NEED to KNOW ..about FF 2. FF staff?

You're not the only one wanting 64bit Filter Forge.
I have asked, and many others have as well.
As of now, FF v2 is NOT a 64bit app.
It works fine in a 64bit OS, but I don't know if it works with as a plugin with 64bit software (don't think it does, but I don't have any to test).
Not exactly sure why they can't/won't give us a 64bit Filter Forge. They know many of us want it, and I do believe it's in the plans... we'll just have to keep waiting.

FYI though... it's been stated in these forums somewhere that there is a 64bit build of FF that they use internally and haven't released. Maybe they just don't want to share it

How much longer will we have to wait?
Until 128bit starts to hit the market?
Who knows???

Use the search -- I posted on 64-bitness many times before.

I'm running Windows 7 x64 and the FF beta works great.

(Haven't used it as a plug-in though)

Chris, sorry if my reply sounded rude -- I definitely didn't want to be rude, just stated the fact. 64-bitness was discussed numerous times before, there were official responses, and the threads are quite easy to find by just searching for "64 bit" using the forum search function. As ronjonnie noted, our official position on 64-bitness is described on the system requirements page.

Quote
BAR-CODE wrote: Can some one link me a official standing on 64 bit for version 2.

V2.0 will be 32-bit.

bar-code,

on my 64 bit vista machine, FF1 and FF2 both run just fine. however, they run in the (x86) folder and were installed there by default. i can even run FF2 as a plugin, since the (x86) mode emulates or runs in the old native 32 bit. so, it runs stand-alone and as a plugin (for me, cant guarantee other results) and works just fine. the drawback, i think, and i'm really not sure of this, is that running in the 32 bit mode means you still have the same old limits we had in a true 32 bit setup, meaning ram is much more limited and so on. so, that's my take on it and that isnt official anything nor guaranteed accurate; just my experience so far.

the biggest boon i can see from having a true 64 bit FF would be the increase in upper limits like RAM. if i'm right about running in 32 bit, then we're pretty much limited to about 3 gigs (depending on how microsoft did things) of RAM overall for running FF (and other 32 bit apps). so, yes, it would be nice to have that extra resource power, but with quad core and quad core 2 machines being pretty common now and being decidedly faster than the single cores, RAM is still important but not as much as it was.

it's also true that a computer is a system. any one component can affect that system's speed. ram is an important one, but there are other things involved, like buss speed and other i/o factors that have all been improved of late, including pci-e cards, SSD drives, windows 7 streamlining, pre-fetch and a host of other things that have sped machines up decidedly. when i went from a single core to a quad core machine i was expecting 3 to 5 times in speed increases. instead, i got nearly 10x the speed on FF. that was unexpected. nice, but unexpected. i attribute this to all the other factors in the system and not just ram.

so, my opinion, and it's only an opinion, is dont wait. upgrade your machine(s) as feasible as it is for you and your others and just keep chugging. FF will eventually make the move, most likely, but even if they never do, your system is going to keep increasing in speed. yes, i think 64 bit apps and systems are finally coming of age now, and we may even start seeing a few 128 bit apps and systems, but that's almost always going to be true. so, waiting is somewhat pointless at this stage.

most of the filters, if not all, are tested with a single core, 1 ghz machine. the max test time allowed for accepting a filter is 15 minutes. if a filter runs past that amount of time in rendering default presets, then it is rejected by the FF library(ian). so, if i'm right about quad cores being at least 10x that (if not more on a 1 ghz), then 60 x 15 = 900 seconds and a quad core would equal 1/10th of that or 90 seconds. that's not bad for any filter of the quality we have here. and most dont max out the test time. so, most are going to load/render in what, under a minute at normal/default image sizes. now, it's also true that the 600 ppi default image size in FF is a far cry from a 3200 ppi image size. so, that of course adds a lot more rendering time back in that equation. still, i've done a bit of high res rendering and i dont recall one that went much over about 5 minutes per render (although some of the new bomber and shapes stuff is pushing new render times now that stage two is out and the AO stuff is also adding more time, so all of that gets amended again (sigh)).

and yes, i know, it aint 12 gigs of ram speed. no question that a bit more ram in 64 bit would be pretty sweet. absatutely. i'd love to see it myself. but, we've learned that vladimir has a plan. he is pretty damn adamant about sticking to that plan and all the badgering we can muster at times tends to fall way short of getting him to alter that plan and frankly, that plan has served us pretty well, so far, even when we are hungry for more toys and more power. i think i've only gotten him to change that plan once and he still wont talk to me because of it (*grin*), but hey, i've got stage II of FF2 because of the plan, so i've got a smile on my face

thanks, gmm. that clears up something for me.