When Windows 7 first came out 64bit drivers for some old hardware simply wasn't available so they needed to supply a 32bit option for people who didn't want to replace that old hardware. By the time Flight is out you probably won't be able to buy any hardware that hasn't got 64bit drivers for it therefore the choice is a no brainer. Don't forget even if you only have 4Gb of RAM 32bit windows can only address around 3.25 gig, it's worth going 64 bit just to be able to use the whole 4 gig and most systems sold in the last 18 months based around the intel 9** CPU also came with 6 gig, again it's a no brainer, 32 bit is most definitely going to be in the minority in 2 years time. Let's face it flight sim fans are going to be the biggest target demographic for a flight simulator regardless of what Microsoft thinks will happen to sales by dropping the word Simulator from the name, as can be seen from this poll the greatest majority of people here do have a 64bit OS, they would be mad not to use those resources.

HelloSo we can take it from your solid denial of those poll results that you and Jim are among the six that are still on 32bit.Here's hoping there is a 32bit Windows 8 for you guys, but I would not bet on it at this point in OS developement. And if the new OS is 64bit only then you can be sure that MS Flight will have a 64bit option.I might just put this poll out in the FSX forum where there is more traffic, just to see if the numbers scale accordingly.

It's not a question of denial - it simply is statistically meaningless, regardless of its subject. The 100 votes represent 0.14% of AVSIMs's registered members (about 70,000). So the sample size is too small. It's also self-selecting because only those interested will reply, so its not even a representaive sample. This applies to all polls on these forums.

It's not a question of denial - it simply is statistically meaningless, regardless of its subject. The 100 votes represent 0.14% of AVSIMs's registered members (about 70,000). So the sample size is too small. It's also self-selecting because only those interested will reply, so its not even a representaive sample. This applies to all polls on these forums.

HelloOk mgh, honest opinion now, where do you think the majority of gamers and hard core simmers will be in 18 month's time 32bit or 64bit?.where do you think the hardware guys INTEL/AMD and the Memory manufacturers along with MS are headed.They all need to sell new product and 32bit to 64bit is going to be the easiest pitch yet.expect to see "64bit inside ads" all over your TV screens this coming christmas.And Christmas is when PC hardware and its supporting software sells to the mom and dads.

HelloOk mgh, honest opinion now, where do you think the majority of gamers and hard core simmers will be in 18 month's time 32bit or 64bit?.where do you think the hardware guys INTEL/AMD and the Memory manufacturers along with MS are headed.They all need to sell new product and 32bit to 64bit is going to be the easiest pitch yet.expect to see "64bit inside ads" all over your TV screens this coming christmas.And Christmas is when PC hardware and its supporting software sells to the mom and dads.

Regardless of what may or may not happen in the future, your poll is still statistically meaningless.Microsoft's marketing department will have far more reliable estimates of both hardware and software sales and the development of Flight will take account of these - not meaningless polls in enthusiasts forums. Anyway, I suspect Microsoft has already made the 64/32bit decision .

Regardless of what may or may not happen in the future, your poll is still statistically meaningless.Microsoft's marketing department will have far more reliable estimates of both hardware and software sales and the development of Flight will take account of these - not meaningless polls in enthusiasts forums. Anyway, I suspect Microsoft has already made the 64/32bit decision .

HelloAt what specific sample size would it become meaningful for you.I have no way of determining the uptake of 64bit vs 32bit other than asking the membership here.So far it is fairly conclusive.32bit era is over and lets be thankful for that, at least we now know what CPU/OS combinations those simmers interested enough in MS Flight and willing to add their votes to this "meaningless" poll are currently running.What would your answer be, stay with 32bit?Try selling that to the MS marketing Dept. this christmas. :(

HelloAt what specific sample size would it become meaningful for you.I have no way of determining the uptake of 64bit vs 32bit other than asking the membership here.So far it is fairly conclusive.32bit era is over and lets be thankful for that, at least we now know what CPU/OS combinations those simmers interested enough in MS Flight and willing to add their votes to this "meaningless" poll are currently running.What would your answer be, stay with 32bit?Try selling that to the MS marketing Dept. this christmas. :(

