When is Prepar3D going 64-bit?

TMK, yes and no. I would venture a pure guess - at least another year or more.

Vic

At some point

They're not saying when

Next!

TMK, yes and no. I would venture a pure guess - at least another year or more.

 

 

Vic

Good Luck With That! If that happens I'll happily switch to P3D exclusively!

Good Luck With That! If that happens I'll happily switch to P3D exclusively!

Bet you won't.

It will break retro-compatibility once and for all. Have you got the money to restart your addon purchases from scratch? And the time to wait while they go 64-bit?

Besides, does the civilian and military simulation market even have the hardware to accommodate 64-bit. MOST commercial flight simulators work on XP, some work on DOS.

L-M have already fixed the worst of the VAS and OOM issue. What is actually needed is nothing more than a bitch-slapping for developers who waste the VAS with memory-leeching, badly-implemented software that is the actual cause of most of the issues.

Thought for the Day: Foodstuffs have to carry the calorific content on their labels. Why dont ALL addons for FS have to carry a VAS statement... verified by an independent source.

LM IMHO has three options here:

1. Migrate the existing code to 64 bit and "just" deal with the then broken function calls, memory management issues and calculation precision stuff

2. Write a completely new 64bit LM sim (=independent of the MS license)

3. Don't do it at all.

I'm thinking there are pro's and con's to all three approaches, and which one they take will probably depend exclusively on a management decision based on the necessary effort in relation to perceived benefit.

1. could lead to a largely backwards compatible 64bit version. I would expect scenery to work just like before. For external programs using SimConnect there could be 32bit and 64 bit versions of the DLL in parallel. But all the other stuff may run into difficulties when LVARs formats and memory addresses change. Plus there is a risk that a 32bit DLL will just not work with the 64bit P3D and would have to be recompiled as well.

2. Has its benefits too, it is much easier to start fresh with all your knowledge than to constantly try to understand what somebody else did and why it stopped working.

3. Is the option of choice if the effort would be so massive that it outweighs any benefit, even from a "marketing guy" point of view. But then again, the dev team has to generate todo's for themselves anyway, or they will be downsized. So internally they will make a strong case for 64bit I guess.

Bet you won't.

It will break retro-compatibility once and for all. Have you got the money to restart your addon purchases from scratch? And the time to wait while they go 64-bit?

When X-Plane went from 32 to 64-bit, most, if not all add-ons worked perfectly. You can run X-Plane 7/8 aircraft and scenery in X-Plane 10 64-bit without issues. I don't see that being any different with P3D (if such a move was made);).

L-M have already fixed the worst of the VAS and OOM issue. What is actually needed is nothing more than a bitch-slapping for developers who waste the VAS with memory-leeching, badly-implemented software that is the actual cause of most of the issues.

At the end of the day, regardless of how well something is optimised, there is going to be a need/requirement sooner or later for 64-bit. Attempting to keep within the amount currently available, limits what could otherwise be possible. The increasing usage of OSM data for scenery development is proof that there is such a requirement. For example (and staying with scenery) maintaining a low LOD radius, purely for the sake of minimising OMM, seriously limits what P3D could offer. The fact that it already offers so much in 32-bit is a testament to its quality programming!

Thought for the Day: Foodstuffs have to carry the calorific content on their labels. Why dont ALL addons for FS have to carry a VAS statement... verified by an independent source.

Why? Because the memory used on a single add-on can differ considerably, depending of the rendering settings set by that particular user.

I know X-Plane/FSX are my primary simulators, but I have quite a fondness for P3D, so I hope you don't mind me chiming in:D.

Regards

Dom

Your comments are always welcome Dom..............................as long as they agree with mine!

:)

Vic

Bet you won't.

It will break retro-compatibility once and for all. Have you got the money to restart your addon purchases from scratch? And the time to wait while they go 64-bit?

 

Besides, does the civilian and military simulation market even have the hardware to accommodate 64-bit. MOST commercial flight simulators work on XP, some work on DOS.

