I open a challenge and financial reward for any Software Engineer that is also a FSX flight enthusiast...

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If you can come up with a software emulator hack, that would in essence, trick W7 64 bit, to 'see' FSX as a 64 bit program and RUN IT AS SUCH, with full stability, I will pay your company and/or website, $100.00 for this issue. No butts, and/or ifs.

 

$100.00 from myself, and anybody else that might add a '+1' to this thread.

 

You could invest time and resources for this endeavor, and reap many thousands of dollars. I don't imagine that there would not be one FSX present and future user that would not willingly part with $100.00 to finally be free of any and all VAS issues from then, on out!

 

If there is even a theoretical possibility, I  would jump at a chance to purchase a software 'pre-run FSX' solution. 

 

That's the challenge, and that's the financial reward I am willing to pay for it!

 

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SesquashToo (Mitch) 

This is a list of some of the issues when porting 32 bit code to 64 bit:

 

http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0004/

 

And this, assuming you have the C++ source code!

 

As an example, Adobe took years (and million of dollars, likely) to port Photoshop to 64 bit, which is probably comparable in size/complexity to FSX, and they obviously have the source code, an advantage that none of the FSX 3rd party developers out there has.

 

In addition to that, FSX has very old code written in assembly is still there from very old versions, and assembly code is even more difficult to port to 64 bit than C++.

 

And this not even mentioning the possible legal repercussions: even if someone managed to do an FSX 64 bit port , I doubt he'll ever allowed to distribute it in any way without incurring in all sort of copyright infringements, even more so considering he would likely wanted some kind of financial reward, for this massive undertaking.

 

That was to give you some idea of the task at hand. I'd say that nobody out there, except Microsoft and perhaps LM, have any chance to accomplish that.

It doesn't work that way, I wish it were that easy ... and you'd need to add at least 5 (or6) zeros to your reward

 

 

That was to give you some idea of the task at hand. I'd say that nobody out there, except Microsoft and perhaps LM, have any chance to accomplish that.

 

If the source code were available for a "reasonable" price the chances would increase considerably.  But I doubt Microsoft or LM would allow that to happen.

This is a list of some of the issues when porting 32 bit code to 64 bit:

 

http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0004/

 

And this, assuming you have the C++ source code!

 

As an example, Adobe took years (and million of dollars, likely) to port Photoshop to 64 bit, which is probably compared in size/complexity to FSX, and they obviously have the source code, an advantage that none of the FSX 3rd party developers out there has.

 

In addition to that, FSX has very old code written in assembly is still there from very old versions, and assembly code is even more difficult to port to 64 bit than C++.

 

That was to give you some idea of the task at hand. I'd say that nobody out there, except Microsoft and perhaps LM, have any chance to accomplish that.

Very true. Besides, you can't "emulate" 64-bit. Your program either has 64-bit word length or not. If it hasn't and it is 32-bit, you have to rewrite the software core to get it to 64-bit. You can't magically make for example a 32-bit address pointer or integer in the code to change into 64-bits or vice versa. How big conversion task is, depends fully on software architecture. If Laminar Research achieved it with XP, it doesn't mean that it can be achieved easily with FSX, which still has parts of some low level Assembly code from the 90's. LM guys have said that 64-bit conversion is a tough and long job. Is it even practical anymore, who knows.

This is a list of some of the issues when porting 32 bit code to 64 bit:

 

http://www.viva64.com/en/a/0004/

 

And this, assuming you have the C++ source code!

 

As an example, Adobe took years (and million of dollars, likely) to port Photoshop to 64 bit, which is probably comparable in size/complexity to FSX, and they obviously have the source code, an advantage that none of the FSX 3rd party developers out there has.

 

In addition to that, FSX has very old code written in assembly is still there from very old versions, and assembly code is even more difficult to port to 64 bit than C++.

 

And this not even mentioning the possible legal repercussions: even if someone managed to do an FSX 64 bit port , I doubt he'll ever allowed to distribute it in any way without incurring in all sort of copyright infringements, even more so considering he would likely wanted some kind of financial reward, for this massive undertaking.

 

That was to give you some idea of the task at hand. I'd say that nobody out there, except Microsoft and perhaps LM, have any chance to accomplish that.

As I am not in any way in the 'software field', I thank you for advising me of how hard it might be and/or cost factor for an effort such as this. Having said that though, I will hope that somebody with the expertise might explore this train-of-thought.  My gawd...if anybody could do this, FSX could reign as a many-years flight simulation foundation....   Thanks again....

