A-10 C 64bit version still planned?

[jctrnacty]

Hi, I listened to whole interview with Wags but one question remains, is there still plan to include 64bit executable with A-10 C?

 

I remember, Wags said that 64 bit experimental version is in the works.

 

Thanks for great sim and good luck to ED.

[Wags]

Yes

[Waldo_II]

Quick and to the point.

[MTFDarkEagle]

Exactly how we like it ;-)

[jctrnacty]

GREAT!!!!

 

Thanks for reply Wags.

[hassata]

OP. Any advantages to running like that. Performance hopefully?

[Insanatrix]

Yes

 

Do you intend on implementing a 64 bit environment in black shark as well or is it just going to be for A-10C?

[Pilotasso]

As said moons ago, all DCS modules are to be brought back to the latest standards of the newer DCS module.

[winz]

OP. Any advantages to running like that. Performance hopefully?

Memory, when you look around the forums, you will notice few people already hitting the 32bit process memory limit wall.

[sweinhart3]

yep. the sim never reaches above 2.5gb memory usage. Additional ram just allows other programs to simultaneously be stored in memory.

[Frederf]

As said moons ago, all DCS modules are to be brought back to the latest standards of the newer DCS module.

 

What standards? There are some new features like modeling an extra turbine temperature or something that wasn't done with the Ka-50. The FAC(A) features. Are these the standards that all DCS modules will inherit or is it more sound engine, shader engine, etc.?

[dooom]

this is great news wags... so many sim titles have yet to take the leap of faith into the 64 bit world.

 

thank you

[sobek]

What standards? There are some new features like modeling an extra turbine temperature or something that wasn't done with the Ka-50. The FAC(A) features. Are these the standards that all DCS modules will inherit or is it more sound engine, shader engine, etc.?

 

IIRC, the team tries to bring old modules to run in the newest engine, but reserves the possibility that modules might only be MP compatible (if problems occur). Do not expect for older airframes to be significantly improved with newer iterations (to be honest, what much is there to improve on?;))

 

You are IMHO a little fast to assume that the FAC feature will be in though, as this was, to my best knowledge, neither confirmed nor denied at this point (note that my opinion on this is as good as the next guy's).

[Pilotasso]

What standards? There are some new features like modeling an extra turbine temperature or something that wasn't done with the Ka-50. The FAC(A) features. Are these the standards that all DCS modules will inherit or is it more sound engine, shader engine, etc.?

 

 

DX10, true multi core support, 64 bit technology along with a bigger version of the map, etc etc. Its still open to change.

[EtherealN]

To be a bit picky, DCS:BS already has multicore support: the sound engine runs in a separate thread after 1.0.2.

 

That said, yeah, it would be pretty nice to get more components separated into their own threads.

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

OP. Any advantages to running like that. Performance hopefully?

It is my understanding that, one of the benefits of the 64bit code is a much bigger world that what we have now.

[EtherealN]

Yeah, basically the theoretical adress space limit for a 32-bit app is 4GB (including video ram), excluding OS peculiarities. 64-bit processes has a theoretical adress space limit around 4 petabytes (or couple hundred gigabytes - depends on architecture/OS peculiarities - note that some OSes also artificially lower the limit, like the cheaper Windows versions are limited to 16GB if memory serves). Basically - 64-bit allows a process to keep track of more information without dumping things into files which for a computer game is usually not very practical.

Edited June 19, 2010 by EtherealN

[Insanatrix]

It would allow for a much bigger preloaded world not really a bigger world. Instead of preloading say 100km of terrain you could preload 1,000-10,000km of terrain into system memory to be paged to video memory. Also you have unit LOD's that must be loaded as well. It should allow for more units on the battlefield with less slowdown as they don't have to be paged from the hard drive. That doesn't mean that you can have like 1,000 tanks firing at each other at one time though because that is more dependant on processing power for physics and such, but actually having say 1,000 tanks on the battlefield at one time would be much more likely with more resources allowed. That's just as an example.

Edited June 19, 2010 by Insanatrix

[kingneptune117]

Yeah, basically the theoretical adress space limit for a 32-bit app is 4GB (including video ram), excluding OS peculiarities. 64-bit processes has a theoretical adress space limit around 4 petabytes (or couple hundred gigabytes - depends on architecture/OS peculiarities - note that some OSes also artificially lower the limit, like the cheaper Windows versions are limited to 16GB if memory serves). Basically - 64-bit allows a process to keep track of more information without dumping things into files which for a computer game is usually not very practical.

