While it’s not certain yet, a project might just unshackle DirectX 10 from its Windows Vista only chains. The Alky Project from Falling Leaf Systems was recently released in Alpha form.

Here is some more details from Ars Technica:

The project plans to do this by building a converter that can take in a DX10 game executable and spit out a modified version that can be run on a (non-Vista) target OS. The target OS must be x86-based, which rules out the PPC version of OS X, since the converter doesn’t do any binary translation.

What is will hopefully, eventually mean for gamers is being able to play the latest games on any operating system. For Windows XP users, this means being able to avoid the Vista upgrade path.

This is one project that I hope works out, as I am moving to Linux rather than dealing with the woes, issues, and annoyance of Vista.