I disagree. There's no reason to have it. Users with obsolete hardware should upgrade to fully experience the game as it is intended.
Economically, there's even a lesser reason to let players house their own 32bit servers.
News Future support for Win 32 and DX10
- Thread starter David Braben
- Start date
I disagree. There's no reason to have it. Users with obsolete hardware should upgrade to fully experience the game as it is intended.
Economically, there's even a lesser reason to let players house their own 32bit servers.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
According to the system spec requirements here (https://www.elitedangerous.com/) the game will run on Windows 7 and greater.
My opinion: drop it. Move forward. Don't let a tiny population of lazy people hold you back. Elite has never been about the lowest common denominator. The massive majority of the people who play Elite are looking for something new, different, cutting edge... This is a project of passion both for you guys and us playing it. Don't let this stuff slow you down.
Drop it, move on.
Drop it, move on.
There is a reason that ED is not running on a BBC micro anymore. It's called progress. Ditch win32 and DX10, we can't be dragged down my things of the past and tbh leagacy stuff like that eats up dev resources better spend on other problems. I know people love their old hardware but lets face it, 32 bit machines are dead and rightly so. So dear oldtimer, do something for the economy and buy new hardware.
That's good I'm mainly concerned they'd try and start requiring windows 10 since windows 10 games seem to be really picky with how up to date your computer is to run windows 10 games.
This question is really directed at the "fewer than 2% of players".
FD surely must be careful of the fact the game is online only and they originally sold it as supporting this older tech. This is one of the drawbacks of on-line only games and also why companies must be cautious in what they say.
But as I'm doing a bit of catch-up on forum threads... Doesn't affect me, so of course I'm all for dropping support for legacy tech and moving on to better stuff. I say skip DX11 and go to DX12 and/or Vulkan.
I run Windows 10. Win7 launched October 2009. In IT lifecycle terms is ready for recycling. MS offered free upgrades to Win 10 and tweaked the originally gawd-awful UI so the old desktop is back at all times. Don't shackle ED to the next OS Microsoft has already left behind.
Of course, if we had a great and common Linux distro with full Vulkan and lots of major gaming company support and FD would support that... at some point can we please move past Microsoft and get this? Steam OS is designed for the living room, we need something more versatile that includes general desktop use and support of VR, Vulkan, latest graphics cards, etc.
i have personally moved from a 32bit OS to a 64bit OS, i think the scope of what Elite is to ultimately become will in time reach its limit on the 32bit OS, so moving forward and upgrading will be inevitable.
my question is.. with the Base Elite dangerous 32bit game? will this remain with the compatibility working in the same universe(seeing all other Cmdrs) once the Following updates come out?? ie.. 2.3,2.4 and 3.0 or at what point will the ability to see other Cmdrs stop??
my question is.. with the Base Elite dangerous 32bit game? will this remain with the compatibility working in the same universe(seeing all other Cmdrs) once the Following updates come out?? ie.. 2.3,2.4 and 3.0 or at what point will the ability to see other Cmdrs stop??
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Deleted member 110140
D
I agree. This is a consequence and limitation of online-only design. Why should the game suddenly stop working on some hardware, if it has worked fine thus far? Especially given that a significant portion of players play ED as a single player game, receiving no practical benefits from being online.
It'd be nice to avoid any legal/feedback issue, but i think it'd be a wasted effort, in a year you'd be able to run base ed on a smartphone... well, actually a machine elite-able will cost less than a smartphone... (Five years ago i bought a laptop for 400€ able to handle base win64/dx11 ed at 720p in a mostly playable way)
Retrogaming is about playing old games on new machines, not keeping alive old machines.
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To me it's wired ppl would still play ED in 32bit mode [wacko].
Unfortunately - because ED couldn't reach a state of a real stand-alone application - it is hard for such players when their game stops to work some day because they can't sync with servers anymore.
From that perspective I would try to pull them into a different "dimension" aka server where they are pretty much left alone with minimum support until that universe finally implodes. Frontier could charge extra for that server or use the money spent on extras there to run that server... Because of the online connection requirement just implement a new/updated splash screen for starting up 32bit ED with information about changes to come.
