A peek ahead??

So like the other something million of you out there I've downloaded and installed the Windows 8 Developer Preview.

Let me be clear from the outset, I'm not a smart phone guy.  Hell I just want the damned thing to ring when someone calls.  I can care less about 3G, 4G or WiFi and you can add to that cutesy interfaces designed to waste even more of my time trying to figure out what to swipe to make a call.

So what do smart phones have to do with gaming and windows?

If you haven't taken a look at the developer preview yet I'll clue you in.  Windows 8 has changed the user interface to closely mimic Windows phone.  It's designed first to be a touch controlled OS (Think tablet) and everything else comes second.

That means that getting around the OS takes some getting used to.  The Start Menu is gone replaced by a set of "tiles" that are meant to provide the same functionality.  On first blush that actually seems kind of cool for a gaming PC. Your own arcade is available with just a single click, swipe or whatever without drilling down through menus. 

I tend to organize my gaming PC so that I have easy access to my game shortcuts either on the desktop (kind of messy) or corralled in a folder named "games" that sits on my desktop.  That means that if you're anything like me you rarely use the Start menu to get to your games.  That makes the "tiles" concept a bit easier for me to get used to.  In a perfect world that works just fine.

That changes if something goes wrong, however.  Right clicking on a Tile doesn't bring up the usual floating menu of properties and other options.  Instead you get a taskbar with two options: Advanced and Unpin.  Advanced offers some some of the functionality of a normal right click menu but is obviously not designed for any intense modifications. 

Note that I'm talking about a "Tile" here.  Tile's live in the "Metro" user interface.  Metro attempts to shield users from all that old Windows ugliness by taking the desktop shortcut model to the extreme.  Click a tile and your application starts up with no muss and no fuss...

Assuming the program works that is....

If it doesn't you don't get much indication of what's gone wrong.  It just doesn't start.  If you manage to find the event viewer you may see a message about an app crashing but from there on things get messy again.

As I understand it Windows 8 is an attempt to unify all Microsoft operating systems so that the experience is largely the same no matter what device.  A smart phone, a Tablet, A PC or the interface to your fridge all have a common look and feel.

The difference is that PC's get Metro AND a desktop.  The Desktop, however, is treated much like any other "Tile" in Metro.  The desktop offers much of the feel of Windows 7 but again the Start Menu is gone replaced by a Start button that flings you back into Metro.  The desktop is your best bet for tweaking program settings but it's been somewhat neutered by the focus on Metro.  It's more of a compatibility tool than a control center. 

I've managed to install Steam and then a few games just to see how the OS reacts.  I realize this is a developer preview so not everything is locked down yet but it is supposed to be complete enough to allow programmers to code for it.  That means that some user features may be a bit wonky and crashes more common than a release candidate.  Still, to develop on a platform the guts have to be in place or it's pointless to even try. 

Steam works albeit slower than normal and there were some issues with the download section not keeping track of a download's progress.  I've managed to install Borderlands, Portal and Half Life 2:Lost Coast.  Portal and Lost Coast seem to work just fine and without any custom drivers from NVIDIA I was able to ramp up Lost Coast visual settings to their highest level with Multi Sampling and Anti-Aliasing at max levels. 

Apparently Nvidia has made an effort to provide Microsoft with a decent driver which is a nice touch especially with an OS platform that is so reliant on graphics.  It's not all guns and roses, however...

As I said I had success with Portal and Lost Coast but Borderlands tries to load and immediately crashes to desktop.  It didn't matter if I tried to launch from Steam or from the program folder.  Something about that game doesn't jive with Windows 8.  I eventually found compatibility options and even ran the troubleshooter to no avail.

My guess would be that unlike Windows 7's desktop interface, the desktop "app" in Metro doesn't provide enough control over the OS to allow a game like this to run correctly.  Remember, the focus is on apps conforming to Metro.  Backward compatibility is apparently deprecated in favor of that.

I've heard that there will be versions of the OS that don't use the Metro interface equating to the "Professional" edition that may solve this irritation.  Server editions only use Metro for administrative tasks.  You have to ask yourself if it's worth the upgrade to get functionality you already have in Windows 7. 

Every new OS tends to shed the baggage of it predecessors to some degree.  We saw that with the change from XP to Vista and with MAC's with the change from OS9 to OSX.  So we all have to eventually accept that our favorite games from the 90's may not work without a lot of work if at all. 

Still, for a title as new as Borderlands that's been designed to work with a new OS to crash while older titles work almost without issue seems a bit strange. 

Maybe one of the developers for whom this version is truly intended will develop some better compatibility with newer titles.

I've said for years that Microsoft wants to be your toaster's OS.  I think they may reach that goal with WIndows 8 and Metro.