Is it time to move to Vista?
December 29th, 2006 by Luc-Eric - Viewed 9461 times - Popularity: 20% [?]XSI 6.0 was being finished pretty much at the same time as Vista was on RC so we didn’t have to fully test XSI on Vista in depth, there was just too many things going on at the same time. New compilers, new MainWin, new render core, new setups, etc.
On one hand, 6.0 adds DirectX 10 support, which is an extremely significant departure from DirectX 9, and is exclusive to Vista. That’s right, neither Windows XP nor the XBox 360 will support DirectX 10, and users need a bleeding edge graphics card. Still, game developers need to get ready now for games that will come out in a couple of years, and they can do so with XSI. We’ve also fixed a few glitches that XSI had when running under Vista. For example, the buttons did not work in message boxes, due to a problem with our skinning mechanism. One can work-around the problem by using the keyboard to select the buttons instead. On the other hand, we do not presently have a dongle driver compatible with Vista, so this means it is required to run the license server off another machine. (I think this does not affect Foundation, which doesn’t have a dongle.) Softimage is very committed to having good Vista support, and will provide updates on the subject during 2007. Right now we do have a few users running under Vista and we’re very interested in your experience if you are doing this; do not hesitate to add your comments to this post.
Windows XP should still be available for general purchase for at least one year, and it is probably best to stay with it in the immediate future. At the other extreme, while we do not test and support Windows 2000 anymore, we do have several users that still use it. We are not at this time using any feature specific to XP, nor are we planning anything of the sort at this time. In my opinion, if you have a laptop it is a good idea to upgrade to at least XP, because it is faster, and graphic driver support for 2000 can be scarce. XP is also required for hyper-threading support and has newer and better drivers. You can turn on “classic mode” in XP to make XP continue to look like Windows 2000 :D
Popularity: 20% [?]
I have v6 Advanced running on Vista (RTM) on my laptop. I had noticed the message box button issue in v5.11, and that has disappeared in v6.
I do get an odd behaviour trying to connect nodes in the compositor though. This was also an issue in v5.11. I put it down to the OpenGL support on my laptop, but maybe you can repeat it at your end. When you try to connect two nodes, you can select the output point and start the link, but it doesn”t detect the input point on the second node, so you can”t drop it and complete the connection. If the input point on the second node lines up with an output on that node you could drop the incoming connection onto the output and it would be connected up properly (as if you”d dropped it on the input). I haven”t found a way to make a connection to one of the mask drop points on the side of a node though.
Hopefully that makes sense. =)
I haven”t done a whole lot of fiddling with it yet, but that’’s what I”ve spotted so far.
The problem connecting nodes in the fxtree occurs when the graphics card is forcing anti-aliasing, which breaks code that uses the back buffer to implement picking. (It will also affect ray casting functions) This can occur on any version of Windows or Linux.
Try to find an options in the opengl graphic card settings which says Full Screen Anti Aliasing.
It should be set to “Application-Preferred” or “Application Controlled” instead of Enabled, 2x, or some other setting like this. It should be an OpenGL-specific setting. Install an updated driver from the vendor if you have no such setting
That’’s good to know. At the moment the nVidia Vista display drivers are still technically in Beta, so I”ll need to wait for an update from them. I don”t currently have any detailed settings that I can fiddle with for the card.
Thanks.
I’m trying to run XSI 6.0 ADV on Vista Ultimate RTM. 3.0 ghz P4, 1.5gig ram, ATI Radeon x1600 512mb.
Took awhile to get it to install and play nice with Vista. First attempt (using “new” iwire drivers) caused Bluescreens on reboot. After completely removing XSI, I solved the bluescreening issue. Then we got it to work just by installing it.
The catch to getting the License Manager to install and run the license service is by disabling User Account Control. Control Panel/User Accounts and Family Safety/User Accounts/Turn User Account Control On or Off. With it enabled, the Start Server/Stop Server was greyed out in the License Manager. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next point update, cause I’d like to enable this….
I’m guessing these problems are related to the Vista drivers for my ATI card:
* I also received an OpenGL error upon startup. Forget exactly what it was, something like realtime shadow maps not found and are disabled.
* I also have the problem with the fxTree. I can’t connect nodes (File Input->Gaussian Blur). I looked at the settings in the Advanced Catalyst Control Panel for the ATI, and SMOOTHVISION: Anti-Aliasing and SMOOTHVISION: Anisotropic Filtering AA were both set to Let The Application Decide.
Any other ideas?
Good news! I just installed the brand new ATI non-beta Vista drivers, and my FX Tree problems are all fixed!
It also fixed another issue I was having: Missing OpenGL extension (ARB_Shadow) – realtime shadow maps will not be available.
What kind of Windows Vista are you using? 32 or 64 Bits?
Hi guys, I’ve some problems running xsi 6.01 on vista home premium 32 bit.
The program seems unstable and some feautures don’t work fine: selection tool draws a grey or black area in the viewport, polygon selection doesn’t work, region tool sometimes makes the viewport become black, scene crash and the program isn’t able to recover after forced closing and restart…And so on…
Do you have the same problems?
Softimage support does’nt answer my mails, so I hope in a reply here.
Thanks,
Marco.
