I consider eSims (maker of Steelbeasts) a pretty conservative development group. I think part of it is culture, but a big part of it is their DoD/MoD customer base.
That said, there head guy had some interesting comments on their thought process on recently rolling out a 64 bit beta:
Quote from sSnake:
We will continue to support 32 bit versions for a while; right now it is planned to have it at least in the next major upgrade. How much longer beyond that is an open question for two reasons:
The memory demand for RAM is rather increasing, the more detailed the terrain gets
This is an unbroken trend; it appears most likely that this trend will continue for years to come. This simply puts systems that are limited to 3 GByte accessible RAM at an ever growing disadvantage.
32 and 64 bit versions will remain incompatible in network sessions
Already it appears as if the 64 bit users are a vast majority. This casts some doubt about the viability to maintain a critical mass of online players limited to 32 bit game sessions.
Unquote
from this thread: http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbforums/showthread.php?t=20911
I remember a long discussion, and one that pops up quite often, over on the BFC forums. They have chosen to not invest in 64 bit development. It took quite a bit a of pushing and cajoling to even get them to accept the flag in 32 bit XP/Win7 systems that gives an extra Gig of RAM to the game.
How many people still use a 32 bit gaming system here? I haven't touched one in probably four years myself.
I am using a 64bit system for over 3 years now.
64 bit is really the way to go for simulation. X-Plane has moved on. FSX is still stuck in 32 bit and it is suffering from Out Of Memory issues.
Re: Battlefront.com and 64 bit support.
That's a head scratcher for sure, 64 bit development in itself is trivial and transparent. Legacy code, or code depending on third party libraries, is usually the problem. Generating 32 and 64 bit binaries is just a matter of recompiling the executables, using different front ends. Both Microsoft Visual Studio and GNU g++ allow to do this just by switching a flag on or off.
My personal theory is that they have legacy essential code at the very heart of the engine which is "broken" by the 64 bit version of the compiler - stuff like assuming that void* is represented with the same number of bytes as an integer, something not rare in C/C++ systems in the 1990 s and early 2000s dealing with the problem of storing and loading complex object models from a binary file - which for whatever the reason has been deemed to be too expensive too rewrite or review.
But that's kicking the can down the road, and I guess that sooner of later they'll have to address that.
Other than offering a lower cost daily productivity os, I'm not even sure why 32 bit is even continued.
Quote from: RyanE on July 21, 2014, 06:26:04 AM
How many people still use a 32 bit gaming system here? I haven't touched one in probably four years myself.
There's no reason software companies should still be tied to the very limited RAM issues of 32-bit. I'd be surprised to see anyone still using hardware loaded with 32-bit OSes these days and running modern games, unless they were actively avoiding any remotely new operating system.
I've had 64 bit processors and OSes since around 2007. It doesn't sound like that long but it's a couple lifetimes in Computer Years. On the third desktop to be precise.
At work we switched to 64bit long time ago.
Ignore this.. Read wrongly.
With regards to BFC, if they can continue to provide at top notch game in 32bit then, they can stay that way.
64bit machines can still run them anyway.
The problem is that the 3Mb limit is already being hit in CM. That is why you see huge load times and crashes on some of the bigger scenarios. The main problem is that even some medium-sized scenarios can hit the limit if they run for a couple hours and have peaks where a ton of stuff is happening.
I have always suspected that the used the CM1 engine as a kernal for the new engine and that might be why they are reluctant to really dig into it.
Ah. I have not played a lot CMx2 except for CMSF and I'm not aware that their engine had already reached the limit.
I just find upgrading my OS to be a big hassle. If I had a lot of free time, I'd enjoy the technical challenge, but with small kids and a demanding job, I'd just much rather spend time playing games than upgrading hardware and software.
That said, I am ordering 8 GB of RAM, a Solid State Flash drive, and a copy of Win 8 for my birthday. Lord only knows when I'll have the time to build it, but I'm gonna try!
Quote from: FarAway Sooner on July 21, 2014, 10:53:44 PM
That said, I am ordering 8 GB of RAM, a Solid State Flash drive, and a copy of Win 8 for my birthday. Lord only knows when I'll have the time to build it, but I'm gonna try!
Oh Damn. I'm so sorry.
That's the worst Microsoft OS released for PCs. It should've been limited to mobile touch devices, and not stuck into regular computers.
I have the urge to throw a pc with Windows 8 out the actual window every time I use that PoS OS. That's saying something, as I was a pc tech for about a decade and had never quite got to that point before, even with the most screwed up machines. I put Windows 7 on my most recent build. It's an efficient dream, not a uselessly obstructing and unintuitive piece of crap like Win8.
I recommend you save yourself the frustration and get Win7-64.
I find Win 8 totally fine and better than Win7. Blazing fast. Don't need a start menu either. That's old school.
What exactly do you dislike? My only complaint are driver issues.
