Tse default to tge rendering?

#1 TSE doesnt support fallback to non-shader cards - it's a big problem for many developers.

#2 The renderer has been completely rewritten for advanced hardware. You would have to back-port it yourself.

#3 I tend to agree with this month's Maximum PC editorial from Will Smith: It's Time to Bid Backward-Compatibility Adieu

I'm typing this by hand, so no linky!

Quote: I hear a lot about backward-compatibility: Windows XP can run apps that are more than 10 years old without problems, and Vista will include much of the same functionality. But is this level of backward compatibility really necessary any more? When was the last time you ran a non-game app that came out in the last millenium, much less 1995?

The oldest app I regularily run is Office 10 and that's just on my aged laptop, which I haven't bothered to upgrade to OpenOffice. Office 10 shipped in 2001. I don't have any reason to run apps more than three or four years old, and I'd bet that most home users are in a similar situation.

I do occasionally play older games, such as TIE Fighter, but I've had a ton of success playing my old DOS games using the Dosbox emulator. When legacy DirectX support is completely removed from Windows, I'd bet that an emulator for old Windows games, similar to Dosbox will be developed in no time.

What about those "mission-critical enterprise apps" that we always hear about? That's right, I'm talking to you, Mr DOS-Database-That-The-Company-Can't-Live-Without. Many companies are converting these critical applications into server-based web applications, which will work in any browser, are automatically backed up, and will continue running even if your client machine goes down. It's time to get rid of all those ancient DOS apps!

A massive effort went into making Vista work properly with legacy apps written by folks who flouted Microsoft's development guidelines. Those legacy apps save settings and files to verboten directories. If Microsoft had the chutzpah to eliminate support for legacy apps that misbehave, it could have devoted development resources to more beneficial tasks -- like improving Vista's end-user experience. [emphasis, mine]

Five years. That's the magic number. There's no way in hell I'm going to be running the same hardware in five years. Please, Microsoft! Ditch your overzealous backward-compatibility rules, for all our sakes!

(copyright MaximumPC magazine)

#4 That would be horrible in the educational sector. Of course, it would make me happy in not having to support something that ran under Windows for Workgroups and was given to universities back in the day and now costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to license in its current incarnation.

#5 Frankly, I can't say whether or no TSE using just diffuse textures and no shader materials would have the same performance as TGE. TSE was developed from TGE, and except for the effects and Atlas terrain, they're pretty much the same. Of course, some of the basic features in TSE are still changing, so they may differ more over time. Of course, though, if you need features that are in TSE and not TGE, performance differences wouldn't matter much, and if you don't need its features, it's best to just use TGE.

#6 I believe the new rendering code will make a big difference in my project where we render many copies of the same thing. Even without fancy materials.

#7 :( is it bad when the developer doesnt have a good enough video card to support pixel shading?

#8 TSE's rendering code is far far differnet from TGEs. I've ported projects back and forth from TGE to TSE, and performance wise TSE outperforms TGE vastly, even with all of the new eye candy. Pixel shader 1.1 is extremely old technology, unless your dealing with very old systems they will ship with at least 1.1 support.