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64-bit L3DT Professional

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64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby Aaron » Tue Aug 23, 2011 3:05 pm

Hi All,

I've started testing the 64-bit version of L3DT Professional, and I was wondering if there were any users willing to participate in a limited trial? If you're interested, please PM me or reply to this post if:
  1. You are a paid-up licensee of L3DT Professional (free trial keys won't work),
  2. you are running a 64-bit version of Windows 7, Vista or XP, and;
  3. most importantly, you solemnly swear to report any bugs that you find.
The purpose of the trial will be only to determine whether the 64-bit build of L3DT 11.08 is stable under typical usage patterns. Consequently, I have not included any new features or expanded capabilities in the 64-bit version yet.

If you're interested in participating, please reply here.

Cheerio,
Aaron.
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby miko » Tue Aug 23, 2011 6:31 pm

*rises hand. Conditions are complied, sire :P

Just out of interest: I always wondered if it is really worth to release an app "64bit", in parallel to existing 32bit version (besides from advertising effects). Are there any advantages you're targetting in particular? Thanks.
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby David Walters » Tue Aug 23, 2011 6:40 pm

I'm a Pro licensee running Vista x64 and so I'd be happy to test this. However I must add the caveat that I'm not really using this program heavily for my current project so you might not get a deluge of reports. I'll give it a whirl though as I'd like to see a 64-bit version of this app!
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby Aaron » Wed Aug 24, 2011 12:40 pm

Hello Chaps,

Thanks for giving this a try. I've PM'd you the download details.

Miko wrote:I always wondered if it is really worth to release an app "64bit", in parallel to existing 32bit version (besides from advertising effects). Are there any advantages you're targetting in particular?


Excellent question. You’re right to suggest there is probably no compelling case for a 64 bit version based on performance or features at this point in time, at least for most users’ current machines. However, for users with serious workstations (e.g. 64GB of RAM), L3DT x64 could reduce out-of-core paging and hold more of the maps in RAM, which would dramatically improve performance on some tasks that involve significant map re-parsing (e.g. water table flooding). I will be experimenting with this shortly.

L3DT x64 could also make use of the much greater virtual memory address space to memory-map large files, which should be faster than the existing mosaic paging mechanism that uses discrete files. L3DT 11.08 introduced automatic virtual memory mapping for intermediate map sizes (>2048 x 2048, <16k x 16k, IIRC), but it’s not yet used for very large maps. This is something I’d like to explore further.

Finally, part of the rationale is future proofing; I would like to have a 64 bit version ready and debugged just in case it is actually needed for something that can’t be done with 32 bit architectures. The SSE3 extensions are an example of a 64-bit only feature that may be useful in the future.

Best regards,
Aaron
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby David Walters » Wed Aug 24, 2011 2:03 pm

Aaron wrote:Hello Chaps,
Thanks for giving this a try. I've PM'd you the download details.


You're welcome.

I've downloaded and it installed correctly. I loaded up an existing terrain okay and I can cruise around it in Sapphire.

So, first impressions are that it's working well.

If I find any bugs shall I post them here?

Cheers,
David
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby miko » Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:01 pm

Downloaded aswell. The first installation run gave me a temp screen freeze (could solve by invoking the task manager). As I had been running Windows updates before (without reboot), I am not sure about the cause, though. So, de-installed, booted and installed again. No problem then.
As David, I have no problems so far in subsequent usage.

PS: Thanks for explaining the background a bit. I see your points :mrgreen:
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby Aaron » Fri Aug 26, 2011 10:52 pm

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the feedback. I'm getting the crash-on-exit bug in the x64 build too, so I'll spend a bit of my weekend in the debugger to track that down. Do you also see a crash on exit, Miko?

Otherwise, does everything seem normal? Are there any little glitches or inconveniences that you'd like fixed?

I've played around a bit with the memory usage to make L3DT x64 gobble more RAM to speed-up calculations. This didn't have any effect on small map calculations (naturally), but did increase the speed of the water table flooding of a largish map (8k x 4k px) by a factor of 3. I'll do some more testing and benchmarking on other calculations, and if all seems tickety-boo, I'll send you another x64 installer.

Cheers,
Aaron.
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby miko » Sat Aug 27, 2011 10:37 am

Nope, no crash on exit here. Another thing, tho: I believe the paths got mixed up for 11.08 and 11.08 x64 (?).
As I have both installed, the normal version is now reporting problems with zURL plugin (these screenshots are from 11.08, not x64).

Concerning glitches and such: Well, these are more 'general', not related to x64 (so this is probably the wrong place to post).

- When loading terrains, different 'loading...' dialogs pop up and vanish again, while the different data is retrieved. Sometimes, a dialog closes and it takes a few seconds until the next one in line pops up. During these phases, I'm not really sure if loading has already finished - or not. So, I click around but see that loading is still in progress and therefore the gui doesn't respond. To sumarize: an "always on" dialog that indicates 'loading still running' would be a convenient thing.

- When loading large tarrains, there is no "abort" function, I reckon. Now and then, I load the wrong terrain (i.e. selected the huge one, while wanting the small one). Then, I have no option to cancel (and need to take a nap, haha). Maybe, combined with the first point above, an "always on" dialog including a Cancel button would help here?
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby Aaron » Thu Sep 01, 2011 9:53 am

Hi Miko,

Thanks for your feedback. I'll look into whether there is any unintentional cross-talk between the 32 and 64 bit versions regarding disabled plugins (i.e. zURL). Have you seen this problem, David?

A universal loading/saving window with a cancel button would be a nice thing. I'll pop it on the dev plan. I suspect it could be quite a bit of work, but I'll have a look into it.

In other news, the caching changes I mentioned above have produced an 80% speed increase for light mapping on large mosaic maps, and a 50% increase for texture mapping*. I'm also working on multithreading of the attributes map calculation, which when combined with the cache changes has produced a better than 4x improvement in performance. I still have a little more debugging to do on this, but when it's ready I'll upload the x64 installer for y'all.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

* There is no speed improvement for 'small' maps; this only applies to maps larger than about 4k x 4k pixels, and less than an upper limit that is determined by your machine's available RAM.
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby David Walters » Sat Sep 03, 2011 8:50 am

Aaron wrote:Thanks for your feedback. I'll look into whether there is any unintentional cross-talk between the 32 and 64 bit versions regarding disabled plugins (i.e. zURL). Have you seen this problem, David?


Yes I think so, although it was a few days ago and I've not had time to test it since then. I can't seem to make it happen now. Sorry!


Glad to hear about the speedups!
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby robert » Mon Sep 12, 2011 9:59 pm

I will alpha test this.

Have win 7 64bits, 6gb ram, I7 940 3.0ghz with nvidia 280 Vid card, and a programmer if that helps :)
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby Empire-Phoenix » Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:38 am

sign me in
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Re: 64-bit L3DT Professional

Postby Aaron » Tue Sep 13, 2011 1:28 pm

Hi Robert and Empire-Phoenix,

Thanks for your interest. At the moment there appears to be a bug in the cache manager. If it's OK with you, I'll send you the installer once it's fixed (next few days), as there's not much point furnishing you with the current buggy version. I apologise for this short delay.

Cheerio,
Aaron.
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