Windows Vista RC1 build is 5600.16384

By guruparan
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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KenAF2

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Posted

And what difference would it make in the ui? vectors or bitmaps, if it looks the same, it's not like the ui is going to be that different!

Originally, the Vista was supposed to have resolution-independent desktop and font scaling. That meant you could get what looked like a 1024x768 desktop on a 1600x1200 LCD, but with the full resolution and display quality of 1600x1200. This feature was particularly good for notebooks and laptops, which frequently have high-resolution LCD screens at relatively small sizes.

A number of modern games have resolution-independent scaling. If you've ever played World of Warcraft, you're probably familar with this feature.

This feature was dropped (or so its been reported) to help Vista make its release deadline.

Neowinian

Tzar

Posted
Posted

Originally, the Vista was supposed to have resolution-independent desktop and font scaling. That meant you could get what looked like a 1024x768 desktop on a 1600x1200 LCD, but with the full resolution and display quality of 1600x1200. This feature was particularly good for notebooks and laptops, which frequently have high-resolution LCD screens at relatively small sizes.

A number of modern games have resolution-independent scaling. If you've ever played World of Warcraft, you're probably familar with this feature.

This feature was dropped (or so its been reported) to help Vista make its release deadline.

Man, i'd love to see that feature implemented. I use large fonts in winxp, but in vista(pre-rc1) scaling the fonts messes the theme completly :(. I hope they implement the feature in a later service pack at least, i need my fonts BIG ;)

Mentor

1WayJonny

Posted
Posted

Man, i'd love to see that feature implemented. I use large fonts in winxp, but in vista(pre-rc1) scaling the fonts messes the theme completly :(. I hope they implement the feature in a later service pack at least, i need my fonts BIG ;)

man no wonder i couldnt find 256 dpi for the fonts today

they removed? that i use HDTV DLP | DVI that would be sweat as 120 it what i use now it make a big difference on a display like mine

man....

Experienced

libertas83

Posted
Posted

High DPI support is still a feature of Vista. Read Greg Schechter's Blog. He wrote many parts of the WPF and DWM in Vista.

Since many of you might not go and read what he wrote on Aug 7, 2006, here it is quoted for you...

High DPI Support in Windows Vista Aero

A good amount of ink has been spilled on this blog talking about all the cost, nuance, impact, and techniques we go through to get a composited desktop. Less ink is spilled on the benefits of the composited desktop. Those were most broadly covered in this initial post. I'd like to expand on one such benefit here -- High DPI Support (or High Resolution Support).

Monitor resolutions are going up while prices are going down. In general, pixel density is going up as well. Both on laptops that are regularly 120 DPI and 144 DPI these days (as opposed to the typical desktop experience of 96 DPI), and on desktops that are getting bigger and denser monitors. This can make for crisper, less jagged display of content. However, in order for this to work, applications typically need to do work to deal with different display resolutions. (This is not always true... for instance, Windows Presentation Foundation applications are natively resolution-aware, and the application developer needn't worry about it.) When applications aren't written to adapt to different resolutions, they just start to look smaller and smaller on higher and higher resolution monitors.

The seminal article for how to write your GDI/GDI+ applications to be DPI aware was written way back in 2001 by my colleague Nick Kramer, and can be found here. This is ultimately the best approach an application can take. However, not all applications do this, and yet users of course use these applications while they're running in a higher DPI environment. This is where the composited desktop re-enters the picture. As you recall, when the DWM is running, applications render to an offscreen bitmap. When the DWM recognizes that an app is not DPI aware and just rendering as it always does, but that the desktop is set to a non-standard DPI, then the DWM goes ahead and renders the window at a larger size.

This "rendering at a larger size" results in the app being somewhat fuzzier and not as crisp as if it were being rendered natively at the correct resolution. However, it's the "correct" size for everything else on the desktop, and typically represents the much better option between rendering at the right size somewhat fuzzily; or crisply but at a size much too small.

For the purposes of this blog, there are some interesting tidbits about the High DPI rendering that are worth discussing:

As this earlier post describes, the client area of the window is just a bitmap. Because of the way the DWM works and how it sits atop WPF technology and thus atop DirectX, scaling the client area is really just a matter of modifying a scale transform on the appropriate node of the "visual tree" that describes the desktop. This notion was described here.

