ok thanks for the update on that madman as i said hope your right and no offence but would be nice if someone from FD could confirm this just for peace of mind if possible.
Horizons: 64 bit only; DX11 only
- Thread starter Ganos_Lal
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ok thanks for the update on that madman as i said hope your right and no offence but would be nice if someone from FD could confirm this just for peace of mind if possible.
Until just a week ago, the expected specs for Horizons weren't any different than for Elite Dangerous itself, they were still trying to get the 32 bit version to play nice with DX11.
It won't, so they gave up trying and went with the 64 bit version, and announced it, and also made clear that anyone who pre-ordered CAN get a refund. Elite Dangerous core game isn't changing for at least 6 more months, but it WILL change next year to 64 bit, so EVERYONE will need to upgrade eventually.
Welcome to software development, where the specs you start off with can change radically during development, going up, down and sideways before it's all done. I've seen software that's doubled it's min required specs during development only to turn around and required half of that when they finalized the build, but they still had those higher specs listed! Seen plenty of games release min specs that turned out to be WAY too low for the finalized build, and those never got updated. At least FD is being nice and letting us know before the beta is even released that the specs went up for Horizons, and that the specs for the core game will ALSO go up next year.
As a programmer, yes, i think that they sincerely had no idea about min spec at that stage (besides dx11, which were already in the min spec for the base game).
Honestly, the specs are comically low for a game of this calibre even with the Horizons bump. What the hell do you guys consider a gaming PC?
Given the choice, I'd prefer that Season 9 looks like it belongs in 2025.
Given the choice, I'd prefer that Season 9 looks like it belongs in 2025.
From my job experience as a software developer I can confirm this. Of course you try to give specs as soon as possible, but sometimes it is simply not possible because sales and marketing needs more time ahead and at that time the developers often are still in stages, where many things are still subject to change.
In the past this was much easier, because development had to be completed earlier to be able to produce the physical installation media in time, so you also had the specs ready at this time. But today most software is distributed online so you can develop right until release. And this also affects the amount of final information you can give early to the customers. I have no problem with this strategy.
No problem, I prefer 100% certainty myself if possible and I can only give you 90% in this case...maybe 95%. If I find a statement from FD officials in another thread, I will get back to you with that
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Oh come now, Full physics, lava physics and whatnot, with destroyable terrain, buildings and whatnot with physics as well, won't demand 'that' much
I fully expect minimum specs to take a fair jump when we get to the point of atmospheric planetary landings, add in people/aliens walking around and big ass cities and I suspect we'll be looking at significant power needed.
I'd point out that there are many settings in ED for graphics, and also some rather nifty presents (low, medium, high, ultra). To be honest I found little difference between high and ultra (it's possibly more noticable on a better monitor than my 24" budget model). "Low" did look a bit ropey by comparison, but that didn't effect gameplay much. Being able to "run" a game is one thing - being able to run it on ultra presets is a different matter, and partially dependant on what frame rates you are able to tolerate. How much money to you want to pay for fractionally prettier spaceships? I'd be surprised if many PCs still running today can't run the game at least on low.
It wouldn't make sense not to up the spec a bit, if doing so means the vasty majority of owners get a better experience and only a small minority a worse one. Tough on them, perhaps, but then why should the entire game be held back just for a small number of users? Frontier do a hardware survey as part of installation - so I guess they know what specs people use and take this into consideration when writing the next version?
That said. I have a R9 270. I don't know how well that'll run ED, as it's above minimum specs and below recommended specs (an R9 280x is recommended). I guess i'll just have to fire it up on my current hardware and see if it runs well - and upgrade if not. It's only a £150 card, so really not a pricey requirement as gaming PCs go.
It wouldn't make sense not to up the spec a bit, if doing so means the vasty majority of owners get a better experience and only a small minority a worse one. Tough on them, perhaps, but then why should the entire game be held back just for a small number of users? Frontier do a hardware survey as part of installation - so I guess they know what specs people use and take this into consideration when writing the next version?
That said. I have a R9 270. I don't know how well that'll run ED, as it's above minimum specs and below recommended specs (an R9 280x is recommended). I guess i'll just have to fire it up on my current hardware and see if it runs well - and upgrade if not. It's only a £150 card, so really not a pricey requirement as gaming PCs go.
It's not 2007 anymore. Stop using Windows XP on an internet computer :/ Can't stop progression because some people just refuse to tag along. One guy wrote about a 9 year old computer with a GTX 970, so apparently money isn't the issue.
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6 GB of RAM is already quite the jump - and one of the reasons you cant use 32bit OS anymore.
