Microsoft got the clock tics right

Not sure about Vista or Windows 7, but looks like the clock tics
accurately in windows 8. At least thru Windows XP, the second hand
would stutter from time to time. And no, it's not hardware related,
it's to do with one's ability to observe things.

John Doe wrote:
Not sure about Vista or Windows 7, but looks like the clock tics
accurately in windows 8. At least thru Windows XP, the second hand
would stutter from time to time. And no, it's not hardware related,
it's to do with one's ability to observe things.

You can build your own clock here. I bet the Visual Studio is
a rather large download though.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windo...Frame-924b039a

*******

Even ancient computers were capable of smooth animation. I was shocked,
years ago, when I got some version of Trek running on the Sun Sparc,
and the animation was smooth. A look in the source code, showed
they were using something called "microsleep" or usleep. That
was new at the time. And pretty impressive for a non-Direct3D/non-OpenGL
application.

Much later OSes, have added things like RT priority, but that's not
really all of the problem. As the above article mentions,
a lack of alignment between screen updates and animation
code, can make things look choppy.

This terminology used to be heard a lot, years ago,
but you hardly hear it mentioned now.

"Detecting Vertical Retrace in Microsoft Windows"

http://www.compuphase.com/vretrace.htm

So it's possible, what you're seeing with Windows 8,
is reinvention of a "new old thing". And done with
an eye towards tablets, rather than desktops.
(Tablet only does animation when it absolutely
has to.)

Paul

On 1/20/2013 6:32 AM, Paul wrote:
John Doe wrote:
Not sure about Vista or Windows 7, but looks like the clock tics
accurately in windows 8. At least thru Windows XP, the second hand
would stutter from time to time. And no, it's not hardware related,
it's to do with one's ability to observe things.

You can build your own clock here. I bet the Visual Studio is
a rather large download though.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windo...Frame-924b039a


*******

Even ancient computers were capable of smooth animation. I was shocked,
years ago, when I got some version of Trek running on the Sun Sparc,
and the animation was smooth. A look in the source code, showed
they were using something called "microsleep" or usleep. That
was new at the time. And pretty impressive for a non-Direct3D/non-OpenGL
application.

Much later OSes, have added things like RT priority, but that's not
really all of the problem. As the above article mentions,
a lack of alignment between screen updates and animation
code, can make things look choppy.

This terminology used to be heard a lot, years ago,
but you hardly hear it mentioned now.

"Detecting Vertical Retrace in Microsoft Windows"

http://www.compuphase.com/vretrace.htm

So it's possible, what you're seeing with Windows 8,
is reinvention of a "new old thing". And done with
an eye towards tablets, rather than desktops.
(Tablet only does animation when it absolutely
has to.)

Paul


About 1980 I did my first analog clock on an Apple II Plus, Orly had 16K
of memory so had to buy 8K more as the Apple program required 24K.

Rene

Paul nospam needed.com wrote:

So it's possible, what you're seeing with Windows 8, is
reinvention of a "new old thing". And done with an eye towards
tablets, rather than desktops. (Tablet only does animation when
it absolutely has to.)

Maybe they are using the System Internals guys. A few technical
features make the switch from Windows XP look worthwhile. When
copying files, besides the Details view showing transfer rate, at
least showing the source and destination folders is an
improvement. And when hovering over a folder, you get to see the
folder contents size (that's very useful here). I realize that
some of the technical improvements/show might have been in 7
and/or Vista, but I wouldn't know.