Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear on low (<=4GB) memory systems

[Renk, T. <tho...@jy...>]

>> 4. There is an easy solution for a 32 bit OS: tweak the LOD settings.
>> If you reduce all LOD settings by 2 you can run FG on a 32 bit OS  
>> without problem.

I think there's a possible confusion between the program and the data it operates on here.

FG runs perfectly fine, looks reasonably okay and fits with 100 km visibility into a 4 GB 32 bit installation if you use the World Scenery 1.0. The problem is not that the FG core would gobble up so much more memory since the 2.12 release, the problem is that we're pushing so much more terrain data to the core with the high vertex density 2.0 Scenery (and buildings, trees, ...)

I don't know if anyone actually does that, but running FG with an 8 km LOD bare setting looks silly. You see a tiny patch of terrain underneath, no proper horizon, and we're getting frequent 'bug' reports about a missing horizon even with the current LOD settings. Whereas having 100 km visibility but lower resolution terrain isn't quite as stunning as the 2.0 scenery, but it sure looks an order of magnitude better than low LOD settings.

So I don't see a real need to simply not support 32bit (or <4 GB systems in general). They could run FG just fine - if people would know how. I think disabling terrasync (which fetches the expensive scenery), pre-packing a lowres version of KSFO and setting defaults for random buildings and trees to low or off and a text pointing users to get the 1.0 scenery manually would lead to a decent FG experience even on low-powered systems. And a webpage dedicated to explaining how to do memory management would help. Much better than discontinuing support or ridiculously low LOD settings in any case.

People do feel strongly about legacy system support - I seem to be getting into a gazillion of heated discussions on that. So kicking 32bit will evoke some strong responses for sure.

* Thorsten