Hardware & Technical Windows 8

[Steve O B Have]

I agree that it will likely work on a 32bit operating system but I'd be very surprised if it caters to a DX9 architecture simply because the next generation consoles will not. The ONLY reason why games are still coming out with DX9 support is because consoles are a major market - once that architecture moves on there will be no reason to keep supporting it.

In two years time on launch I would put money on it not supporting DX9 and XP not being a supported OS. There's simply no advantage to using it and using such an old API set means that the developers are only making more work for themselves. We will see both PS4 and XBOX 720s on the market, we'll see pretty much every new device on a multi core CPU architecture and memory ridiculously cheap. GPUs of a caliber to run the game will be in the sub £100 category and anyone with an XP machine wont be expecting to run a AAA quality game on it.

Remember - we're talking about two years down the line here. The latest numbers from the Steam Survey states the following:

As of Dec 2012
DX11 users: 49.75%
DX10 users: 30.83%
DX9 and lower: 19.42%

OS users:
Win 7 x64: 56.35%
Win 7 x86: 14.12%
Win XP: 10.03%
Win 8 x64: 6.33%

CPU count:
4: 41.16%
3: 1.89%
2: 49.11%
1: 5.16%

The numbers do kinda suggest that across the gamer demographic both XP and x32 CPU architectures and OS's are playing a pretty serious minority and that's with 2 years still to run.

 

[Abysinth]

Microsoft have already announced the termination of support for XP in April 2014

 

[bodshal]

It may be worth pointing out that Windows 7, consumer and business/enterprise editions, get long term support from Microsoft (10 years). Meaning updates and whatnot for quite some time to come.

Not least because Win8 is pretty consumer focused, I doubt any enterprise will be deploying it anytime soon. (It does have AD support and whatnot, but it's just so irritating to use when every third mouse click reverts you to the damn menu thingy!)

 

[aelreth]

Are we still programming for 32 bit?

Or are we planning on moving to the 64 bit realm?

Care to dispense your wisdom Mr Steve?

 

[Steve O B Have]

Are we still programming for 32 bit?

Or are we planning on moving to the 64 bit realm?

Care to dispense your wisdom Mr Steve?

Well according to Microsoft, Windows 8 is going to be the last of the operating systems to support 32bit applications so it'll ends up being based around the overall market share. As for the specifics of what Frontier will or is coding for, I can't really speak to that. They've yet to specifically set a base hardware requirement. I'd suggest though with the nature of computations of many objects, multithreading and effectively utilising multi-cored processors has many many advantages. There is a fair amount that you can offloaded onto the GPU but if that's been loaded with textures, tessellation, raytracing and shaders then you want to have a pretty reliable CPU to deal with raw object computation.

Long and the short - I'd put money on the came being coded for 64bit only but not being employed by Frontier and not having an inside line on the facts, I can only speculate.

I will ask and report back though

 

[laz001]

Yes, I was referring to the RT architecture (I don't mean the device, Surface RT).

Regardless of what happens with Windows 8, MS have done a very smart thing by taking steps in rewriting the underlying architecture of Windows in the way they have, because the next generation of desktop, laptop, tablet, phone and console will all share the same O/S architecture.

Writing a game for 1 of those platforms means it is automatically viable for any of the other 3 with (in theory) minimal code changes.

As far as I know, stats show that fewer and fewer people are buying desktops - tablets are growing phenomenally, and laptops are steady (and every new laptop seems to be a Windows 8 touchscreen). In two years, I think Windows 8 could be pretty widespread.

Hence I wonder if Frontier would be considering this route.

 

[Steve O B Have]

If Win 8 is more than just an intermediary OS then I'd be surprised. It's uptake has been pretty abysmal and there's a fairly solid stigma attached to it not only from the ME/Vista stepping but also from the failure to deliver on an enterprise level. The integration of the code is smart from a technical perspective but unless MS makes some serious ground in the mobile market it won't count for much. Integration with XBOX and the mobile environment might cater for a great deal more. Once that has taken hold then the mobile component may follow. Having said that apparently there is already a youth move toward Win Phone simply because Apple and Android aren't 'cool' anymore... go figure.