News Future support for Win 32 and DX10

[nullgenome]

my 2p, please drop asap.

TBH I wouldn't mind a jump straight to DX12 as my children's PC and mine both have Win 10 & graphics cards that support it, 7950 & R9 390, though with Windows 7 popularity I doubt that's financially sensible.

 

[Artophwar]

Windows 7 and DirectX 11 are already 7 years old themselves. Im actually surprised anyone can run Elite Dangerous with anything older than 7 years. I would just keep reminding people at certain intervals before you cut off Legacy support. So like a warning in the Launcher at 3 months, and another warning a month before.

 

[samuelb]

Yep, axe it. Please save us from constantly providing support for tiny user bases. Developing obsolete code (Win32 on x86 is all but obsolete) is a drain on resources and adds layers of complexity which are pointless.
Those who say "but this, but that", well tough. You cannot complain if you cannot get the hardware, it is just a computer not water or air, sorry to be blunt.

 

[Elgered]

In a few years you could offer a discontinued Win32 Solo-only version as a demo or giveaway

 

[Rojo Habe]

Windows 7 and DirectX 11 are already 7 years old themselves.

The company I work for have just migrated from Windows XP to Windows 7.

[Chortle]

 

[Tikigod]

The company I work for have just migrated from Windows XP to Windows 7.

[Chortle]

There's a big difference between personal application and business, so things like that really aren't any more surprising than that some areas to this day use tape storage, UNIX and all sorts of things even though "Newer and sometimes better" alternatives now exist.

For a business, there is an associated cost with any kind of migration from one type of system to another even for something as simple as upgrading software. And that cost has to be weighed against projected gain and possible negative consequences of such an 'upgrade' (Downtime, retraining, document/file conversion, planning and implementing any changes to existing workflows that are needed and so on).

With personal use, if you want to go from one OS to another... you pretty much just do it. It doesn't matter. Even though some will make a huge noise over something like the fact their start menu is now sorted chronologically rather than alphabetically is the end of the world and stops them from sleeping at night and doing anything.


Frontier aren't targeting the game for a broad business market. If they were they'd likely be targeting environments going back the last 15 years if not longer as a base point, the idea of being able to just be thinking about environments only 6-8 years old would be a dream come true.

 

[TinyPwny]

Wow, I've never seen so many posts in a row without any anger / misplaced feeling of entitlement on this forum.

I'm not gonna be a combo breaker either... Gotta agree with pretty much everybody that 32b/DX10 should be abandoned for the benefit of the game.

 

[Toumal]

Trust me, the moment Frontier actually drops support, there WILL be complaints. Which is fine, I just think that they should prepare a solution for this beforehand - be that a gift certificate, a partial refund, or something to that effect. You know, just have this ready for the hard cases. Makes a world of a difference to the public perception.

 

[Insomnia]

Trust me, the moment Frontier actually drops support, there WILL be complaints. Which is fine, I just think that they should prepare a solution for this beforehand - be that a gift certificate, a partial refund, or something to that effect. You know, just have this ready for the hard cases. Makes a world of a difference to the public perception.

I do feel that Frontier messed up from the beginning. Using 32bit as a platform for a game that span over 10 years in development is just a stupid idea but I think, and hope, that they've learned.
What bothers me most is that a significant group of players wanted 64bit from the beginning but was quickly tramped on by other people saying ED never needed 64bit. I even think there were opinions from Frontier staff saying 64bit wasn't really needed... But I could be wrong.
So, yeah, maybe a refund really is justified here.

 

[JerryLove]

I'm sure it's been mentioned in the 26 pages leading up to this: but you would be on downright shaky legal ground if the software you sold became retroactively unplayable on what had been compatible hardware.

New game? Sure.
New expansions? Maybe (but again: you have people who have purchased in advance all the future content).
Can't play the core game because it's now incompatible with the hardware you've been running it on and there's no way to not take the update and keep playing? That's an issue.

I'm W64 and would personally benefit; but watching you do that would make me hesitant to invest in future products. What if the next upgrade breaks my installation?

 

[Sentenza]

There is no point in any 32bit software today, seriously.

 

[Rock Hermit]

I agree 32bit/DX10 should be abandoned for the benefit of the game.

However why should FD consider refunds? Technology moves on, to quote Microsoft "Nobody will ever need more than 512K ram" (yes I have worked in I.T. that long!) I don't see Micro$oft giving out refunds because I cant run DOS on a 64 bit platform.

