...is Vista starting to kick ass?
I just heard that Microsoft dropped two patch Vista Fix Packs in order to solve some of the issues we have been seeing in Vista. As a matter of fact, I recently blogged about the issues I was experiencing in Microsoft Flight Sim X, among other games - and what do you know, I get an email in my inbox this morning asking me to download these patches.
So I downloaded and installed them - and now I'm flying through Friday Harbor on a float plane - at 2560x1600 with maximum detail enabled. It's so real, I can't even begin to explain the look/feel of the game. As I look down over the water I see the white crests of the waves gurgling in the middle of the bay. I did some whale watching on another flight - and the scenery & sites couldn't be more immersive. Try taking a helicopter through Vegas at night and if you aren't blown away I'll eat my hat!
I should probably apologize to the guys at Nvidia for giving them such a hard time on this, it's good to see that they're getting it right. It will be nice when they do the same for our previous customers who purchased PCs last year and are looking to upgrade to Vista now.
It turns out that I'm still viewing this in DX9 - not even DX10 yet, so let's see the difference when DX10 for FSX arrives.
10 comments:
As much as it might have been an annoyance to not have a functional second video card, I personally find it much less encouraging when you find out that a company like ATI took shortcuts and released a driver that circumvents vista's security system opened a backdoor that allows trojans to install rootkits relatively easily.
The vunerability still has not been patched.
perhaps it is a Microsoft issue that they still need to patch. They seem to have a new one every week. NV's driver method might be simply masking it out of luck.
No nVidia opted to go the long route of not having a signed driver (I'm sure we all remember that fiasco). Now nvidia has a signed driver and everything in hunky dorey.
ATI on the other hand, having pointed at nvidia so long, opted to work around the requirement of having a signed driver and inadvertantly left the entire OS open to an attack via any software with access to the video card.
You are all incorrect. The vulnerability affects NVIDIA as well as ATI and other types of drivers under Vista. The original developer of Blue Pill discussed this at length during the Black Hat conference, and demoed the attack using both NVIDIA and ATI drivers. By the way, her example did not require the NVIDIA/ATI hardware be present in the system, just the driver to be located on the targets drive. According BP's developer the problem is a fundamental design flaw in Microsoft's OSes.
However, those with an axe to grind against ATI/AMD conveniently left out the details of her presentation. Go and do a search for yourselves to determine the facts.
Best Regards,
Daniel R.
Rahul, out of interest, what machine are you running? Is it a bespoke voodoo-based beast or is it one of the 'off the shelf' models?
I thought the DX10 patch wasn't out for FSX yet? Can someone point me to it?
We will likely be showcasing FSX in DX10 in September. That said, I suspect it will become available to the public sometime in the next couple of months. I believe right now the image quality hasn't changed much, but the overall performance is better.
I personally think that Vista is great, as do most people. Microsoft released an unstable OS, but at last they are now putting in the effort to sort all of these problems out. Also, Vista is more secure than any of the other operating systems out on the market at the moment, it is even better than Mac OS X! I personally can't wait for DX10 goodness with Crysis, it looks absolutely amazing.
lamboman - dalambomanblog.blogspot.com
With respect, considering that the DX10 pipeline for FSX hasn't even been developed enough even for beta testing yet, what you are experiencing is the full glory of DX9.0L rendering of FSX... ;)
Rahul,
You are mistaken. What you saw was not DX10 on Vista. It was DX9L. DX10 is not even half completed as per the Project manager of the FSX division of Microsoft.
I don't blame you for being impressed with the water in FSX. It is amazing...even without the DX10.
Manny
mmahadevan@aol.com
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