[yesnod] Axing 32bit has my full support, most ppl have 64bit capable computers for Windows since 2009, there is literally no HW out there that is capable enough for ED but fails to run 64bit. It's just the laziness and fears of ppl not switching their OS to 64bit. Yes there are some laptops where full driver support for 64bit is not a given, but that is crappy HW (vendors) in first place and most likely a niche in the niche of ED players at large.
The dilemma is with Frontier, they sold the game at a fixed price where ppl thought they have a copy for life, but the developer and game service model in its basic form is rather comparable with those of MMORPGs that use freemium or subscription models.
In case of 64bit I would hope for a change towards DX12 or better Vulkan(tm) too. It might not be beneficial for max FPS, but usually DX12/Vulkan can guarantee a way better minimum FPS. I would expect major improvements for VR when low level APIs are used (and I hope to see lots of improvements for VR in many aspects the coming years). But also for monitor users minimum FPS is key...
[hotas]
Unfortunately - because ED couldn't reach a state of a real stand-alone application - it is hard for such players when their game stops to work some day because they can't sync with servers anymore.
From that perspective I would try to pull them into a different "dimension" aka server where they are pretty much left alone with minimum support until that universe finally implodes. Frontier could charge extra for that server or use the money spent on extras there to run that server... Because of the online connection requirement just implement a new/updated splash screen for starting up 32bit ED with information about changes to come.
[yesnod] Axing 32bit has my full support, most ppl have 64bit capable computers for Windows since 2009, there is literally no HW out there that is capable enough for ED but fails to run 64bit. It's just the laziness and fears of ppl not switching their OS to 64bit. Yes there are some laptops where full driver support for 64bit is not a given, but that is crappy HW (vendors) in first place and most likely a niche in the niche of ED players at large.
The dilemma is with Frontier, they sold the game at a fixed price where ppl thought they have a copy for life, but the developer and game service model in its basic form is rather comparable with those of MMORPGs that use freemium or subscription models.
In case of 64bit I would hope for a change towards DX12 or better Vulkan(tm) too. It might not be beneficial for max FPS, but usually DX12/Vulkan can guarantee a way better minimum FPS. I would expect major improvements for VR when low level APIs are used (and I hope to see lots of improvements for VR in many aspects the coming years). But also for monitor users minimum FPS is key...
[hotas]
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To be honest everyone who is capable of playing elite today has a 64bit CPU in their pc, they could just reinstall their OS as 64bit. Anyone telling the opposite is either completely uninformed or outright lying.
Because we have 64bit CPUs since the Athlon 64(2003) and the Pentium 4(2004), both of them are so outdated by now that they can't run elite at all. So even the most ancient pc running elite has a more modern cpu than the A64 or P4, meaning its 64bit capable.
So people can stop asking for 32bit "servers" instead just reinstall their OS, which is probably win7(minimum requirement), as a 64bit version.
Case closed.
As for DX10 support: Any Nvidia card since the 600 series and any AMD card since the HD7000 series is DX12 capable, basically any card since 2012.
Because we have 64bit CPUs since the Athlon 64(2003) and the Pentium 4(2004), both of them are so outdated by now that they can't run elite at all. So even the most ancient pc running elite has a more modern cpu than the A64 or P4, meaning its 64bit capable.
So people can stop asking for 32bit "servers" instead just reinstall their OS, which is probably win7(minimum requirement), as a 64bit version.
Case closed.
As for DX10 support: Any Nvidia card since the 600 series and any AMD card since the HD7000 series is DX12 capable, basically any card since 2012.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
whilst i agree it is time 32bit oses were put out to pasture, is it really that simple? if you have windows 7/8 i didnt think you could just reinstall the 64bit os if you only have a 32bit key?
no idea on windows 10, however i do know a fair amount of people who chose NOT to go to win 10 due to the huge amount of spam/bordering on spyware built into it.
(its not an issue for me, i am just trying to see all the cards on the table)
I can understand why it is not so simple. I cant think of a single example (i am sure there are some i just do not know of one) where a buy once pay for ever product suddenly demanded i had to buy a new os to carry on working...... but as i said, dont get me wrong, 32os support is a noose around the games neck i would happily see the back off.. some may say i was short sighted of FD to support 32bit in the 1st place given that at the start of 2015 other games were 64bit only.
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Suggestion: How about Frontier offer a legacy branch? Essentially, a clone of the game frozen in time, with their own server (like beta). You probably don't even need more than a single VM for that. This way, they could enable players who simply cannot upgrade to keep playing for a few more years.
