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Windows Vista and OpenGL

Posted: 17 Mar 2007, 09:08
by Hudson
Anyone playing IL-2: 1946 probably heard me griping about my Slideshow style OpenGL performance and having to use DirectX and have horrible performance because I was suffering because of that.

I did some reading, and the OpenGL situation is not nearly as dire as I think most people believe it is. Microsoft is leaving two avenues open for OpenGL support at the moment. One is an OpenGL compatibility layer that converts to DirectX. That will get you the slideshow style performance I was getting. The other, is that the driver developers can provide support. This is the saving grace, as I just installed the nvidia 101.41 beta drivers. Holy cow, I can use OpenGL again. And it's nice and smooth again.

So, no need to panic about all that PDT_Armataz_01_12

Posted: 17 Mar 2007, 09:59
by PanzerMeyer
Thanks for the info Hudson. However, it will be at least a year if not more before I go over to Vista. In other words, I wont go over to Vista until there are several games out there which I want to play that require DX 10.

Posted: 17 Mar 2007, 10:05
by Hudson
That's up to you, and I can't fault you for not caring :)

I had access to Vista readily available without dropping my bank account to pay for it, so for me, it was just a matter of install...

It's certainly not as bad as everyone is making it out. It just ain't all that exciting either. I have lots of games from Diablo II: LOD to World of Warcraft, F4AF, DOW 40K: Dark Crusade, IL-2 1946 and whatever else... they all work fine.

The only things that didn't work off the bat were Diskeeper, which now does because of an update, and one other program I no longer use... I continually see X, Y, Z is not on MS's list; like all of Adobe's products, but I can assure, from personal experience they run fine.

Turn off Aero and all the junk effects, disable UAC so you don't go insane allowing every frakkin' program to run, and change to a few other defaults, and it's OK. I certainly don't consider it an improvement over XP, just something different. Unfortunately if MS has their way (and they will) it is here to stay...

Posted: 17 Mar 2007, 15:26
by Buffalo Six
Good to hear Hudson...now we can work on your carrier takeoffs =)

Posted: 17 Mar 2007, 16:08
by Hudson
I'll work on getting carriers right after I'm done working on getting off the ground :-P

Posted: 17 Mar 2007, 21:54
by BlackHawk*K
not sure if it applies to this situation, but vista just did a patch to help with program compatibility too. i didnt realy read alot about the details and it was one of those untitled patches MS is prone to do.

Posted: 17 Mar 2007, 21:56
by Falker
I’ve had Vista for about 3 weeks now. It looks cool. Like running a flash player on your PC.. and I’ve had no problems with open GL. Tho I haven’t tried running all my games yet. Only problem I have with Vista is….

Me: Delete Item

Vista: Are you sure you want to delete this item?

Me: yes

Vista: Are you really sure??

Me: Yes !

Vista: Okay , so you’ll need administrator rights to delete this item, Are you really sure you want to delete it???

Me: Fu#king YESS! Dnag Nabbit !! PDT_Armataz_01_07


Is there a way to turn that off , because it’s like pop up’s on my PC that I didn’t ask for. It gets tedious after awhile because I’m always deleting files after I’m done with them to free up some room on my hard drive.



Hudson wrote: Turn off Aero and all the junk effects, disable UAC so you don't go insane allowing every frakkin' program to run, and change to a few other defaults, and it's OK. .

I’ll need a walk through on this and where to locate the place to turn it off , because I have no idea what or where Aero is.

I’m noob at this O.S. :)

Posted: 17 Mar 2007, 22:27
by Hudson
Aero is responsible for the fancy shmancy eye candy on the desktop. All I did is make my desktop look like the Classic Windows desktop. Gray bar at the bottom, normal start button, no sidebar, etc.

UAC is the nag that always asks allow or deny.

To disable:
Start>Run
Enter gpedit.msc and press return
In the new Window Local Computer Policy>Computer Configuration>Windows Settings>Security Settings>Local Policies>Security Options there is an option called:
User Access Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode
Change the setting for this from Prompt for consent to Elevate without prompting and you'll get rid of a lot of the nagging.

This will behave more akin to Windows XP, where if a program requires admin priveleges it will just be consented and run as so (well with Windows XP it would actually just run with your priveleges, which as a typical user would be admin).... Be aware though, a lot of older programs don't know they need admin priveleges and on the Compatibility tab for the shortcut you will need to set Run this program as an administrator, else they'll barf in unpredictable manners here and there...

This mess should gradually get better as programs are written to properly recognize what they need and escalate their priveleges accordingly...

Posted: 18 Mar 2007, 09:37
by Falker
Cool! That’s fantastic information. PDT_Armataz_01_37 Very Helpful , I went up and down the same security page and turned off and on a few other things too. :D Now I can start enjoying my Vista again. Woot!