Help me understand Aero interface of Vista

ShePearl

ShePearl

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
417
Many people claim to love Aero interface of Vista. Some call it 3D desktop etc.

Can you guys tell me if I'm understanding Aero interface? Because to me, it's not much different from Windows XP. You press WINDOWS key + TAB, you get a cool effect in the middle of a screen a bit different from traditional ALT + TAB. That's it. What else is there?
The same old desktop with 2D icons, mouse pointers etc. (Yes, I heard it's vector based rather than bitmap). It's the same old interface... with a bit of touch up.
 
It might look like 2D, but it's not. Everything on the screen that you see is either a 3D object with object data loaded into the graphic's cards memory, or it's a 3D texture. You might think what you see is fonts onscreen, but they're actually pixels rendered on textures - the entire Aero interface is a 3D texture, to put it basically.

Flip3D is eye candy, really, we all know that. Alt+Tab still rules beyond anything else as far as keyboard shortcuts, but Windows+Tab just gives you something to show off to friends, etc.

Because the entire GUI is now fully 3D rendered, it offloads that aspect of the OS to a far more capable graphics engine - your GPU - and let's the OS worry about other stuff.

Hope this helps...
 
This is just my opinion, but Aero is different then Classic. It definitely acts more 3D then before, like when a window is closed, it backs away from you before it disappears. Aero has a transparency where you can see though the borders to "help soften and distract the user less", but I am not sure I believe that one. Aero is pretty, takes up RAM and Video. But its not a necessary thing. Honestly, I have Aero on, but transparency off to use power in other places. The biggest use of power is the sidebar, I don't that at all. I would rather have speed then pretty. Take care.
3Dscroll.jpg
 
I like the minimize/maximize to taskbar is animated--I think that's an Aero feature, anyway. And the transparent window frames.
 
The biggest difference is that Vista now actually renders the desktop in directX, using the gpu of your video card for processing.. This gives a nice speed boost, and allows for transparency, and other nifty effects.

XP on the other hand used the 2d portion of your video card and most of the rendering is bound to your cpu.
 
Incidentally, Aero is not vector-based - everything's bitmap as normal, just larger icons are supported. Changing to using vectors is easier said than done; OS X has started to phase it in, but is currently using a vector/bitmap hybrid.
 
ShePearl said:
Many people claim to love Aero interface of Vista. Some call it 3D desktop etc.

Can you guys tell me if I'm understanding Aero interface? Because to me, it's not much different from Windows XP. You press WINDOWS key + TAB, you get a cool effect in the middle of a screen a bit different from traditional ALT + TAB. That's it. What else is there?
The same old desktop with 2D icons, mouse pointers etc. (Yes, I heard it's vector based rather than bitmap). It's the same old interface... with a bit of touch up.
Click to expand...

From a user pov, it's eye candy, and takes up more RAM.

For me, this eye candy just happens to taste like shit and is pretty expensive.
 
Aero doesn’t really add usability improvements. However, on a PC with a decent DX9 GPU, it doesn’t really have much overhead.

Here’s on free add on that’s really nice I think, it’s an OS X Expose clone for Vista: http://insentient.net/. Somewhat more useable than Flip3D.

The better the hardware, the better this will run, but it works ok on my tablet pc with an integrated Intel GPU.

It’s tough for Microsoft to win when it comes to UI. Aero is a very clean looking UI and runs well on pretty modest hardware. I do wish they could have added some more usability to it. I’ve seen some tech demo videos of Aero that had a lot more 3D functionality than what shipped with Vista. We’ll see more in Windows 7.
 
The biggest difference is actually in the way Vista treats each window.
Ever have a situation where in XP. You drag a window and the one behind it is either blank or shows the contents of the window you dragged?
That is because XP can only "redraw" the contents of the currently active window.
Vista can "redraw" each window regardless of activity or otherwise.
I know I've butchered the explanation but, Suffice to say, The largest benefits are under the hood
 
Aero windows makes your graphics card run on 3D fan settings, make the windows slower to respond and add no real world benefit whatsoever.

Even with aero and all effects off, Vista still closes and opens windows slower than XP. With effects on it gets old real fast.
 
It's also worth mentioning that you should have 2gigs of ram for vista to run smoothly. I tried it with 1 gig before and there was a ton of hard drive swapping going on. Now with 2gigs, its actually very smooth, and runs well on my 4yr old hardware.
 
CopyThat said:
The biggest difference is actually in the way Vista treats each window.
Ever have a situation where in XP. You drag a window and the one behind it is either blank or shows the contents of the window you dragged?
That is because XP can only "redraw" the contents of the currently active window.
Vista can "redraw" each window regardless of activity or otherwise.
I know I've butchered the explanation but, Suffice to say, The largest benefits are under the hood
Click to expand...

QFE

Plus the taskbar previews, alt-tab previews (that are always up to date, not just most recent snapshot), and alt-tab/win-tab you can click the app you want without having to cycle thru all (not sure if the XP preview mod did this or not, I know the normal alt-tab doesn't) are all now must haves.

Also the stills don't really do aero justice, as when you're looking at the preview of a game or a movie, it's actually the game or the movie, not just a still of it. You can have a ton of windows open with a game in the background and put the mouse over the game button in the taskbar and see a real time mini display of what's going on.
 
becuase the interface is drawn useing direct x calls, it mostly sits in yout video memory.. there is one big reason why this is nice, and that is that it dosenot have to load a 2d interface behind a 3d game, the game and the interface sit on the same bench (so to speak) if your running a graphicly intence game, you take little/no preformace hit when running in desktop mode, both the gui and the game are being drawn by the same engine at the same time, and not 2 sepprate engines. more so, it has been optimised to do exactly this..

example, WoW i can tab between it and any other (already open) screen with absolutly no hang time, in XP, on the exact same hardware, you hit alt+tab to a window that is already open and there is a good 3 to 4 seconed lag befor it pulls the frame foward, and 6 to 7 more seconeds to draw the content. do you take a slight performance hit, yup... is it noticable enought to care about... nope...
 
I just can't find myself going back to XP aside from the itunes/ipod touch support. Vista is just so much easier and refreshing on the eyes. At first it had a bit of a learning curve to it, but once you get around that it's really good eye candy. You can either change options to bring back more familiar traditional windows usage, or stick with full vista as well.

I like the little subtle effects like transparency, smooth gradients, the smooth maximize/minimize effects, the seamless window switches, the reduced likely hood of "windows" freezes jumping from window to window, the real time previews, the win-tab (3d flip).

I know more can be done with it, but as it stands, it's all the little things combined that really make it "better" than XP. Performance wise, I feel it's faster in the desktop mode. Anything 2gb and/or weak video card, and it becomes a pain to use similar to xp... it is a resource hog.
 
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