What is this vector based drawing that Vista will use?

[jasonja]

Originally posted by: xtknight

Originally posted by: jasonja
Multisampling is the term Microsoft often uses for Anti Aliasing, they are synomous. It's actually the technique used to anti alias in D3D. It describes the process by which you take multiple pixel samples from a larger frame buffer (2X, 4X, 8X the size) and filter it down to the actual resolution you're running at.

You're probably sick of this by now, but,

Multisampling is not just a general term? I'm pretty sure it's used for OpenGL as well.

I thought supersampling was also AA?

It's a general term. AA is called a number of things... Multisampling, AA, FSAA, etc. What I was saying is that if you read the DirectX docs they always refer to anti aliasing as multisampling.

 

[zephyrprime]

Essentially, everything will run in Direct3D all the time. Even traditional windows programs will actually be drawn onto a vector rectangle in 3d space that is parallel to a 3d viewing plane rather than a rectangle on a 2d buffer as is the case now. All the raster graphics that programs currently produce (text, pictures, scroll bars, etc) will be a texture in texture memory that will be drawn onto a rectangle. The video card will run in 3d mode all the time rather than just when video games are running. Programs will start coming out that are natively 3d also so windows programs will have UI elements like those currently found in video games (but less frilly).

 

[makken]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
Essentially, everything will run in Direct3D all the time. Even traditional windows programs will actually be drawn onto a vector rectangle in 3d space that is parallel to a 3d viewing plane rather than a rectangle on a 2d buffer as is the case now. All the raster graphics that programs currently produce (text, pictures, scroll bars, etc) will be a texture in texture memory that will be drawn onto a rectangle. The video card will run in 3d mode all the time rather than just when video games are running. Programs will start coming out that are natively 3d also so windows programs will have UI elements like those currently found in video games (but less frilly).

I can see it now,

"What FPS can YOU run windows in?"

 

[Cheesetogo]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
I suspect your friend is confusing squishing with natural scaling. A 320x240 2D image displayed at 1920x1440 is going to be smaller than it would be at 1600x1200 but it's not being "squished", it is simply the fact that the pixels are smaller at higher resolutions.

Squished would be displaying a 1600x1200 image at a 320x240 resolution; then you would lose pixels because the display doesn't have enough pixels to replicate the original image.

And again for 3D there is no squishing or scaling involved as it's always the same size.

Maybe he was talking about dot pitch. A 19" monitor might not be able to display all the pixels of higher resoulutions due to not having a a lower dot pitch, where as a larger monitor would be able to display all the pixels with the same dot pitch.

 

[WolverineX]

Well I have a Samsung 997df, at Newegg it's listed to have the lowest dot pitch according to their site.

 

[BFG10K]

Maybe he was talking about dot pitch.

Possibly, but given a resolution where dot pitch could become a factor a typical 2D desktop would usually be unusably small anyway. For 3D it doesn't really matter since it's all interpolated anyway.

 

[xtknight]

I have seen 17" monitors with 1920x1440 (whatever 19x12 is) resolution. I believe they were a couple discontinued Viewsonics. Is this physically possible or what? The dot pitch of them seemed on-par with every other 17" monitor, but those had a resolution max of only 1280x1024 in some cases. How do CRTs scale so well? Is their shadow mask/grille not a definite number of dots?

 

[BFG10K]

Is this physically possible or what?

It's possible but a 2D desktop would be unusably small and also the refresh rate would be sub-par.

How do CRTs scale so well? Is their shadow mask/grille not a definite number of dots?

Essentially yes. CRT pixels can physically grow or shrink as is required, unlike an LCD which has a fixed grid of pixels that never change size. CRT pixels' only hard limitation is a minimum size which is dictated by the dot pitch and viewable area.