A few foolishbrave 3rd party developers are testing 64-bit X-Plane builds, as well as our internal art team.  Their early testing will help us fix a few of the “duh” bugs quickly before we go public beta, which should be Real Soon Now.™

(Please do not ask for a 64-bit build; we selected the first-round testers and we are not looking for any more private testers.  Everyone will get the build soon!)

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

37 comments on “64-Bit X-Plane is In Private Test”

  2. Can I have the 64-Bit build please?! (kidding)

    Glad to hear that the testing extends to the internal art departments… In a way, that’s more important to me then the memory expansions.

  4. Very good news. I’ve got a fairly new system with a heap of VRAM (2 GB) and system RAM (12 GB). It’ll be nice when XP10 can take advantage of it.

  5. It is better to push it through testing in private, than to have many loose end bugs and complaints from the public. Ironing out the bugs for a better product is well worth the wait! : )

    1. It’s certainly more efficient for us. One of the problems with a public beta is that we get multiples of bug reports, and it takes time to wade through them. With the private beta, we can target certain functionality with certain testers. The private beta was a big win for “pre-beta-ing” 10.0.

  6. Good job.
    On the other hand (don’t take this wrong, just use it to clear things out)… Ain’t “64bits” just a compiler flag? I mean, what is making this so complex to justify (a) the delay (I think mid-November 2012 is late for the best consumer simulator to not have a 64bit version), (b) the “private testing”, (c) the fuss about making one (from dev. side, because from consumer side, it is justified now that 99% of users have 64 bit CPU and a good deal of them have 64bit aware OS).

    1. It is not just a compiler flag. 64-bits is:
      1. A compiler flag.
      2. Making sure all code is 64-bit safe.
      3. Rewriting the Mac OS/UI layer to not use any Carbon calls, as Apple doesn’t provide them in 64-bits. This means all new Windowing and OpenGL setup. (Some file system type calls were easily ported by simply using the Linux variants on OS X.)
      3a. To do 3, we did some much needed UI abstraction cleanup, which has been discussed in previous posts – see comments and notes about someday letting Linux users edit their own X11 code. In the case of Mac, refactoring the code makes it less painful to use ObjC where it is needed.
      4. Porting the SDK to 64-bits, which means going back over steps 1-3 again for the plugin system and the “built-in” plugins we ship, as well as
      4a. Developing the 64-bit plugin ABI materials (e.g. link libs, new headers, where the DLLs go on disk) and testing them and
      5. Redoing automatic crash reporting, memory dumping, and any other functionality that is highly bit-size specific.

      The private testing is simply for efficiency in testing. And the “fuss”…we get asked about 64-bit pretty much continuously, so posts on the state of 64 bits are to answer users questions. The “delay” – that’s been covered in other posts; we looked at a number of high priority features immediately after shipping 10.0 and while 64-bits was on the short list, it wasn’t first on the short list so we did other features first. Users who really want 64 bits consider this a delay; users who really wanted those other features would have considered doing 64 bits a delay. In my experience the divide is between the Mac and Windows users since the available memory to X-Plane of the two OSes is really radically different.

      1. Clear.
        I don’t want to move this off-topic, just let me write down again my belief that Mac port is holding back the project (and yes I know it’s LR main dev platform and preferred system). That said, can you point me to some report on the percentage of platform usage between your customers? (if its public) I say “point me”, not to mess this thread.
        Back to the topic, let’s hope you do this mostly right in the first few takes and 64bit moves off closed beta to open RC and release within 2012. 🙂

  8. real quick rendering weather ?,

    with 64bit allowing more Ram, I assume weather can run nice pending ones system. Will there be cumulonimbus clouds in x-plane? storms are kind of so so without this option.

    Thanks

    1. As I have said before, there is no change to _any_ of the systems of X-Plane with 64 bits. They do the same thing they did before, they just won’t crash if you crank too many things up at once. So the weather will look exactly like it did before, except that if you can somehow crash the sim using weather settings to run out of memory (unlikely – most people crash the sim with textures or scenery settings) that won’t happen.

      1. correct, i understand what you said, as i read the posts often. let me rephrase.
        Please add cumulonimbus for realism.

        In understanding that more RAM can be used/ rendering settings can be turned higher in the 64bit version, perhaps will that outcome allow for additional features in the weather system in another patch? ie more clouds (cumulonimbus) Heavily needed to allow for storm realism!, Such additions would warrant the 64bit memory benefits.

