nVidia and ATI perform regular driver optimizations, in most cases they focus this optimizations on the newer SM, 3 & 4... why would nVidia be worried about optimizing 1.1 or 2? anyway.. there is NO increase at all, the only changes I see are purely visual...

Thats becuase these are shaders, the bottleneck is still your CPU not the GPU, put in a less powerful new card or you could try turning down CPU oriented task such as mesh lower your screen res and uncap the FPS limiter, recompile some of those shaders to lower values, maybe then there wont be too much of a bottleneck and you'll be able to see.Your right they focus on newer SM because driver optimizations have alway been carried over, there is nothing new to optimize in SM1/2 etc and the new GPU still use those old instructions, just run an old DX8 benchmark and you'll obliterate it. More shaders, pipes, faster clocks faster vram to run those old instructions on, no "new" optimizations needed.Cool stuff *******.

Cool stuff *******.

Well.. there is nothing else to do in fsx.cfg :) ShadersHLSL is the next frontier... however, after 'further' testing, I'm not sure I like the 3.0 shader clouds :) they look too pristine, perfect, clean.. so, this will end here, just tweak shaders for experimentation purposes and if you know what you are doing because you get 0 performance increase.. zero, nada.. I'm just playing with the water shaders to see why only SM2.0 is used, even though the MS team programed the function for SM3.0 in the shaders.I also saw some interesting shaders that use 'material' references (.bmp files) for runway, clouds and pretty much everything else... I wonder if anyone have tried playing with those to fix the DX10 Preview runway flashing.. there are tons of options there...

Well.. there is nothing else to do in fsx.cfg :) ShadersHLSL is the next frontier... however, after 'further' testing, I'm not sure I like the 3.0 shader clouds :) they look too pristine, perfect, clean.. so, this will end here, just tweak shaders for experimentation purposes and if you know what you are doing because you get 0 performance increase.. zero, nada.. I'm just playing with the water shaders to see why only SM2.0 is used, even though the MS team programed the function for SM3.0 in the shaders.I also saw some interesting shaders that use 'material' references (.bmp files) for runway, clouds and pretty much everything else... I wonder if anyone have tried playing with those to fix the DX10 Preview runway flashing.. there are tons of options there...

Material ref might be the emisive, specular and bump. The DX10 preview problem "seems" to be a z-buffer issue...Have fun bro!BTW am pretty sure max water uses SM3.0 as directx9C is the required DX version for installing and running FSX

A "fix" for the flashing runways/taxiways was discovered and published several months ago. It involves a tiny and invisible modification to each airport's .bgl file. Details may be found at http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/index.php in the Scenery forum(s).

A "fix" for the flashing runways/taxiways was discovered and published several months ago. It involves a tiny and invisible modification to each airport's .bgl file. Details may be found at http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/index.php in the Scenery forum(s).

Yeah, thanks. Saw that with great intrest, but it involves hand coding all the worlds airports...and then there are issues with the limited AA, as well as some other broken scenery commands that work fine in DX9, its all really a shame. Not to step on anyones toes but probably part of the reason Aces is gone. :(

Yeah, thanks. Saw that with great intrest, but it involves hand coding all the worlds airports...and then there are issues with the limited AA, as well as some other broken scenery commands that work fine in DX9, its all really a shame. Not to step on anyones toes but probably part of the reason Aces is gone. :(

It's called "DX10 Preview" for a reason. It's purely experimental and Aces/Microsoft made no secret of that. Officially, FSX is a DX9 game.

It's called "DX10 Preview" for a reason. It's purely experimental and Aces/Microsoft made no secret of that.

They made no secret of that? Did you know something before the rest of us did, Devs included? You couldn't have meant what you just said.You must know that's a very sore spot for some of us and I think you have it a bit mixed up. Some of us got hit hard in a personal sort of way as in lost $$ from lost business, which was a direct result of the bitter disapointment over the fact that the advertized advantages of FSX-Vista/DX10 as announced early on, in the trailer and even later at launch, that went on to become much later the broken DX10 preview - and thats all I'll say about that.Microsoft at 2006 E3 the Electronic Entertainment Expo they announced DX10 product and the extarordinary graphics it would deliver, out of the 20 listed what game did they use to highlite Vista-DX10? FSX.Aces anouncing the development of Acceleration: "DirectX 10. "Flight Simulator X: Acceleration" will continue to build on the rich visual foundation of "Flight Simulator X," taking advantage of Windows Vista and DirectX 10 to deliver breathtaking graphics and dynamic environments for a truly immersive experience. Use of DX10 graphics is optional."So maybe a better way of saying it is: "after they decided to abort the effort of DX10 they let us all know it is broken by calling it a 'DX10 preview'". unfortunately, that, after many invested in new DX10 hardware and Vista for no real good reason.

