DirectX 10.1 in Vista SP1 = Almost Nothing at All

With the release of the first service pack for Windows Vista, Microsoft is cooking a move similar with the original launch of the platform. And as DirectX 10 was exclusive to Windows Vista, so will DirectX 10.1 be exclusive to Windows Vista Service Pack 1. But the gaming community and industry have failed to see eye to eye with the Redmond company on the limitations inherently brought to the table through the exclusive association between Vista and the latest version of the DirectX suite of multimedia application programming interfaces.

In the past, both game developers and the gaming community have lashed out at Microsoft for not backporting DirectX 10 to Windows XP. Members of the gaming industry from Valve Software and GSC Game World indicated that they are not too happy with Vista and DirectX, a Microsoft strategy that ended up being simply bad for business, as the operating system's obscure market share did little to drive up sales or development of products designed especially for the operating system.

And as Windows XP is the ubiquitous gaming platform at a global level, the users pointed the finger at Microsoft for forcing Vista upgrades down their throats. And on top of it all, manufacturers of graphics cards, including NVIDIA and ADM's ATI have run into a wide array of support and incompatibility issues with the new operating system and the included graphics technology.

And yet, Microsoft consistently refused to change its tune when it came down to DirectX 10. Moreover, the company is taking it one step further with Vista SP1 and DirectX 10.1, currently planned for the first quarter of 2008, following the availability of Windows Server 2008.

Nick Stam, director of Technical Marketing for Nvidia revealed to Tech.co.uk that the company did come across various compatibility problems with Vista, and even stated that DirectX 10.1 "won't make much difference when it comes out. Vista out of the chute was hard, but we weren't the only ones caught in that. Microsoft were changing things...it impacted the driver team in a big way. We've worked really hard to get Vista and XP on a par. In some cases Vista gives better performance."

Concomitantly with the updates introduced to its drivers, NVIDIA also published, at one time, pages after pages of Vista integration issues. And Stam proved to be little enthusiastic when it came down to DirectX 10.1. "It's coming", before adding a bit of flesh to the bones. "There are some nice efficiency standardising improvements....many of them can be done with 10 but 10.1 makes it easier to do things. Developers won't be using 10.1 today. We don't see any major games through 2008. It won't make much difference when it comes out."