I suspect this game is likely like Halo 2 was; the DX10/Windows 6.x limit being artificial.
I played Halo 2 "vista" on XP
Yes, I already said this was possible. No, I don't think Just Cause 2 uses none of the features of DX 10 and could work perfectly in DX 9 like Halo 2 could. I beat you to the punch here anyway
But then you've got games that don't even need DX 10 and were mostly just trying to advertise the new API (Halo 2).
And regardless of PC support, if this game is also on consoles (remember, Xbox 360 and PS3 GPUs are DirectX 9 class GPUs) then I see no reason why it shouldn't support DX9 / XP.
I don't know about the PS3, but I remember Microsoft going on and on about the 360 running an "advanced version" of DX 9, which had some of the features later added in DX 10. You're also missing the point of these APIs, too. They're basically a set of guidelines that GPU manufacturers follow that makes it easier for whatever game engine to communicate with the hardware in
any PC. There are lots of PCs running lots of configurations, and so optimisation is next to impossible. Deviating from these APIs, with so many different GPUs and their corresponding builds
is impossible.
That's not exactly true for a 360, which obviously runs with a single hardware setup for its entire lifetime. There's going to be a lot more optimisation possible and many more options available than what you would get while working on a PC game. Basically, you could get the DX 10 features into the game on 360 without much work. When it comes to PCs, it's not so simple.
I don't care what any benchmarks say or what you say your friend's experience was. Windows 7 runs like shit on my computer.
If it runs like shit, your computer is probably shit.
But I do have problems with Windows 7.
I disabled all the ugly visual garbage I don't need and killed processes I didn't need. It ran just as bad.
The point was, if you really could run games at max settings then running Windows 7 should be no problem. If you can't run Windows 7 without your computer falling into a heap, I doubt it could handle Just Cause 2.
Or any game on max settings.
So it is not necessary.
You are the one who went on about "beauty" being a benchmark here. DX 10 makes it easier for visual improvements to be made while using less resources. DX 11 made it easier yet again. It doesn't only make it easier to make the game prettier, though. It makes it easier to make the game all-round.
I really don't blame them for not wanting to port their game to an old API because some people refuse to give up their 9 year old operating system.
Nope, but I have statistics that say 58% of computer users use Windows XP. That's the only real statistic in this, and that's all that matters.
Except it doesn't matter unless you want to argue all PC owners would play Just Cause 2.
I am aware it's mostly anecdotal evidence taken from a small sample, but almost everybody on those boards has made the jump to Windows 7. I've also seen them make statements similar to me ("gamers are using the new operating system") but I've never really bothered to follow the discussion or see if any statistics were shown. They don't, nor do I imagine they have the hardware capable of playing games anyway.
Remember, there was a 5 year gap between XP and Vista. When Vista came out there was a lot of negative press and so many people chose not to adopt. That's a fair bit of time for the XP userbase. It's also a fair bit of time for their hardware to grow old.
Unfortunately, no recent surveys have been made to find what percentage of PC owners play games.
I'm sure video game developers look at the people who come out and announce what operating system they have on /v/ to make decisions on what operating systems they want to support instead of using real data.
I'm sure video game developers aren't so dense to think the PC userbase consists entirely of enthusiast gamers. I'm sure a video game developer is going to think, "If they're going to play our game, they must have a computer that isn't 9 years old. If they don't have a 9 year old computer, they're probably running Windows 7 (
because it's just as fast and has many features over XP).
I can play Fallout 3 on the highest settings with huge texture mods, Borderlands on the highest settings, Sims 3 on highest settings, Flight Simulator X on pretty high settings, Crysis on medium settings, TF2 on highest settings, Half Life 2 on highest settings, Gmod on highest settings, and every other game I've never had issues with. Do you really believe I won't be able to run Just Cause 2? Even if I can't run it on highest settings, I could run it on some settings. Stop being dumb.
Most of the games you listed there are extremely easy to run, especially all things to do with HL2 and Fallout 3. If you were to play any of those games with DirectX 10 (Crysis), it would bog down your system a bit more.
However, the point I was trying to make was that if you could run these games on such settings you should have no problem running Windows 7. You can run CPU-intensive games (HL2) perfectly, and you can run GPU-intensive games (everything else) perfectly.
Either you were imagining the huge slowdown in Windows 7, or you can't play these games on max settings. There is some discrepancy here.