And yes this will affect me - my son uses a win32/DX10 pc to run Elite - I will have to buy him a new one

 

[JerryLove]

However why should FD consider refunds?

Because they are retroactively breaking a working product.

Imagine I look at the system requirements of Elite Dangerous today and it runs on my system. I even pull down the free arena to make sure. So I hand them $80 (or whatever the base game + season +commander pack is).
Next week: they push an update that makes the game unplayable for me because I have a 32-bit system. I can't just opt out of the update and keep playing... no, my game which was listed as compatible with W32 is no longer.

Of course they should issue a refund (unless they can find a way to keep it running).

Imagine if the company that made your car pushed an update that disabled it from operating in the town you live in. You'd be OK with that as long as most other people benefited from the update?

 

[londonx]

I don't buy that dramatic phrase, everything has a finite life span, especially software support.

 

[CMDR Crustatious Cornelius Pig]

Onward and upward.

Hi Everyone,

As you know we spend a good deal of time planning for the future, and one issue (and opportunity) we are considering is the effect of supporting Win32 and DX10, and the benefits we would get if we were to drop them. As you know, we support leading edge technology like 4K, 8K, VR, and with things like compute shaders in Horizons we really push the boundaries overall, but there are restrictions with Win32 – particularly the amount of memory we can address at one time – and with DX10 in terms of requiring an alternative rendering solution in our code. Dropping these two would help us support high end effects with a better result – to make the game better.

About 0.5% of players that have installed Elite Dangerous have used their game on Win32 at some time. Some of these machines are capable of running Win64 (ie the hardware would support it). With DX10 (fewer than 2% of players) it is more tricky as you may need to upgrade the graphics card on such machines.

We do appreciate that although those are small percentages, that is still a significant number of people affected. We want to give as much notice as we can. It will be at least six months before we would make the change, but we want to know your opinions first, and to give warning that the change will need to come at some point, so please let us know.

Thanks.

David Braben

 

[Rock Hermit]

Imagine I look at the system requirements of Elite Dangerous today and it runs on my system.

If you looked at the system requirements today why would you not see that on the 19/9/2016 FD announced that sometime in the future they are dropping win32 support? If you did you should not be surprised when your software no longer functions.

For example if you want to run the latest version of windows you need the latest hardware - Note Micro$oft's Windows 10 CPU support : 3rd Generation Intel Core Processors will not work at some point next year after Intel and AMD have released their new CPU's, how many of those are using Windows 10 currently? Neither Intel or Microsoft are offering any refund.

Just my viewpoint but anybody who spends their money on ED now using a win32 knows they will have to upgrade or stop playing. To use your car scenario - would you buy a VW diesel?

That's how the modern day world works. Just expressing how I see it.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I cant run DOS on a 64 bit platform.

A scandal ! MS-DOS on a platform, 64-bit, a dream in memory of the happy days. It would be nice to have a real independent MS-DOS to do all file operations and other cleanups

 

[xondk]

Because they are retroactively breaking a working product.

Imagine I look at the system requirements of Elite Dangerous today and it runs on my system. I even pull down the free arena to make sure. So I hand them $80 (or whatever the base game + season +commander pack is).
Next week: they push an update that makes the game unplayable for me because I have a 32-bit system. I can't just opt out of the update and keep playing... no, my game which was listed as compatible with W32 is no longer.

Of course they should issue a refund (unless they can find a way to keep it running).

Imagine if the company that made your car pushed an update that disabled it from operating in the town you live in. You'd be OK with that as long as most other people benefited from the update?

That does in no way make people eligible for refunds, not one way, if it did you would have people asking for refunds for older iphones and such when support dropped, but yeah that won't work, and it won't work here.

So no, there is no 'of course' that they should issue a refund, if you have already played that game for an extended period of time, add that this is a six months warning...You are warned in plenty of time. I would not be surprised one bit that this is due to season 3 and how they want it to perform.

If you are running w32 and dx10 max you are already getting very low end experience of the game as it is....upgrade? win win?

 

[M_Biscotti]

Hello,

Joining everybody here, I can't any problem due to the drop of 32 bit platform and Dx10. Locking a machine to 4GB memory is nowadays a bit... A bit harsh for the computer

 

[EUS]

Win7 is the last MS OS to be installed on my machine.
If FD wants 10 years of purchases from people like me, they had better get on with multi-platform support, including 'nix variants, and whatever non-DX stuff that entails for when win7 reaches EOL/support.
Enforcing 64 bit doesn't affect me, I have no dog in that race.