Windows 8 Pumps up Metro UI With DirectX 11.1 Graphics

From DailyTech: Windows 8, Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) innovative and controversial new consumer operating system (OS) is set to hit store shelves and go live online on October 26.

Available in three varieties (Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and the ARM-compatible Windows 8 RT), the new operating system seems like it would be a performance killer with demanding multi-touch (even on new desktop machines!) and the rich, colorful animated Metro user interface (UI). But despite the demands of the new gloss, Microsoft has thus far showed a stubborn determination to not just meet Windows 7's already high performance bar, but to surpass it.

With Windows 7, Microsoft's efforts focused on DirectX acceleration of Internet Explorer 9, Windows Live Mail, and Windows Messenger. With Windows 8, it's now looking to accelerating all Metro apps.

It reports that text rendering has improved between 150 and 330 percent from Windows 7 -- critical because Metro UI uses a lot of rich word art to convey information. Metro UI also uses a lot of rich geometry, rendered as HTML5 Canvas and SVG standardized technologies. Microsoft reports drawing lines nearly twice as fast and rectangles over 4 times as fast as in Windows 7.

SVG is a bit trickier than standard geometry, as SVG images can be irregular shapes -- such as the outline of an animated cartoon animal. For SVG Microsoft has baked a new acceleration technology called Target Independent Rasterization, or TIR, into DirectX 11.1's Direct2D libraries. Microsoft promises between 150 and 500 percent improvement over Windows 7 in rendering rates.

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