You are confusing the case for 64 bit with the meaning of your survey. Yours is a self-selectiing survey. All it tells us is that 90% of the 94 who responded have a 64bit CPU and a 64bit OS. It tell us nothing about the wider AVSIM membership and even less about flight simulation users globally. That's not just my opinion. See the following from Statistics Netherland - the country's offical statistic agency."Many web surveys are not based on probability sampling. The survey questionnaire is simply put on the web. Respondents are those people who happen to have Internet, visit the website and decide to participate in the survey. These surveys are called self-selection surveys. The problem is that the survey researcher is not in control of the selection process. Selection probabilities are unknown and, moreover, they are considerably smaller than in traditional probability surveys. Therefore, no unbiased estimates can be computed nor can the accuracy of estimates be determined."http://www.cbs.nl/NR...00814x10pub.pdfObviously 64 bit is the future and the industry's market departments pushing them for commercial reasons eventhogh the majoriry of home PC users are unliklely to notice any significant difference. Microsoft's own article titled 64-bit Programming for Developers concludes:"When you compile applications as 64-bit, the calculations get more complicated. A 64-bit program uses 64-bit pointers, and its instructions are slightly larger, so the memory requirement is slightly increased. This can cause a slight drop in performance. On the other hand, having twice as many registers and having the ability to do 64-bit integer calculations in a single instruction will often more than compensate. The net result is that a 64-bit application might run slightly slower than the same application compiled as 32-bit, but it will often run slightly faster."http://msdn.microsof...v=vs.85%29.aspxThe key advantage of 64-bit is that it allows very significant increase in virtual address space (4 Gb. for 32-bit applications and up to 8 Tb with 64-bit application). There is an increase in the amount of physical memory to 16 Gb for Win7 Home Premium (192 Gb for Win7 Ultimate). Given FSX out of the box needs 0.7 Gb of virtual memory How many users of Flight will need more than 4 Gb, and how many will buy extra RAM.Microsoft is a commercial organisation and it will make its decision based on what it sees as the balance between the developmen and the revenue budgets over the life of Flight. This might include getting a 32-bit version out of the door quickly to start the revenue stream followed by a 64-bit version later. Microsoft could decide to include other enhancements in the 64-bit version to encourage those who'd already bought the 32-bit version to by it as well. Or am I being too cynical?

I do not know anybody still running 32bit windows

well you do now.Al

You better throw out all that old hardware and software because by the end of 2011 all of it is going to refuse to run!

The latest (January to April 2011) figures I can find suggest the following split of Windows operating systems worldwide are: 35.4 % for Win 7 16.9 % for Vista48.3% for XP(The percentage are based on all all operating systems, including non-Microsoft ones. The have to be factored up to make their sum 100% to give them as percentages of Microsoft operating systems.)http://en.wikipedia....erating_systemsIn 2010 the split between types of operating systems were: 64-bit 46% 32-bit 54% for Win 764-bit 11% 32- bit 89% fgor Vista 64-bit <1% 32-bit >99% for XPhttp://www.thewindow...users-in-number(If anyone has any other figures I'd like to see them.)On the basis that it's unlikely that there's been a significant switch from 32 bit to 64 bit on Vista or XP in the last year, and making the extreme assumption that 100% of Win 7 operating systems are now 64 bit, the following table suggests that at least 65% of PCs are still using 32 bit and less than 35% are using 64 bit. Microsoft can't just ignore that market.

The latest (January to April 2011) figures I can find suggest the following split of Windows operating systems worldwide are: 35.4 % for Win 7 16.9 % for Vista48.3% for XP(The percentage are based on all all operating systems, including non-Microsoft ones. The have to be factored up to make their sum 100% to give them as percentages of Microsoft operating systems.)http://en.wikipedia....erating_systemsIn 2010 the split between types of operating systems were: 64-bit 46% 32-bit 54% for Win 764-bit 11% 32- bit 89% fgor Vista 64-bit <1% 32-bit >99% for XPhttp://www.thewindow...users-in-number(If anyone has any other figures I'd like to see them.)On the basis that it's unlikely that there's been a significant switch from 32 bit to 64 bit on Vista or XP in the last year, and making the extreme assumption that 100% of Win 7 operating systems are now 64 bit, the following table suggests that at least 65% of PCs are still using 32 bit and less than 35% are using 64 bit. Microsoft can't just ignore that market.

HelloRegarding MS Flight you can take the XP32 + XP64 percentages straight out of the equation as neither of these will ever run MS Flight unless MS backport DX10 or 11 (unlikely), both are EOL operating systems.So that leaves us Vista which MS would love to bury, and Windows 7 which is sold with both versions in the box

Of course not, this is only a sample, but the 92% would!Cheers,- jahman.