When that transform scaling is performed on the visual tree, ultimately in DirectX, this results in performing a texturing operation with the same sized texture but a larger mesh (the target client area), resulting in stretching the client area bitmap.

The Non-Client Area (the window frame) is not scaled uniformly with the client area. As in non-DPI scaled situations, it's "painted" separately. It's not simply subjected to bitmap scaling because for the frame, we can natively scale it, and choose elements appropriate for the target resolution, render caption text appropriate for the target resolution, etc.

While one can imagine any scale factor coming about as a function of the target DPI resulting in windows that land off of pixel boundaries and represent fractional pixel contribution. However, we avoid this and clamp our scaling so that we always remain on pixel boundaries and remain as crisp as possible, within the confines of the graphical filtering algorithm in place.

More details for the app developer:

The preferred mechanism by which an application will be able to declare itself High DPI aware under Windows Vista will be via the manifest. Look for upcoming MSDN documentation discussing how to do this. In the event where a manifest isn't appropriate/available (for instance, when writing a library or framework), the the library should ensure that the "SetProcessDPIAware" API is called before creating any UI.

Nick writes a bit more about High DPI in the context of USER and GDI compatability.

Community Regular

GamblerFEXonlin

Posted
Posted

I'm using Opera now, and simply pressing "+" "-" and "*" I can enlarge or shrink images as well as text size. Images naturally looks blurred when enlarging, but shrinking shouldn't be a problem. It is a problem and looks bad because they use a nearest-neighbour algorithm for speed.

Now the question: could Opera use the 3D cards hardware accellerated bilinear filtering on image resize? How about accellerating anti-aliasing of the vector fonts? If the GUI was floating around in hardware-accellerated heaven on the 3D card, the PC would be very responsive.

And applications that use PNG images for buttons also hardware resize their buttons, Like uTorrent

http://jooh.no/web/utorrent_shot.png

Any thoughts?

Proficient

SionicIon

Posted
Posted

Well, there's only one milestone left, and that's the one that'll eventually go to stores. I'd be beyond surprised if the RTM had an as major feature as this fully vectorized UI. It'd easily be the most surprising feature addition to any OS I've followed the development of.

There trying to add a WOW effect to RTM, and anyway, I'm already tired of looking at aero glass, I like those concept screenshots with the big titlebar full of glass, yummy, this glass isn't that awesome anymore, nothing has changed since 5308 and that is quite a long time, there testing Vector Glass in Microsoft's private labs, and it won't need testing once its done and outta here in the RTM build! :yes:

Grand Master

DrCheese

Posted
Posted

Anyways, I hope Vector Glass does come, its in the private labs, I hope whatever source Paul got that information from is wrong or is an employee who doesn't know anything...

It would completely defeat the point of all this beta testing, the Vista office website design and all the video's of the OS that MS have released thus far

Its not going to happen.

there testing Vector Glass in Microsoft's private labs

And you know this how?

Grand Master

Randolph

Posted
Posted

Ok so I unistalled Vista RC1 because as of course, it don't support many applications yet. And the ATI "not supporting OpenGL" is still getting to me. It crashed when I tryed to switch from Aero Glass to Classic back to Aero Glass thus locking up my PC thus causing me to force a shutdown via the power button. I think XP will serve me good for a little while longer. :)

Grand Master

Slimy

Posted
Posted

just under 20 minutes from hitting next after choosing a partition to the user name screen

just under 3 minutes to test the computer's performance

over a minute to prepare the desktop for the first time

The current bootscreen looks awful. So far, browsing is very smooth (and wow, super fast in ie7 x64 comapared to ie6 x64!), seems like the refresh bug has been fixed.

Enthusiast

Omega Prime

Posted
Posted

Did they update adding fonts?

I cant be bothered to boot in and look

It's exactly the same as it has been for the past 15 or so years. While I never use the "Add Font" feature, I'm sure it'll annoy people here who've been looking forward for MS to change them.

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