News Removal of Win32 support for Elite Dangerous

EdzUp

EdzUp
I used to play ED on me old i3 330m (yes it runs 32but ok (20-30fps) it also runs 64 bit but at 2fps.

I'm all for moving 64bit forwards but why not just leave it as is and turn off alien content for it this way we can still trade and explore just not do CG's etc.
 

the100thmonkey

the100thmonkey
Ceekay said:
A desktop i5 is a lot faster but the i5U range is a low power consumption laptop model, the lack of DX11 support explains why Horizons wasn't accessible thx :) but 15 FPS (@720 resolution) or less isn't going to be much fun I'm afraid.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Intel-Core-i5-4200U/Rating/2742
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They're also usually dual core models.

Actually, the game runs fine on an i7-5500u, but that might be due to hyperthreading, although it's unlikely. It might also have something to do with the GTX960m GPU. :)

I used to play Elite at 15fps on my Atari 520STFM and think nothing of it.
 

the100thmonkey

the100thmonkey
Darkminded said:
that is very buddy buddy with Microsoft
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They're so buddy buddy with MS that they released a PS4 version of the game. PS4s run on a custom UNIX (a derivative of BSD, iirc) and use custom UNIX graphics libraries.

It's a lot closer to open source than DirectX, although I've seen nothing to suggest that GNM(X) and PSSL are anything like Vulkan (although Vulkan has been hacked to run on PS4 hardware.)
 

CMDR Ellegon

CMDR Ellegon
Darkminded said:
Then Again we ae talking of a Company that has investes alot on it's own Graphis engine (Cobra) and that is very buddy buddy with Microsoft ... so dropping DX in favor of a open source platform for Windows players, might not be on the road, making (cobra) compatible with Vulcan API, is a good idea because it opens even more market for Open Source S. O.'s , although we have not seen Frontier show much interest in open source S. O.'s!

Correct me if i'm wrong Frontier !
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Currently, they need to support DX 10, DX 11, OpenGL for Mac and whatever the consoles use. DX 12 would introduce new features, but would exclude the significant number of Windows 7 players. A migration to Vulkan would give them "next generation" features and reduce the number of supported APIs drastically.

Vulkan is available for all versions of Windows (7 through 10), many people have it already installed (i.e. everybody with Nivida cards). Support for macOS is available through a third party and could be licenced. That might address the OpenGL gong show on the Mac. Vulkan also seems to be available for the PS4. So all these platforms could be supported with the same API. Bringing down the number of graphics APIs from 5 to 2 seems to be very attractive to me. As a by-product, a Linux version should now be super-easy to do.

Cobra is a framework and very modular (it has been around since 1988!), so adding/replacing the graphics API is something they have done before.
 
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