News Future support for Win 32 and DX10

Marcus

Marcus
I think, if we are looking at the long term future of the game, then it only makes sense to make this change so that the games further development isn't shackled because of the need to support older standards, especially since only a few people would be benefiting from it.

As I am sure you are well aware, technology moves on, other games are going to start using DX12 sooner rather than later, lets not let Elite get left behind.
 

cmdr awesome

cmdr awesome
BRING IT! - dropping support for 32bit and DX10 is clearly the right thing to do and personally I'm stoked about the graphical improvements this will bring.

one minor thing though...
How long could someone with ED 1.6 and DX10 continue playing?
Charging for Season 3 is perfectly reasonable, and having a higher minimum spec for the latest season is also completely fine.
BUT compelling players to make a hardware upgrade just to play a game they already bought is maybe not so reasonable.
2% of millions is still a lot of people, and if there are active players out there who for some reason can't upgrade easily, how should they be treated?

I suspect the best answer is that players who feel unjustly affected by the announcement should reach out to support. There is probably only a small handful of people who both want to keep playing and would be unwilling/unable to upgrade, and they would best be dealt with individually.
 

DustyArne

DustyArne
hs0003 said:
the XboxOne does support DX12 :)
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Pecisk said:
ED support OS X for Season 1 - using OpenGL 3.3 basically. for Horizons and upwards they need OpenGL 4.3, DirectX 11 equal, because of compute shaders. Vulkan *doesn't* support OS X at level ED requires (it is merely a glue framework by third party so you can port mobile games from Vulkan to Metal). Nor Apple plans to support OpenGL beyond 4.1.

PS4 has their own high level and low level language and shader language similar to DirectX 11.

So basically DirectX12 support just benefits Windows 10 and XBO. DX11 is still required. So pushing for DX12 is just not practical yet. Neither for Vulkan to be frank - although as Linux user I would welcome that :)

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

And it supports DX11 too. It is not required to use it.
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Yes, sorry. that is what i mean. Now its running on a custom version of DX11. We (xbox crowd) call it DX11.5.

If Frontier will fully support DX12 with Elite Dangerous, we xbox users will (greatly) benefit form it. Specially if you consider the Scorpio end 2017.
 

Obsidian Ant

Obsidian Ant
cmdr awesome said:
BRING IT! - dropping support for 32bit and DX10 is clearly the right thing to do and personally I'm stoked about the graphical improvements this will bring.

one minor thing though...
How long could someone with ED 1.6 and DX10 continue playing?
Charging for Season 3 is perfectly reasonable, and having a higher minimum spec for the latest season is also completely fine.
BUT compelling players to make a hardware upgrade just to play a game they already bought is maybe not so reasonable.
2% of millions is still a lot of people, and if there are active players out there who for some reason can't upgrade easily, how should they be treated?

I suspect the best answer is that players who feel unjustly affected by the announcement should reach out to support. There is probably only a small handful of people who both want to keep playing and would be unwilling/unable to upgrade, and they would best be dealt with individually.
Click to expand...

It's possible Frontier might follow Bilzzard's model with World of Warcraft, and make the older expansions a free and required upgrade for all owners of the game. If they do this, Horizons gets rolled into the base game...and the base game on its own ceases to exist.
 

Rhaedas

Rhaedas
cmdr awesome said:
How long could someone with ED 1.6 and DX10 continue playing?
Charging for Season 3 is perfectly reasonable, and having a higher minimum spec for the latest season is also completely fine.
BUT compelling players to make a hardware upgrade just to play a game they already bought is maybe not so reasonable.
2% of millions is still a lot of people, and if there are active players out there who for some reason can't upgrade easily, how should they be treated?

I suspect the best answer is that players who feel unjustly affected by the announcement should reach out to support. There is probably only a small handful of people who both want to keep playing and would be unwilling/unable to upgrade, and they would best be dealt with individually.
Click to expand...

My guess, simply they are frozen at the point they're at. They should still be able to play what part of the game they have, it's not like they need to be severed from the rest of the players. But they won't get any more updates and improvements. Which for some, might be fine to just play the core part.
 

m2stech

M
32bit and dx10 are both defunct now, and unless the game becomes win10-only then I support anything that helps speed up updates and new content.
 

Daedelous

D
Win32 has had it's day and ready to be left behind, the longer you keep it going for older machines the harder it is going to get to go forward, kinda like dead weight.

Drop it and let the game properly flourish.
 

Michael Brookes

Game Director
BurnyBurns said:
Stealth season 3 release timeframe? ;) With two major updates to go after 2.2 hopefully sometime in October, that sounds resaonable.

Anyway, good to have the notice, but it sounds very reasonable to drop the legacy support after such a notice has been issued half a year beforehand. Less dev force for legacy support and more for pushing on!
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I wouldn't get too excited just yet :) 6 months seemed like a reasonable time to provide as a warning.

Michael
 

WinterCharm

WinterCharm
I've been playing on 64 bit for a while, but on very low end hardware. Will these changes affect the minimum system requirements as well?

also, thanks for the heads up and the continuing open communication :)
 

SHADEVARI

S
Win32 and DX10 are quite old and at some point old stuff need to be left behind to be able to progress. I am using Win64 myself so I might be biased, but I am all for dropping Win32 and DX10 support if in return we get better performance, prettier graphics, fewer bugs (due to easier management of code) and maybe even DX12 and NVIDIA SMP support with ED 3.x.
 

zzehirbazz

zzehirbazz
Michael Brookes said:
I wouldn't get too excited just yet :) 6 months seemed like a reasonable time to provide as a warning.

Michael
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You wouldn`t because you already work there and know everything :/

Besides you SOOO confirmed it right there. I am sure you did sweat a bit afterwards.
 
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EdzUp

EdzUp
basically dropping Win32 would mean i cant play ED atm till I upgrade. At present my 64bit laptop doesnt run 64bit ED at any acceptable framerate even having 8Gb ram, it runs ED 32bit fine though.

just because were running 64bit OSs doesnt mean we can run ED64
 

zzehirbazz

zzehirbazz
It`s the best week ever!

First we got 2.2 beta date, a couple days later David Braben himself confirms 3.0 release "approximately" unintentionally :D

Best part is Michael Brookes doubled it down
 

Hiyu

Hiyu
I'm for this - a lot of big games (e.g. Battlefield 3, released Oct. 2011) made the hard switch and players seem to understand. I just hope that SSR isn't too artifacty for a space game :)
 

elaverick

elaverick
I should preface by saying that as a x64 user with a relatively modern graphics cards this won't directly affect me... however... with a 10 year plan in mind for ED, I think we have to expect that the hardware/OS requirements will be a moving target. I would hate to see the engine limited by the constraints of a system rooted in the past.
In short I would be in favour of raising the minimum system requirements as the game develops.
 

nrage

nrage
Obsidian Ant said:
It's possible Frontier might follow Bilzzard's model with World of Warcraft, and make the older expansions a free and required upgrade for all owners of the game. If they do this, Horizons gets rolled into the base game...and the base game on its own ceases to exist.
Click to expand...

My money is on this as well. The base game will become seasons 1-X and there will be a single "expansion" season X+1 at any one time. It makes sense from a development perspective and also from a pricing model perspective.
 
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