Aah the joys of Vista

[C1ay]

Another small business victim :(

 

A friend/client bought a new PC Friday since they were on sale at Sam's. He spent the weekend installing software and moving data to his new PC. This morning he called to tell me that when he tried to log on this morning it told him his Windows key was not valid and wouldn't let him in. He wanted to know if I knew away around this problem and I told him no so he asked what he should do. I asked him if the machine came preloaded and he said it had and that he had some WGA cert with the key on it that came in the box. I told him all he could do at this point was called the support number and explain it to them. He called again this afternoon in hopes that I might have thought of something, anything since he was on hold for 5 hours and then got disconnected. Somehow me thinks his new copy of Windows is costing him more than just the sticker price :)

[Tormod]

Holy smokes...on hold for 5 hours? I'd give up after an hour. Poor man!

[Thorshammer]

Thors, could you try some resource-demanding games like HalfLife2 or Doom4, and some simulators, preferably XPlane, of Lock On if you must shoot, dont do MS Flight Sim, the flying engine is too lame and Toca3 for a driving sim. And I'd like to see some figures to compare that to if possible, is there any way you could install WinXP and try those games on there and get some FPS and then the same games on Vista?

 

Alexander,

 

I'll be happy to. I'll most likely do Half-Life2 or Halo2. Can you think of something more fantasy sci-fi related that would test in the same way as a simulator? I'm not into real life as much when it comes to vid games.

 

We shall see how it really does. I'll need to buy them one at a time, so it'll be a few days or weeks before I can post an assessment. I am eager to see how Vista stands up in that way.

[alexander]

I'll look into it Thor, i really dont know of any other simulators that are quite as intricate as XPlane though.

 

(Bascially a reduced version of the about on X-Plane, by Austin Meyer, but only slightly reduced)

 

1) It takes in the model of the plane and breaks it down into its elements, such as propeller, rutter, horizontal and vertical stabalizers and so on.

 

2) Then, twice a cycle the aircraft linear and angular velocities, along with the longitudinal, lateral, and vertical arms of each element are considered to find the velocity vector of each element. Downwash, propwash, and induced angle of attack from lift-augmentation devices are all taken into the consideration when finding the velocity vector of each element.

Propwash is found by looking at the area of each propeller disk, and the thrust of each propeller. Using local air density, X-Plane determines the propwash required for momentum to be conserved.

Downwash is found by looking at the aspect ratio, taper ratio, and sweep of the wing, and the horizontal and vertical distance of the "washed surface" (normally the horizontal stabilizer) from the "washing surface" (normally the wing), and then going to an empirical look-up table to get the degrees of downwash generated per coefficient of lift.

 

3) The airfoil data that was entered in Part-Maker when the models are created is 2-dimensional, so X-Plane applies finite wing lift-slope reduction, finite-wing CLmax reduction, finite-wing induced drag, and finite-wing moment reduction appropriate to the aspect ratio, taper ratio, and sweep of the wing, horizontal stabilizer, vertical stabilizer, or propeller blade in question. Compressible flow effects are considered using Prandtl-Glauert, but transonic effects are not simulated other than an empirical mach-divergent drag increase. In supersonic flight, the airfoil is considered to be a diamond shape with the appropriate thickness ratio... pressures behind the shock waves are found on each of the plates in the diamond-shaped airfoil and summed to give the total pressures on the foil element.

 

4) Using the coefficients just determined in step 3, areas determined during step 1, and dynamic pressures (determined separately for each element based on aircraft speed, altitude, temperature, propwash and wing sweep), the forces are found and summed for the entire aircraft. Forces are then divided by the aircraft mass for linear accelerations, and moments of inertia for angular accelerations.

 

5) And then steps 2-on are done again 14 more times in that second. (so 15 times a second)

 

As you can see that is a lot of processing that needs to be done all the time, but that is why X-Plane is an FAA-certified flight simulator that recently interested the US Airforce and they are building a special millitary version of the Sim. I dont want to predict anything, but i think they will change the situation with computing the airfoil at supersonic flight, at which point the sim will be nearly perfect!

