Check the daz site for a complete list of supported systems. Glad im on OSX :-)

Actually, I think you will even have to upgrade cause it is 10.2 and you mentioned that you weren't there yet a few weks ago I think.

does anyone here still use Win95 seeing as it's a non supported version now?

Yes

Win95? What's that? ;)

(Sorry, nickedshield)

No problem, when I get bored I use my wfwg box in DOS I don't retire my machines- they are set for a specific function and some old hardware I cannot replace oris compatable with a more modern machine. Yes, I do have a powewr box for Poser.

I don't use Windows 95 anymore, but in my opinion it was the best OS made.

Sadly (for those who haven't upgraded), Win95 is a dead OS. Microsoft pretty much pulls this sort of thing every time they release a new system. Win98 is next on the hit list, and is pretty much on the way out as well- you'll have trouble finding official "signed" drivers for many graphics cards under Win98- because Microsoft refuses to certify them anymore. I even have trouble transferring data easily from Win95 to WinXP machines; instead of a serial port connection, I've got to manually copy things over on disk. Actually, considering DAZ will be using hardware accelleration, it's no suprise that Win95 will not be supported. Microsoft's DirectX is pretty much the only way developers code for PC hardware anymore, and Win95 doesn't support all the latest DirectX versions- which have features that DAZ will need to ensure their renders are fast and high quality. Anyway, PC users who are still running Win95 should really consider an upgrade to WinXP, and maybe a system upgrade as well. WinXP, with all the patches, is much more stable and superior to Win95 (and I should know- I've been using all the Microsoft OS's since MS-DOS), and, as you can see, most new programs will soon require WinXP to work... at least until the next version of Windows is released...

I wonder what Win3.1 would run like on a 2Ghz P4? I did like Win95 but then Win98 came along which was slightly better & now we have Windows NT to play with :) aaaah DOS now that WAS a Fun OS to play with ;)

Tansfering data between my wfwg>95>98 is no big hassel. I still use FastLynx that I bought in 1992. Works in DOS mode. I still have to see if it will work with my XP box. Gee, I forgot what DOS stood for (disk operating system). Widows=shell. Ah the fun of dedicated hardware.

Win98, my favorite of favorites. I think MS should have included a bottle of Valium in the package. For those who remember, NT 3.51 was an exceptional platform but got brushed aside because of poor software support.

Someone mentioned DirectX... I may be wrong, but it looks like Studio is going to use OpenGL, is there a difference? My understanding was that DirectX was proprietary and OPenGL was an open source accelerator.

Hey ... look what renderer they will have!!!!! >> 3Delight renderer by DNASoft included (Renderman compliant) << !!! WOW, thats cool! That means radiosity and so on ... (or not? ... who cares :) ) Cant wait to have the first version here Chris

Well, I hate to say this, but until the price of wide format color printers comes down to below $1000, or HP decides to update the drivers for the printer I have now, WinXP is useless. Kate (who refuses to give up her 11 x 17 print capability for anyone)

Here are a few thoughts:

1. Nickedshield; warnings about Win95 and OpenGL programs are usually published because Win95 doesn't include the OpenGL libraries by default. You might get away with Win95 by downloading the libraries; I got the demo of FaceGen Studio to work this way.

2. C1rcle; the answer to your Win 3.1 question is "instantaneously..." :-)

3. Here's another caveat about Studio;

http://www.daz3d.com/pages/dp/press/press_releases/studioannounce.html

under the section headed "Items that will be implemented at a later stage of the DAZ|Studio Beta Program:" comes this;

"Save function enabled "

Looks like we'll have a nice toy to play with, but not a truly useful one, until this function is implemented.

thanks steerpike :) save function? saving what though?

WinME required a 50 gallon drum of Quaaludes! :) I never had it install, work, or "plug and play" properly. It failed spectacularly during beta (wouldn't even install) and wasn't much better after release. Multiple devices (lists of the same one), BSoD, BkSoD, system freezes; it sucked. It remained on my systems for about 1 day before begrudgingly moving to Windows 2000 Pro (begrudgingly because many games at that time did not run under it). Now, I consider Win2000 Pro the best Microsoft OS yet. And they are going to pull support for it soon (stupidly, since there are probably tens of millions of users of Win2000). I think that software developers have to draw the line on the OSes supported. Otherwise, they'd have to support MSDOS 1.0-6.0, WFW, Win3.1/3.0, BeOS, AmigaOS, C64-OS (whatever that was called), NeXT, and so forth and so on. Win98 and MacOS 9.x are good bottom lines.

save function? saving what though? I'd assumed the ability to save modified .PZ3 files - DAZ's article implies that some modification of imported scenes will be possible.

yes it sounds like it might be something along those lines, it wouldn't make sense for it to be save disabled for renders else there'd be no point in having it :)

I agree. 95 and 98 were not all that different on the surface, but 95's graphics system was grossly underpowered and buggy. W98 was at least able to handle the basics.

