is Microsoft going in the right direction for DirectX ?

[irfan1982]

With MS announcing the next release will have very less improvements over the current version of DirectX, is this a right policy of Microsoft to force users to upgrade to its newer software which isnt supported by the current hardware ?

[Bires]

Perhaps you could be more specific about your concern/question?

[Speedfreak]

huh? Why would you have to upgrade. Any OS can olny have the newest version of DirectX.

[paulc]

DX8.0 -> DX8.1 isn't a huge revision just from the numbers. The items under discussion for DX9 are a huge change from DX8. The difference is just how the major and minor revision numbers are used, just as in any other software.

[paulc]

Originally posted by Speedfreak
huh? Why would you have to upgrade. Any OS can olny have the newest version of DirectX.

Win95 (all versions 950, SR1, SR2/2.5) was officially dropped off the list for DX8 and higher support. NT4 never officially supported anything higher than the DX3 that was shipped with it (I have DX5 installed on my NT4 workstation at work).

I wouldn't doubt that DX9+ would have some feature support in the future that may not be possible under lower versions of Windows (like NT4, left in a state of USB and DX6+ abandonment). But it looks like Win98 and higher OS's are getting good current support and even DX9 is almost a year off from now.

[Bires]

I'm sure the "end users" would hack the heck out of it. I really don't see anything wrong here (but maybe I just miss the point).