Vic,

 

Glad you're not a mod, otherwise life would be very boring with so much "control" over content. Everyone for the most part has been civil in this thread I started.

 

I don't really care one way or the other about the EULA ... as far as I can tell it's purpose was to prevent competition between P3D and Flight. At this point in time, I doubt Microsoft are that concerned as they have much bigger problems to address such as the epic failure of Win8 adoption/usage.

 

X-Plane, which I still haven't warmed to, is 64 bit, and may well become the sim of the future. FSX of course will still be 32 bit and LM have said that v2.0 will be also.

 

That's another disappointment for me, without 64bit that's going reduce the products potential considerably. But I do understand the challenge of moving from 32bit to 64bit ... have done so in a few of my own projects but I didn't have compatibility influences to consider.

 

Anyway, I do hope the P3D folks the best. I haven't warmed up to X-plane either ... yet, but it does look like it has a more promising future ... if only it could be better funded so we could have tools to migrate more FSX products over. Seems to me it's the 3rd party vendor support that has the real control of us hardcore flight simmers.

Vic,

 

Glad you're not a mod, otherwise life would be very boring with so much "control" over content. Everyone for the most part has been civil in this thread I started.

 

 

LOL! I agree Rob. It really has been civil BUT the EULA part of it has been done to death, ad nauseum. There is absolutely NOTHING new on that subject except individual opinions and pure fantasy.

 

I guess you have to get some chaff mixed in with the wheat!

 

Vic

So far so good. Like Seargeant Schultz said:

 

I really have no interest in the P3D EULA "debate", but as has been mentioned in other threads, the limitations in the EULA may solely be imposed by Microsoft, as they may have wanted to reserve the right, at some point in the future, to release Flight Simulator 11 and not have LM out there competing with them in the "entertainment" market. I suspect that the wording in the EULA is solely a result of the negotiation for the licensing of P3D. BTW, I tend to doubt the possibility that MS will update FSX, considering how they abandoned MS Flight. MS thinks that they are a hardware company these days, not a software company.

 

As to the 64 bit issue, it would be great if some future version of P3D was full 64 bit (Not a mish-mash of 32 and 64 bit with some kind of helper programs that provide the interface). But that said (and from someone with 40 GB of RAM on their PC), I side with those who say that 64 bit will not guarantee any improvement in simulator performance. Most PC video games are not 64 bit and those that have made the switch have not demonstrated any major performance advantage. Where you will get most of your performance improvements is on the hardware side (faster GPUs, faster and more CPUs, SSDs vs HDDs, etc.).

 

And that is the crux of the issue of why P3D (or X-Plane for that matter) is a better option than FSX. Eventually, FSX will be stuck running on legacy hardware with a legacy OS. It's inevitable.

Perhaps Microsoft will buy/own/ or lease a piece of the P3D pie and box /market it as the consumer version. Just like Aerosoft and just flight do with other developer products. Then they would call it FS11 and there would be no more grey areas to debate about. Who knows.

 

In the end its the add on developers who will dictate where we all go. If they end development for fsx then fsx will slowly die out. If they all start heavily devloping for xplane, we will all be jumping over. Same thing goes for P3D or any other simulator that comes out. Because thats forward progression.

 

Its what ever makes the best use of our hardware, and the best value and simulating experience we can get as the majority see it. Whatever catches fire. And personally a real life aviation company like LM would seem to have the upper hand in money and resources. Its a common thing to see a company employ a consumer division that is slimmed down at the same time as having a commercial division.

As to the 64 bit issue, it would be great if some future version of P3D was full 64 bit (Not a mish-mash of 32 and 64 bit with some kind of helper programs that provide the interface). But that said (and from someone with 40 GB of RAM on their PC), I side with those who say that 64 bit will not guarantee any improvement in simulator performance. Most PC video games are not 64 bit and those that have made the switch have not demonstrated any major performance advantage. Where you will get most of your performance improvements is on the hardware side (faster GPUs, faster and more CPUs, SSDs vs HDDs, etc.).

