Frontier has announced that Elite: Dangerous will be dropping support for Win32 and DX10. According to the team, only small percentage of its players use Win32 and DX10, and that by dropping these two it would help the development team to support high end effects with a better result.
As Frontier claimed:
“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.”
Regarding the percentages, only 0.5% of players are using Win32 and fewer than 2% of players use a DX10 GPU.
“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.”
Frontier concluded that it will drop support for both Win32 and DX10 in six months.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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This game supported DX10 and Win32? Huh, who knew.
Good. No matter the few casualties, Win32 should already be dead in high-end-specs gaming… and the very same for DX10.
I hope that more and more game developers will drop old versions of DirectX. Only in new API like DX12, Metal, Vulkan we can get full power of new GPU, multi core CPU etc.
Really, Metal? I personally don’t think devs should put effort towards an API no one will utilize anymore than they should support Win32 or DX10 (for the same reasons really).
“Really, Metal?”
New version of Metal in OSX 10.12 will support AAA games. First AAA title will be new Deus Ex.
I hear ya, and am aware of the few cases it will be fully utilized, but just like dx10 it’s an extremely low user percentage. Speaking of Elite, didn’t they effectively drop support for Mac due to development relating to Metal and shader support?
*first and last.
Why not metal? I think that it’s great that after all those years Apple starts to invest money to port AAA titles like DeusEx to Metal API. If Apple use serious cash to support developers OSX may be more popular among gamers
I’m glad to see that in 10.12 Metal will be robust enough to be used for AAA games. I have a Mac that I use for games and so far Metal hasn’t set the world on fire since it up until then did not support key features that AAA games need. The vast majority of games use Apple’s antiquated OpenGL support. Newer games using that in conjunction with OpenCL. So far I’ve only played ONE game that uses Metal on my Mac and that’s Refunct… and the only way I could even tell is the Steam overlay didn’t work in it.
I’m all for 3 APIs really still wish they would just use one API for all method and Vulkan would be it. Be easier for dev’s i would think.
As long I can remember developers always want to use best API for each system. Good integration with platform is the key. This is why nearly all developers use DirectX instead OpenGL on Windows and developers on PlayStation use GNM/GNMX instead of OpenGL. This is why DeusEx developer use Metal on Apple OSX. Best API for each system.
Every non fanboy knows directx was a lot better then OpenGl dev’s claimed it was a nightmare or programming back in the day in modern times. Vulkan has not had these complaints. Not some crazy Vulkan fanboy BTW but i really think it would be better for us gamers and developers.
Programming for Vulkan means more market share. Also there was times were OpenGL outperformed Directx but following Microsoft was the better option as they really were the best to work for. I couldn’t care less what Linux fanboys say before XP Linux was just to complicated to gain support for gamers.
Now Ubuntu is not hard at all to use and i say this as a long time Microsoft user who didn’t switch to Linux and will definitely not switch to Mac. But like i said its not XP days its 2016 and Linux and Ubuntu are perfectly fine for 95% of the market. Only thing needed is support. If i was a dev i wouldn’t even consider anything else but Vulkan.
rather metal than win32/dx10
anyone still play this?
Great news. Can’t wait to see the improvement..
Legacy Engines with Legacy Coding & Legacy Developers, resulting in Legacy-bound end-products.
Welcome to the Video Game Industry – where the legacy just never ends – well, until the OS changes break something, & they’re too lazy to fix it because they already jacked all your money.
Agreed, wouldn’t call it lazy though.
Well, in many cases, it is. If the studio still exists, & the IP is still being worked on, there’s no reason for a couple of developers to take a bit of time & slap on a band-aid on the older games. Especially the older ones, who actually worked on the games that are currently breaking down due to time.
In the case of IP’s that got sold, traded, or auctioned off when Studios shut down, true, that’s another thing entirely. Even so, however, there is I suppose an argument to be made that creators could &/or should be more responsible with their creations, much like how directors are now returning to decades-old movies in order to oversee proper, high-quality HD restorations of them.
Then, of course, in some cases, there’s the publisher angle cock-blocking you “because old” or whatnot – whatever delusional excuse they’ve managed to come up with in order to justify not supporting old games, even to the point where they think slapping on a band-aid & putting it on GOG won’t earn them any profits what-so-ever.
Unfortunately it’s not that simple (we tend to look at our (the consumer) side of things).
Since the “dawn of the mega publishers” the word isn’t making games, it is making profit, which more and more makes games development expensive and prohibitive and developers aren’t the ones having the final saying on things.
In the case of independent studios, I can see it happening (and a lot of times it does) but given the state of the business side of gaming development, costs, relationship with the public/consumer, marketing and what not, those still things that not all studios can afford.
See demos for a example, it’s simple not worth for any developer to spend time developing them. For consumers it’s great, for developers it’s a nightmare (cost x benefit speaking). The guys at the Extra Credits on youtube have a good and simple video about this.
You second point, another thing extremely difficult, especially the “responsibility” part. Again, unless you are fully independent, you don’t have a saying. You signed a contract, you sold your soul to the devil, you did your work and now the devil doesn’t want your body anymore but your soul remain forever his. Now he can keep your soul all tidy up and shiny for all the future reincarnations or he can keep it all dusty and crumbling on a old cupboard. Even if you manage to keep your body fit for continuous work with your soul, it’s all in the devil’s hands. (note: Analogies may or may not digress and get out of hand but hopefully the reader get the point. :P)
In conclusion, the devil controls the games industry and we need a powerful exorcist to not only cast him away but also purge his demonic deed among our holy people and…
I think I might need my meds.
Pretty much that, yeah.
Nicely put 😛
P.S. You know which Extra Credits video it is, specifically, by chance? Sounds like a useful thing worth bookmarking.
IIRC is called “Demo Daze” or something among those lines. 😉
“Win32 & DX10 dropped” okay cool. but will they actually take advantage of win64 and dx 11 or 12? probably not like most games and devs.
i laughed at first as i read it as “Elite: Dangerous will support for Win32 & DX10”
heh. anyways, i hope the game turns out good at least. i still find it weird this is a article nowadays. isnt this the norm?
no one plays it any way
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
:p
That’s what I was thinking at least they aren’t dropping Win32 support in favor of UWP.
Doesn’t matter, it have a s**ty developer.