I think there's a possibility that we are starting to see Prepar3d 2.0 default scenery. Read more about it here!

 

 

And here ends up with:

 

Not for the first time in my life I am flat out wrong about things! Still it was all speculation to begin with and no animals were hurt in the making of these rumours

 

 

 

A 64 bit conversion would be a massive project. They've stated that it would require rewriting much of the libraries and DLLs, some of which have been used by the sim for years.

 

Yes and if I don't remember wrong the biggest problem would be that part that still is written in Assembly code that has been with FS series for years.

And here ends up with:

 

I told no lies, I said it was speculation at the outset and I'm never afraid to admit to being wrong.

 

I'm too lazy to go looking for links, but it has been posted many of times by L-M personnel that v2.0 is an upgrade to DX11 and not 64bit.

 

Speculating on my part, but if there was to be a move to 64 bit that it would be another full dot release.

 

I certainly wouldn't spend a whole heap of cash buying into it unless it was a 64bit version. DX11 wouldn't be enough to warrant a move but that again is just my position.

Yes and if I don't remember wrong the biggest problem would be that part that still is written in Assembly code that has been with FS series for years.

 

Yep, I remember reading that a while ago.

Do you have a link, I'd really like to read more.

"We would love to have true 64bit support, but this isn't a feature we can rush. We're dealing with a massive baseline that has been in development since 1977. The first MS version was in 1982, but even that was a year before I was born. Obviously the baseline has been updated and refactored many times, but there are still snippets of assembly code and 32bit pointer math floating around in there, which adds complexity to the update process.

 

Beau

 

Prepar3D Software Engineer"

 

If you wish to read more, check out the official P3D forums.  I think many are confusing LM releasing P3D "tools" that now work in a 64bit environment as opposed to P3D actually coded to 64bit. 

On 27 May this year Lockheed Martin wrote:

Note, first off, that we haven't announced 64 bit support for 2.0, and I can't comment on where 64 bit support falls into our product road map at this time. As such I can't really answer your question other than to say that add-on scenery generally doesn't include dlls that run in Prepar3Ds application space the way that many add-on aircraft do, and that in all likely hood, there would be very few scenery issues if/when we move to 64 bit. We are adding some features to the model format for 2.0 though so 2.0 models won't work in P3D 1.x, ESP, or FSX. Older models should still work in P3D 2.0 however.

Beau
 

Prepar3D Software Engineer

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=2870.0#postid-12476
 

The sting is in the tail. If models developed for P3D V2.0 won't work in V2.0 then they presumably won't work in FSX either. That must have implications for developers. Do they develop V2.0 models for a smaller market, continue to develop for V1.4 and FSX, or develop for both with additional costs? Also it merely states that Older models should still work in P3D 2.0 - not that they will work.

M

 

I certainly wouldn't spend a whole heap of cash buying into it unless it was a 64bit version. DX11 wouldn't be enough to warrant a move but that again is just my position.

 

I wouldn't, even in the slightest bit, consider whether it was 64-bit.  I remember the big 16 to 32 bit move in software years ago.  It's was good change and allowed the developers to access more memory, and a larger instruction set but, truth is, most folks couldn't tell the difference.  What I *would* do is look at the performance and stability...if it's better (regardless of the bits) then, well, it's better.

 

 

I wouldn't, even in the slightest bit, consider whether it was 64-bit. I remember the big 16 to 32 bit move in software years ago. It's was good change and allowed the developers to access more memory, and a larger instruction set but, truth is, most folks couldn't tell the difference. What I *would* do is look at the performance and stability...if it's better (regardless of the bits) then, well, it's better.

 

Agree, as long as they fix the issue where scenery that is not used don't take up VAS space then I think 32 bit would work great for a long time..

An interesting little bit that Beau posted today regarding updates to the graphics engine with V2:

 

 

In V2 we do terrain lighting and mesh generation dynamically on the GPU. Fast flight terrain paging performance is much improved as a result. By leveraging D3D11 texture arrays, hardware instancing, and tessellation, we can draw the terrain and water for the entire globe in one draw call. (No promises that we will ship it as one draw call because it may be more optimal to break up, but it's pretty exciting that it's possible with D3D11.) In addition, we encode the land class into the elevation model which allows us to shade differently for each land classification. (e.g. snow will appear shiny in the regular scene and cold in the IR sensor scene.)

 

Source: http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=2971.0#postid-13011

On 27 May this year Lockheed Martin wrote:

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=2870.0#postid-12476

 

The sting is in the tail. If models developed for P3D V2.0 won't work in V2.0 then they presumably won't work in FSX either. That must have implications for developers. Do they develop V2.0 models for a smaller market, continue to develop for V1.4 and FSX, or develop for both with additional costs? Also it merely states that Older models should still work in P3D 2.0 - not that they will work.

You answered your own question. Developers will presumeably know at that point how to make models in FSX that will also work in P3D 2.0. The "should" there has variables that are just unknown now. Once it is known what works and what doesn't they can design around it to make models that are native to FSX but also work in P3D 2.0.

 

Do they develop strictly V2.0 models? I doubt it. Not right away anyway.

 

Obviously, the only applies to going forward. If some already developed older models don't work it'll be no different then FS9 to FSX models that didn't work. They have to decide whether a new model for a new market holds enough profit for them.

An interesting little bit that Beau posted today regarding updates to the graphics engine with V2:

 

 

Source: http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=2971.0#postid-13011

 

Pretty awesome stuff.

M

 

 

I wouldn't, even in the slightest bit, consider whether it was 64-bit.  I remember the big 16 to 32 bit move in software years ago.  It's was good change and allowed the developers to access more memory, and a larger instruction set but, truth is, most folks couldn't tell the difference.  What I *would* do is look at the performance and stability...if it's better (regardless of the bits) then, well, it's better.

 

I agree. 64bit is all in how it's used and it doesn't magically make a marginal product great.

XPX advocates constantly brag about it being 64bit but it still has bad scenery, bad ATC, a terrible AI system, no seasosn, etc. so what good does 64bit do me?

 

If P3D 2.0 succeeds in offloading the CPU and taking advantage of high end GPUs, they'll be plenty of headroom for many more years.