Just a little sidestep, not trying to go off topic too much; but I was reluctant to go to Win 8 as well, but I am glad I did.
I have no diver issues eventhough I have very recent hardware. The OS never crashes and runs much faster.
I did get rid of all the 'new' stuff though and made Win 8 into a Win 7 clone as far as desktop goes, but all else is fine.
Most games have higher FPS too. I like it. I just don't like the initial marketing push for the OS which was clearly focussed on mobile devices. With 8.1 there have been lots of love for PC users again.
Other than drivers, I see no reason to go out of my way to avoid win8. You can run it just like its Win7. My father-in-law was all a-scared about win8 on his new laptop. I set it to boot right to the traditional desktop and bang, he doesn't even know its win8.
It runs a heck of a lot faster, especially 64 bit apps. Like Google, it synchs between all of my machines, and if you like the tiles, well there you go. I have no complaints, other than updating from 8 to 8.1 killing my CM2 activations.
I made the switch to 64-bit when Vista was released. Other Vista issues aside, after the first month I never had a driver issue. IIRC there where only a few drivers I couldn't get working, most notably was an off brand camera I had gotten. But all my major hardware was covered to various degrees. Since then everything has worked fine.
As for games, the only games I've really noticed it have been games I've modded heavily, Skyrim and KSP. Luckily one of the modders for Skyrim was able to use SKSE to extend how much memory the game can use. Before the memory patch I had to be careful with the number of mods I was using. Now I can run all the highest texture packs and any game play mods I want and my computer doesn't even flinch. I haven't gotten around to modding the new version of KSP to see how the new 64-bit version improves performance or the number of mods I can run. In v0.24 i was able ti run a fair number of mods, but I had to use texture reducers in order to not hit the 3.5GB limit.
Quote from: jomni on July 22, 2014, 02:52:32 AM
I find Win 8 totally fine and better than Win7. Blazing fast. Don't need a start menu either. That's old school.
What exactly do you dislike? My only complaint are driver issues.
As usual with most new Windows OS releases, they've buried a lot of functionality an extra step or two further down in the UI. This one is the worst of the bunch that I've seen. My opinion can be written off as just being resistant to change, but I find it more of a pain in the ass to get to many things. Like Settings & Control Panel stuff that had taken some navigation to get to before, but now it's really a scattered mess. I suppose that if you never had to tweak or fix stuff, then you don't have to worry about that, but it's something that I still occasionally do for friends & family.
Driver issues are always a problem for a year or two after a new one is released. That's to be expected.
If I ever picked up Win8, I'd end up looking for a proper Windows interface add-on for it. I actually love the start menu and navigation in the previous ones. >:(
No need for addons anymore. Its available in Windows now or, if you just want to run something simple and be done with it I recommend Start8 by Stardock.
Quote from: Nefaro on July 22, 2014, 09:57:13 AM
Quote from: jomni on July 22, 2014, 02:52:32 AM
I find Win 8 totally fine and better than Win7. Blazing fast. Don't need a start menu either. That's old school.
What exactly do you dislike? My only complaint are driver issues.
As usual with most new Windows OS releases, they've buried a lot of functionality an extra step or two further down in the UI. This one is the worst of the bunch that I've seen. My opinion can be written off as just being resistant to change, but I find it more of a pain in the ass to get to many things. Like Settings & Control Panel stuff that had taken some navigation to get to before, but now it's really a scattered mess. I suppose that if you never had to tweak or fix stuff, then you don't have to worry about that, but it's something that I still occasionally do for friends & family.
Driver issues are always a problem for a year or two after a new one is released. That's to be expected.
If I ever picked up Win8, I'd end up looking for a proper Windows interface add-on for it. I actually love the start menu and navigation in the previous ones. >:(
I agree most of the features are not explained. But it is no different than Win7. Right click on the start ison and select Control Panel, or any number of the same options as Win7.
Quote from: RyanE on July 21, 2014, 07:54:05 PM
The problem is that the 3Mb limit is already being hit in CM. That is why you see huge load times and crashes on some of the bigger scenarios. The main problem is that even some medium-sized scenarios can hit the limit if they run for a couple hours and have peaks where a ton of stuff is happening.
I have always suspected that the used the CM1 engine as a kernal for the new engine and that might be why they are reluctant to really dig into it.
More than the "kernel" I would say that they reused the "boring bits", probably stuff like the file and network input/output systems. Especially in games that support real-time multi-player, keeping in sync the state of the game amongst the "peers" is a fricking pain in the arse that people only wish to revisit once in a decade. And the more detailed is the simulation, the greater is the pain. From what I can gather reading about Steel Beasts, I think the devs did as much "refurbishing" of the older bits in the engine as they could within their internally set deadlines and decided to call it a day. Hence the lingering incompatibility between 32 and 64 bit clients.
Indeed CMx2, especially with the bigger maps in the 3.0 revision of the engine, is approaching a stage where accessing more than those "paltry" 3 GBytes is a must.