What worries me a little is MS' advice to use restore if you run Me or XP... If it's fully backward compatible, why would you need it..? That leaves poor 98 users like me discombobulated.

>Now for some numbers that can be quantitatively reviewed. In the 3D >Mark2001 SE bench mark, I gained slightly from 9256 to 9305.That is less than the marging I would have in two benchamrks with exactly the same setup after a clean start. How can someone call that an "improvement".Alex

Hi All,I installed DX9 and didn't/don't have problems. Subjectively I can only say that FS2K2 does seem to run smoother, but my system is fairly beafy anyway, so I didn't have any frame rate problems with DX 8.1 (which held steady at 35fps w/full everything enable). Where I do notice the big difference is in the sharper colors/hues and shades of the sim. Taxiway lights were next to impossible to spot at night but with DX9 they appear to be sharper and much more easier to spot. The sound is awesome.Below are before and after screen-shots which quite frankly don't illustrate a huge difference between DX 8 and 9. The changes are subtle and thus subjective, as in: "I was able to hear the squeak in my car, but you as the passenger could not. With DX9 the sqweak is gone" You know your system better than anyone, if you see a positive difference then you're that much further ahead of the game. Happy HolidaysBillSystem:Aleinware 2.8g w/2 gig RamRadeon 9700 Pro v3.0 Catalyst dvrsXP Home w/Dx9NEC MultSync 19"Klipsch Pro Media 5.1 speakersSB Audigy PlatinumTM CougarScenery: Manfred Domandl's Whini201 and 2 and Mike Stones 727

Sorry I omitted which picture was what.1 = With DX92 = Without DX93 = Without DX94 = With DX9Not that is makes much of a difference :)Bill

ok, I have windowsME and I'd like to give it a trywhat to do when I wanna reinstall dx8,do I just have to download and install DX8 then again?

>ok, I have windowsME and I'd like to give it a try >what to do when I wanna reinstall dx8, do I just have to >download and install DX8 then again? No, it is not that simple, you cant install an older version of DX as it will "see" the newer version and avoid installing.Though it is not too hard to re-install DX8 once you have installed DX9, it is not for the uninitiated, I have installed and un-installed DX9 on three machines here including my main FS2k2 "Boss Box" running Win98SE it entails doing things in the right order and some registry cleanup as well, a lot can go wrong and I wont walk anyone through it just so they can experiment as I don

ok,i'll stick to DX8 ofr the time being,it's just that I read in the screenshots forum that so many people were getting an considerable increase in framerates.but I'll stick to the old saying "if it ain't broke,don't fix it" :)

Alex,Not that I'd disagree with your findings, but I have concluded that FS2002 has a certain characteristic where most of its performance resides in the RAM and Processing power of the computer rather than the GPU performance. So any major Direct3D advancement would be most likely discredited in the first place, proving further of a new D3d's effectiveness. I'd like to know if anyone else would agree with such a finding.

Well on the bright side at least DX 9 does support win 98, which is something I was not certain would actually happen. I was getting the feeling that Win 98 users would be compelled to upgrade their OS if they wished to utilise the features of the new generation graphics cards.Now I feel a little more hopeful that Nvidia and Ati will continue to support Win 98 users with appropriate drivers for their new, upcoming cards. At least I hope so given that DX9 supports Win 98.I'd love to run Win98 for at least another year and it looks like that might well be the case now.

I've just installed DX9 and see no difference. No problems either. :-) Running Win98se, AMD 1.4, 512 DDR RAM, GForce2 64 MB DDR. I agree that DX9 is probably not helping in fs2k2 but think GPU performance should be ranked right in there with RAM and CPU horsepower.Best regards,Rob

Hi,My experience is in any case positive. I don't want to discuss the crisper picture are not, but experience is telling the following:If I fly the Marchetti SF260 with the VC on, I had to set it to Low Gauge Quality mode to get rit of the jerky movements with Active Camera. With DirectX 9.0, the jerkies in High Gauge Quality are past history.BTW I suffer from the "placedo" effect :-lol . The world looks more crisp to me too.Merry Christmas, Happy New Year to you all !hmALDI Computer 1Ghz, 512 Kb, Nvidia GTS2 32K (Overclocked 450, 390 Mhz), 41.09.

Installed DX9 this morning, ran DXdiag, and all was ok. Ran 3DMARK2001, and got a score of 12772 compared to 12804 with 8.2, so no meaningful change. FS2002 runs ok, no real differences in fps, may be a bit sharper, but can't measure it. But - I still have problems in FS2002 with antialiasing, mostly with 3rd party aircraft. I get distorted red letters when I display frame rate and when I select a menu screen, it is slow to respond and I get multiple screens. If I turn off AA, these problems disappear. Problem occurs at 1024x768x32 and 1280x960x32, haven't tried other resolutions. I have installed (and re-installed) 40.72 certified drivers with no improvement. My only adjustment using RIVA Tuner is LOD -0.5. My system:P4 2.53 Ghz, Gigabyte GA-8IHXP MB, 512 MB RDRAM 1066, ABIT GF4 TI4600 video, Windows XP Home w/SP1.Any suggestions?Dale/

I installed DirectX9, and Catalyst 3.0. I saw some performance improvement, but that probably came from Catalyst 3.0, and not from DX9."Q: Are there any immediate benefits to installing DirectX 9.0? A. When coupled with a DirectX 9.0 compatible video card and driver, you may see a visual improvement in games that were designed *with DirectX 9.0 in mind*."Note that it sais "designed with DirectX 9.0 in mind". There are currently no games out that are coded specially for DX9. That statement refers to things like improved shaders and displacement mapping.FS2002 is basically coded for DX7, not even DX8. So, in theory, there should be no improvement in FS2002 from updating to DX9.You may see an improvement by just updating to DX9 and using the same videocard drivers, I'm not denying that. The reason for the improvement is probably that some left-over files get updated or some driver conflict gets resolved by installing DX9. Some codepaths may also be more optimized and efficent in DX9 vs DX8, but that's not likely.