On 3/11/07, Stefan Dösinger stefandoesinger@gmx.at wrote:
Am Sonntag 11 März 2007 19:40 schrieb Jesse Allen:
The concept is nice, and I'd like to learn 3D graphic APIs better. But when I consider DX10, I don't have any DX10 apps, nor do I have Vista. I'd also be concerned if it is even properly documented if I were to start that way. So I'm not thinking I want to do DX10. However, this idea can be considered with any API that is currently not implemented. So I think I'll want to try this with a smaller more widely used API.
Regarding applications, I have a few of them:
/opt/windows/dxsdk/dx9/Samples/C++/Direct3D10 $ ls BasicHLSL10 GPUSpectrogram PipesGS Bin HDRFormats10 ShadowVolume10 CubeMapGS HLSLWithoutFX10 SimpleSample10 DisplacementMapping10 Instancing10 Skinning10 DrawPredicated MotionBlur10 SoftParticles EmptyProject10 MultiStreamRendering SparseMorphTargets FixedFuncEMU ParticlesGS Tutorials
21 applications, so it is a widely used API. Oh ooops, those are just the sdk demos. And only 19 of them, bin/ and EmptyProject10/ do not really count...
Jokes aside, there aren't any dx10 apps yet, except some demo apps. The first one to be expected is Halo 2 on April 24th afaik. The only thing is that MS has created some hype around dx10 recently. It would give us some nice publicity if the Halo 2 box states "Runs on Windows Vista and higher" and winehq.org says "Runs Halo 2 on Linux, MacOS, Windows XP and earlier"
I do not think d3d10 hardware is required yet, the reference rasterizer should work for the start. It is a long way to get any actual rendering going. Regaring Vista, the nice thing is that Students get Educational licenses cheap. But the license should be checked carefully. I for example may use it only for educational purposes. As I am working for CodeWeavers my hacking on wine isn't purely for educational purposes. No idea of SoC can be considered an educational thing.
Okay, the test apps you have are a decent start. On buying vista, it would have to depend on getting accepted for the project, because I can't do that right now. I have that kind of typical student budget. Now I'll hunt around for the ed version here. Maybe we got it at my bookstore. But I don't mind buying any upgrade version for my XP laptop. Even ultimate.
Jesse