStructure"=dword:00000064
"GammaLevel"=dword:00000003

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics\Tier00010000]
"MemorySize"=dword:00020000
"PixelShaderVersion"=dword:00000003
"VertexShaderVersion"=dword:00000003

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Avalon.Graphics\Tier00020000]
"MemorySize"=dword:00020001
"PixelShaderVersion"=dword:00000003
"VertexShaderVersion"=dword:00000003

Note that modifying UseDX9LText to anything other than 0 breaks composition (with those values, anyway)

Cheers, Roman