October 14, 2008 by
Jason
The pain…
If you’ve invested your hard earned cash on a Creative X-FI sound card and a copy of Vista, you may be feeling a bit underwhelmed right now. Some of your games may be sounding a bit flat and lifeless and you’ll have no doubt felt that sinking feeling when you edit the sound settings in your new game only to find that you can’t enable some of the fancy options. There is a good reason for this and you probably will have been told at great length about it by one of the many passengers on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon.
The Science…
If you’re an experienced PC gamer you’ll no doubt be aware of DirectX and the various functions that make up the DirectX standard, such as DirectDraw, Direct3d and DirectSound and DirectSound3D. You will probably be aware of the hype surrounding Direct3d already, given that it has now reached version 10, but that’s a story for another day. DirectSound is what we are interested in here and it is sadly missing in Vista. XP and DirectX9 featured a “Hardware Abstraction Layer” which was a piece of software that allowed Windows to talk directly to a soundcard such as the X-FI to provide hardware mixing and 3d effects for your games. Without this layer any sound you hear will be mixed using software, rendering much of your shiny new soundcard useless. Read More»
Posted in windows vista | 1 Comment »
1. DirectX 10. Without a doubt, Vista’s support for DirectX 10 is the primary reason why gaming in the Windows environment will transcend gamers’ wildest dreams and far exceed the visual quality of even the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. “When DX10 games come out, the end result will be a significant increase in visual fidelity,” said Microsoft’s Donahue.
This means a marked increase in the number of objects and/or characters on the screen at a time, as well as dramatic impact on the level of background detail trees, water, stars in outdoor and indoor environments. It also means, for example, that characters’ clothing and fur will flap in the wind. Based on the early gameplay screenshots released for DX10 games such as Crysis, the impact of this new version of DirectX is quite clear even at a glance. (See the comparative scenes from Age of Conan: The Hyborian Adventures below.)
This increase in graphical quality is the result of a number of enhancements in DirectX 10 code, operations and resulting capabilities. As an example, a brand-new shader model (Version 4.0) in DX10 allows for more detailed and nuanced 3-D graphics. Read More»
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February 02, 2007 by
Jason CrunchGear has info that the Microsoft Execs are masterminding the Zune Phone as you read this news. According to CrunchGear it will be a smartphone that works homogeneously with the Zune marketplace. It will most likely not, however, run Windows Mobile. Rather it will make use of an interface similar to the current Zune, an interface considered among the best available on audio players.
Connectivity is the major concern of the device. It is said that it will be able to sync with the Xbox 360 and stream video from the system to the phone via a wireless data connection. This would be pivotal in Microsoft is proliferation of its media ambitions. Not only does it already have millions of 360s in homes capable of downloading movies, itd be able to distribute those videos directly to its phones. Speculation perhaps, but probably a much faster route to a larger GSM market than the Apple unit.
We have just received a sound tip that Microsoft is working on its very own phone to be branded under the Zune moniker. Our tipsters inform us that Microsoft execs are in meetings today hammering out details of the device and developing strategies and timescales for its release.
Read More»
Posted in Computer, Mac | 2 Comments »
January 31, 2007 by
Jason Stereo systems used to be collections of components that you maintained in the living room. Since the MP3 revolution, that’s no longer the case. Now it’s easier to collect all of your music in one place—your PC—and play it from there.
Of course, once you move away from CDs, you quickly run into a problem: How do you listen to music in different rooms?
With Microsoft’s new Windows Media Player 11 (WMP11) and its built-in Media Sharing feature, you can easily set up one computer as the server and have it stream music wirelessly to other devices around the house, such as a Microsoft Xbox 360 or a networked media hub. And starting with Windows Vista, you’ll also be able to stream music wirelessly between PCs from WMP11.
Unfortunately, WMP’s PC-to-PC streaming doesn’t work in Windows XP. For that scenario, here’s a solution that’s almost as easy—sharing your music library across your home network, so that any machine can access it. It’s not technically beautiful, but it’s practical and glitch-free. Regardless of what devices you have on your network, here’s how to centralize your music system around WMP11.—Jamie Lendino, editor of Ziff Davis Smart Device Central (www.smartdevicecentral.com) Read More»
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