 

Mitch

Very true. Besides, you can't "emulate" 64-bit. Your program either has 64-bit word length or not. If it hasn't and it is 32-bit, you have to rewrite the software core to get it to 64-bit. You can't magically make for example a 32-bit address pointer or integer in the code to change into 64-bits or vice versa. How big conversion task is, depends fully on software architecture. If Laminar Research achieved it with XP, it doesn't mean that it can be achieved easily with FSX, which still has parts of some low level Assembly code from the 90's. LM guys have said that 64-bit conversion is a tough and long job. Is it even practical anymore, who knows.

Thanks for the reply...your thoughts to consider, but (perhaps wearing a pair of rose-colored glasses) I can only hope for a solution and/or conversion to 64 bit....  

There is possibility, but the task is enormous. LM has already mentioned this. Its in the works of being looked at or even in the process of being worked on , but as has been mentioned, all that old code has Made the task 100x harder than usual.

 

I'm with you though. I think anyone here would pay 100$ for that but it's not something that an SDK would provide to make that happen. This is the core stuff. Fund LM to make sure it happens to increase the chance.

 

 

I can only hope for a solution and/or conversion to 64 bit....

 

Like I said, make the source code available and I can guarantee you 64bit conversion will start immediately.

It doesn't work that way, I wish it were that easy ... and you'd need to add at least 5 (or6) zeros to your reward

 

 

 

If the source code were available for a "reasonable" price the chances would increase considerably.  But I doubt Microsoft or LM would allow that to happen.

I would have to stick to my issue of 'zeros', but many other users would piggy-back that, I'm sure!

Like I said, make the source code available and I can guarantee you 64bit conversion will start immediately.

"From your mouth, to the empowerment's ear...." !!!!

 

It would be wonderful, and an exciting announcement....

 

Mitch 

 

 

I would have to stick to my issue of 'zeros', but many other users would piggy-back that, I'm sure!

 

I was suggesting entire project cost, not individual contributions. 

 

 

Fund LM to make sure it happens to increase the chance.

 

LM are well funded but they are still a very very small team working on P3D (smaller than Xplane team which is about 6 devs) ... open the source code door and I'm certain there would be 24+ devs ready to roll with the source code.  But the door is NOT open.

64bit conversion is usually easy and I don't think it took Adobe much time at all.- Only compare Flightgear 32 to 64bit sources...

 

 

LM are well funded but they are still a very very small team working on P3D (smaller than Xplane team which is about 6 devs) ... open the source code door and I'm certain there would be 24+ devs ready to roll with the source code. But the door is NOT open.

This I don't understand. Obviously MS doesn't give a hoot about flight simulator anymore nor its dedicated users so why is source code locked away? Gee whiz. Sell it to LM. Make it useful. If they want to keep it then make use of it and develop it further. If there is no business in it fir them then for crying out loud - Open the door!

It's a physical impossibility.

 

It's really as simple as this:

 

In 32-bit a pointer to a memory location is 32-bits in length and has a possible value range of 0 to 4,294,967,295.  All pointers in a 32-bit application are exactly that size and there's no way to get 32-bit machine code to see it as anything larger.  It's physically impossible.

 

Reverse engineering FSX is the only possible method for a third-party to make FS run as a 64-bit application.  Some will say that's legal, I'll simply say that Microsoft has more money than all of us combined and thus rewriting their product by reverse engineering will exceed our total life's income combined in law suit costs. :wink:

This I don't understand. Obviously MS doesn't give a hoot about flight simulator anymore nor its dedicated users so why is source code locked away? Gee whiz. Sell it to LM. Make it useful. If they want to keep it then make use of it and develop it further. If there is no business in it fir them then for crying out loud - Open the door!

Well the intellectual proporty of the source code is still worth a lot of money, so they are not going to let it just like that.

64bit conversion is usually easy and I don't think it took Adobe much time at all.- Only compare Flightgear 32 to 64bit sources...

In many cases it is, but not always. In the easiest possible scenario, you pretty much just recompile your software and you are done. But something that has old and low level coding in it and who knows even badly documented, things can get quite tricky.

What they said ^

 

Plus, AFAIK there is a ton of FS code written in pure x86 assembler, so first you have find someone or several guys who still know how to “code and decode”  it and port it to x64 or if possible (not allways) to C++.

(Don’t count me in, last lime I attempted to code assembler (circa 1988) I turned my 80286 PC into a toaster.)