Interestingly, it also looks like to can't declare an array in XC16 > 32K even when using eds - let me know if you get this also. Anyway, I've put together a new Firewing BETA build ...
I decided to read over all those sections I skipped in the XC16 users guide and noticed that restriction, too. I'll have to take a look, but I thought the instruction encoding allowed for 64K of data space... perhaps not.
In any case, the newest beta is allowing me to compile pretty much up to the full limits of ram, but when I build in MPLAB it seems that the debugging info in MPSIM isn't happy with any arrays >= 8192 in length. The debug symbol disappears (it isn't available in the Watch window anymore). It's not the total ram that's an issue... I can have multiple arrays of 8190 and all seems well.
I can't try this with the FW toolsuite since it maxes out at 8192-64.