remember a while ago, say 8 years, processors were always faster and faster? we had 400 MHz pentiums then 800Mhz pentiums then next thing computers were 1.6 gigahertz?
all that stopped some years back. we hit just over 3, maybe 4 gigahertz and just stopped.
the reason is - get this - the limitation of the speed of light. because the wires are a certain length in the computer, it takes a certain amount of time (speed of light) for the electrical signals to make their way from one end to the other.
we just can't go faster. if intel or AMD could have made an 8 gigahertz processor they would have.
XP on a 3 gigahertz processor runs lfs the same speed as windows 9 will on the same processor.
adding multiple cores and doing parallel computing works great but only if the computation can be divided, calculated, and put back together without overhead. in real life you get something like 20% gain from having 2 processors instead of 1.
Scawen might cook up something like Id software did using Binary Space Partition trees in Doom, but processors aren't going to get much faster.
In the end, they will fail if they use these strongarm tactics. You can't force people to give you money for no real reason. On their current path they will end up with angry users and they will leave. Their current path must (and may) change. I have some vague memory hearing something a few months ago that Bill Gates might be a getting little more involved again and Mr Ballmer is leaving... is that true? Maybe that would help? I may really be off the mark here but in my imagination, Bill Gates was kind of into the technology aspect of things but Ballmer was into money making. I really haven't researched that, it's just a vague impression so if I am wrong or anyone has some better info, please let us know!
I haven't heard of any ways to run DX10 / DX11 software on Linux or Mac. I am under the impression you must use Wine and it supports up to DX9.
I haven't been catering specifically to those systems in any way. I haven't spent even 5 minutes trying to cater to them. LFS worked in DX8 on those systems (using Wine) but actually it works better on them after the DX9 conversion because it's better supported (I think that is the case, but again, this is a bit vague and not researched, don't really know much about Wine).
Our vision is new physics and new content, followed by some other interesting things like dynamic track conditions.
People can 'leave' if they want to. I don't even have a concept of leaving and returning, LFS is just here for license holders to have a go when they want to, obviously that is more likely when there is an update.
The current 3D patch is one of those diversions that is actually quite exciting for me and some people. I have always wanted to be in there in virtual reality and hopefully that will happen within two months! But I agree it has probably slowed some other things down. However, that has nothing to do with catering for old / other operating systems. Just a few days during these months on the new 3D system were spent upgrading from DX8 to DX9 because DX9 is a better standard than DX8. And that had no effect on other operating systems, it was just moving LFS one step towards more recent DirectX versions.
Again, I don't see the connection. There wouldn't be faster progress on the things people want (content, physics, etc) if we used DX10 or DX11. They just don't affect that at all. I'm simply not spending any time at all catering for these other systems. In fact I would spend more time trying to change LFS to use DX10 and DX11, but won't do so because there isn't any reason to do so.
That's pretty much bang on. Gates has actually seemed like a pretty down to earth kinda guy from what I've read on his reddit AMA's.
However the current CEO (Satya Nadella) is against gaming as a whole, so things won't propably get much better for us. I predict Microsofts Apple-envy will only increase and they are going to start forcing their retarded touch based systems even harder on everyone.
yeah i saw it again that you need a checked version of windows 7 to use the debug option(im suprised that no one in msdn has found a way around it or microsoft is going all over hitler on their asses..)which means no option left
yes i know but most of the people cant understand that you guys dont actually work on crytek 3 and yet lfs has graphics of 1900 b.c (dont get me wrong one of the main reasons i love lfs is because of that ive tried every other sim other there with 20-30 cars and the lag was strong on them..)
(OT) (again)
not exactely the reason.
Semiconductors when reduced in size begin to have different properties that are leading to constraints the industry does not want to face. The current high frequency is the limit of the current design (nanotechnology). As you say it is now more efficient to combine multiple cores to do the job in parallel instead of increasing the frequency again, wich means more consumption on smaller objects = big headache + lots of $ to spend on
Now folks, please, stop distracting the coder from his job
hmm i don't know why i thought that was the biggest reason. it's one of the reasons.. i went looking and learned that electric signals travel only 1/2 the speed of light, so if a circuit is to be synchronised to the same clock, then it can only be 5cm across at 3 GHz. it's amazing to think we are close to this physical limit.
but as you say processors could go much quicker if it weren't for the heat problems and the limitations of how long it takes the switches to go from on to off, not to mention many other factors.
