More info of Longhorn from WinInfo Daily UPDATE mailing list:
1. ==== NEWS AND VIEWS ====
(contributed by Paul Thurrott, thu...@wi...)
* WINHEC 2003: FIRST LOOK AT LONGHORN GRAPHICS
During a pre-show demonstration yesterday of the Longhorn graphics
subsystem at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2003
trade show in New Orleans, I saw for the first time some of the
advanced video effects that Microsoft will enable in the next Windows
version. Longhorn, which is due in late 2004 or early 2005, includes a
completely new desktop composition system that replaces the model
earlier Windows versions used with one that is more technically
advanced, visually appealing, and scalable. The early test versions
Microsoft is showing at WinHEC include amazing animation effects,
smooth window scaling, and advanced window translucency.
The change is startling. Earlier Windows versions rendered the Windows
desktop as one display surface; each window was a region on that
shared surface. In the new model, individual windows are responsible
only for drawing their own surfaces and then only when other windows
aren't hiding those surfaces. In Longhorn, each window has its own,
full-featured surface, independent of the other windows, and each
window acts as if it's always 100 percent visible, forcing it to
redraw itself constantly. Likewise, the desktop is rendered many times
a second by combining the contents of each open window. These changes
require significantly more graphics resources than earlier Windows
versions, but Microsoft notes that most modern PCs have 3-D graphics
power to spare. For those PCs that don't have the hardware necessary
to take advantage of the full Longhorn user experience, Microsoft will
scale the graphics back into different modes.
In baseline mode, Longhorn will offer features similar to those in
Windows 2000 and use software rendering only. The next step up, the
so-called tier 1 experience, delivers the minimum
hardware-acceleration and desktop-composition features required for
the Longhorn user experience. This mode requires mainstream 3-D
graphics hardware and offers 3-D capabilities equivalent to what was
available in Microsoft DirectX 7. The tier 1 experience also supports
low-power modes, making it ideal for mobile computers. In the tier 2
experience, users will get the full Windows Longhorn user experience
on the desktop, which includes support for advanced 3-D graphics and
animation. This mode requires the most advanced hardware, such as
high-end 3-D hardware released in 2002 or later, and features
capabilities equivalent to DirectX 9 and later DirectX versions.
The demonstration I saw was performed on a Longhorn build 4015
desktop. When windows moved across the screen, they visually
"shuttered," bending under the speed of the movement, like a flag
billowing in a breeze. The windows had various translucency levels,
but in a much more fine-grained and visually stunning way than earlier
Windows versions. And, best of all, you can visually scale windows up
and down with no loss in quality as you resize them, an effect that's
impossible on today's Windows desktop. Microsoft told me that none of
these effects were designed for the final Longhorn product, but that
the company is simply testing them. Microsoft could use the scaling
feature for window minimization: Instead of using a standard taskbar
button to represent a minimized window, Longhorn will probably display
a miniature version of the window so that you can visually
differentiate among the various minimized windows and more easily
select the one you want. The shutter feature will also likely evolve
into a minimize effect, Microsoft said.
One of the most important aspects of this technology is that
application developers won't need to rewrite their software to support
the new features. Instead, Microsoft will automatically provide the
new animations, transparencies, and effects to any existing Windows
application running under Longhorn. All the applications I saw during
the demonstration were available today in Windows XP, including
Notepad, Command Prompt, Paint, and Task Manager. Another interesting
part of the demonstration involved a set of movie clips from "Star
Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones" that played in realtime while
they flipped about on the screen; during this process, applications
were launched and ran, all without affecting the speed or rendering
quality of the animating, spinning movie clips. The underlying
hardware that powered this graphical wonder was a relatively low-level
1.5GHz Pentium 4 with 384MB of RAM and ATI's RADEON 9700 3-D graphics
card.
The effects I've described above are hard to explain in text, but I
took dozens of pictures and will post them on the SuperSite for
Windows later this week. Although the show hasn't even officially
started yet, I'm already quite impressed with what I've seen of
Longhorn.
Ioannis Vranos
* Programming pages: http://www.noicys.freeurl.com
* Alternative URL 1: http://run.to/noicys
* Alternative URL 2: http://www.noicys.cjb.net
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