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[Steve.Wilson]

As opposed to 64 bit floats, 64 bit processing is another whole technology point worth addressing, especially since X-Plane is now venturing in that direction.

Right now, I'm sure that Outerra is doing fine, memory-wise, since it's still relatively unpopulated, despite evidence to the contrary provided by some very ingenious environment development.  But as the number of unique objects increase, and as new biomes and weather enter the processing picture, it's likely that system resources are going to be challenged.

So....Brano, what are your intentions in this area?  Are you planning to migrate to 64bit at some point?

[cameni]

Yes, we are planning to move to 64 bits. Should be relatively easy, our own stuff is mostly prepared but there are some external libraries that need to be handled.
However, biomes and weather and similar rendering stuff actually do not need 64 bits; they need to be handled on the GPU side where the limits are lower, and we need clever management of GPU memory anyway.

But you are right, 64 bits will be needed soon when the number of unique objects become too large. At least on the CPU side it will make things simpler.

[Allan Davidson]

About the processing of a world populated with players and objects, could the Server -> Client approach be sucessful? I mean, one dedicated server is responsable for handle/store the whole Anteworld, objects and conecting multiple players in a single session? This could free the client of some heavy CPU/RAM/HDD stress, making 64-bit only needed for server.

But since Anteworld right now needs the x/y/z files to be fully downloaded to each client, maybe this cannot be done.

That makes me think twice about the viability of a mobile client for an Outerra server.

[Steve.Wilson]

That's good news, Brano.  Glad to hear it.

Allan, it's not about static storage.  In a client-server situation that is managing a whole planet full of possibilities, where the variety of objects can be staggering, given a whole world to populate with regionally specific architectural styles, vehicles types and the like, objects can be downloaded and used only when needed.

But when you have a truly well populated scene where you see all these objects pretty much at one time, you're going to run out of addressable memory with a 32 bit operating system.  That's been happening to a lot of power users ever since the introduction of X-Plane 10 with a much richer plausible world than ever before.  So it's not about CPU or GPU, it's about the data pipeline and dynamic memory that has to keep track of all of the objects, and all the objects' textures.  In a country setting, this won't really be a show stopper, but if someday we get into realistic cities, and no reason we shouldn't, then all havoc will ensue if working within a 32 bit operating system.

[Allan Davidson]

In fact, i'm favor to 64-bit clients, only if it not take a lot of precious time from devs.

[Steve.Wilson]

There's good news about that, Allan.  Since the team has been planning for 64 bits, their code is likely already 64bit safe.  Then it's just a matter of compiling the code with a 64 bit compiler rather than a 32 bit compiler.  Well....sometimes it's not *that* simple, but in reality, compared to the sort of mind boggling stuff that Brano and team are doing, it's not going to rob excessive time.  Just my admittedly somewhat uninformed opinion.  But 64 bit is essential for the future.  We've had 64 bit OS's for some time now, and all computing is migrating that way, just as we did going to 32 bits back in the mid-90's.  Got to keep up with the times.

[Allan Davidson]

Thats remember me of practice some 64-bit coding and throw my olds 68000/z80/8086 books away. Never ever saw how 64-bit looks like.

[ZeosPantera]

Why do I picture both of you as mortimer and randolph

[Allan Davidson]

Sorry mate, don't know these fellas.

[Steve.Wilson]

Time to explain the humor.

[ZeosPantera]

You are both very lucky.

[Sunnyyello]

ROFL!!! Gotta love the humor on this site...

[seppen]

You never been with me pissed drunk for months lol.

[Allan Davidson]

back to the main line (at least the 2nd main line), would a server-client aprouch for Anteworld be possible? The server stores and handle and the world and the clients only interact with it?

[cameni]

About the processing of a world populated with players and objects, could the Server -> Client approach be sucessful? I mean, one dedicated server is responsable for handle/store the whole Anteworld, objects and conecting multiple players in a single session? This could free the client of some heavy CPU/RAM/HDD stress, making 64-bit only needed for server.

But since Anteworld right now needs the x/y/z files to be fully downloaded to each client, maybe this cannot be done.

That makes me think twice about the viability of a mobile client for an Outerra server.

In theory, yes. The problematic part is that the server would have to hold a huge amount of data to be able to simulate clients that could crawl away over the whole globe. At the physics simulation level (~15cm resolution) the whole land surface of Earth is ~10,000 TB of data. The server would have to do the same thing the clients do - unpacking the data dynamically as needed, but for all clients, with some clever management. Also, the server side needs to be able to scale, split to multiple machines, each managing a part of the world.