Seeking feedback on Windows 7 support

Paul

To the extent the December 2025 release of WSV3 Tactical Mesoanalyst 2025 could/might/will support Windows 7, I would like to base this off hearing from real-world users, and quantifying how numerous they are.

There are numerous improvements and simplifications I could make if assuming minimum Windows 8 target, not the least of which is guaranteed Direct3D 11.1 support. I also see benefit in eventually using Microsoft's native WinHTTP-based WebSocket client API, also guaranteed with 8 and newer. I purchased a proprietary WebSocket client component in the meantime, but there are efficiency and likely performance benefits to use the WinHTTP one in the future.

I also have intentions (post-release) to create a Direct3D 12 rendering engine, which I understand requires Win10 as a minimum notwithstanding circuitous modding abilities to port D3D12 engines to Windows 7.

I am strongly tempted to make Windows 10 a baseline requirement, at least eventually. Windows 10 lacks the annoyance, bloat, and poor reputation of 11, while having full support for D3D11.3, D3D12, and WinHTTP WebSocket client library, and others.

I am specifically testing to ensure a smooth experience and official support on Windows 11, but I am tempted to make Windows 10 the recommended platform, and 10 or 11 required. I have purchased two Win11 modern PCs for testing, one a powerful gaming laptop with powerful NVIDIA RTX 4060 discrete GPU - the first time I have incorporated high-end hardware into testing.

Based on the newest Steam numbers, this covers 96% of PCs, and December 2025 yet 1.5 years in the future: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

I suppose that enterprise/government/corporate contexts might have a higher percentage of Windows 7 targets, but I can always back-engineer reverse compatibility if the need exists later. Right now I am optimizing for the common consumer experience using prevailing commodity consumer hardware.

Let me know if you are someone who intends to use WSV3 Tactical Mesoanalyst 2025 in December 2025 where lack of Windows 7 support would be a deal-breaker.

jcline

I'm a Mac user myself, so take this for what you will. Howevever, Windows 8 was released in August 2012 and Windows 10 was released in 2015. By the time WSV3 Tactical Mesoanalyst is released in late 2025, Windows 10 will be 10 years old. I think you'd be well within your rights to limit support to that platform, especially if it will make development and deployment easier.

Paul

jcline Love to hear it. Keep in mind, with the full VM compatibility, everyone on Mac will be able to use it through Parallels, so that opens up much more potential use than shunning W7 support reduces.

Suburbazine

I would be very happy to see Win7 support ended as soon as possible, because it's way past the expiration date and people need to move on. Literally no reason to remain connected to the internet.

Parker

I believe it's time to discontinue future support for Windows 7. Since most significant software no longer supports it, maintaining it has become unnecessary.

eliteo

I haven’t used or seen anyone use Windows 7 in years. I don’t even think Baron Lynx and TWC’s MAX has windows 7 support anymore. I say discontinue

Paul

Some more info on this: I am finally concretely using a certain Win32 OS API which only exists on Windows 8 and newer (the WinHTTP native WebSocket functions).

WinHTTP is highly optimized and not having to introduce an external dependency, another DLL, or bloat the EXE is maximally efficient when there is a perfect native OS option for WebSocket support.

Worst case if, say, some company wanted to eventually pay for Windows 7 support, I could very seamlessly and easily create a new WebSocket client layer with Win 7 support. Since April I have been using a separate paid commercial library for the WebSocket client interface, which doesn't require Windows 8, only for testing. If given the option to use the very highly performant native Win32 API option offered since Windows 8 to omit a 600kb DLL, I will go for it. I am sure it is better performance anyways.

This is more work but absolutely worth it because in mid-May I entered a phase of obsession over minimizing the EXE file size. This is tactically significant for a few reason. I will share more info about this later.

Windows 8 minimum requirement is comfortable. First, WSV3 Tactical Mesoanalyst will be optimized for Windows 10 as the official recommended OS (on which it is also being developed), so Win8 is already older than the official recommendation. We're also guaranteed WebSocket support in WinHTTP (above) and also Direct3D 11.1 (some useful GPU programming features such as guaranteed ability to use UAVs at all shader stages).

I will release more info later about the new super fast client-server streaming/instant PUSH data model using WebSocket protocol (runs over standard HTTP/HTTPS TCP ports to play well with firewalls/public networks) and also about the technical battle to release a very lightweight, unbloated, small, no-bullshit EXE with few dependencies and impressively immediate initial launch.

TheDopplerKid

600kb isn't a great deal of data, but given your target application size, it very well could be a few bricks off your back.

Paul

WSV3 Tactical Mesoanalyst is being written to leverage high-performance SIMD CPU instructions for maximum power efficiency and speed on data operations which benefit from SIMD acceleration. This is a significant value-adding feature. The value of WSV3 compared to other options will be to have the most performance-optimized and resource-usage-efficient real-time weather graphics software.

Since we are 64-bit only, we are guaranteed SSE2 instruction set.

I now see SSSE3 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSSE3) (not to be confused with SSE3) will be beneficial to use as well.

This would exclude 15+ year old PCs, but likely this isn't an additional restriction if Windows 8 is a minimum target anyways, with Win10 being recommended.

Actually I believe almost all Windows 7 PC CPUs support SSSE3, as well as much newer.

So, let me know if there is any case where you would want to use optimized real-time weather graphics/tracking software on a Windows 8, 10, or 11 PC which doesn't support SSSE3. I am pretty sure no such case even exists.

If that is true, then it's harmful for me to not make use of the hardware as fully as possible. I do not want to go so far as requiring AVX-512, for instance. It's foolish to exclude 5% of users for largely meaningless performance improvements. But, it's also foolish to not take full usage of the hardware that 100% (or, even if in theory 99.9%) of users will be running the software on.

I am thankful to be in a position of skill to leverage SIMD and GPU for weather graphics. This is only true very recently. The gap between performance-optimized software and lazy, inefficient software has massively increased in the last 15 years in the consumer space as hardware has become more powerful. There's now a bigger delta between quality software and non-optimized software than ever before, because when the hardware was weaker you were forced to do things the right way or else you wouldn't have had a usable product.

I will show the world the power of native, low-level, Data-Oriented-Design-engineered efficient software for weather graphics as opposed to WebGL/Javascript in a web browser.

Maybe people won't care; maybe windy.com will serve most users' interests for free. The outcome doesn't matter. What matter is accomplishing the goal and doing so better than all competitors. That is the goal.