 

These days there are many games that are now 64bit native, here are a list of a few (by no means all):

- Battlefield 3

- Bet On Soldier: Blood Sport (native)

- Bioshock 2

- Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (native)

- Codename: Panzers (Phase one) (via patch)

- Colin McRae Rally 2005 (via patch)

- Crysis (native)

- DICE Games for 2013 (Frostbite engine)

- Digital Combat Simulator (DSC) A-10

- DCS Black Shark 2

- Dreadnoughts

- Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) (via patch)

- Far Cry (via patch)

- Half Life 2 (via patch)

- Hellgate: London (native)

- iRacing

- Rainbow Six Vegas (via patch)

- Shadow Ops: Red Mercury (native)

- S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

- Unreal Tournament 2004 (via patch)

- World of Warcraft (via patch)

- WWII Tank Commander (native)

 

Even small development shops like iRacing have moved to a 64bit environment and they pride themselves on "realism".

 

But like I eluded to earlier, textures, high quality textures is the primary reason to move espeically now that we have video cards such as NVIDIA's GTX 690 4GB (SLI 8GB) -- you can't map that much video RAM into a 32bit Address space and for high quality textures you want to scale as much as you can because video RAM is even faster than Quad Channel system RAM.

 

If you look at some of these games and their texture quality, it's pretty impressive ... moving to 64bit permits even higher texture quality ... in FSX this could be applied to any of it's many polygons from aircraft to land to clouds. It would certainly increase the LOD size so that it's not noticeable or distracting (without having to tweak any config settings) - I'd love to see a 150mi LOD radius - that'll never happen on a 32bit address space. IMHO, FSX should have moved to 64bit prior to release, that would have secured a VERY healthy future for FSX and especially for the 3rd party vendors (sure it would initially introduce a short growing/conversion pain) ... but to late discussing that now. I honestly think many 3rd party vendors just didn't understand the limits of a 32bit address space and how it would impact them in the long run.

 

I view the move to 64bit as pivotal to the long term success of "ANY" Flight Sim related project.

 

Rob

I honestly think many 3rd party vendors just didn't understand the limits of a 32bit address space and how it would impact them in the long run.

 

Rob

 

I don't think Aces did either, or else they would not have implemented such lame "out of memory" exception processing !!

I am really getting bored with all the armchair lawyering about EULA's and this specific EULA in general. The EULA is essentially a legal declaration, which is composed of WORDS which are SUBJECT TO INTERPRETATION. The ultimate definition of the EULA will only come when and if it is tested in court.

 

+1, unless LM starts actively enforcing their policy or someone gets hauled into court to be told exactly what it means I'll make my own mind up.

Until one of the protagonists swears a complaint, the police or authority duly authorised enters (with a warrant) the home of a private user alleged to be in conflict, confiscates the computer, checks its contents, then takes the owner to Court we will never know. The issuers of the EULAs would say it is for the private user to defend their use of a marketed product.

 

And think of the defence that could be mounted.

 

Stand by .....

Naaaa, easyer for LM just to ask proof of.....or license the software to the machine....why going to court, hummmm wondering why PMDG is not on board....never mind I've read why.

Naaaa, easyer for LM just to ask proof of.....or license the software to the machine....why going to court, hummmm wondering why PMDG is not on board....never mind I've read why.

 

I'm so tired of reading your pathetic negative posts. Go on out of the p3d forums, go back to the FSX forums.. enjoy your instable platform.

Sys OP please kill this thread LOL

I'm so tired of reading your pathetic negative posts. Go on out of the p3d forums, go back to the FSX forums.. enjoy your instable platform.

 

LOL you tell him mate. He propounds the boneheaded use of DX10 which is so broken even with all the fixes that it is absolute rubbish outside of his happy little Miami bubble. So he just has to keep coming here and dissing all the P3D users who are looking for something better. I don't give any consideration to his posts or opinions on the matter any longer.

I am enjoying the Airbus X extended, it comes with an EULA compatible for P3D and a default installer, I believe so does the QW146 and more coming.

 

Great to see developers not having an issue releasing an EULA that is compatible for P3D.

 

And a dedicated installer.

Until one of the protagonists swears a complaint, the police or authority duly authorised enters (with a warrant) the home of a private user alleged to be in conflict, confiscates the computer, checks its contents, then takes the owner to Court we will never know. The issuers of the EULAs would say it is for the private user to defend their use of a marketed product.

 

And think of the defence that could be mounted.

 

Stand by .....

 

Not necessary. All Lockheed Martin need do is ask Academic Licence holders to show in which and by which Territory they're "licensed, chartered or otherwise accredited to provide Academic Education" and terminate the licences when it's not forthcoming. (Section 14.6 of the Licence)