The clever thing about Windows is the money pit it sucks you in to. Since I bought my first PC back in the days of DOS I've never bought another PC outright.  I've just constantly upgraded the parts piecemeal as I saw fit and paid out for every new OS.  It's been fun actually. I seem to remember somehow my first graphics card was called a Voodoo! And then there were Soundblaster sound cards etc!😀 (Whatever happened to Creative Labs??)
 

I don't know whether this constant upgrade cycle is just a con? Maybe it's cheaper just to buy a new Apple Mac every five years or so? Because it seems to me the main advance with regard to games has been purely the graphics quality. Sounds are no better and the gameplay is worse. Die back in the early days and you were done. You had to start again! We were proper gamers back then! 😂

The thing I've noticed in the last couple of years with regard to Windows is that the constant availability of better hardware has given software developers a pass for terribly unoptimised sloppy code. And ditto Windows itself.

Edited October 20, 20214 yr by jarmstro

I have the impression that the Intel/Windows (and AMD) camp has been stagnating over the last decade.

Yes, the CPUs still get faster, same for the graphics cards. But nothing new comes out of it.

All the real advances were done in the mobile market, only check how the original iPhone and Android phones have evolved in usability, speed and battery perforamnce (albeit that the extra battery power has always been sacrificed to pump the performance 🙂 ).

And now Apple is taking all these advances into the PC arena, redesigning completely the architecture of the pc.

Unfortunately for a heavy price tag. But what is holding Linux to go the same path, like with the Steam box?

BTW, the M1 processor is reminding me of the IBM cell processor used in the PS3, at the time revolutionary, but it needed rewriting of all programming tools. Which was a big burden and eventually Sony went  for a classic CPU.

 

7 hours ago, soaring_penguin said:

Yes, the CPUs still get faster

They really didn't

Intel Core i7-3970X from the end of 2012 is virtually identical performance to a i7-8700K from 2017 and a i7-10700K from 2020 is only noticeably better because it has 8 cores instead of 6.

AMD5900 range launched at the end of 2020 is the first time in ~10 years there's been a significant improvement in x86_64 performance.

Three reasons for this IMHO;

Consumers went mobile, which basically put chips on a "hard reset" back to year 2000 levels of performance - but in your pocket (fun fact, the first iPhone launched in 2007...).

Mainstream software dev went SaaS, because the internet became mobile and widely available, and they could deploy on Linux machines that could actually use more than one thread efficiently in the same application.

Most consumer desktop PCs were windows which didn't offer developers APIs for multithreading until 2018, so none of the windows software could really make use of the 2012 hardware anyway.

7 hours ago, soaring_penguin said:

reminding me of the IBM cell processor used in the PS3, at the time revolutionary, but it needed rewriting of all programming tools. Which was a big burden and eventually Sony went  for a classic CPU.

There's more to that story though, because the CPUs in the PS4 and PS5 are much closer to the PS3 than the PS3 was to the CPUs used in the XBOX360, and Microsoft still doesn't have an OS that can really make use of them, whereas Apple, Sony and Linux (also behind Android and the same design as iStuff) have been doing it for decades

On 3/16/2021 at 1:03 AM, mSparks said:

But when he says "mobile and desktop will become the same" do you think that means they will make the mobile version more 3PD friendly ..... or the desktop version less 3PD friendly and more like the mobile app is now?

On 3/16/2021 at 2:03 AM, JGregory said:

No.

Steam Deck seems to fit the former "docking mobile more 3PD friendly"

XP11 has a good chance of getting featured there I think (Steam Deck Verified), which will do wonders for its visibility, I'm going to be pretty disappointed if XP12 doesn't top charts from what I've seen so far.

 

 

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

I'm going to be pretty disappointed if XP12 doesn't top charts from what I've seen so far.

Better prepare for disappointment then.

Also, you should really try running some demanding software on a 2012 int CPU and compare that to a 2021 CPU to verify your statement about performance, you'd be surprised.

Steam Deck is a gaming handheld. Why would LR have any interest in supporting gaming handhelds? They are not targeting gamers, but rather looking down on them?

Just now, rka said:

, but rather looking down on them?