I long for the day when I can get all the software I need in place and running smooth, on a pc with lots processing power, hard drive space, and RAM, and then just unplug, off the grid, and never look back...

BeatYS I once had the misfortune to use WinME for a day, it was the longest day of my life :( I've just been hunting & I can say without question the C64 OS was CBM Basic :)

I thought "Basic" was in there somewhere as it was the basic programming interface unless you wanted to program in assembly.

Well, Win3.1 worked great for me, as did Win95, as did Win98, and now XP. But I pretty much run programs that are in line with the OS used. I mean when I upgrade my machine, I usually upgrade my programs as well so I keep in step. I wouldn't necessarily want to run current programs on my older machines though. But what I ran when I had all those OS's worked fine.

sure brings back some really good memories :) all those peeks & pokes heh

Using assembly language inside Basic was hard, but fun. The same graphic pattern, built in asm, moved faster on a 4 MHz PC than it does now in Win on a 1 GHz PC. Granted, the newer systems can do a -much- wider range of things, but I'm not sure that running 250 times slower is a good tradeoff for those abilities.

Believe it or not Win95 is still the "standard" desktop at the European Space Agency, we're moving to XP soon though :) later jb

Nooooooooo... Not Peeks and Pokes! ;) It's been so long since I even touched a C64 for programming (maybe 15 years or so) that most of it is forgotten (or, in computer terms, garbage collected for more recent storage needs: C,C++,Java :). So, back to the topic. Is DAZ Studio going to work on a C64? ;-)

You can actually get a web browser and mail clients for the 64, so I don't see whay not... :)

Didn't DAZ mention Linux support here in their "announcement" message?

I still use Windows ME and i love it no hidden processes running in the background no memory leaks. Keeps my rendering time to a minimum and I can create 3D models more quickly on windown ME then i can in XP (Slower tracking ect) I guess its user preference.

DazStudio is OpenGL based. OpenGL is the only realistic cross platform graphics API. DirectX is pretty much a Windows only affair. OpenGL is also a whole lot easier to code. DirectX is a horror. As to performance differences between OpenGL and DirectX I personally have never seen anything significant enough to outweigh the cons of dealing with DirectX. Although a lot of games are going to DirectX, at the higher end of the graphics hardware and software spectrum, OpenGL pretty much dominates. The new OpenGL 2.0 spec will also level out the differences between OpenGL 1.x and DirectX 9 and above. Windows XP and 2K share a lot of common core code and 98/Me are close to that core. Under the hood where you are actually writing lines of code Windows 95 has a number of "issues", some age related, that made supporting it a problem.

Wolf, one I saw the first screen pic of DAZ Studio I figured that 9 wasn't going to be able that level of graphics. Rocketman, you been sniffing hydrazine or something? Win95 was just the world's largest bug fix for 3.1, which isn't say much since it added a new class of bugs to replace the ones it fixed. XP is the only OS from M$ that I've read more good reviews than bad ones in both the 'first look' and after it's been out awhile. EsnRedshirt, Any developer that's building for a cross platform setup will use OpenGL, not DirectX DAZ Studio is being built on OpenGL so I highly doubt it will even support DirectX since that would be letting M$ get their messy fingers in the works. >BeatYourSoul So, back to the topic. Is DAZ Studio going to work on a C64? ;-) < Yep, it will also work on the Atari 128 ;-) :-D praxis22 > Believe it or not Win95 is still the "standard" desktop at the European Space Agency, we're moving to XP soon though :)< Is this why the Ariane 5 has been spending more time in pieces or in the ocean than is space? :-) a few of the other versions of what DOS meant, from those that used it Dumb Operating system, Dismal OS, Dino OS and a dozen or so more along the same lines :-)

Kate - What printer do you use? I use a Canon BJC-5000 which supports 11 X 17 size. It was not supported by XP, and the Win2000 drivers from the US didn't work, but I downloaded a Win2000 driver from a different country, I think Austrailia but I'm not sure, and the printer works fine. I think the best OS I ever used was OS/2WARP, but IBM got tired of supporting me!

