if u go back in the past, u will find that MS said, they cannpot support OpenGL 2.0 in vista in it's native form, they said, the code will be translated in DirectX compatible code, which will result in opengl 1.4 like working. this poses a problem as many games & workstation apps work in openGL mode
then MS clerified that games need not worry, as they run in Full screen mode, at which DWM closes, when i played quake 4 on vista, DWM.exe closed down, & when i quit quake 4 it restarted. games do not run in window mode, those which do, are not working at full potential.
the directX 9 SDK demos are supposed to run in window mode, they are shader heavy, but not system heavy, they are simply example of the code
the UI elements of Vista are calculated in 3d, they are made in zbuffer, but they cannot be compared to using same functionality as games, even MacOS X UI runs with the gfx card but it cannot be compared to a game, it's nothing like a game, the window's are drawn as textures parallel to the monitor screen, in zbuffer, but the textures & code etc is very simple compared to a game
& why it doesn't matter who u r, cos u said u have system level access to aero. I don't know a lot about Vista DWM, but u do, plz celrify all here
take a look at this blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2...18/578637.aspx
it clearly demonstartes how easy it is to code for the glass window, the WPA API out there makes it very easy for developers to write code for glass, it's nothing as compared to the complex SM 2.0 of games
besides this is not a SM2.0 thread, insted it's a Vista user review thread