92% of 100 enthusiasts on an enthusianst website use 64-bit OS is a totally and utterly meaningless survey. Why not stop motorists on a busy highway and do a survey on how many of them have a drivers licence?Right now 56 PERCENT of Windows computers are running 64-bit operating systems. The majority of that is due to the sucess of Windows 7. A large percentage of that number is due to server migrations from applications like Exchange 2003 (32-bit) to Exchange 2010 (64-bit only) requiring Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit only) to run. If you even take just 10% of the 56% and attribute that to server only 64-bit operating systems you get a consumer adoption rate of only ~46%. Secondly almost 50% of PCs are running Windows XP, which is 10 years old. Windows 7 has been driving corporate desktop upgrades like wildfire, so let's take another 20% of all 64-bit operating systems and chalk that up to corporate desktops only. Now you're down to ~26% of all entertainment PC's with 64-bit operating systems. For example at Cisco I was just given a brand spanking new i7Pro Laptop with Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit...we have 70,000 employees - every one of my large enterprise clients (Accenture, United Airlines, etc) are or have upgraded to Windows 7 64-bit and they represent over a million employees total. I can gurantee you that not one of those PC's will be running Microsoft FLIGHT.So yes, there has been a huge increase in 64-bit adoption because of the enormous success of Windows 7 and corporate adoption of Windows 2008 R2 which is based on W7 code. The survey is meaningless on many levels because on top of it all, it doesn't take into account that the vast majority of people that use or have used FSX don't even know about Avsim! Will consumer adoption of 64-bit operating systems occur in time for the relese of Flight? No. Will FLIGHT be done in two versions? No. Anyone willing to take that bet? I've got twin girls for whom I need to save for college!

92% of 100 enthusiasts on an enthusianst website use 64-bit OS is a totally and utterly meaningless survey. Why not stop motorists on a busy highway and do a survey on how many of them have a drivers licence?Right now 56 PERCENT of Windows computers are running 64-bit operating systems. The majority of that is due to the sucess of Windows 7. A large percentage of that number is due to server migrations from applications like Exchange 2003 (32-bit) to Exchange 2010 (64-bit only) requiring Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit only) to run. If you even take just 10% of the 56% and attribute that to server only 64-bit operating systems you get a consumer adoption rate of only ~46%. Secondly almost 50% of PCs are running Windows XP, which is 10 years old. Windows 7 has been driving corporate desktop upgrades like wildfire, so let's take another 20% of all 64-bit operating systems and chalk that up to corporate desktops only. Now you're down to ~26% of all entertainment PC's with 64-bit operating systems. For example at Cisco I was just given a brand spanking new i7Pro Laptop with Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit...we have 70,000 employees - every one of my large enterprise clients (Accenture, United Airlines, etc) are or have upgraded to Windows 7 64-bit and they represent over a million employees total. I can gurantee you that not one of those PC's will be running Microsoft FLIGHT.So yes, there has been a huge increase in 64-bit adoption because of the enormous success of Windows 7 and corporate adoption of Windows 2008 R2 which is based on W7 code. The survey is meaningless on many levels because on top of it all, it doesn't take into account that the vast majority of people that use or have used FSX don't even know about Avsim! Will consumer adoption of 64-bit operating systems occur in time for the relese of Flight? No. Will FLIGHT be done in two versions? No. Anyone willing to take that bet? I've got twin girls for whom I need to save for college!

HelloYou may well be right and Microsofts target platform for Flight! is really the 50% of users running XP32.Here's looking forward to a memory limited DX9 flightsim then, and we already have two of them

HelloJust trying to get some idea as to how many Avsim members are using 64bit CPU's and OS

Here's an interesting post:Is there going to be a 64-bit native version?It seems almost all the new computers in Best Buy and such are 64-bit.So I think the time has come for more games to support 64-bit versions.This is a post from November 2008. The poster was asking about a 64-bit version of World of Warcraft. Again, confusion regarding 64-bit computers being sold vs. the 32-bit operating systems being loaded on them. As of May 2011, WoW is still 32-bit...just like FLIGHT will be.

You better throw out all that old hardware and software because by the end of 2011 all of it is going to refuse to run!

When it does refuse to run, I will indeed sling it, but it still works fine at the moment, and as you know, computer components and software get cheaper as time goes along, because there is always something new and better the following week, so it is not economically smart to sling it until I have to if it is still working okay.Al

Here's an interesting post:Is there going to be a 64-bit native version?It seems almost all the new computers in Best Buy and such are 64-bit.So I think the time has come for more games to support 64-bit versions.This is a post from November 2008. The poster was asking about a 64-bit version of World of Warcraft. Again, confusion regarding 64-bit computers being sold vs. the 32-bit operating systems being loaded on them. As of May 2011, WoW is still 32-bit...just like FLIGHT will be.

Hello MikeWhy are 32bit operating systems still being loaded onto 64bit machines, I obviously don't get it.I could see why back when W7 was released as the drivers for a lot of hardware where not available in 64bit back then.But now in 2011 when 64bit machines have been the only option for a long while, why would anyone choose a 32bit OS for their new i7 6gb or 8gb machine.When do you think the transition will fully take place and why don't Intel and AMD just go back to producing 32bit CPU's if everyone is so resistant to moving to a 64bit OS.There are some pretty clued up users in this thread who seem convinced that 32bit is good enough so should I install this 32bit W7 disk that I have here rather than the 64bit version that I recently installed?