Now I have messed around extensively with XSI 6 and Vista, I have learned that for XSI to run great on my laptop with a 7900 GS Nvidia Go card is to right click select the compatability tab and select the All users button on bottom of window, once there just select or check run in Windows XP Svc Pk 2 mode and apply then close. What happens now is that all the vista composite stuff goes off and runs in Vista Basic mode, but will return back to normal once XSI is closed. Now some are saying or asking why couldn’t I just do the compat stuff through the first Property win? Well everytime I did it I kept getting a SICore Crash. But when I changed the setting for all users it does just fine.
I think, Vista is too expensive regarding both money and binding of system resources. And this system resources I want to be used by XSI. So I think I will stay as long as possible on Windows XP. And I hope XSI also will be as long as possibel compatible with XP. This is a subjective opinion without testing Vista and XSI on Vista.
Best regards
Steve
I run my laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium. I installed XSI 6.01, and the installing process went fine. But then you have to run the licence manager and stuff. I turned off the UAC to enable the ’start’-button in the licencemanager, and i also inserted ‘COM1′ instead of ‘IBU’ in the config-file..
But when i start the server, it stops automatically after 5 seconds or so…. anyone with the same problem? Please, im desperate! :P
Sorry, that is Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit
Hi, does XSI 6 Foundation use DirectX to render content in its real-time modeling viewport?
Thanks
I am a huge fan of xsi. Im running on an old dual xeon with xp pro but ive recently ported to mac with a macbook pro and a mac pro. I hope one day that XSI will be available on mac osx/tiger though i realize the amount of sales will be low. given apples recent success due to the ipod and its ability to deliver a pretty damn stable os i really thing its the best OS for graphic apps due to its intuitive interface (much like xsi itself). Not only intuitive but it delivers a more professional workspace. Ive signed the petition of course and i can always dual boot. However im still hopeful that xsi will be available for mac one day it would be such a dream come true.
For those people who are having the grey/black selection bug in vista, check the solution here, it works
http://softimage.wiki.avid.com/index.php/Vista_Known_Issues
foundations 6.02 now works fine for me in Vista. Turning off Aero may help as well. Unfortunately after upgrading to Vista I realized what a honorable POS it is, and would stay away from it as long a possible. I lost so much of my system resources to that buggy annoying bloated DRM server masquerading as an OS that 8gb of ram on vista 64bit ultimate performed like 4 gigs under XP 32-bit. Of course my drivers didn’t work (especially MS competitors like VMware) because Vista disabled the drivers as unapproved non-MS signed drivers (“a Vista 64bit feature”,) and when i got them working perfectly via a technet work around, or in unsigned diver mode MS patched to disable them again calling it an exploit and removing the the entire unsigned drivers option from the safe mode boot menu. My printer, and scanner didn’t work and my wacom tablet cut in and out while my MS mouse and keyboard flaked my apps refused to run, Burning data cd’s or DVD,s failed, copying 400 MB on the same clean, unfragmented hard drive partition take 45 minutes and multiple tries. All kinds of productivity destroying foolishness ensued including loss of 200GB of data on my external usb drive for no apparent reason. Apps saying not responding and OS greying out the whole display just because a program is busy working on a task I just told it to do.I tried to setup dual display via a second video card and the machine began to stutter mouse and explorer freeze every 3 seconds and audio go’s blip, blip blip. Oh IRQ conflicts welcome back to windows 98 anyone ? While my hard drive grinds 24/7 running bs and any demanding apps sputter along on my quad core 8800GT 8gig system like it was a 1 gig P4 with 768MB of ram and a sis video card. My SATA drives performed like IDE or PIO. Maybe if I was using my PC for e-mail and web browsing and hadn’t run XP on it before I wouldn’t notice the difference, but I don’t, I did and I do. I have switched to Ubuntu and I dual boot XP to use XSI for now. I would avoid Vista like the plague. When XP support is no more, I’m going Linux or MAC hopefully Softimage picks up their poor Linux support beyond selling it with a $300 emulator that let’s it run on one ancient releases of a handfull of distro and starts supporting more openGL based plug -ns. Direct-x 10 for Vista is a push to force people off XP and open GL has 2.0 HSL Shaders and generally keeps up with anything in the direct X world, runs great on windows and other platforms (until Microsoft puts a stop to that by sabotaging that at the OS level and saying opps anti-trust we don’t know why it started to run like ass in windows or btw opengl drivers are not approved on 64-bit why not try DirectX instead! Wink Wink) Open GL is just under utilized in the face of Microsoft’s proprietary api. Vista is a flop, is unbearable as a serious workstation for CGI and it’s an insult to loyal MS customers. I bought XSI over other solutions like 3dsmax (though XSI is a wonderful app)due in part to learning it ran on linux. Only not with my license , not natively, and not with most plug-ins, cost $300 more and their support for it is relegated to a wiki and running on very old disto’s with degraded performance. The new version comes out and where is the new linux support to keep XSI current. Heck if they had a native nix version they could dominate the Mac platform hands down how many graphic artist’s don’t prefer a Mac right? Programmers like direct x , but artists , animators and gamers could careless if it worked and looked as good under open GL. Check out the OGL shader blender uses if you doubt the capabilities are there with Direct-X. PS I don’t hate vista because I use Ubuntu Linux or use ubuntu Linux because I hate Vista and XP is soon to be history.