FS11 will be a 64 Bit app?

[byork 2,258]

Has anyone heard if FS11 will ship as a 64 bit application or will be it 32 only?For future planning, I'm wondering if we're going to need to start making 64 bit versions of our DLL's.

[Guest darrenecm]

Has anyone heard if FS11 will ship as a 64 bit application or will be it 32 only?For future planning, I'm wondering if we're going to need to start making 64 bit versions of our DLL's.

Hopefully Microsoft will do as some other games companies have and cater to both camps by providing 64-bit binaries in addition to 32-bit on release, or shortly after release. Far Cry, Half Life 2, STALKER, Unreal Tournament etc are prime examples of such laudable attitudes by developers, showing a higher level of commitment and pride in their work. As far as I'm concerned, those developers producing high profile titles that do not adopt such a stance are letting their 'good guy' mask slip, revealing a tendency to just do as least as possible to bring in the sales and let commitment and pride be damned :)I can't say I'm experienced as far as the level of performance increase 64-bit brings but I would imagine games that make heavy use of streaming data, like M icrosoft Flight Simulator has done for years, would benefit rather well in being able to shift around twice as many bits in one go, not to mention the advantage of having even more system memory to play with.Also, considering Microsoft is the force behind Flight Simulator and they have been seen to promote 64-bit operating systems, I'd think the onus to support 64-bit gaming is even more of an issue for if those evangelising 64-bit operating systems are not making efforts to support 64-bit, then why should others? We've managed to shed the 16-bit shackles of previous operating systems, now we just need to make the next leap.

[n4gix 4,947]

Has anyone heard if FS11 will ship as a 64 bit application or will be it 32 only?For future planning, I'm wondering if we're going to need to start making 64 bit versions of our DLL's.

There's still not nearly enough market penetration for them to limit FS to being a 64bit application, and there's no way they have the budget to make two versions... :( :(

[Guest darrenecm]

There's still not nearly enough market penetration for them to limit FS to being a 64bit application, and there's no way they have the budget to make two versions... :( :(

Bill's a far more experienced coder than me so I'll defer to his judgement on the technicalities of producing seperate code paths for 32-bit and 64-bit. But I was thinking the effort would not be so fiscally improbable, especially as other companies far smaller than Microsoft have already done this. Would all the Gigabytes of Flight Simulator data need to be converted for a 64-bit environment, or just the executeable code? I could understand if game data the size of that which FSX includes had to be radically altered. Although I'm fairly sure data is just data regardless of how many bits are being used by executable code bringing it in to memory? Also, would't the compiler be able to do much of the conversion for executables?Unless of course the Flight Simulator code base has hard-coded 32-bit 'magic numbers' and structures stuffed all over the place . Then it would be a maintenence nihgtmare ;)

[byork 2,258]

there's no way they have the budget to make two versions... :( :(

Let's hope you're right, although I kinda wish MS would go 64 bit only for future O/S's and App's. We can't linger in the 32 bit world forever.

[Chuck_Jodry-VJPL 663]

" There's still not nearly enough market penetration for them to limit FS to being a 64bit application, and there's no way they have the budget to make two versions... " You said a mouthful there Bill, i was doing some research into market penetration over the holidays to glean from the figures what i could for planning the year and how and what to release and in what format , during 2007 the NPD re-release of the 2007 sales figures had listed Flight Sim X at 280K units and a # 9 spot in the sales list , the 2008 figures did not include FSX Gold in the top 20 and that from my perspective is a concern.We can take what lessons there are to be had from this showing , i had hoped that the release of " Gold " would have boosted the available client base more than it had but alas the total number of copies of FSX in circulation is still far short of what is neededto have a strong market for addons , i am sure there are some exceptions where the " Tube liners " are concerned as there are comparatively few of them , but in general sales have been low compared to historical FS9 totals.Among the conclusions i have reached is that Developers need to release both FS9 and FSX versions of a given product in order to survive, this conclusion has not escaped the attention of a number of houses , ESDG releases the CitationX V 2.0 for FS9 , PMDG releases their MD-11 This week for FS9 , the Front page of Avsim is very well replete with releases for FS9 be they Payware or Freeware , in fact there are far more copies of FS9 in circulation than FSX and this doesn

[Guest darrenecm]

" There's still not nearly enough market penetration for them to limit FS to being a 64bit application, and there's no way they have the budget to make two versions... " You said a mouthful there Bill, i was doing some research into market penetration over the holidays to glean from the figures what i could for planning the year and how and what to release and in what format , during 2007 the NPD re-release of the 2007 sales figures had listed Flight Sim X at 280K units and a # 9 spot in the sales list , the 2008 figures did not include FSX Gold in the top 20 and that from my perspective is a concern....http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2008...-franchise.aspx

Your observations are worrying for a sim-fan like myself who has noticed a drastic increase in 'dumbed down' titles and decrease in products that challenge the mind and not just the trigger finger. I'm praying to the simulation Gods that Flight Simulator does not fade away like the rest of the great sim products of the past due to percieved poor sales.It's not just in the games publishing sector that this 'dumbing down to lowest common denomintor' attitude is evident, it's also increasing in the print and TV media sectors. Just look at how many mind-numbingly worthless reality TV shows like X Factor and Big Brother are springing up. Also note the increase in 'fluff piece' and psuedoscience news coverage going and you'd be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that the human race is rapidly devolving into an idiotic, simpleton species :(The fact that email spam is fiscally viable for those who send it also hints at the fact that stupid, weak-minded, gullible humans vastly outnumber those with some semblance of intellect. In this climate of devolution it's thus not totally surprising to see products like FSX which require a modicum of brainpower, struggling to sell :(

[Chuck_Jodry-VJPL 663]

darrenecmObservations are what they are , as to the closing paragraph the possibility of a console version is a complete supposition on my part without the least indication from MS of its veracity, that said i see no reason that the game needs to be dumbed down to be used on an Xbox , the menu or user interface would need changes and some provision made for using external hardware via a usb connection, again just to be clear i am indulging in deductive reasoning here and do not have any indication from MS of their intentions on this matter.