Elite: Dangerous is about to leave older rigs behind

If you’re playing Frontier Developments’ Elite: Dangerous on a PC that’s behind the power curve, you’re going to be passed by soon. David Braben, CEO and founder of Frontier, warned players that the studio will likely be dropping support for 32-bit systems and graphic cards still using DirectX 10. According to Braben, their data shows that very few players of Elite: Dangerous would be negatively impacted by the shift to higher-end systems.

“As you know, we support leading edge technology like 4K, 8K, VR, and with things like compute shaders in Horizons we really push the boundaries overall, but there are restrictions with Win32 – particularly the amount of memory we can address at one time – and with DX10 in terms of requiring an alternative rendering solution in our code.”

The Steam Hardware Survey supports the idea that the majority of gamers use 64-bit systems with DirectX 10 (or better) video cards, but it’s not a direct measurement of the full Elite: Dangerous audience. David Braben went on to say that the support change would likely not take place for at least six months and that the studio is open to feedback regarding the decision. Time to go shopping for new PC parts, space cowboy!