ok, so i have been reading lately about the directx10 hack for windows xp and it looked intriguing so i downloaded it. alot of my games work with it EXCEPT my favorate game, Bioshock. and that was the one i was most wanting to have the dx10 features. anyone else have this problem? or anyone know how to fix it?

all it does is just sit there and not do anything when i double click the bioshock icon. the game never launches..



guhhhh, might have to upgrade to vista

There is no working DX10 hack for XP.

The only improvement with DX10 in bioshock is slightly better textures.

DJcoolmasterx, have you tried the Windows XP directX 10 hack? Don't see how your saying blatantly that it doesn't exist when it clearly does and people have been using it..... I just don't know which games actually work on it.

there working on improving support

dx10 for windows xp is still in alpha and will be some more time before it is ready for use by everyone

It's been in Alpha for about 18 months, which is roughly the same time that the group trying to do it folded. The most I've ever seen anybody claim is that they've gotten the Direct X info to say DX10. I'm curious as to which games the OP says he has gotten to work with this. Chances are they are games that do not actually use any real DX10 functionality. Not that Bioshock really uses much of DX10 either but obviously enough to make it not work in XP. But you guys can keep on hoping for this. Maybe it will be ready in time for DX12.

Yes I am aware of this and I have indeed looked into it, however I'm yet to find any evidence of it working in games. The group the was working on it folded as purplerat said, it can hardly be said to be working as all it effectively does is trick dxdiag to say dx10... And if it doesnt actually work in games then a DX10 hack for XP does not exist.

Either way I can't see why anyone would be so desperate for DX10, not nearly as much difference to DX9 as hyped, not yet anyway.

Just look at how far behind WINE is on DX and thats been going ages even with really dedicated developers.

The fact that DX10 has been proven to work on XP by a hack, leads me to believe it was Vista margetting all along, rather than DX10 being technically impossible on XP like MS lead us to believe. oK the hack is bugged, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

As for DX10 improvements, there not outstanding. Even Crysis doesn't see much improvement over DX9. That's not to say DX10 games can't get better, but in no way essential right now.

What "fact" are you referring to? Making dxdiag say DirectX10 is hardly a fact proving that DX10 works in XP.
Even beyond that making very specific DX10 features available in XP is not the same as hacking DX10 for XP. What people seem to miss about this whole attempt is that it was never about just flipping some magic switch in XP or DirectX to make them compatible. What was being done was to completely re-write portions of DX10 function calls to use either OpenGL or DX9 functions in a similar way that could work in XP.
It's not that the effects that DX10 is capable of are not possible with other APIs in XP, just that the way DX10 achieves them was not possible in XP. There are others who can explain it a lot better than me but it has to do with the difference in how XP communicates with hardware (specifically the GPU) versus how Vista does.
The problem with having to rewrite or work around each individual difference between the two is that it completely defeats the purpose of an API. What you end up with is emulation, which as djcoolmasterx pointed out usually lags why beyond in both development time and performance. So what's the point of DX10 on XP if you have to wait until it's outdated to use it and at a heavy performance cost.

DX10 is... meh.

I made the move to Vista for DX10, I was highly disappointed by DX10... and very surprised by how great an OS Vista is.

DX10 has softer lighting and shadows, and marginal better water, its really not worth pinning your hopes on 18 month old vaporware.

I would have to somewhat disagree with some of you. I think DX10 is better than DX9 visually. The blur effect, the moving objects, the texture stream, smoke and water algorithms and the memory allocation are great in DX10. I find it makes a difference (IMO) in Crysis. Another, rather lame game, which shows a lot of DX10 improvements, is Hellgate: London. The game is, imo, very disappointing in gameplay and storyline and yadi yadi yada…but when you switch settings from DX9 to DX10, then you see a huge improvement in smoke particles (Nvidia DX10 Smoke), and the blurring effect (Distant view).

Regardless, Bioshock’s DX10 features are barely unnoticeable. The water effects (which was suppose to be “the” noticeable improvement) looks the same. A crack is a waste of time.

yep the only difference in bioshock is some of the smoke. it is slightly smoother (at least the ones that come from when the gun is fired and it hits a object


http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page4.asp
check it out, almost 100% no difference

smoke is a little better because when the it offers better transparency and the smoke texture doesn't make it's way to the edge of the texture file before fading out this makes it smoother

thinks like that can easily be done in dx 9

just use a better texture

in maya3d, you can render realistic smoke by layering smoke textures (flat) and using png or tiff or psd files instead of jpeg so you get transparency and make sure the smoke doesn't reach the edge of the texture (this is a performance saving effect, but the same effect can be using particles also but when you use particles instead of psd files of smoke made in photoshop, it ads about 20-30 minutes to the render time when using mental ray )

The hack does NOT work. Really that simple.

Wouldn't it be great if Microsoft admitted they screwed up, released a Windows XP Second Edition with DX10 that was compatible with all my old software/hardware, and we all just pretended that Vista never existed? Nah, that would be too easy of a fix.

Not really sure what you think that would accomplish. The bigger flop (not that I would really call either a flop or mistake) was DX10, not Vista. For all the crap that MS got about Vista at release combined with all the hype of DX10 and the continuing desire to get it on XP the really ironic thing is that most gamers who "bit the bullet" and went to Vista for DX10 found that Vista is a really good OS for gamers while DX10 offers almost nothing. I'd take Vista w/o DX10 any day over XP w/DX10.

i have to disagree on that point, vista was and still is slower for gaming, still has compatibility issues with programs, although i will admit that service pack 1 was a massive improvement to its speed, that was soon screwed up by SP3 for XP which meant that XP is still faster and more stable.