Introduction

Windows Vista™ is the first Microsoft® Windows® operating system that provides a range of user experiences that gracefully scale based on a system’s hardware capabilities while still giving the user full control over configuration options. All computers that meet the Windows Vista minimum supported hardware requirements will run the Windows Vista Basic user experience. Computer systems with more capable hardware—in terms of performance and video memory capacity—will run the Windows Vista Aero experience. Aero provides an additional level of visual sophistication and a more responsive and manageable user interfaces.

Aero is based on a new and innovative window-management technology in Windows Vista called desktop composition. Desktop composition supports the Aero features including smooth and tear-free window transitions and management, transparent window borders and client areas, Windows Flip and Flip 3D, and live taskbar thumbnails. All these items are collectively referred to as Windows Aero.

Requirements

• Microsoft DirectX 9
• Video Card support for pixel shader 2.0
• 32bit color quality
• The system is running with Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) graphics driver