Future development for 64bit

[aero-3fsx]

I see the latest announcement from Turbulent Designs is that they will develop for 64bit sims only to ensure that they can take full advantage of the latest tech

I think other developers will go the same route as 32bit may impose severe restrictions on the end results of the products they make

So far we have had it very good. A year ago even OrbX inferred that 64bit upgrade would incur an upgrade fee which I fully support but was not necessary

Many planes are being updated often with simple new installers or with recompiled code

Some of the new tech coming from OrbX may be exclusively be for 64bit as they have 4 sims to market to

I think with the much greater potential that 64bit has for addons as well as sims, the 32bit restrictions need to be left in the sands of history

For those who wait for new sims to stablilise, make the move as soon as your most important addons are usable or find alternatives and let our hobby go forward free from unnecessary limits

[anothercarbon]

64 bit is obviously current technology, but it doesn't affect things as much as people think it does. The fact that all the FSX-based sims have a CPU clockspeed bottleneck is much more important. Also, scenery is largely about textures (images). It can't be that difficult to have two versions of graphical files if that's even an issue since it's binary files that need to be recompiled. OrbX wouldn't have provided free 64 bit upgrades if it were such a huge hurdle. There's also the matter of animations, but again OrbX didn't seem to have a big problem with upgrading those.

 

You should worry more about flight sim tribalism than being kept back by people using 32-bit FSX. A lot of programs simply have two versions so it shouldn't concern you. Not everyone is entitled to a P3D license (and spare me mental gymnastics about how almost everyone can use it - it can't). OrbX would be losing customers if it focused exclusively on P3D users, which is why you see them working with Dovetail and Aerofly (and seemed open to X-Plane for a second). Ultimately the more customers they have, the more resources OrbX has to make you happy.

 

FSX will eventually die, but until FSW or Aerofly are more fleshed out, it's going to have a large userbase.

 

There's also a limit to how much P3D can advance. Optimization and RAM only go so far unless LM programs a completely different product. I think the people who are really impressed by P3D are those who have used FSX for so long that they think incremental improvements are good enough.

[Doc_Z]

No gymnastics necessary, just curiosity.  Why can't you use P3D?

[Dusterman]

I have four different 64 bit sims installed, will remove FSXSE as soon as Orbx updates their airports for P3Dv4.  64 bits allows much better autogen and seems to provide smoother control of aircraft.  The number of trees and buildings in 64 bits is amazing and the base FSW airports are much better than base FSXSE airports, depending on how much work Dovetail has put in them.  All the 64 bit sims are going to be improved over time, looks like FSXSE will be kept for the current user base but no upgrades.  Fully agree with aero-3fsx that the 64 bit sims allow developers to do much more than they could in 32 bits.  If I have to pay an upgrade fee or buy a new product, that is the price of progress.

[Nick Cooper]

1 hour ago, Doc_Z said:

No gymnastics necessary, just curiosity.  Why can't you use P3D?

 

and no discussion of the P3D licencing system either please.