 

But i will try to find some other good benchmarking game.

 

Also are you planning to dualboot Vista with XP for this testing? We could really use some data to have something to comare Vista performance to...

[pgrmdave]

Alex, while Vista may be worse for playing games (although I don't think that's true given what I've read), wouldn't Windows still have the most support from game companies, as they have in the past? Wouldn't Vista still need to be the OS for gamers?

[alexander]

I mean idealy i would ask you to even get the 60 Gig expansion pack for X-Plane with world scenery for from +60 o -60 degrees lattitude, and download the extremely detailed airport data and livetime weather, but that would be too much to ask (and really fun to play, and did i mention hard unless you are a pilot?)

[alexander]

Gamers (all that i have talked to so far and there have been many, a few dozen) are not willing to convert and will stick it out with XP until Vista makes it worth converting...

[pgrmdave]

60 gig?!? I have a 40 gig hard drive....I feel behind the times....:)

[alexander]

Lol, i have a 120 on this, but i would still need an external drive if i wanted to run XPlane on the mac and wanted all the scenery...

[pgrmdave]

Yeah, I know that right now XP is better than Vista for games, but I meant Vista compared to the other competitors - Linux and Mac's OS. While I think that Linux is a better OS, it does not suit my needs, nor the needs of many people who play a lot of PC games. If Vista can still run the games fine, even with the massive amount of overhead it takes up, it will be my choice for OS.

[alexander]

Now dave, that would not be an issue if developers took something out of their buttock region and ported their games to OpenGL, now wouldn't it?

 

Benefits:

 

OpenGL/OpenAL => Development will be increased and platform will become better (and opengl is available on unix/windows)

 

Linux community => manufacturers will be required to write drivers for both OSes (Video and Audio)

 

Windows community => they will finally run a platform that is specifficaly designed for just graphics/audio output

 

Humanity => gamers will not have to stick with an insecure and constantly problematic OS that spies on them, making gamers less suisidal and less homicidal which leads to less violence in the world and happier people with less worries and depression, which in term leads to healthier people.

[Zythryn]

Problem is, you need the game support before the gamers will come on over in large numbers.

I would LOVE to see Mac embrace game developers. They got off on a really bad foot in the early years by holding on so tight to their software (Mac produced all software, OS and hardware, no one else).

 

As you mentioned earlier, they got a lot better with hardware in the recent past. Hopefully they continue to move that direction with the software.

 

More systems means more competition means more good games for us:)

 

P.S. This is one gamer that is moving to Vista, so you now know one Alexander;)

[alexander]

You are the first one i know.... Make sure you wash your hands before and after handling the Vista DVD, you may catch a virus or something :)

[Thorshammer]

A friend of mine got a MAC virus a few weeks ago, and it wiped her out totally. She had to have her hardware rebuilt :) so it does happen...she found out that though they are rare, MAC viruses are typically devastating when they do hit.

 

Alexander,

 

Xplane sounds like way, way more money than I'd spend on a SIM, lol, but I'll be happy to go get Half-Life2.

 

 

Just my perspective on this so far:

MS would not have bothered with Vista if it didn't support games. I have read articles on the web complaining about reduced functionality for games and CADKey progs, and I am lead to wonder what criteria the authors used when testing. Did they really have the hardware to handle Vista AND the Applications? Maybe, maybe not.

 

So far it looks like an OS that will stay around, and eventually become the business software. It's crisp and professional, it looks much more mature than the goofy colors of XP, and at very worst it's great for multi-media editing and presentation.

 

That having been said, I do spite Microsoft for the business arrogance behind the railroading tactics of coming out with an OS that many software makers have to race to catch up with. Should the be a driving force in innovation? Of course, in the sense of competition in the free market ( I didn't say "fair" competition, which by now would be a big laugh when it comes to Microsoft, lol). Should they force the adjustments of file types in other software companies to keep up with compatibility? I don't think so, myself.

