Yeah, if I had to hazard a guess, it would be that the folks still running a 32 bit O/S, probably don't have the hardware to run FO:4 in any event...... I still see them from time to time at work, mostly Vista, and an occasional Win7 32 bit version, but, it's all becoming rather rare. And yes, XP is still out there, but, I suspect the hardware it is running on wouldn't have a hope in hell of running FO:4...... or even Skyrim...... at least, not at playable framerates. The world has finally caught up.

The game engine has indeed evolved. With each iteration, it has new capabilities, some old bugs get fixed, some new bugs get introduced. I suppose expecting anything else, would be bordering on wishful thinking. Lets just hope the game has evolved in better shape than Johnny Cash's http://www.streetlegaltv.com/news/case-of-the-mondays-johnny-cashs-one-piece-at-a-time-cadillac/.....

I still use retail XP64, via VM, for software compatibility. I've got Apps that are flat-out unstable under Windows 7.

It would also be crazy to have a 32 bit and limit yourself to 2GB of memory, if it's a 32 bit exe on a 64 bit system then you can make use of LAA and use up to 4GB. Skyrim made use LAA and even that I think would CTD at about 3.2 GB, it was restricted memory that nearly killed the PS3 with Skyrim.

The game will definitely be 64 bit otherwise it wouldn't be able to fully utilise the consoles. And like Todd said the extra memory for them is fantastic.

I used to run XP 64 bit as my O/S.... I only recently 'upgraded' to Win7.

if "dynamic lights" == "casting shadows" is true, these are in skyrim already, though optional (not on a settings- but on an editor-base, meaning you could use several types of "shadow" as well as "non-shadow" lights) and somewhat limited in count, since these appear to be rather ressource intense

this.

edit: maybe they hope that, if they annoy us more, we'll die out sooner

it's not like we had much of a choice if we want to keep running recent software anyway...

Get on your tinfoil hats kids!

http://www.livingstone-tech.com/livingstone/wp-content/uploads/featured39@wdd2x.jpg

I get the impression that you don't understand what the concern or annoyance is; if you are in IT, that's scary.

The good rule of thumb, is that if the service is free, then the user is the product.

I suspect there's also a bit of - if they can get more people to actually move forward to the new system (as opposed to holding on to old versions with tooth & nail), it'll save them money in the long run. Actually getting folks to upgrade is worth more to them than the short-term income that selling the OS would get them.

Or something like that.

Exactly what Ive said, nothing new here.

Casting shadows isn't the only feature of dynamic lighting, my bad.

Another thing is that these type of light emitting objects when placed on the area, produce 'real time' light. Meaning the environment gets the illuminosity it has the time the game runs.

Which is kind of different of the other option. The other lighting method has been that the devs would place light sources in the engine that will illuminate some places, then 'record' (like taking a photograph) how a place looks like with the light source added, so all the information where shadows are and how bright some spots are, are 'recorded' and then painted to the textures of the area, and then the light source is removed. The outcome is a room for example that seems to have an active light source (eg a bulb or candle) and shadows, but these being 'static', as in the information of brightness / darkness for each pixel gets painted to the textures and is concrete. You can spot such lights for example when you go in a room, and you see some drawn immovable shadows coming from pillars or furniture, but moving objects like the player's character don't cast shadows from that light.

Of course having dynamic lights means that the illuminosity and shadows are calculated in real time, while the player plays the game, and as a result it takes cpu resources, while static lighting is information that just loads once when the area is loaded, and after that requires no further processing by the cpu / gpu.

so, a flickering candle light casting a flickering shadow would be such a light? such are in skyrim. (weren't in fnv though iirc)

I actually like that Bethesda is improving on Gamebryo with the Creation engine, they should've done that ages ago. I have faith that if they keep working on the engine it'll get better without sacrificing the versatility of scripting and modding that previous versions had.

What about Papyrus? I'm not a modder, so i have no personal experience with it, but i've yet to hear anything good about it from the modding community.

couldn't say anything bad about it, except that, for me at least, the learning curve was pretty steep, and that i'd like some functions from the old language back (anybody join a "give us GetContainerItemCount ()" riot...?) )

The way the engine handles scripts is completely different with skyrim now as well, which caused additional problems for some modders..... Script lag became an issue. With the old engine, every running script went all the way thru each frame, now, it doesn't necessarily happen that way..... you can get a half second (20 frames or more....) delay on when your script runs. For scripts that are timing dependent, like anything combat related, the new system really cramps their style. Would be nice if they would re-integrate scripting so it works the way it used to, but, I don't really expect to see that happen.