64-bit isn't really necessary... I know, I'm a developer. You might think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread... but... that doesn't make it necessary. Sloppy developers that munch memory like it's going out of style really don't need more memory. It's like giving the government more money... they'll just waste it. :wink:

 

As for DirectX 11... it's coming... L-M considers it critical in the rewrite of the 3D rendering code.

 

+1 I too am a developer and agree that 64bit won't offer much to the Flight Sim franchise. In fact performance may suffer due to the fact that the DirectX API's favor 32bit. Also 64bit real number calculations while less performant than 32bit math would offer nothing performance wise for FSX. What is needed is more offloading of CPU calculations to the GPU which are much better at rendering scenes.

 

Cheers

jja

+1 I too am a developer and agree that 64bit won't offer much to the Flight Sim franchise. In fact performance may suffer due to the fact that the DirectX API's favor 32bit. Also 64bit real number calculations while less performant than 32bit math would offer nothing performance wise for FSX. What is needed is more offloading of CPU calculations to the GPU which are much better at rendering scenes.

 

Cheers

jja

 

So the fact that XPlane 10 is capable of showing MUCH more detail in 64bit mode means it has nothing to offer the flight sim franchise?? I don't get this statement. 64bit code in and of itself won't improve performance or make anything look better but what it would allow FS to do is to use more VAS space (much, much more than 4 GB) so that one could load scenes with far more detail than is currently possible without getting OOMs.

 

I'm glad to hear they are moving toward 64bit in version 2.x but it occurs to me that the DX11 compatibility might help a lot with OOMs. As I understand it most of us FSX users run the program in DX9 mode and one of the problems with DX9 is that everything being contained in the video card's onboard memory has to be mirrored in the FSX VAS which in complex scenes that require a lot of VRAM would increase the amount of VAS used significantly (and possibly causing an OOM if the 4GB limit is breached). In DX10 onwards this apparently isn't necessary so the use of the newer DX11 API alone might help until 64bit arrives?

Lockheed Martin have already said that they're trying to break the tradition of Prepar3D being CPU bound. They're also trying to make use of all the features DirectX 11 has.

I am a developer and I wont bother speculating why any particular sim will benefit butas I said before, two major sims went 64 bit and got big improvements.

 

Now, if you had said that about xplane or DCS you would have said it based on the same argument you make for p3d - and you would have been wrong.

You just can't have the level of detail with addons such as OrbX, a detailed airliner (i.e. PMDG NGX) with max settings and a whole heap of AI flying around in a detailed area like London with addon airport scenery

 

Lockheed Martin has made made it clear it is not interested in the entertainment market so why would its commercial customers want that level of detail? Their objectives won't include flying with "addons such as OrbX, a detailed airliner (i.e. PMDG NGX) with max settings and a whole heap of AI flying around in a detailed area like London with addon airport scenery." What would be the purpose?

 

EDIT

 

On the subject of 32 bit/64 bit games Microsoft said:

 

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.

Lockheed Martin has made made it clear it is not interested in the entertainment market so why would its commercial customers want that level of detail? Their objectives won't include flying with "addons such as OrbX, a detailed airliner (i.e. PMDG NGX) with max settings and a whole heap of AI flying around in a detailed area like London with addon airport scenery." What would be the purpose?

 

LM have made it clear through their marketing that they are not targeting the entertainment sector. Why would they not want a sim capable of doing all of that other stuff. The two things do not seem to be mutually exclusive to me.

Why would they not want a sim capable of doing all of that other stuff.

 

Because it may be of so little interest to Lockheed Martin's commerial customers Lockheed Martin may decide it's not worth developing those features and that development effort would be better applied elsewhere on features its customers do want.

Because it may be of so little interest to Lockheed Martin's commerial customers Lockheed Martin may decide it's not worth developing those features and that development effort would be better applied elsewhere on features its customers do want.

 

Yes, if that is the case. However as already stated p3d looks a lot better than many large scale simulators so why their push to redo p3d with DX11. The only advantages there surley fall in to the same category of unneeded for commercial customers, yet it is a priority for them.

