[Weter]

For my marrow mind, the alternative would be for users - to stuck with v1.6 untill their OS upgrade.
At least, Captain Obvious tells to me so.
It's up to Life - to develop itself, it's up to some of us - to be conservative, or constrained for some external reason.
There are many unconstrained ones - they shouldn't suffer because of us.
But monitoring OS amount will bring to ORMT the objective data, which would tell, when to upgrade.

[eric from trainsim]

Why does anyone feel an obligation to keep Win7 support beyond v1.5?

It's three years since end of life. Anyone who has made the decision to stick with it this long has done so accepting the risks.

[cjakeman]

eolesen, on 24 December 2023 - 08:48 PM, said:

Why does anyone feel an obligation to keep Win7 support beyond v1.5?

I suspect we have many users around the world for whom a PC is a precious resource and upgrades/replacements are expensive. Indeed some of our developers are working with PCs which are not high performance.

it's interesting to see from our regular statistics show that we have 2,300 active users (10%) who never upgraded to v1.4, which was when we dropped Windows XP so we could switch to Monogame.

We don't want to hold back progress (and we aren't) but we ought to know what the impact of our decisions will be.

I hope we will find out just how many when the data collection features intended for v1.6 give us some results.

[Weter]

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many users around the world for whom a PC is a precious resource and upgrades/replacements are expensive

I can only confirm that. Since new medium-grade tower/laptop costs ($1000 in average) more, than monthly salary.
Saturated one never understands the hungry - as telling says.
So, "Тo eat, or to get win10 System to run ORTS - that's the question!" Shakespear did never dream about.

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We don't want to hold back progress (and we aren't) but we ought to know what the impact of our decisions will be.

:good:

[PerryPlatypus]

cjakeman, on 25 December 2023 - 08:46 AM, said:

I suspect we have many users around the world for whom a PC is a precious resource and upgrades/replacements are expensive. Indeed some of our developers are working with PCs which are not high performance.

it's interesting to see from our regular statistics show that we have 2,300 active users (10%) who never upgraded to v1.4, which was when we dropped Windows XP so we could switch to Monogame.

We don't want to hold back progress (and we aren't) but we ought to know what the impact of our decisions will be.

I hope we will find out just how many when the data collection features intended for v1.6 give us some results.

At the same time, if there are major advancements that we can make that have the potential to pull in new blood who has otherwise been ignoring ORTS due to outdated graphics, then imo we need to push the envelope forward. At TrainSimulations just for example, we are slowly, steadily bleeding customer base. We have been for years, with no sign of stopping. As much as I am all for the advancement of physics and have helped to the greatest extent I can in the past in that realm, it's very clear that for the thousands of potential users who haven't given ORTS a try, the dated graphics engine is a MUCH bigger reason than the physics not being perfect. Lighting, materials, shadows, etc. While we may never be able to achieve the same level of graphics as the big budget payware games, we shouldnt use that as an excuse to not have improvement of graphics as top priority, or the gap between "us" and "them" is just going to keep growing wider. The old users are gonna keep on leaving, there is no way around that. If we can counteract it by giving a reason to new customers to hop on board, and simultaneously not feeling the need to hold back potential features, isn't that a win? I can guarantee you that if glTF model / PBR texture functionality got fully implemented into a stable version of ORTS we (TrainSimulations) would be taking FULL advantage of that.

[Genma Saotome]

I'm still running Win 7... and have a Win 11 PC under construction. One of the things I notice when I see an update for something I have is that it often does not mention what OS it expects. When I see that I assume there is nothing for Win 7. In some cases there is mention of older versions and I do find Win 7 editions there, sometimes a few patches beyond what I have. I appreciate that.

My point in writing this is actually about courtesy: All vendors should make a point of offering the last version of their product for each non-current version of Windows. I don't think it would take that much effort by the OR team to have several clearly labeled download links that identify Win 7, 8, 10, and 11.

[Weter]

That's good, Dave... except one thing:

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I don't expect it to be included in Stable Version 1.6 but in v1.7. The reason that it might not be in v1.6 is that glTF requires some features of DirectX 10 and this is not available in Windows 7.1.

When users upgrade to v1.6, they should receive a warning that the next stable version will not be compatible with Windows 7.1

[cjakeman]

Genma Saotome, on 25 December 2023 - 02:32 PM, said:

My point in writing this is actually about courtesy: All vendors should make a point of offering the last version of their product for each non-current version of Windows. I don't think it would take that much effort by the OR team to have several clearly labeled download links that identify Win 7, 8, 10, and 11.

Good idea. We can do that.

[cjakeman]

PerryPlatypus, on 25 December 2023 - 01:14 PM, said:

If we can counteract it by giving a reason to new customers to hop on board, and simultaneously not feeling the need to hold back potential features, isn't that a win? I can guarantee you that if glTF model / PBR texture functionality got fully implemented into a stable version of ORTS we (TrainSimulations) would be taking FULL advantage of that.

Good to hear. We are checking out glTF and PBR right now so I hope TrainSimulations are getting prepared for it.

[xavivilla]

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I don't expect it to be included in Stable Version 1.6 but in v1.7. The reason that it might not be in v1.6 is that glTF requires some features of DirectX 10 and this is not available in Windows 7.1.

Please explain this to me. If I run dxdiag.exe to see what version of DirectX my windows 7 has, it tells me that I have DirectX 11. Are those DirectX 10 features needed for gITF not present in DirectX 11?

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