Hi guys,Alot of you have already seen the PMDG 737NGX Overhead shots, and everyone seems to be extremely happy, and pleased they live up to the remarkable expectations..http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtop...3358&st=200I have asked this before in the past, and i would like to ask again,Someone has mentioned that "my performance will die with this new addon"..I am very optimistic over the progessions that ******* made over easter, [fs developer not the messiah".]Also Mr Kok at Aerosoft, has said that his addon will be 5% less in performance than the default microsoft Airbus,, [for me thats 70+fps in the VC at Heathrow Xtreme uk2000]..So i adress the question again PMDG,1) You addons are getting more and more advanced, with quality. Is this directly proportional to Performance, or do you think after gradual understanding that you can also improve performance aswell!All the best and good luck with the developmentAlex

The better it looks, the worse it plays. That's the general rule of computer gaming.Though I wouldn't underestimate PMDG's ability to raise their frame rates - they've learned a thing or two after more than a decade of developing for flight sims.Ken Smith

Texture and geometry quality are most definitely not directly proportional to a loss of FPS. There's a heck of a lot that plays into it, one of the big killers is strange - mouse clickspots. For some reason the engine really gets bogged down by them - we have methods for dealing with it somewhat, but it's not perfect. ACES knew about the problem and were going to fix it before the studio was shut down... pretty unfortunate.Please rest assured though, we're not going to release something that performs badly on a decently modern system. If you can run the MD-11 and J41 well, this will be no different. It should be better actually due to some new optimization methods in the systems that we're doing.

Texture and geometry quality are most definitely not directly proportional to a loss of FPS. There's a heck of a lot that plays into it, one of the big killers is strange - mouse clickspots. For some reason the engine really gets bogged down by them - we have methods for dealing with it somewhat, but it's not perfect. ACES knew about the problem and were going to fix it before the studio was shut down... pretty unfortunate.Please rest assured though, we're not going to release something that performs badly on a decently modern system. If you can run the MD-11 and J41 well, this will be no different. It should be better actually due to some new optimization methods in the systems that we're doing.

The answer i was looking for!Cheers Tabs

Texture and geometry quality are most definitely not directly proportional to a loss of FPS. There's a heck of a lot that plays into it, one of the big killers is strange - mouse clickspots. For some reason the engine really gets bogged down by them - we have methods for dealing with it somewhat, but it's not perfect. ACES knew about the problem and were going to fix it before the studio was shut down... pretty unfortunate.Please rest assured though, we're not going to release something that performs badly on a decently modern system. If you can run the MD-11 and J41 well, this will be no different. It should be better actually due to some new optimization methods in the systems that we're doing.

SOLD. My system runs the MD-11 very well.

every pmdg model just keeps getting better... It would be nice if they went back and re-optimized the VC of the 747X though. My still favorite heavy metal

PMDG hasn't released a product that runs poorly on my computer so I am happy! The stupid FSX detailed clouds bog down my system more than the PMDG planes

Ryan,About the mouse clicks. Why can't you make an option that lets us define what buttons acutally work in our VC. For instance I'm sure there are more buttons that we dont use then buttons we do. WHy not make it so that the user can defiune via a Control Panel what VC buttons are 'alive" and "dead" and then when we are flying and want to use an alive button we have to go into the 2d panel. We would be keeping the same fuctionality but also keep better frames. I seriosuly love your work and PMDG's but there has to be a line drawn as far as FPS go. ORBX has incredible scenery and they just discovered Texture Flow...I dont know really what it is but it works....real real good. For example, I own some Aerosft German Airports, they look 'ok' not even close to as good as the ORBX stuff does but they have crappy FPS, yet they look awaful, make no sense to me. I think it would be a investment for you guys to toy around with some new technology to see if you can optimize the 737...I know I wont be lket down, I never am.

Texture and geometry quality are most definitely not directly proportional to a loss of FPS. There's a heck of a lot that plays into it, one of the big killers is strange - mouse clickspots. For some reason the engine really gets bogged down by them - we have methods for dealing with it somewhat, but it's not perfect. ACES knew about the problem and were going to fix it before the studio was shut down... pretty unfortunate.Please rest assured though, we're not going to release something that performs badly on a decently modern system. If you can run the MD-11 and J41 well, this will be no different. It should be better actually due to some new optimization methods in the systems that we're doing.

Jordan,I'll admit to not fully understanding this myself, (this is Vin's domain as the VC modeler) but I do know that it's not as simple or easy as doing that. For one, the clickspots are part of the model, so in order to allow per-clickspot disabling like you suggest, that means a different VC model for every combination of active vs. disabled clickspots. That's a heck of a lot of models for a VC as complex as this is. We don't want any 5GB downloads here... I'll ask about experimenting with a few variants though, like maybe a version of the VC that has just the essential MCP clickspots enabled so that you can control the plane in normal flight, but all the non-essential overhead stuff disabled etc. I do know there's other concerns with doing this though because of the way we interface between the 2D and VC versions of the gauges.

