Hackers say: No need for Vista to run DirectX10

spookmineer · Post by **spookmineer** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:08 pm

A group of hackers, going by the name of Alky Project, claim to be able to run DirectX10 without Vista, by the use of a self developed "wrapper".

If this proves to be true, it will mean a major setback for Microsoft.

Microsoft consistently stated that DX10 is interconnected to Windows Vista. The code would be too much an integral part of the Vista-kernel to be used in other Windows versions, but critics say it is a cheap marketing trick to lure especially gamers to Vista.

The hackers behind Alky Project say the statements of Microsoft are nonsense. Cody Brocious, head developer of the Alky team, says on his weblog that by bundling a few executable files, DX10 is feeling right at home on different operating systems.
The 19 year old American claims to have reverse-engineered the code for geometry shaders - an exclusive feature for DX10 hardware - from Vista.

Games which require DX10 would in some cases be able to run on "older" DX9 cards. Brocious says, Windows games will run on other OS's like OS X and Linux, thanks to his wrapper.

An online preview with a few examples from the DirectX-SDK is said to support the claims of the Alky team.

Source (Dutch)

Post by **CA_Steve** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 4:02 pm

makes me smile.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Tue Apr 24, 2007 5:17 pm

I remember trying to use "wrapper" back in the day of Glide and OpenGL (though that one is still alive and kicking). Can't say as I cared for them, as they were horrifically unstable and often offered no performance advantage if not an outright downgrade in performance.

But to each his own...

Tzupy · Post by **Tzupy** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 3:24 am

Unfortunately, if they'll make it work well, then M$ will sue them and stop the whole project.
M$ are desperate to sell Vista, they would do everything NOT TO extend the life of XP systems.
Or even worse for M$, get XP game performance under Linux!

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 5:00 am

DX10 under XP is good and all, but I find really interesting is the comment about DX10 on Linux. Something like this would be unprecedented, as DX9 has been around forever and Linux support is still pretty weak.

Sylph-DS · Post by **Sylph-DS** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 6:34 am

I wouldn't expect too much of it. Although I guess if it makes Bill Gates wince, that's always good

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 8:57 am

Well, as long as we are dreaming, it would have been nice to run DX10 on XP. I don't want to switch to Vista just to run Crysis.

However, the article doesn't provide enough details, it just says a wrapper. And any wrapper will have a performance loss. The question is how significant it is going to be and how compatible is it going to be.

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 10:30 am

I would really love for this to be true and work perfectly, I am not a VISTA fan.

Andy

Post by **Rusty075** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 11:54 am

"Works" and "Works well" are two very different things. You can already run games on Linux and OS-X using Cedega and Wine, and that certainly hasn't caused a mass exodus away from Windows for gamers.

The typical "gamer" seems to be willing to pay hundreds of dollars for marginal increases in performance...if Vista offers the ability to play DX10 games at even a small performance boost over an XP-DX10 hack then it seems unlikely that the <$100 cost of moving to Vista is really going to slow the gamer transition.

jojo4u · Post by **jojo4u** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 1:06 pm

I read some german posts from two people which have much insight into this topic. They left not much hope for a high quality result of this project mainly because of the past experiences with this guy.

~El~Jefe~ · Post by **~El~Jefe~** » Wed Apr 25, 2007 6:17 pm

linux runs a computer many TIMES faster than windows does. not like a speed bump. Getting it right on linux yields great results. graphic cards are the issue though but can work decently so. Wine/cedega works well but it sluggish in covering good titles.