[Tormod]

A friend of mine got a MAC virus a few weeks ago, and it wiped her out totally. She had to have her hardware rebuilt :shrug: so it does happen...she found out that though they are rare, MAC viruses are typically devastating when they do hit.

 

Do you know which one? I've never heard of it. If she needs hardware replaced it sound to me as if the service center is trying to blame a virus. ;)

 

That having been said, I do spite Microsoft for the business arrogance behind the railroading tactics of coming out with an OS that many software makers have to race to catch up with.

 

I both agree and disagree. Since XP will be supported for many years to come, nobody will be *forced* to upgrade.

 

On the other hand, an OS will regularly need replacement as new requirements are placed upon it. My XP box runs on completely different hardware now as compared to when I got XP. It still runs better than ever though, so I have no need to upgrade to Vista atm.

 

I don't think it's correct that software makers have to "race to catch up". Vista has been loooong in the making and any sane developer should have had plenty of time to prepare. I will add that I have no idea how developers get access to Vista code but I assume most professionals are MSDN subscribers.

 

I'd like to compare the upgrade frenzy with that of Apple's:

 

Mac OSX is more frequently upgraded but there are no upgrade paths - you always have to pay for a new license (for example, from 10.3 to 10.4 cost $200 in Norway). But you can pay for about 2-3 Mac OSX upgrades before you're at the price of a single Windows upgrade. Mac OSX has a huge advantage on Windows in that you get a lot of (actually usable) applications bundled, like iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, Garageband, Mail, Calendar etc - and while Apple does not force you to use them they are quite good.

 

Another thing is that OSX only comes in one flavor. Well, there is a server edition but it's not sold as a desktop license. In comparison, I am horrified at Microsoft's FIVE versions of Windows Vista (Basic, Home, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate).

 

Apple's greatest change lately was the move to the Intel architecture last year, which made a lot of people very angry because they bought new Intel Macs and thought all their software would run faster. But it didn't - most software runs in emulation mode until the developers can get a Universal Binary edition out that supports Intel (Adobe has been notoriously slow and only now are we seeing Photoshop CS3 with UB support, due in April).

 

Geeks like me always jump on the first chance to upgrade to the new OSX version (easy since my job pays for it). But one major difference between Windows upgrades and OSX upgrades is that (usually) the Apple upgrades actually work right away, with no obvious changes for the user apart from new features, whereas the Windows upgrades changes a lot of stuff and becomes a major hassle with search for drivers etc. Apple have a better way to implement this IMHO.

 

Mind you, I am a heavy Windows *and* OS X user so I belong to both sides of the OS debate.

[alexander]

No, no, she didnt't get a mac virus at all, there are none, its called getting pwned by a script kiddie that laid his hands on a firmware exploit or any decently recent os x exploit (as people do not tend to update software very oftenly).

 

And I highly doubt that it was a hardware rebuild, it is however likely that someone screwed with some hardware firmware (why i think it was a firmware exploit), screwed it up and then everything would seem like it went to hell...

[Thorshammer]

Thanks for the insights, Alexander and Tormod. I will ask her more about it. It really is just as likely that the techs just told her that...

 

My comments on Microsoft were mainly based on my experience with Vista and it's current incompatibility with Kubotek KeyCreator, the software I need to run.

Microsoft's help data on this says that other software developers who use the win32hlp.exe file will have to change their software to run on Vista. Their reason for deciding not to offer support for win32hlp.exe was "it hadn't been updated in a long time and it was deemed to be no longer up to standard." My suggestion would have been to update it,lol. Fortunately, it looks like they will get around to it.

 

Tormod,

 

Thanks for your comparison of updates. As a designer, I will likely be getting a Mac someday, for it's benefits.