Conclusion
Microsoft concluded the presentation by saying today marks a major milestone in the history of Windows. It’s the beginning of a new generation. With Windows 11 they have a renewed sense of Windows’s role in the world. They see 3 clear opportunities, first Windows recognizes that there is no personal computing without personal agency, personal computing requires choice. Windows is the stage for the world’s creation. Windows isn’t just an operating system, it’s a platform for platform creators. This is the first version of a new era of Windows.
Our Opinions on Some Features
Widgets
The first thing to touch on is Widgets. Widgets are not a new concept. Way back in 2006, with Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced Gadgets. Gadgets were little programs that basically lived on your desktop. They could be customized, downloaded, and basically pinned on your desktop. Windows Vista shipped with eleven Gadgets: Calendar, Clock, Contacts, CPU Meter, Currency Conversion, Feed Headlines, Notes, Picture Puzzle, Slide Show, Stocks, and Weather.
Therefore, this concept and feature of “Widgets” is nothing new at all, yet Microsoft is trying to sell you on the fact that Windows 11 Widgets are new. It just isn’t, there were whole download pages, even on Microsoft, dedicated to official Gadgets and unofficial Gadgets for Windows Vista, 15 years ago.
It will be interesting to see what Microsoft does with Widgets going forward in Windows 11. Will we be able to download new Widgets into the interface? Will we be able to detach them to the desktop instead of a fly-out window? We will have to see. Just know that this concept is not a new one at all, and has been in previous versions of Windows as something other.
Windows Aero Anyone?
The new rounded, soft, glassy look of the UI refresh. This is also not new. Again we go back to Windows Vista and the introduction of Windows Aero in 2006. Windows Aero was a design element for Windows that affected the UI. A major component was the Aero Glass theme, basically making Windows transparent and more “glass” like in appearance.
Further Aero features were Windows Flip and how you switched between Windows. Another component was live tiles in the taskbar when you hovered over open Windows and also Live Thumbnails. Desktop Windows Manager providing hardware acceleration was also introduced. This WIndows Aero interface evolved in Windows 7 with other new features added, including the Snap feature.
The point is, this softer, rounded, “glassy” UI refresh has been done before. This is just another iteration of refreshing the UI, and it appears that Microsoft is now going with a softer more rounded look, but still retaining the “glassy” look with how light is reflected on the icons. Hopefully, it will be snappy in performance, though, which is something Windows Aero was not.
Gaming
Let’s move to a more interesting topic for us at least, gaming. Gaming is our focus here on TheFPSReview.com. From a gaming perspective, there are two features we are highly looking forward to, and most curious about, in regards to Windows 11. We’ll also just briefly say that DirectX 12 Ultimate is of course going to be supported, and will be welcomed for game feature support. We look forward to more DX12 Ultimate games, and Windows 11 will allow them.
Auto HDR
Auto HDR is a very curious thing. From what we saw, it is something the game developer does not need to do anything to enable. It also appears the end-user, gamer, also has to do nothing. It seems to be a feature that can simply be turned on on the OS and just work, in all your games. If it really does work this easily and doesn’t have weird image quality bugs, or performance bugs, it could be a game-changer for the gaming experience. Granted, you also need an HDR monitor, and HDR image quality on monitors varies greatly. However, given that you have a good HDR monitor, this could allow you to experience all your games in a new light, literally.
The image comparison of Skyrim shown was quite appealing. The side shown with Auto HDR enabled had a much better contrast of light and more vibrancy. This could be a huge boon to a lot of games if it just works that easily. What we don’t know though is how it is going to affect performance. We don’t know if it will just tank on lower-end GPUs, or if they have what it takes to make it viable. We don’t know what level of GPU this will be best suited for. These are all questions we have, and the only way we are going to know is to try it, test it and find out. However, it is exciting, and we certainly want to test it to know more. Now let’s just hope they’ve fixed HDR from within Windows, which never worked or looked appropriate in Windows 10.
Direct Storage
Direct Storage is a term we have heard before. In fact, we’ve heard it as connected to video cards. When the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 was launched in 2020 NVIDIA announced a technology called RTX IO. This can reduce load times, move assets to the GPU and reduce the demand on the CPU. NVIDIA RTX IO can interface with the Direct Storage API. Therefore, Microsoft Direct Storage is potentially a huge boon to gamers on the PC.
This is also going to make fast NVME SSDs even more important for gaming, and finally, NVME will be advantageous for game loading. It will be very important in the coming future that SSDs are benchmarked and tested since they will now potentially impact your gameplay experience. We want to review many SSDs on our website, and aim to have a lot of those to look forward to, so stay tuned. SSDs are about to get very important once Direct Storage takes off.
Final Points
One might have assumed that the Windows 10 update known as Sun Valley, planned for 21H2 would just simply be another update. It appears instead that Microsoft has decided to just go ahead and market a whole new Windows version around this update.
It can be argued whether Windows 11 is just Windows 10 with a new coat of paint, or if there really are significant changes to warrant a completely new numbered version of Windows. One potential new update with the OS was actually not talked about in the video, and that is the potential for improved schedulers built into the OS. This would mean better handling of CPU threads, especially on non-traditional monolithic CPU cores. For example, upcoming big.LITTLE CPU Core designs. Improved schedulers will be needed, and this new OS may provide much better performance due to that.
Well, anyway you slice Windows 11, it is going to be called Windows 11. It will offer some gaming improvements we are looking forward to that have the potential to improve your gameplay experience in positive ways. It could also have updates to help CPU performance, with improved schedulers for upcoming CPUs. As for the other productivity, creativity, entertainment features of the OS, we’ll leave that up to you. Please let us know in the comments what you think of Windows 11.
Naturally, when Windows 11 is released we will be upgrading to the new version on our test machines here at TheFPSReview.com. In this way, we can benefit the most from the latest hardware and extrapolate and test the best gaming experiences possible to relate our gaming experiences to you.