https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/289874-Future-support-for-Win-32-and-DX10

"Future support for Win 32 and DX10

Hi Everyone,

As you know we spend a good deal of time planning for the future, and one issue (and opportunity) we are considering is the effect of supporting Win32 and DX10, and the benefits we would get if we were to drop them. As you know, we support leading edge technology like 4K, 8K, VR, and with things like compute shaders in Horizons we really push the boundaries overall, but there are restrictions with Win32 – particularly the amount of memory we can address at one time – and with DX10 in terms of requiring an alternative rendering solution in our code. Dropping these two would help us support high end effects with a better result – to make the game better.

About 0.5% of players that have installed Elite Dangerous have used their game on Win32 at some time. Some of these machines are capable of running Win64 (ie the hardware would support it). With DX10 (fewer than 2% of players) it is more tricky as you may need to upgrade the graphics card on such machines.

We do appreciate that although those are small percentages, that is still a significant number of people affected. We want to give as much notice as we can. It will be at least six months before we would make the change, but we want to know your opinions first, and to give warning that the change will need to come at some point, so please let us know.

Thanks.

David Braben"

Whilst I understand games development has to progress & they can't be expected to run games on CBM64 like computers, this will screw some folk over that just can't afford to upgrade their systems.

"What's so bad?" I hear you mutter.

The game is online only, even if you only play solo mode, you still have to be online.
As soon as you load the launcher, it'll patch everything to 64bit etc, meaning in a few months ED may not be playable for some that were playing it the day before the patch.

If only Braben had stuck to his "yes, you will be able to play this offline"...

Time to upgrade those of you that need to & still want to continue playing.

I'd just say this illustrates yet another reason to not buy games for single player that require you to be on-line.

If i was a dev and i had an alpha/beta or anything where it was being tested i would force online for data collection, metrics, and to keep all builds updated to the latest from the shop. You cant effectively test code if everyone's all over the map.

That said, if i was a developer I would honor my prior statements and create an offline mode at release and only after I disabled all beta accounts and shutdown the beta server so everyone would need to download a release client.. to help hinder the pirates a little bit.

Exactly what I was thinking. By now people should know it is online only. This usually means the servers can be turned off for all or some players at any moment. If for the sake of easier development they turn access off for those who use outdated software/hardware where less than 2% of the people are affected, I would not care much.

If it would be an offline game, I would suggest not updating or turning off automatic updates if possible, but since this game is always online and seem to force updates, well given the history you were warned before.

What's so bad?

Actually I guess one would get access again when upgrading software/hardware.

Welp, it's about to happen.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/370612

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/6tlc60/end_of_32bits_elite_dangerous_support_for_24/

Someone worked out that it's only 210 (guess work) players that will lose access to a game they paid for, but that's still bad I think.

Yeah, it's good that games are advancing, but more proof that Fdev should've allowed an offline game mode like originally intended.
Just hope those players hadn't spent money on in game stuff as well as the game itself, as I can imagine they'd be really pissed off.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/359320/discussions/0/1470841715975921323/

" Thank you for purchasing our overpriced benchmark software . "

Maybe those still using Win7 (Dx10) aren't so prone to spend money on this problematic game..

EDIT: oops, DX number mistake

Windows 7 and even Vista have Dx11... that someone would only be able to use Dx10 is highly unlikely at this point.

I think that's a given risk you take when you decide to buy an online-only game, whether it's ED, Destiny or WoW.
It's different if they would force something like this on an offline game, but that is not the case here.

As someone who recently quit Elite Dangerous, and who accepted it as an online-only game, this news is not a really a deterrent. What made me quit the game was not the online-only matter, it was the gameworld and the gameplay.

I wish I could upvote this more than once. I am always careful to make sure the single player games I am buying are totally offline.

If your GPU does not support DX11 yet, maybe it is time to replace it. You can get a very cheap and basic card as long as it is modern and the cost will pay itself back in energy savings. I know I saved the cost for my 2nd hand DX11 GPU in less than a year with lower power draw despite it being more powerful than my DX10 GPU.

The Windows 32bit vs 64bit is a bigger problem as at least in Vista and 7 you cannot change just like that but need to buy a new Windows license. Even if the game works on McIntosh, it does not work in Wine so there is not that option either :-(

When I heard it was going to be always online, I lost all interest in this particular game. I am not totally averese to MMOs, I play one a little and have tried some others, but what I was looking for in ED was not this. <shrugs> Hopefully there are people enjoying it so it was worth making.

Out of curiosity, I had a look in a big online shop and to my surprise they STILL have some GPUs for sale NOT capable of DX11... Why do they not send those to destruction or sell for a pittance?! Charging over €100 for a card way weaker than this or last generation's integrated (Intel included) goes beyond my understanding.

So who are the people who are affected? I presume all Elite Dangerous players have 64bit CPUs, so is it about requiring 64bit Windows (no matter if it is Windows 7, as long as it is 64bit), and a graphics card capable of running DirectX11?

My simple solution: go ahead with this change, and offer a full refund to all the affected people (who according to the metrics are playing it on a machine which can't handle 64bit and DX11). After all, he said only a very small percentage are affected, so it shouldn't be so hard to compensate to all of them.


When I read the original message, I first thought this was about "sorry we will leave Win32 behind, and go to Windows Store/UWP instead". Luckily it was not, that would have caused a true shitstorm in my head even though I don't even have the game.

As an ex-Backer who asked (and obtained) a full refund because of the always online DRM and who is still very bitter about it; I fail to see the issue here.

If you play an "online" game you have to expect that said game will, over time, either be dropped by its devs or will have to "upgrade" to newer, up to date, technology. You cannot expect the devs to forever support older technology just because that's the technology that was available when the game first come out.

That's the price you have to accept when you play always-online games, be it MMO, F2P, or server side logic/universe like Elite Dangerous.

And we are in 2017, having an OS/Computer that doesn't support 64bits is at the same level as still trying to use Windows XP.

Except that MS's newest OS (Windows 10) still has a 32 bit version.

Yes but I think you can freely change between the 32 and 64bit versions in Windows 10, right? Oh sure it would entail a reinstallation (guessing here), which is a lot of work but still. Maybe that printer, which was the reason to go 32bit, or whatever that did not have a 64bit driver has one now or maybe said printer broke already. Of course, it might be a much more expensive peripheral but then it would most likely not be a machine intended for play.