I decided to try some experiments myself. I tried setting up not only the swarmcloud.fx file but the terrain and water settings too, the terrain seemed much clearer, at a resolution of 1M, and the water darker and more reflective at 2Xmid+, maybe even too reflective prototypically, but I liked it. It looked closer to X-Plane water. The bad part though was a show stopper. It messed up the horizon and and graduated fog effects. So unless I can figure out how to fix that, back to 2.0. I should have taken a couple of shots before I reverted. Sorry!

They made no secret of that? Did you know something before the rest of us did, Devs included? You couldn't have meant what you just said.

Yes, I made a very public post to the community about FSX and DX10. Fall of 2007. And basically apologized to the community for releasing the "magic screenshots" and not living up to themThats well after the E3 news from 2006, and typically more recent official news trumps older news.For devs who where on the SP2 beta, this was not a huge surprise.For those who followed my blog posts about SP2, I was dropping major hints for months that the "magic screenies" where not what the community should expect.So no, the news about what DX10 was in SP2 should not have been a huge surprise.

It is important to remember that FS was a group endeavour and therefore full of the conflicting opinions and desires of the different developers. There was, more than likely, a lot of politics in the meetings and a lot of conflict concerning features, methods, and techniques. Perhaps there had been some desire to include SM3 compatibility in the game, but that this was ultimately defeated in one of those noisy meetings. There are many other instances of things left undone or done differently in FS; the shader model is not the only one.Best regards.Luis

Luis,the main issue with SM 2.0 vs SM 3.0 for DX9 support is installed base. nV didnt have SM 3.0 support until 6800 series. ATI didnt have it until x1800 generation.So a choice of SM 3.0 for DX9 would have meant 3 generations of ATI DX9 parts ( 9700, 9800, x800 ) and 2 generations of nV DX9 parts ( 5900, and 5950 ) would have been excluded.It didnt seem like a wise choice. Phil

Yes, I made a very public post to the community about FSX and DX10. Fall of 2007. And basically apologized to the community for releasing the "magic screenshots" and not living up to themThats well after the E3 news from 2006, and typically more recent official news trumps older news.For devs who where on the SP2 beta, this was not a huge surprise.For those who followed my blog posts about SP2, I was dropping major hints for months that the "magic screenies" where not what the community should expect.So no, the news about what DX10 was in SP2 should not have been a huge surprise.Phil

Its good to see your alive and kicking Phil,Though I got to give feedback to some team members on concerns, wish list etc I never did get a seat on the beta bus.Not to bring this all back up, in business we often try to forcast the future, its a risk. Trying to plan ahead to sync production into a user market that fits well before the next scheduled version of FS has always been a struggle, and if it happens to be complex project you better start yesterday...so much for forcasting the future.The feedback that I was getting and as you probably got in mid 06 around the E3 announcment was all systems were go for DX10, gonna be great stuff!I dont think it was until qtr3 of 07 that you started to clear things up and by then it was a little late, and BTW no one from Aces ever spoke of the flashing texture probelm nor of the lack over filtering control, the blame had always been put on the GPU guys and the rest of us just left very dissapointed. Hey, thats business though, and for the larger part FSX is one hell of a product, we all love it, and really appreciate the effort...cant even imagine the fun you must have had, corporate setting and all.Cheers!

Luis,the main issue with SM 2.0 vs SM 3.0 for DX9 support is installed base. nV didnt have SM 3.0 support until 6800 series. ATI didnt have it until x1800 generation.So a choice of SM 3.0 for DX9 would have meant 3 generations of ATI DX9 parts ( 9700, 9800, x800 ) and 2 generations of nV DX9 parts ( 5900, and 5950 ) would have been excluded.It didnt seem like a wise choice. Phil

Not a problem anymore :)Shader 3.0 mod for FSX here: http://www.venetubo.com/SM3_v1.1.zip