I'm sure it was because of the consoles. Developing game engines for both 32 and 64 bit platforms was prohibitively expensive, but now that the consoles have 64 bit processors in them as well, it now makes sense for them to migrate to 64 bit game engines.TucoBenedicto said:
It's just the alpha dude. The beta version will most likely have Windows 8 support, and of course, the retail for certain will.Adityathewarriorwithin said:
No, if the developer could run on 32-bit, they probably went for it so that they could sell to people with older PCs. There's plenty of people running TW2 on 32-bit OS, based on the posts in the support section.HomemComH said:
I agree though, it probably won't be necessary for the next generation of games.
As far as I know the PS3's Cell implementation is 64-bit. There are other Cell implementations that include 128-bit CPU registers, used in high performance computing.PrinceofNothing said:
If we are to blame anyone, it should be the corporate world that seeks the minimum amount of effort for the maximum amount of profit. In everything.
You mean the governing principle of western societies since the XVIII century, which has lead them to historically unprecedented levels of common welfare and is now being happily cloned throughout the world, even by those who were believed to despise it just up until a few decades ago?Volsung said:
OK.
On topic, it seems 64 bit's pretty much a staple nowadays. I'm told the vast majority of gamers runs 64 bit OSs, so, by all means, go for it.
More info in HerePrinceofNothing said:
Original Source (Polish)
The advanced technology of the REDengine 3 makes RPGs comparable to top-shelf shooters, both in terms of game world presentation and the epic proportions of events that the player is drawn into. The engine is a next-gen ready solution that begins to blur the line between pre-rendered CGI movies and real time rendered graphics, bringing us closer to the most life-like world ever created in video games. All the state-of-the-art visuals form a living ecosystem allowing the player to be a part of a vivid environment. The new face and body animation systems implemented in REDengine 3 offer realistic expression of emotions, movie quality scenes and character interactions.
The technology uses high dynamic range rendering with 64-bit precision that ensures superior picture quality with more realistic and precise lighting without losses derived from reduced contrast ratio. A flexible renderer prepared for deferred or forward+ rendering pipelines has a wide array of cinematic post-processing effects, including bokeh depth-of-field, color grading and flares from many lights. A high performance terrain system allows multiple material layers to be efficiently blended and uses tessellation for the best possible detail. The technology also includes seamless blending between animations and physics along with many more features. The engine uses CD Projekt RED’s new version of its proprietary REDkit editor with tools made specifically for RPG game creation. The editor can build complex, branching quests and set them in a free roaming environment with a simplicity not achieved by similar toolsets.
It may have been 64 bit, but since it only came with 256 MB of memory, it doesn't really matter.Volsung said:
That's referring to the HDR DX11 renderer which is different than what we're discussing. Still, I think the game will be a 64 bit engine. I had a look at the Wiki entry on the Red Engine 3, and it states the engine was designed exclusively for 64 bit platforms:JMSLionheart said:
Link
At any rate, even if CDPR doesn't come out and explicitly state it, it seems obvious the Witcher 3 will be 64 bit. I can't imagine them making such a huge gaming world with no loading zones and no artificial boundaries or transitions on 32 bit machines that can utilize no more than 4GB of memory.
I'd say it matters. 64-bit instructions, 64-bit (double) precision numbers, and so on. Don't think it only refers to the total amount of addressable memory. Register count and precision can make a huge difference in final performance, regardless of clock frequencies.PrinceofNothing said:
We, pc gamers expect nice years to come, the new consoles are much like a PC, this means (logically) that all the games should be faster and easier to be ported in PC versions, and should run better on PC. Also, this new era begins with BF4 supporting only 64-bit and Witcher 3 too (i hope) this also means better PC management in relation with hardware-software(games).
So i think in the years to come, the PC upgrades will be less and less.
So i think in the years to come, the PC upgrades will be less and less.
64 bit instructions have a larger code and data footprint so typically, you lose some performance switching over to 64 bit being unless your program requires more than 4GB of memory or you're crunching huge numbers.Volsung said:
Also, games don't use double precision. The only programs that use double precision to my knowledge are HPC/Scientific in nature.
As far as register count is concerned, the Cell processor has a Power PC core which has 32 registers, and that number doesn't increase in 64 bit mode unlike x86-64 processors which have twice the amount of general purpose registers (16) available to them when running 64 bit programs.
Those extra registers help offset the performance penalty associated with running 64 bit code, so porting code over to x64 is usually worth it.
I don't.HomemComH said:
I blame Microsoft for insisting on releasing 32 bit versions of their OS instead of forcing this transition.
Dragonbird pointed that a lot of people still use a 32 bit OS, but that's confusing the symptom with the cause.
First, no, they aren't really a lot, not among gaming enthusiasts anyway.
Second, many do that not because they need to (there aren't even 32 bit CPUs on the market anymore and if you have a old CPU that pre-dates the 64 bit era you won't be able to play anything remotely modern anyway), but just because they don't know better and that was the embed OS when they bought their PCs.
That said, developers could have pushed this transition too making 64 bit mandatory for big sellers. People are quick to adapt when they actually need to.
But many just didn't care enough to make this push.
Games development is a driving force for technology moving forward on PC's, but if a developer is going to tell people they need to upgrade, they need to be able to demonstrate solid reasons, and for 32-bit to 64-bit I don't think those reasons existed until fairly recently. Because it isn't just the OS - if they were saying the OS needed to be x64, they're almost certainly also implying that you need more than 4GB RAM and probably at least quad-core. Otherwise, why would you need to go x64?
Widespread acceptance of 64-bit isn't that old - Windows 7 only came out four years ago, and before that we had Vista, which a lot of gamers wouldn't have touched, and XP x64, which was never sold retail. So two years ago, there would have been a LOT of people still running 32-bit XP. And these games themselves aren't memory or processor-bound, they're graphics-bound. I suspect that the developers wouldn't have seen any need to push gamers, and risk losing sales, for what was probably only a very small improvement.
It's different now, and yes, I think it's reasonable to expect people to upgrade. But for TW2? No.
Widespread acceptance of 64-bit isn't that old - Windows 7 only came out four years ago, and before that we had Vista, which a lot of gamers wouldn't have touched, and XP x64, which was never sold retail. So two years ago, there would have been a LOT of people still running 32-bit XP. And these games themselves aren't memory or processor-bound, they're graphics-bound. I suspect that the developers wouldn't have seen any need to push gamers, and risk losing sales, for what was probably only a very small improvement.
It's different now, and yes, I think it's reasonable to expect people to upgrade. But for TW2? No.