If income or growth begins to drop, shareholders start to dump stock, share value dives and you are left vulnerable to hostile takeover. Likely result is your company is bought out and asset stripped.
Even though I am upset with the progress, I still love this game, it just feels old right now.
I would like to honestly and truely thank Scawen for breaking down my post and giving a reply to each section. It caught me off guard but I thank you for breaking down the way you see things.
I will resume trying to quietly wait for the next update/test patch/whatever lies ahead for us.
Thank you again for the reply Scawen. Much appreciated.
Yes, I agree 100%. But it is stupid that that is the case - this is one of the massive flaws of modern capitalism. Because there is no genuine reason why a company should fail if it made less than it did the year before, or it should be a problem when the GDP of a country is less in one year than the previous.
It is only because these perfectly reasonable conditions are considered to be bad and labelled "recession" and so on that it's instant "SELL, SELL, SELL" by these damn fools that are actually in charge.
It's not that I am being naive. I'm just thinking for myself about how the world can work in the long term and there are many economists who have actually used their own brain instead of going with what they were taught at university. Growth-based economics (the "normal" version of economics followed religiously by nearly all politicians) was designed for a time when humans were a small force in a big world. The theories assume that there is an infinite space for our (economic) activities to expand info, and growth is a convenient solution, always providing "more, more, more". But that will actually destroy the world in the end. You can't keep growing in a finite space. You really can't, a five year old child can understand that but "conventional" economists are brainwashed to ignore that fact.
It's no good listening to me though, better read something properly written. you can start here: http://dieoff.org/page37.htm
More on that way off topic subject but it's much more important than LFS! Also it does drive the nastier side of Microsoft and directly affects our lives.
Amazing thing, everyone knows that the quest for eternal growth is what caused the global recession (when confidence in the boom failed it all tripped over itself). But all the big party politicians want to do is to get back to a state of growth. It's sheer lunacy. They are trying desperately to set us up to a state which is guaranteed to go boom and bust again.
Personally, I'd like to see Native Linux support in the future (WINE is a hit and miss make do) SteamOS is going to be good news for hardware support (logitech wheels already work on it, I do believe anyway). Plus a native linux LFS program would allow for a dedicated LFS Distribution which would be awesome for people who wanted to run dedicated simulator machines amongst the many other reasons to move away from Windows.
I also think Windows is of the past now. The products are getting progressively more silly.
I agree. It's a system that promotes exploitation at every level.
I wouldn't call them "damn fools" though. The boom bust mechanic is a very efficient way for the elite to increase their wealth. So from their point of view, they are anything but fools! And why would they change what is for them a very profitable system. It's the ordinary folk who buy into the consumerism dogma who are fools IMO.
I don't believe DX10/11 is even on the radar over at winehq.org. If you are willing to spend 5 minutes to help improve support for Wine, you could take a look at http://wiki.winehq.org/DirectX-ToDo and see the current state of DX9 support. Some things work, some don't.
That said, even though I've used Linux as my desktop since 1996, I support 32-bit XP + DX9 and I have a couple more reasons why it's the right choice.
1. That's what the big boys do. The Elder Scrolls Online, a 2 month old AAA MMORPG with a budget that's rumored to be $200 million USD agrees with you.
2. Poor people. Yup, I know, the poor are a terrible target market because they don't have any money but the reality is that XP is going to be around for many years. For a lot of people using what used to be cheap computers, upgrading XP to 7 means buying a new computer. The sad fact is, a lot of people just can't afford to do that.
And, finally, just because you asked, not because I think it matters, here is my story of having XP exploited... I've been a computer guy since forever then about 9 years ago I moved to Mexico and just left all my computers behind. 80+ hour weeks can get to you after a couple decades and I'd just had enough. Anyhow, about 6 months later my family came to visit and the brought me a brand new "decent but cheap" laptop as a suprise gift.
Well, by then I had chilled out on the "screw this" attitude so I went to TelMex and picked up a DSL box, took it home and hooked it up. I didn't have a signal so I just went and took a nap. 4 hours later I woke up and, like magic, my computer was just online. I was pretty underwhelmed by how slow the laptop and internet were so I took a look at my processes and saw a ton of stuff that shouldn't be running. Digging around a bit, I saw that the machine was compromised so I just reformatted and installed Linux.
Sorry for the long post, I sort of wish I could address some of the stuff flying around this thread but even this post is off topic.