 

Why would commercial customers care about the push to dx11 for eyecandy but not 64 bit as a better basis of a simulator. Some time in the future 32 bit applications will require tinkering to run on modern os's.

When you think about it all customers of the platform desire the same things. As with most enterprises however the project manager will need to first consider the funding which would become their highest priority when it comes to feature requests. It still should be a win-win for us meer consumers as we have many times before benefited from technological advances funded by the military industrial complex. Take the internet as an example. Cheers jja

A good reason for upating that P3D will not run with DirectX 11. It still needs DirectX 9.0c - see the other threads on this subject.

From the linked Microsoft article:

 

"Sixty-four-bit architectures allow developers to push the limitations on how games [in this case read simulations] look, sound, and play."

 

I'm sure that LM would like to push the limitations, i.e. expand the possibilities of what they develop and then sell. One of LM's competitors in the PC based simulation world is MetaVR. Here is a link to their "Virtual Reality Scene Generator (VRSG)."

 

http://www.metavr.com/products/vrsg/vrsgoverview.html

 

Notice that it has "asynchronous texture paging technology for visualizing high-resolution, photo-realistic databases at 60 Hz; can address up to 2 TB of texture in real time." I bet it's not a 32 bit application.

Lockheed Martin has made made it clear it is not interested in the entertainment market so why would its commercial customers want that level of detail? Their objectives won't include flying with "addons such as OrbX, a detailed airliner (i.e. PMDG NGX) with max settings and a whole heap of AI flying around in a detailed area like London with addon airport scenery." What would be the purpose?

 

EDIT

 

On the subject of 32 bit/64 bit games Microsoft said:

 

Hey buddy, you be stalking me! Everytime I post you refute it with something cynical! Anyhow they've been pretty good to us "entertainment" seeking simmers so far trying to ensure compatibility with FSX addons and who is to say commercial customers won't want these things? Are you in touch with any of them?

If you've ever seen a real Level D full flight simulator, FSX/P3D is already miles ahead of the graphics they have - their commercial customers probably already think it's amazing compared to what they're used to.

 

Very true- when a flight crew go for recurrent training in a sim, no-one is interested in the scenery (other than perhaps airport navigation/approach/runway lighting). The goal is not to "replicate/simulate flight", the crew doesn't need that as they are flying for real on many days. If this is the nature of the commercial customer base (recurrent or differences training), then don't expect any work be done on "eye candy". It will be interesting to see where LM eventually takes this product.

 

Thanks, Bruce.

We are lucky though, we have a big company that has got a simulator that is already at an eyecandy level above other level d systems.

 

I imagine that those systems had a lot going against them back in the day. Processing power, graphics systems available and most importantly as already said, graphics at the bottom of the list of important features.

 

Thanks goodness for being in a new century where things are easier. Imagine what can be done today with dx11 for the same amount of effort put in to those big simulators back in the day on their sub par graphics.

 

Just because the bar has been set low doesn't mean a new company in the market with a new simulator cannot exceed it.

Lockheed Martin has made made it clear it is not interested in the entertainment market so why would its commercial customers want that level of detail?

 

 

This comes up many times and I still find this statement bizare, perplexing, and unclear. If this was really the case, then why are they encouraging fsx addon devs to support p3d? And why would devs spend time and resources on supporting p3d with installers and adapting to it if LM doesnt care about them? Something is not jiving here.

 

If you read the interview from avsim, http://forum.avsim.net/page/AVSIM%20Pages/interview_with_lockheed.html

they tread a fine line because of the EULA but clearly they are encouraging and loving the support of addons which are previously fsx addons. Maybe corporate customers dont care. Maybe they do and love the enhancements. Reading between the lines suggest that they will continue to support and encourage it. All that has to be done is adjust the wording. Avsim is hobbyist. its not just a for fun simulator. we are more hardcord than that. Who here is interested in starting an aircraft with Ctrl E. The majority here follow proper procedures. Thats training, and education. We are students of aviation. If we want a just for fun sim than Flight would be a blockbuster sim right now, and or we could go get all the shoot em up flying games and shoot things down or fly through squares. I for one have no interest in that whatsoever.