News Future support for Win 32 and DX10

BurnyBurns

BurnyBurns
David Braben said:
It will be at least six months before we would make the change,...
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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!
 

Niewitch

N
Its so small percentage and technology develops and so do people machines at the same time, so percentage still drops. 64 bit CPU, 64 bit windows versions, and DX11 GPU is all allready been there for years and you can get those fair cheap. To my point of view it takes time from game develop and donwngrade game, considering those arguments i really dont think thats wise by anymeans to go backwards, just go ahead.
 
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Redan

R
One again, Frontier justifies why I am the proud owner of a lifetime pass for this game.

Make it happen, Mr. Braben. All ahead full!
 

Esvandiary

Esvandiary
This seems like a reasonable choice to make, to me... DX11 is getting on for seven years old now, so if anyone did need to upgrade their graphics card (the worst case), they could do so for minimal cost.
The first Nvidia graphics cards to support DX11 were the GTX 4xx series, for AMD the HD 5xxx series. These cards are 6+ years old, and anyone running anything older probably isn't getting an amazing ED experience to begin with!

As for Win32... Same deal, except 64-bit CPUs have been common since... what, 2006? I think it's fair to move forwards, especially if we're talking about 0.5% of people who have ever launched ED.

I can definitely believe that dropping these "legacy" builds and code paths would allow FD to simplify things and improve performance, especially going forwards with new features, whatever order those appear in. :)
 
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Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Sir.Tj
Things inevitably change and move on, appreciate the notice given on this.

I just hope and pray that the OR DK2 is able to run the game etc.

Thanks David. :)
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
If the game is to grow then it makes sense to plan for the future and drop legacy features- as long as the changes are communicated well in advance (as they are now).
 

nrage

nrage
Iori said:
Why Dx12 and not Vulkan? Is there anything Dx12 can do that Vulcan can't, other than running in less platforms?
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Given the XBONE support I suspect DX12 is required. That said, Elite also has MacOSX support and Vulcan supports that. What does PS4 support require, I wonder..
 

BearlyArcane

BearlyArcane
Robbotech said:
please don't ever make us run windows 10
i'll have nightmares tonight now...
:eek:
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I've been using Win 10 since it was first available for testing. Bar an initial lack of compatible drivers, Win 10 has been the smoothest Win OS Ive used. No problems at all nowadays.
 

Mazhurg

Mazhurg
Tinman said:
*deactivates cloak*



Season 3 will be released roughly 6 months from now then?

Got it! ;)

*activates cloak*
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Not quite. He said that he would give a six months notice, he was not giving it. So, six months from the time he announce it is when season 3 will drop.

/s
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
nrage said:
Given the XBONE support I suspect DX12 is required. That said, Elite also has MacOSX support and Vulcan supports that. What does PS4 support require, I wonder..
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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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hs0003 said:
the XboxOne does support DX12 :)
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And it supports DX11 too. It is not required to use it.
 

CMDR Disco Cat

CMDR Disco Cat
picommander said:
Before Windows 10 I was an aggressive Windows hater in general and openly supporting (and still using) Linux. Windows 10 has largely changed that, can't even say Linux is generally "better" than Windows anymore. So from my point of view this hate is pretty much irrational.
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That was also me a few years ago.

DirectX12 & Vulkan are clearly the future for pc gaming. I hope that linux and mac os will gain from this as they support vulkan too (and by extension, so do Android and iOs).
 

Obsidian Ant

Obsidian Ant
Tinman said:
*deactivates cloak*



Season 3 will be released roughly 6 months from now then?

Got it! ;)

*activates cloak*
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More to the point, what technology will season 3 contain that requires the dropping of Win32 and DX10... :D

(BTW, I hear atmospherics can have quite pretty effects...)
 

tiger61378

tiger61378
Well, guess its time to retire this calcu...er, laptop I'm using and get a new one. I struggle with 32 bit (I grew up on horrific framerates, so 15fps just feels normal to me :p), and even the chip is at around minimums, so its time anyways :p
 

Red Anders

Red Anders
This seems entirely reasonable. I'm sure all developers want to make their games available to as many potential players as possible but Win32 and DX10 are legacy tech now by most reasonable standards and I think most gamers are able to accept that there's a cut-off point after which you can't hamstring development in order to continue to support compatibility with tech that's approaching 10 years old.

I'm also assuming that it's implied within DB's comments that 'around six months' is the projected start of Season three since it would make sense to cut the cord at the time a new season began.

Also nice to see a post from DB at all on here. I shudder to think of how many hours of my life I've spent playing his games in the last 34 years.
 
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