Vista's incredible vistas

Gee, look at the amazing computer games we can look forward to if we buy Windows Vista right now!

3 year old textures, a sad reminder of how pitiful the range of colours is that we get from today's displays (+ boxiness!), purple, more purple... oh, and lots of boxes.

I'm really looking forward to this incredible new DirectX 10 graphics technology. It looks like Microsoft Games' latest superior innovations are almost caught up with 3 years ago!

And according to an IGN preview, it runs like crap with all the settings cranked........just like Halo1!
(can't wait to here an announcement stating that the online co-op got stripped out)

I don't understand, what does screenshots of Halo 2 (old by now) have to do with Vista or DX10?

The sad thing is, this has everything to do with Vista and DX 10.
In fact, it's what Microsoft has been toting so far as one of their few "exciting" Microsoft-published answers for "Why to buy Vista for the new wave of games"... except for Flight Simulator 10, which - though very nice looking in DX 10 - is a bit of a niche thing.

The game requires Windows Vista, because it's so incredibly advanced and all. ("Hmm," says the dumb user who they are trying to fool, "it looks like Windows XP has better graphics and newer games than Windows Vista. Why do I want that thing?")

Nothing against Vista, just their strategy: "I know, let's re-release console games that should have been on this platform 3 years ago, charge for them as though they're new and use them so people buy our operating system!"

I see no colour banding in those shots, what makes you say it's a limited range of colours?
Because the artist chose to use alot of primaries in the colour scheme?

(Sorry, just nitpicking. Carry on!)

"Colours" is a bit of a vague term. It's the amount of white the artists had to use. I like the idea of ultra bright, bluish explosions, but that technology just doesn't allow for it. Today's displays do not have nearly enough dynamic range to create such vivid effects, so they must be done with the highest colour available: A (not very believable) full white. Dynamic HDR sort of lets this stuff happen more believably (Half-Life 2 Episode 1's big core thing, near the beginning, shows precisely how. It is a scene impossible with the low dynamic range of older technology).

Come to think of it, I'm sure that the flash of white is gone in an instant and quite striking in motion (just like that dynamic HDR), so, err, carry on :)
(Just an ugly screenshot. It's the type of thing that only looks right in motion).

Lay off Microsoft for God's sake. It seems to be all you ever go on about lately. :/

LOL! I must be colorblind then i really cant tell the difference between say: FFB2D5B7 and FFB2D5B6 (just an example)

24bits (16.7M) colors is close to the human eye's range of distinction. What more do u need?!

and where are the shadows?!?!

Oh I see, you are dissapointed with the dynamic range of monitors, then.

Well that I can agree with. We're getting there, though. What's the top contrast ratio a
monitor can have these days? 10,000:1? That's a helluva lot better than it used to be.

Cliff Richards went solo, I think?

1 Million : 1 with OLED technology. But at that contrast ratio you would want to turn of HDRi and Bloom ^^

Actually, that looks really awesome ... much better than the the game on the original Xbox anyway. When you run Halo 2 on the 360 though they added a high def mode so it looks pretty good on that too (though it still looks very updated in those shots above). I think you just have to understand Halo to get excited about this. I personally am not a big fan of the 2nd game but it's still a good game ... just doesn't have the perfectly balanced elegant gameplay of the first. Unfortunately, console game tastes and PC game tastes are radically different. As always and amazing game on either platform to begin with becomes average to mediocre when players on the other side play it.

Erm, but wasn't Halo 2 been released like 2 years on the original X-Box 1?

Anyway, aside from the 2 player coop mode, Halo is pretty dull anyway, especially Halo 2 whereby you think this game is amazing, I've jumped on a huge big walker thing, and I'm running around inside of it. Oh wait, that's the most exciting part of the game. If this is 'the' game to sell DirectX10, a souped up re-release of a half decent game 2 year old game then I can't see why anyone want it.

I'm such a nerd, I actually get a bit excited when I hear about OLEDS, LED flashlights and the like.

Is that wrong? It feels wrong.

Its naughty, thats what it is! :)

Dabz

yeh halo is the most overrated game ever.

(and vista sucks)

I have nothing against either, really. Vista is a decent improvement in most cases and I would happily use / like it if I ended up for some reason buying a new PC off the shelf with Vista pre-installed.
Halo has a rather overzealous following, but it isn't a terrible game. There is better, but there is some much worse stuff as well. It does well enough to be reasonably amusing, and Halo 2 seems to have much better art direction. The environments are still a bit bland (and very unrealistic, as mentioned even in IGN's preview), but it looks pretty decent for its time and its target platform.

It's the mixture of the two that bothers me. The makers of this game probably have a pretty good idea that it is not the be-all end-all, so they should not encourage this madness. The more you poke at it, the more wise the fans get to the fact that it is old, and even when it was new it was old. The horse is already dead. Now they can either wait for people to notice (creating immense anger) or they can hurry up and get a either get a newer, better one, before anyone notices.
The same is with DX10, really. It is being toted as some kind of mystical "CreateNiceGraphics(IML337)" function and the media is buying it.
DirectX 10 does not magically give you nice water effects and it certainly does not give you decent art direction; programmers and artists do.
Okay, it helps a little bit, in the same way that using OpenGL is nicer than programming at the bare metal.

Anyway... mmm... OLED :)

Vista has been out for home users for, well, a good couple of months, there is no actual DirectX 10 games released yet.

How can anyone comment on something that cannot be benchmarked, or comment on DX10 as a whole when no software is currently available for gamers that use it?

And Halo isnt one of my 'most anticipated' games for Vista, this is:-

http://www.crysis-game.com/

Dabz

*EDIT:Re-worded, same thing though! :)

I'm not commenting on its speed or flexibility. I'm commenting on how it is treated as something more than a collection of graphics APIs. It is a graphics API, not the holy grail!

The job of making it easy to do nice water is entirely up to the engines / (more preferably, individual games) that use it. Something like Torque, for instance, provides easy pre-made water.
For obvious reasons (bloat), this should not change.

Crysis does indeed look nice :) As does this one.
I still find it hard to believe that this high detail can exist in a game, but it does! Quite exciting stuff coming about soon.