Aaarrgh!

In my last post I said Microsoft would be releasing some official information on a topic that had caused plenty of FUD on forums. They haven’t yet done so. This is kind of annoying. The guy I was talking to hasn’t responded to my query about where the statement would appear. So the world – or at least, that part of the world that discusses these things on forums – carries on consuming and spreading FUD.

Some parts of the Windows team reacted very quickly to the suggestion that Monad could allow the spread of viruses. This team needs a boot up the backside, IMO. Scoble, are you listening?

OK, enough beating about the bush – I asked about OpenGL, and specifically this topic. Now I come to re-read the topic, it’s clear – if the app asks for accelerated pixel formats, and there is an Installable Client Driver available, Windows Vista will switch off the desktop compositor while the ICD is in use. What effect this will actually have I don’t know – presumably it will temporarily revert to using software desktop rendering, i.e. directing each window to draw in turn, clipping the parts that are obscured, as Windows has done for about 18 years (Windows 1.0 only allowed tiled, not overlapping windows). And of course you’ll only notice this if you’re using a windowed OpenGL app – full-screen apps (like games) will no doubt want the desktop compositor turned off!

The stuff about taking a 50% performance hit is simply FUD, IMO. The presumption is that translating OpenGL calls to Direct3D calls is expensive, but I don’t really see that. Numerous sites have had posters claiming that OpenGL is a more performant API than D3D, but without a program released for both APIs with as much time spent on both implementations, benchmarked on a range of hardware to eliminate driver variability, there really is no way to tell. I think the basis for this is essentially iD fanboys – since iD use OpenGL for their Quake, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Doom 3 engines, it must obviously be better, right? I honestly don’t know, except to say that the games I’ve played have always seemed ‘fast enough’ if my system’s been within recommended spec, whatever API was used.