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Glad I could help out, you probably aren't the only person who was thinking that way either. I was rather surprised they just didn't go 64 bit with the game originally, as Cobra, the engine, is natively 64 bit, guess they figured they could get more of the older gamers that way, not realizing many of us older gamers have better systems
The big difference in the minimum specification is the requirement for DirectX 11 hardware support in the GPU (i.e. shader model 5.0 or above). This will be to do with compute shader support. If you have lower RAM than the minimum, or an inferior CPU or even a slower graphics card, it should still *work* as long as the GPU has the aforementioned hardware support. It might not work very well, but it'd still stand a chance of running. If you don't have a supported GPU, it won't run at all.
This particular limitation is something that Frontier will have known about for a long while. I *think* they've mentioned it before but it would have probably been sensible to telegraph it much sooner so that their customers have the chance to upgrade if possible, or otherwise refund.
This particular limitation is something that Frontier will have known about for a long while. I *think* they've mentioned it before but it would have probably been sensible to telegraph it much sooner so that their customers have the chance to upgrade if possible, or otherwise refund.
Elite Dangerous requires DX11 as part of the min specs for PC, always has, but it would use DX9 if you didn't have DX11 capability, AND, most importantly, it only required a 32 bit OS.
Horizons is 64 bit OS required, no more 32 bit OS, because they dropped all DX9/10 support and went full DX11. And they discovered that DX11 and 32 bit Windows don't play well together, never have, which is why so many DX11 games suck graphically, they are all 32 bit based. THAT is the biggest actual min spec change for Horizons, it's 64 bit and requires a 64 bit OS now.
The main core game will remain 32 bit for at least the next 6 months, but it too will be upgraded to 64 bit next year, so...
Honestly I have no clue what the difference between 32bit or 64bit systems.
I do know my system is a 64bit system.
Does the quality of graphics and gaming increase going from 32bit to 64bit?
I suppose so, because to a novice, just the numbers sound like an increase...like going from DX9 to DX 11 and 12.
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Technically a 64bit OS does nothing in terms of Graphics all by itself.
What it does help with is having direct control over >4GB of RAM. Most 32bit Installations top off at around ~3.5GB usable RAM.
The core itself can benefit from that as well, but so far the advantages have been rather small (and came at the cost of increased RAM usage).
That means more stuff is possible and less compromises have to be made - but in the end it all depends on the 3D Engine being used.
I could imagine that very Engine got an overhaul for Horizons to some extent. With future volcanic and atmospheric Planet landings in mind, it was probably unavoidable.
What it does help with is having direct control over >4GB of RAM. Most 32bit Installations top off at around ~3.5GB usable RAM.
The core itself can benefit from that as well, but so far the advantages have been rather small (and came at the cost of increased RAM usage).
That means more stuff is possible and less compromises have to be made - but in the end it all depends on the 3D Engine being used.
I could imagine that very Engine got an overhaul for Horizons to some extent. With future volcanic and atmospheric Planet landings in mind, it was probably unavoidable.
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The minimum specifications are ambiguous, because the actual requirement was for DX11 software and feature level 10.0 in hardware, which is what the min spec card had. That's really the only thing that's changed on the GPU side, now feature level 11.0 is required (or more specifically shader model 5 I think).
i7-2600.... easily it wont even break a sweat
I am in the unfortunate position of using an older high end laptop (Core i7) for Elite Dangerous and the GPU only has Direct X10 hardware features. Running 64 bit Win 7 with 6GB RAM so ok from that point of view. Since the GPU is soldered on I've had to build a new PC for Horizons, so not that happy. Tried to do it as cheaply as possible just to see what could be done.
I went with an AMD A10-7870K APU coupled with a Radeon R7 250 graphics card so it can do AMD dual graphics, poor mans Crossfire between the APU GPU and the card. Seems to be working fine on ED 1.4 more than twice the performance I was getting with my laptop. Cheap as chips. A low end Intel solution with a Nvidia GTX 750Ti would likely be bit faster but would have been a couple of hundred bucks more.
I went with an AMD A10-7870K APU coupled with a Radeon R7 250 graphics card so it can do AMD dual graphics, poor mans Crossfire between the APU GPU and the card. Seems to be working fine on ED 1.4 more than twice the performance I was getting with my laptop. Cheap as chips. A low end Intel solution with a Nvidia GTX 750Ti would likely be bit faster but would have been a couple of hundred bucks more.
I thought I was the only one on the planet with a 2600k - which has worked nicely for 5 years odd...