Actually, it hasn't turned into that at all - if you read the post before yours; that (non)topic is a very minor theme. There's a tremendous amount of misinformation, and a handful of useful information in this odd thread so far - but it is an interesting read nonetheless.
1) Yes; there is a plethora of "vulnerabilities" that don't require one to outright click on an executable to run it (websites don't ask for permission to "run" all the time and many exploits look for that principle: java, html, asp, and every other standard is what you need to be thinking about here - and running 10 year old software firewalls on a 10 year old OS is akin to sitting in a strong oak tree 40 feet above ground and feeling safe in a lighting storm because your feet don't touch the ground. (as long as you're net connected)
2) What the hell is this hardware argument about XP? The hardware you're running; or more specifically what OS you're developing on, don't really cross paths here. Scawen could develop on DX9 for years to come (which is a wise decision; considering the lower path of every modern game defaults to that) with no consequences - unless you count cross platform compatibility as a consequence (which he rightly counts as a benefit). Run, for example, Metro 2033 in DX9 vs DX11 - you'd be hard pressed to spot the difference.
3) What is the difference? NOTHING - Unless one takes advantage of the newer features, which are few. IE; a DX9 using game gains nothing by moving to DX11 (or 10) unless specifically made to do so as in Tesselation (the major feature) or other minor ones. This is simply an API; not necessarily a feature-set. In an abstract way, it's like painting a picture with Red, Green and Blue instead of Cyan Magenta Yellow and Black (although that difference might be more noticeable).
Anyway this may not make sense tomorrow so whatever. Race on.
The discussion here is not necessarily about the DirectX version, I think in this thread about everybody agrees that LFS would have nothing to gain by moving to a newer DirectX version.
What this is about is about some people's controversial stance on upgrading software
Now, IMO If Scawen needs an XP machine to keep working on the DX9 render path, then this should have been the end of the discussion right there. Also, if your million dollar industrial/medical equipment only comes with XP drivers and the company that made it went out of business 5 years ago, that's also a pretty good reason to stick to XP for the moment (provided you also make some plans for the future).
However, to suggest that sticking to XP would be a wise course of action for the average Joe is in my opinion a mistake and it's sad to see a fellow software developer advocating this.
People here who don't develop software for a living might be excused for thinking that "all the security bugs in XP must have been ironed over the years of patching", however the sad truth is that, at the time when XP was developed, Microsoft didn't give a rat's ass about security and it's only in later operating systems that this was started to be taken seriously and features aimed at mitigating large classes of exploits have been added. This is not the forum to talk at length about Data Execution Prevention or Adress Space Layout Randomization but do look those up if you're interested.
TLDR: Sticking with XP is fine if you're a power user who knows what s/he is doing and the machine is air gapped. For the average user to stick to XP just means more powerful botnets to worry about for the rest of us.
im just wondering here
ok i guess the whole update our workstation will be very risky and time consuming from xp to 7
but if you had the choice right now right here to port the whole damn thing from dx9 to dx10 or something else compartible and accesible from both platforms would you do it?
By the way everyone, as we are talking about DirectX 9... have you tried the latest test patch? It has the graphical improvement of antialiased mirrors, many people reported higher frame rates and there are several fixes. It's on the verge of becoming the official version 0.6F so we would appreciate your testing feedback if you haven't had a go yet! https://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=85807
Maybe I will have a look and try to see if I get some info over there. Do you or any other Linux users know of any issues running the latest test patch in Wine? I can't remember hearing many reports but I do remember comments that it worked well and some screen shots looked the same as on Windows.
I'm sure that supported software with security patches will be safer for the average Joe. I feel quite negative about Windows 7 because in every day life it seemed to be throwing obstacles into my path with nearly every step I tried to take. It became quite tiresome. Also, they took away the ability to view a dual monitor setup as a single render target surface. Seems like a total fail, the only improvement related to that was that it allowed a full screen video to use a single screen instead of being half on one and half on the other, as is done "stupidly" on XP if you run dual monitors as a single desktop. And the deal breaker was obviously when they deliberately removed the ability to run a debug version of DirectX 9. That is just sabotage and because of it, Microsoft have lost my long term support. I'll be wondering (very gradually and in a long term sense) how to get away / not use Windows as the primary platform.
Me? No, because I want to support as many systems as possible, and DX9 is the way. It works on XP, Vista, 7, 8, Mac, Linux... and there are no relevant advantages in using later DirectX