 

L-M have already fixed the worst of the VAS and OOM issue. What is actually needed is nothing more than a bitch-slapping for developers who waste the VAS with memory-leeching, badly-implemented software that is the actual cause of most of the issues.

 

Thought for the Day: Foodstuffs have to carry the calorific content on their labels. Why dont ALL addons for FS have to carry a VAS statement... verified by an independent source.

Sorry Mallcott, your response of 64bit over 32bit is totally non-factual. This is the type of info that sends many into a purchase panic and stays with old technology. If you are using Windows Vista, 7, 8/8.1 or 10 as 64bit, you are already using pseudo 32bit/64bit apps and O/S. And we have had 64bit hardware for personal use, since the first AMD Athlon and Opteron in 1999, and IBM / Apple's PowerPC in 1997. Intel got it into their servers in 2001, and AMD launched the first PC's with full function and chipset 64bit in 2003. Intel only followed in 2004 with 64bit PC's.

Why do you think there is a default \Program Files (now 64bit) folder and \Program Files (x86) (new 32bit) folder, on systems with Windows running 64bit. They all work in perfect synchronicity. So please correct your post and stop indicating that one will have to buy everything from scratch.

I am running Microsoft Flight Sim 2004 on Windows 10, with no issues, a very old 32bit app running on an up to date 64bit modern O/S. How's that possible if we used your supplied info. Rather let those that really know, understand, educated with diplomas and degrees, and understand the technology better, respond to OP's as above. You are supplying total inaccuracies.

And although you mentioned the VAS issue, this has nothing to really do with 32bit, as in reality, 32bit can only register 3.2GB of physical RAM, a physical and scientific limit for nearly all known PC's and laptops, unless one has one of those rare processors with PAE (Physical Address Extensions). The VAS issue is the virtual address space ranges made available by an O/S to a process, and is limited to 4GB with apps like FSX, not directly linked to the physical RAM. That's why P3D has resolved it within a 32bit app such as P3D from v3.0 onwards, without needing the address space of a 64bit system. That is far better in fixing this before one launches a 64bit app, ala what FSX:SE has tried to do, they still have the generic issues of FSX!!!!! Commercial flightsims have for a long time run on 64bit, and custom built in many cases, on 'nixes (Unix, Linux). These O/S's have been way ahead of anything MS in 64bit software. We are exposed to this now in our level with LM and P3D, and them releasing it to anyone wishing to buy it. So again you have it wrong.

Lastly we are heading for the ultimate technology Y2K issues by 2038. By this date we have to have all systems and software running 64bit, to calculate and program anything on computers beyond this date, and it's far more serious than the last Y2K, in flipping a date back to 1980.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

Regards

Andrew Brown

Sorry Mallcott, your response of 64bit over 32bit is totally non-factual. This is the type of info that sends many into a purchase panic and stays with old technology. If you are using Windows Vista, 7, 8/8.1 or 10 as 64bit, you are already using pseudo 32bit/64bit apps and O/S. And we have had 64bit hardware for personal use, since the first AMD Athlon and Opteron in 1999, and IBM / Apple's PowerPC in 1997. Intel got it into their servers in 2001, and AMD launched the first PC's with full function and chipset 64bit in 2003. Intel only followed in 2004 with 64bit PC's.

Mallcot is referring to add-ons for the sim and isn't entirely wrong. Add-ons such and terrain mesh and textures should be very easy to move to a 64 bit sim. The problems start when you get into aircraft, gauges and any other add-on that uses compiled 32 bit code. These will most likely need to, at the very least, be recompiled, if not re-written. This will lead to many developers having to spend time and money that most will probably want to recoup. Hence the remarks about having to repurchase add-ons for a 64 bit sim upgrade. And this doesn't take into account the opportunity for the sim developer to make major changes as part of the upgrade. Maintaining backwards compatibility has its advantages, such as FS2004 aircraft being flown in FSX, but it also restricts the developer sooner or later.