Pure speculation.

21 minutes ago, rka said:

Steam Deck is a gaming handheld. Why would LR have any interest in supporting gaming handhelds? They are not targeting gamers, but rather looking down on them?

Laminar isn't looking down on gamers, we are 😅.

Seriously, the X-Plane code is (just like it´s MSFS counterpart) aiming to run on several platforms - the ultimate goal is to make more money, obviously - which funds development even for the hardcore aviation enthusiast.

X-Plane already runs on many mobile devices, and care is taken during development to make it scalable enough to enable this. I think Steam Deck is quite well above the hardware capabilities of most smartphones, so getting X-Plane to run (and tap) this market is a no-brainer.

Scalable means that you can turn off features if your hardware (i.e. a mobile phone) is not strong enough to run it satisfactory, as opposed to omitting a feature completely for fear it will overtax less capable systems.

 

23 minutes ago, Janov said:

Laminar isn't looking down on gamers, we are 😅.

That's gotta be that un-hostile tone we're trying to achieve here.

Thanks for your rather irrelevant follow-up though. It's good that XP is scalable from 286 to smartphone, it would be better if it could scale up to 2021 PC hardware. Sorry, but you basically asked for it 😉

Edited October 21, 20214 yr by rka

Well, things were looking not too bad (if not maybe a bit off-topic with the Windows vs Linux ranting)...unless you showed up with your instigating post, suggesting that "Laminar Research looks down on gamers".

 

1 hour ago, rka said:

They are not targeting gamers, but rather looking down on them?

and here is another one (hostile tone):

35 minutes ago, rka said:

Thanks for your rather irrelevant follow-up though.

You are a well-known X-Plane hater that did nothing but post on this forum to instigate and create hostility...you have no interest in a regular debate about X-Plane or it´s features.

People like you are the very reason for the hostile atmosphere on this forum and if the mods see any chance at keeping it alive and relevant, it will probably need banning (yes, yes, I know, we can "ignore" certain users 🙄) of folks like you for good, since they - for the life of them - can´t play nice.

Like proven by your initial post.

Edited October 21, 20214 yr by Janov

@Janov and @rka - Maybe I'm living on another planet but neither of what either of you said was hostile, so there no need to suddenly start the usual fun and games again. Shake hands and move on. The discussion has been good so far

 

Is XP12 still targeted for release in summer 2022?

I first heard it from a friend of a friend that knows somebody who was in a scuba diving holiday with a guy that looked like Austin and was told that 'next summer will be hot!'

Looks pretty clear to me! 😁

6 minutes ago, peroni said:

Is XP12 still targeted for release in summer 2022?

I don't believe they ever mentioned a release date.... but expect a lengthy beta process first

2 hours ago, rka said:

Also, you should really try running some demanding software on a 2012 int CPU and compare that to a 2021 CPU to verify your statement about performance, you'd be surprised.

up until last December my intel 2700k (discontinued in 2012, 4 core, 8 thread overclocked to 4.5Ghz) was still getting better fps in xp11 (50-80 on high settings, cpu limited) than most do now.

Its that I used to record

2 hours ago, rka said:

Steam Deck is a gaming handheld. 

unless you bought a high end AMD PC in the last 12 months chances are its got better performance than your desktop, its much more than any gaming handheld to hit the market before.

You've seen

right?

 

Edited October 21, 20214 yr by mSparks

22 minutes ago, mSparks said:

right?

Wait what.. simming whilst in a real plane copying the real route... Impressive 

On 10/18/2021 at 11:53 PM, mSparks said:

virtually no software with multithread support (MS only added std:thread to their build tools/VC++ in 2018), and even those that do are crippled by the ancient thread scheduler in the windows kernel.

Sorry, this is rubbish. Here is some education from 2005 for you. This guy ran 54965 threads on a Windows machine. The blogpost is so old, that it only exists on the wayback machine. I have programmed capable multi threading solutions with VS98/MFC6.

You are anyway mixing multithreading with multiprocessing. The former is not applied to increase overall performance, only the latter does.

Here you can see, how correct choices by the dev indeed cause dramatic performance increases.