My OEM version of Windows 7 came with both 32-bit and 64-bit DVDs and the same key was used for both.
The issue here is this.
I am not the below but i actually do know someone like this.
I have a 32 bit windows 7 that I did not wish to upgrade at the time because I already have it and use it for other light purposes(Checking mail,browsing internet ect.)
I bought a game with the promise of offline support.
I play my game on my win 7 32 bit machine.Elite dangerous is the only game I play.
Suddenly offline support gets dropped.
Suddenly 32 bit gets dropped.Now I am unable to play my game because fd dropped offline only mode which if they had it in I wouldve ketp on playing my game till I was ready to upgrade.
I am not a computer whiz.
So I am left with the following options:
A)Pay someone to reinstall windows.
B)Upgrade my pc to the minimum requirements.
C)Stop playing elite.
Whatever option I choose I am left out of pocket,Is this fair to me?.Had the game offline support on which was the premise I bought the game there would be no issue at all.
I am not the below but i actually do know someone like this.
I have a 32 bit windows 7 that I did not wish to upgrade at the time because I already have it and use it for other light purposes(Checking mail,browsing internet ect.)
I bought a game with the promise of offline support.
I play my game on my win 7 32 bit machine.Elite dangerous is the only game I play.
Suddenly offline support gets dropped.
Suddenly 32 bit gets dropped.Now I am unable to play my game because fd dropped offline only mode which if they had it in I wouldve ketp on playing my game till I was ready to upgrade.
I am not a computer whiz.
So I am left with the following options:
A)Pay someone to reinstall windows.
B)Upgrade my pc to the minimum requirements.
C)Stop playing elite.
Whatever option I choose I am left out of pocket,Is this fair to me?.Had the game offline support on which was the premise I bought the game there would be no issue at all.
I think your friend needs to drop the "offline support" thing, that train has sailed. Plus there's not really been any "suddenly" - at least six months notice for dropping 32bit and that notice hasn't been given yet.
From what Ive seen every time time there is a major update clients and sometimes even the launch client needs updating. The real point is to reduce the number of different version that need updating. Since I installed windows 10 64 many legacy games no longer work properly.
Everyone wants the best game. So you need decent hardware and the latest DX since it supports multithreading dx10 is still single thread regardless how big your VC is.
It will be interesting to see how the XBOX keeps up since it has shorter lifespan than PC.
All this can bee seen as technical inertia.
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
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And it supports DX11 too. It is not required to use it.
BOO Hoo . IM a PC Owner so I don't 'Care' about consoles. XBOX was unpowered and MS knows it. Already talking about refreshes . There must be some reason I can justify spending £1600 just play games.
Spoke to APPle about the Open GL issue. They don't me they didn't want to sell me a MAC anyway! Its a serious computer not for playing 'games'
Acording to Dell Ive done the 'impossible' with regards to upgrades. They actually nerf all trhere hard ware forcing you to buy new PC even if they use the same base board.
It is a 2008 dimension . Came with core duo 2.1 Mhz 2gb vista gtx7200 100 GB. I have pushed it to a quad core 8gb 2 terra byte GTX 5200 win 10 . It could probably go to 1080. The problem is that because of house the board was nerfed . It not possible to safely overclock and there are no more bios updates. ED currently runs fine but it would be interesting to see how a newer machine would perform.
But the Key issue as DB pointed out is how DX10 works. It doesn't use more than one thread regardless of how much hardware behind it. AMD have gone with a high multicore count. with lower GZ overall win10 give major boost . Intel is still a massiv premium. LOwer core count higher hrx. The GC does all the heavy lifting. BUt the CPC handles stuff like AI . There use of shader tech is really clever to turn GPC into a 'cpu' procedural stuff.
All this talk about how amazing SC looks no reason which ED can same or better.
Also what will the final Spec of SC be like? Seriously.
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Being a Gen X its really interesting to find my self reading this. I remember when after the release of Elite in 84 on the BBC B. They later brought out on 128 with colour. Later when a sequel was planned it was clear that it wouldn't work on the BEEb. The amiga had 16bit with 4200 colours. At the time it was way more powerful than any IBM pc which supported 4 colours. For graphics . I belive Amiga was used to render graphics in Babylon 5.
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