Gee, I guess that means my DOS 6.0 will not run it either! ;-) I still use that, incidently, to run a antique Lotus 2.2 clone spreadsheet to balance my checkbook! I love turning th ecomputer off without "shutting down", too! How we were in 1987!

As much as I LOVE my XP (home) I must say, that prior to that, WinME was the best windows ever made! It worked. And it worked. I still have it on a few of my older computers at home and it works. And works :o) Oh and Poser runs great on both systems.

Hey L Apart from XP I had significantly FEWER BSOD's on ME than on any other OS, Win98SE included. And remember that it was ME that introduced the truly indispensable System Restore feature. The XP version works even better, but the feature saved my butt more than once in ME when I installed funny things. But XP ROX! I have yet to see a BSOD in that OS. And I've been running it since it came out.

Ahem.
I wasn't going to say anything, but I just can't help myself....
Win98SE and Win2K were the last incarnations of Microsoft being worried about competition.
WinME and WinXP are both just Pretty, dumbed down interfaces of the 2 operating systems; In respect to Win2K vs WinXP, Win2k is more stable, has a lower official failure rate, and runs the same applications faster.
WinXP also has a lot of security flaws built in that just shouldn't be there, since they almost had to be by design.
Most pro organizations that require security and stability are completely ignoring XP, waiting for Windows 2003 (which, by the way, is pretty nice).

I have to agree completely with RealDeal. Windows 2000 is one of the most stable OSs on the market (maybe besides some specialized ones). Crashes? What are they? The only time W2K crashes is when there is a bad driver loaded which can usually be replaced or removed. My FTP/Web server runs W2K Pro and the only time it needs to be rebooted is when there are Windows Updates requiring it. And, yes, I complete ignore XP (even Pro). Could not get it to install on either of my systems and caused me endless agony trying to reinstall W2K afterwards. Did someone say "Windows 2003"? :) Has a beta been sent with the MSDN license?

"DazStudio is OpenGL based. OpenGL is the only realistic cross platform graphics API. DirectX is pretty much a Windows only affair. OpenGL is also a whole lot easier to code. DirectX is a horror." (btw, opengl id also HARDWARE acceleration, it requires you to have an opengl based graphics card to function, as of opengl spec 1.2) "As to performance differences between OpenGL and DirectX I personally have never seen anything significant enough to outweigh the cons of dealing with DirectX. Although a lot of games are going to DirectX, at the higher end of the graphics hardware and software spectrum, OpenGL pretty much dominates. The new OpenGL 2.0 spec will also level out the differences between OpenGL 1.x and DirectX 9 and above." why not use Mesagl? software based acceleration, if there is no hardware accelerator present, ( as of opengl .8 spec ) and it follows the opengl code in all respects other than requiring hardware acceleration. oh, yeah, mesagl is *nix only, since no-one wants to complie it onto that legacy os shipped with pc's. ( if it was worth using it wouldn't be included with the hardware )

rwilliams, I'm using the HP 1120C which I basically got for free (beat THAT price, Staples g). Actually, I inherited it from hubby's secretary who got a new one since there are no drivers for WinXP for this printer so it stopped working when the company upgraded to XP from 98 (they bypassed 2K completely, dunno why). I've got WinXP sitting here in its little box, but you know, I don't think I'm ever going to install it. I just don't care for the idea of getting some stranger's permission to replace my hard drive, motherboard or other computer components. Just doesn't sit right with me. Kate the Stubborn

Kate, that's the other part of XP I despise. It is really just a means, like CL's now-removed protection, to aggravate good customers and make the others laugh. It's disgusting when a cracked version works better than the "protected" version because of the protection being removed. Says alot about whom (or what) M$ really cares: itself and its profits...

Yup, it's out with the developer network... and you can get your very own copy at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/default.mspx it's release candidate 2; one of the benifits of early software like this is, well, it's free; always a good thing. plus, while it will have security holes, no one will know about them for a while. It's not quite as stable as win2k, but it does have the 64-bit threading and hyperthreading, I believe. Of course none of these OS's compare with OS/2.

Is Windows 2003 the same thing as Longhorn?

Jaqui:

You can get a Windows version of MesaGL at chUmbaLum sOft. Mete Ciragan has compiled versions 3.11 and 5.0 for MilkShape users who are having trouble with their 3D cards' hardware acceleration.