 

Sorry for not being in the know, but I just put together a 1000 dollar gaming rig and your telling me that i will have to wait for a 64 bit version of DCS A-10C to come out after the 32 comes out? Or will I be able to still run the 32. Oh, silly me, forgot to mention i have 64bit windows installed due to the RAM advantages.

[winz]

64bit windows is able to run 32bit applications. But 32bit applications got an inherited limitation of 2GB virtual ram per process (no matter how many physical Ram you have installed) on 32bit system. This limit can be somewhat higher on 64bit system.

 

The 64bit application has a much higher memory limit.

[EtherealN]

It would allow for a much bigger preloaded world not really a bigger world. Instead of preloading say 100km of terrain you could preload 1,000-10,000km of terrain into system memory to be paged to video memory.

 

You are forgetting that we need to keep terrain around all units on the map loaded as well as run the terrain to be accessible to the AI and so on. Terrain is not just a graphical thing here - indeed the graphics is a relatively minor aspect.

 

Sorry for not being in the know, but I just put together a 1000 dollar gaming rig and your telling me that i will have to wait for a 64 bit version of DCS A-10C to come out after the 32 comes out? Or will I be able to still run the 32. Oh, silly me, forgot to mention i have 64bit windows installed due to the RAM advantages.

 

64-bit Windows can still run 32-bit applications. When you investigate your "pure" windows file structure on C you'll find two very similar directories:

 

C:\Program Files\

and

C:\Program Files(x86)\

 

By default windows will install 32-bit applications into the x86 directory, where something that's called a "translation layer" will, well, "translate". Such translation does come at a small (microscopic even - you will not notice it) performance cost, but it's vastly better than running a 32-bit Windows even if we forget the memory amount issues - since pretty much all processors on the market for desktops today are 64-bit and you will get benefits from being able to use the 64-bit instruction sets on your processor. So a net profit in all aspects.

[slug88]

Furthermore, where did you read that the 64bit version would come out after the 32bit? It sounds like they'll both be available simultaneously.

 

 

Sorry for not being in the know, but I just put together a 1000 dollar gaming rig and your telling me that i will have to wait for a 64 bit version of DCS A-10C to come out after the 32 comes out? Or will I be able to still run the 32. Oh, silly me, forgot to mention i have 64bit windows installed due to the RAM advantages.

[Insanatrix]

Didn't touch on graphics of any sort in my post mainly the fact that more resources would allow for preloading or caching more data to RAM instead of to virtual memory or pagefile. Doesn't matter where the terrain is it has to be loaded into memory even before it goes to video memory to be rendered or displayed. Same for units and any sort of "data" that would hold a part of memory. And 2 ^ 64 or 18.4 exabytes roughly is the limitation of 64bit although yes, Different version of windows do limit that.

Edited June 20, 2010 by Insanatrix

[EtherealN]

Didn't touch on graphics of any sort in my post

 

"of terrain into system memory to be paged to video memory."

Sorry if I misunderstood, but that there made it seem like you were talking about graphics.

 

And 2 ^ 64 or 18.4 exabytes roughly is the limitation of 64bit although yes, Different version of windows do limit that.

 

Not the limitation of current 64-bit implementations on desktop computers - that there depends a lot on how the adresses work. There's a lot of ways to implement memory handling and still call it "64-bit" that result in very different limits, sometimes as "little" as a quarter petabyte. I am unsure about the limits of current AMD and Intel implementations, but they're not at the level that 2^64 as a simple number would make you think last I checked.

 

However, I realise that I was a bit unclear in how I phrased my earlier post, apologies. Basically there's theoretical limit of a general implementation, theoretical limit of a phrase ("64-bit" can mean so many things), then practical limits of specific implementations (like "chip X") and finally artificial and/or practical limits of specific operating systems.

 

Also:

2^64 = 18 446 744 073 709 551 616 = 18.4 exabit = 2 305 843 009 213 693 952 = 2.3 exabyte.

Edited June 20, 2010 by EtherealN

[winz]

Didn't touch on graphics of any sort in my post mainly the fact that more resources would allow for preloading or caching more data to RAM instead of to virtual memory or pagefile.

That's wrong assumption. The application works only with virtual memory. It doesn't know whether it's data are in physical ram (nor does it knows their real addresses), or stored in page file. That's the OS buisiness.

If a 32bit application will run out if its space, then it will crash. No pagefiles, nothing, thats OS business