How to get glass to show up on Windows Vista Beta 1

One question I get asked frequently is "hey will this piece of hardware
run Glass on Vista?". Working day-to-day at Micrsoft, the answer is
always kind of a puzzle, depending on the hardware that is in question,
the build of Windows you installed, and what drivers you may have
gotten your hands on.

But for folks out in the real world, who are using Windows Vista Beta 1, I can provide a little more guidance.

In Beta 1, the first thing you need is an LDDM display driver. (You can
learn more about LDDM by typing "LDDM WinHEC" into your favorite
search-box, and find the DirectX team's slides on the new driver
model.) There are other requirements as well - your graphics part needs
to support the entire DX9 API, and you'll also want plenty of memory
allocated for graphics.

The reall challenge people run into is picking the right graphics card. Luckily, ATI and nVidia have each posted pages on their web-sites that list the supported cards, and available drivers.

If you install Windows Vista Beta 1 on a computer with one of the listed parts, and the listed driver, you will see Glass!