          1. hmm interesting, besides memory limits

            cumulonimbus for realism would be a great great addition! Hope it is added 🙂 Thanks, i look forward to try the 64bit patch against my scenery and planes before I buy more RAM or not. *definitely keeping 32bit also

      2. “they just won’t crash if you crank too many things up at once” …mmmm except maybe if we put really many many many things up (even not at once). With polygons of trees, polygons of water inside mesh DSF, more accurate mesh sources, lots of facade buildings, lots of VFR landmarks and so on, we are able to crash the 32 bits sim so easily that I pray that 64 bits will solve it … but … I am a little bit pessimistic

  9. I have a suggestion.

    I’m having trouble of playing X plane 10 with Logitech Wingman Force

    it worked fine at 10.02,but crashes everytime at 10.11

    How about let costumer choose which version that wanted(for example，individual patch file free to choose),instead of force us to use the lastest patch version?

    1. Please either file a bug, contact customer support, or both. If you have filed the automatic crash report, that is great, but I did not see one with the email address you used to file this bug.

  10. Hi Ben,

    I just wonder whether compatibility with Windows 8 has been assessed, or at least, if X-Plane is believed to work “out-of-the-box” with the latest Redmond OS. I was thinking about an upgrade (I’m currently running Win7 x64), and of course I would be glad to be able to enjoy X-Plane with it 🙂

    Best regards,
    Filippo

    1. I have not assessed win8. It will _probably_ just work, but I do not recommend that anyone who has purchased X-Plane 10 risk their ability to run X-PLane 10 on an OS update; if you update to win 8 and it doesn’t work, I don’t know how soon we can fix any problem that win 8 introduces. (I also don’t know why anyone would update from win7 to win8 at all, but that’s another story.:-)

    2. My main desktop at home is running Server 2012, which is the same thing as Windows 8 with some very minor differences. I’ve had no issues with X-Plane itself. Still working on getting some add-ons installed/configured after the upgrade and hard to say if the issues I’ve seen are related to the new OS or not.

      It’s not so much a matter of people looking to upgrade as it is people who will be buying new computers this holiday season. However, Win7 to Win8 is minor compared to the jump from WinXP to Vista.

  11. Ive been using X-Plane-10 in Win 8 for a while now and I also have tons of X-Plane addons and plugins (more than most) you could say Im an addon horder. They all work perfectly fine in Win 8. Not saying you should run out and get it, but dont be afraid of X-plane not working in it.

    Rob

  12. Hmm, windows 7 64 bit, 3970k on Asus Rampage Formula IV, 32GB 1600mhz ram, Intel 520 240 GB system drive, EVGa GTX 680 4GB Ram, looking forward to 64 bit version to crank everything to the max. Do you suggest turning the paging file on or off as I have it only set to 2Gb instead of windows managing it as it uses a lot of hard drive space??

    2. I agree with Ben, let Windows manage it.
      That said and pending extra info (that may explain), why on Earth have 32GB RAM on Windows? Do what with them?
      Also having everything on an SSD is NOT the BEST.
      (plus it normally means very small storage)

    3. Memory was on sale so why not, also use adobe premiere cs5.5, so it it useful. Have another drive as we’ll, Intel 520 480gb. Reason I ask about page file is that windows 7 will use min 20gb of drive space for it, therefore I set it manualy to manage at min 250mb and max 2gb so I do not lose hard drive space. Have also experimented with a 2560×1440 Resolution in the past and never noticed any difference when compared to 1920×1080 resolution, unless I’m missing something? Anybody else running xplane 10 on a 2560×1440???

      1. Yeah eric i hear ya , hope they finish early in the beta period. I know ben said mid beta, who knows when that is. Despearately need these delayed assets for realism. Will be a nice addition.

  15. Ben,

    how will 64 bit affect the 3rd party plugins ? Do they all have to be rewritten or could some of them just work ? I am thinking of plane-specific plugins (777, CRJ200) or other important ones like the XSB.

      1. So let us all hope that the creator of the magnificent XSB knows about this 😉 Do you know him, Ben ? :p

        1. XSB, what’s that? 🙂 Seriously, I don’t know when Wade and I will have time to 64-bit-safe XSB, but it is much needed, as XSB is a real memory hog.

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