I have FSX running on Vista. My soundcard is a Creative X-fi. From what I have read, games that use OpenAL for sound will be hardware accelerated on Vista. But if a game uses the older DirectSound API (or EAX 3 or 4), hardware acceleration won't work. Creative has a project called Alchemy to translate calls to the older API into OpenAL so you can get hardware acceleration.I don't have Alchemy installed yet because I can't find if FSX uses OpenAL or the older API. I'm trying to do everything I can to improve framerates. If FSX is using the older API, then Alchemy might take some load off the CPU, and get me an extra frame or two.Anyone have details about the FSX sound architecture?

I can't answer you question, but this article might help:http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/bo...message.id=1694

I don't know either, but I would ASSUME that FSX is still DirectSound/EAX3 or 4) since it's at present DX9, and DX9 utilizes DirectSound. It sounds like (oops, no pun intended) OpenAL may be a feature of DX10. Wild guess.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

OpenAL can be used by DirectX 9 games. Battlefield 2142 uses it, along with a bunch of newer games. After some more reading, I'm pretty sure you're right about FSX using DirectSound. I think I will try Alchemy and see if I get a frame rate increase.

If Alchemy helps your fps, let us know here in these forums...RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case