ACES knew about the problem and were going to fix it before the studio was shut down... pretty unfortunate.

It really really is a waste - short-sighted tail-chasing by a gaming division who thinks we'll all be playing mario-kart via the cloud on phones. I am so disappointed that we have to live with these flaws for a long time to come.I wonder if all the talents (ex-ACES and PMDG-level folks) could get a new platform together which is designed for high-fidelity? Or, are the NDAs so draconian that the intellectual might is strangled? Anyhow, thank you for the insight Ryan.

It really really is a waste - short-sighted tail-chasing by a gaming division who thinks we'll all be playing mario-kart via the cloud on phones. I am so disappointed that we have to live with these flaws for a long time to come.I wonder if all the talents (ex-ACES and PMDG-level folks) could get a new platform together which is designed for high-fidelity? Or, are the NDAs so draconian that the intellectual might is strangled? Anyhow, thank you for the insight Ryan.

Jeff, FYI, ex-ACES members have created their own company, Cascade Game Foundry. Read the press releases on their website here.

Jeff, FYI, ex-ACES members have created their own company, Cascade Game Foundry. Read the press releases on their website here.

alot of aces members are involved with FS developers

alot of aces members are involved with FS developers

The point I was trying to make, Jeff, was that we may no longer be stuck with FSX and its limitations, if they deliver in their promise to make a whole new simulator.

The point I was trying to make, Jeff, was that we may no longer be stuck with FSX and its limitations, if they deliver in their promise to make a whole new simulator.

Hi Andrew,I am aware of Cascade Game Foundry, and hope for the best with their venture, but I am concerned that market (survival) issues will curtail their offerings or even prevent their (pardon the pun) taking flight.MS was/is such a behemoth that they could afford the loss-leader of MSFS in an effort to keep us (the consumer) on the PC and on their OS and related products. But, alas, MS is a company who can't decide who they are and have lost their moxie to other technology companies who focus on the 'net/web/cloud. As a result, they have new young turks who are out of touch with earliest days of the PC revolution that spawned MSFS. MSFS is too 'cerebral','slow', and unstructured (you can't 'level' up in a prescribed and determinant manner) for today's audience. To drive the knife in deeper with a twist, MSFS didn't have a multi-player experience that was compelling enough, real enough or sufficiently action-packed to make an impact. Basically, MSFS was for the individual to escape and marvel at the simulation their PC afforded. So, visually, other titles surpassed MSFS and the focal point of gaming money became devices, consoles and games that looked great and went "BOOM." I say all of this despite the fact that MSFS was, at its death, a money maker. Some of the flaws attributed to maintaining some degree of backward compatibility with 20+ year old software notwithstanding, MSFS was strong DUE to its 20+ year history AND due to the deep pockets of MS. However, the realty of our recession-ravaged 'advanced' economy and other other demographic/technologic advances predicates that the times have left us behind. I feel that flightsimming, especially of the heavy-iron, high-fidelity, airliner ilk, will return to it's cottage industrial and niche roots. Whether we'll survive at this level is uncertain. When Bruce Artwick did his thing, we were in the early and heady days of the PC's ascendance and the tech world was full of visionary hackers who saw the art and commerce of their newfound world - now we are basically left with the commerce part. What will draw young talent to Flight simming when the action is elsewhere? I say this not only out of opinion, but through observing young and talented programmers over the last decade (I teach): increasingly, very few of them are either interested or aware of flight sim.If we can leave the Win32 legacy (and, accordingly DirectX) behind, we might be able to realize a new architecture that supports flightsimming across platforms (by this, I suppose I mean MAC) and give XPlane some real competition.In any case, I feel that we are stuck in this mode we are in and both hobby/freeware and high-quality payware developers will perfect/refine the existing paradigm.Anyhow, sorry for a long rant in response to a short head's up; I hope CGF will come through with something, but I think FSX will be our Falcon 4.0 but without the open crack at the source code. However, we do have the SDK (flawed as it is) and some clever folks around. I suspect that, thanks to emulation software such as VMWare, that we'll be able to fire up some copy of XP/Vista/Win7 and FSX for a long time to come and get our fix. Over time, we *might* get all of our favorite aircraft modeled so long as the expertise and motivation doesn't die with the current crop of gurus.

Hi jeff,To be honest i was in the exact same position as you,, very very worried about flight sim development..I have had chance to talk to developers who are "high" up as it were, and nopw that FSX is here to stay, advances have been made!Aircraft are looking spectacular and the performance is not suffering [check the latest PMDG and Fslabs concorde].My computer is in the "hospital" getting a new motherbaord and I7 930 @3.4 put in, i was getting fine performance with my "heavy" aircraft and sceneries and i7 will absolutley blast me into the 40/50fps VC at Uk2000 Heathrow,For me the sim runs like glass, and the visual quality has me comparing my screenshots to realworld shots, and not being able to tell the difference. Rest easy that FSX is here to stay! :DAlex