They are promising emulation, I wonder how good it will be...
If it is good enough it could be good: the older games would not be disrupted by possible new changes in DirectX 10, 11, 12 etc.
Though it is quite possible the opposite will be true: a lot of games will have problems, in better case developer releasing updates (for that emulated DirectX < 10), in worse case the complete emulators will have to be used - hopefully with better support for 3D graphic than now....
And maybe community comes with something like DOSBOX for Windows games...
Anyway, I happy that only minimum of games I am interested in (classic RPGs) are hit by this... (There are only a few of them requiring good 3D card).

Mirek

I call BS on this. It doesn't make any sense to emulate older DirectX for "faster DirectX10". WTF does that have anything to do with it? In XP D3D8 and D3D9 .dll's are seperate from each other so it may also be that way in Vista or D3D8 will be integrated into the DX9 .dll's and simply use that. Has absolutely nothing to do with DX10.

Also I hardly think it's a good idea to emulate older DX when there won't be any DX10 titles out when Vista is released.

Went looking for the experts opinion:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23188

Looks like that thread is more about DX9+ card-specific drivers for Vista than it is about DirectX 10.

As far as DX10 DLL comes in separate form, I also consider backwards compatibility emulation some kind of nonsense.

That's assuming that Vista will allow the current DirectX 9 DLLs to work.

I think all this is part of the common hype whenever a new Microsoft's Operating System is announced. As far as I am concerned, my Windows XP setup must have a lot to live yet before I eventually make the jump to Vista.

Definitely. From what I've heard, Vista is shaping up to have less and less to offer while adding more and more disadvantages (extra DRM crap, etc.). It may be another Windows ME type of situation.

Heck by the time Vista comes out Wine should be pretty good at running most DX games. Already I have some games that only work under Wine that won't under DX in 2K/XP.....way MS appears to be doing things Wine may be more compatible than DX when Vista comes out. (Wouldn't suprise me....DosBox is already more compatible than 2k/XP NTVDM).

Now if we only had a VM that could emulate/virtualize DirectX (Vmware's getting there but it has a long way to go).

MS may have to either lower Vista prices considerably or look the other way to Vista piracy once they release it......Man, I wish Apple would get their act together and release their OS for all x86 PC's.

At least it sounds like it won't be completely broken, unlike the DirectX 5 to 6 transition. (Are those the right version numbers?)

They were indeed the bad old days. I recall DX 3/3a (I think)/5 were all quite nasty in terms of change and driver stability - there pretty much wasn't any 😀

As for Vista having new stuff - well, that's good really as long as it's a change for a reason and will be around for a while. Sometimes MS eek out backwards compatability for too long and this causes its own problems!