May FSX and Flight Comparison Screenshots

[BobKK47 2]

The more I look at the shots, the more I can see the subtle improvements.For example, in the first set the airport off of the right wing, at altitude, looks more realistic.And in the shots showing Waikiki, the sandy beach area adjacent to the hotels is non-existant in FSX but clearly visible in Flight.

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

The more I look at the shots, the more I can see the subtle improvements.

Those improvements are visibly way more than subtle.

[Tierborn 191]

The more I look at the shots, the more I can see the subtle improvements.For example, in the first set the airport off of the right wing, at altitude, looks more realistic.And in the shots showing Waikiki, the sandy beach area adjacent to the hotels is non-existant in FSX but clearly visible in Flight.

subtle??  :(

[tf51d 284]

I thought it was the other way around in that FSX implimented curved surface airports where as FS9 used flat surface airports?Hence the reason why FS9 airports that have custom ground poly dont work right in FSX and you get the bleed issues. For example, you can port the FlyTampa FS9 airports to work in FSX, but you have to use an ADX file for the ground surface because the ground polys that came with it for FS9 use wont display correctly in FSX and you need to remove them.

Actually FSX implemented the curved Earth but the airports are still flat, that is why we still get plateaus when higher mesh is used. The airports are flat because they couldn't (Or it was too costly in performance) get AI to work right on curved or sloped airports. You can make an airport follow the curves of the Earth, but AI won't work on them.

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

Actually FSX implemented the curved Earth but the airports are still flat, that is why we still get plateaus when higher mesh is used. The airports are flat because they couldn't (Or it was too costly in performance) get AI to work right on curved or sloped airports. You can make an airport follow the curves of the Earth, but AI won't work on them.

That's not entirely correct.Based on personal experience trying to use FS9 "flat earth" airport ground polys in FSX. Although the aiports do appear flat since the earth only curves somewhere around 8 inches per mile, but when you try to use those textured or photoreal ground polys in FSX you will see texture bleed due to the slight curvature. Even when you use a "flatten" in FSX it conforms to the curvature of the earth which makes it appear flat, but really isn't. I've tried to use an FSX flatten to get rid of the FS9 ground poly bleed, but it doesn't work.Read this post by Martin of FlyTampa, which goes into much more detail about the "round earth model" in FSX and how it effects airports. http://www.flytampa.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1862Also try this short post by Shez, Dick (rhumbaflappy), and meshman for a better understanding about what I am talking about. http://forum.avsim.net/topic/81406-time-to-begin-conversion-of-fs9-scenery-to-fsx/More info on the subject can be had at Fsdeveloper.com and I remember Umberto at FSDT discussing this as well on his forum when talking about the difference between FS9 airport development vs. FSX airports.Essentially, although the airport appear flat, they really aren't but you cant visually see a differnce in curvature.A good example to see for yourself is to install the Flighzone KPDX airport using the port over instructions a fellow posted a while back, or install a FlyTampa FS9 airport into FSX and you will see that the ground polys will appear correctly in some areas, but they will bleed in other areas.

[Chock 17,769]

Ever heard of this saying: "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics"Guy who said the above was a politican, one thing is for certain he understood the above far better I am willing to bet you do and to be fair most other people as well.

Bit off topic but interesting all the same, nobody knows for certain who it was that first said that oft-quoted phrase. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka Mark Twain) was among those who popularised it, and although he attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli, based on it being the kind of thing Disraeli probably would have said, there is no evidence of that Disraeli did so; most written references to that phrase (or one similar to it) originate some time after Disraeli was dead.Al

[bsmfinegan 12]

Bit off topic but interesting all the same, nobody knows for certain who it was that first said that oft-quoted phrase. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (aka Mark Twain) was among those who popularised it, and although he attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli, based on it being the kind of thing Disraeli probably would have said, there is no evidence of that Disraeli did so; most written references to that phrase (or one similar to it) originate some time after Disraeli was dead.Al

Mind you, why would a politcian quote something like that....sort of blows their cover somewhat!!!Bryan.

[Chock 17,769]

That's true.Al

[mgh 89]

It's far from clear it who first said it.http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/lies.htmi'd bet it was a politician - after all they know all about lies.

[n4gix 4,955]

i'd bet it was a politician - after all they know all about lies.

Sadly enough, that is all too true. "Honest Politicians" -aside from being an oxymoron of the First Class- don't last long in politics.Very few have ever been elected to office without having learned to fight dirty. Even those few who do come into politics all full of ideals and good intentions soon learn that idealism doesn't get them far, and good intentions don't get them reelected. One has to be seen "delivering the goods" to the folks back home. Politics is all about the art of the deal, and what you can get away with... :(

[JimmiG 244]

Very nice comparison screenshots, although I personally view MSF/MSFS as a platform rather than a complete product. What you get in the box in terms of scenery and aircraft are just there to get you started. Most will eventually have replaced almost every texture and object with something else from a third party developer. So far more interesting for me are the core technologies that the engine supports.There is no doubt that Flight looks better out of the box than FSX does, but it's sometimes hard to tell whether it's because of more realistic art assets or actual, new technology. The sim definitely seems to use some kind of HDR rendering. This would increase the contrast and "depth" of the image, and make it look less washed out (especially apparent in the first image). It's also possible to use post-processing techniques to reduce saturation and increase contrast and generally get a more cinematic/photographic feel from the game. Those are all nice features that many games use, but it's nothing ground-breaking.Then there's the issue of what the scenery engine is actually capable of doing. Addon developers have really pushed the FSX engine for beyond what anyone at Aces can possibly have envisioned. Many things they do however, involved "tricking" the scenery engine or adding custom layers to it. Native support for some of the more advanced techniques that scenery developers use would be cool, so you can create FTX-like airfields using just stock APIs and methods.Another thing that they definitely need to fix is that absolutely ridiculous balancing act between smoothness and scenery sharpness that has plagued FS since at least 2002. You should not have to artificially limit your framerate in order to "divert resources" towards rendering scenery. This should be entirely automatic and dynamic, as it is with other games and simulators. Using very high detail settings on a slow PC should only affect your framerate, it should not cause scenery texture quality to degrade. I have high hopes that this will finally get fixed. FSX was essentially developed for 10 GHz single-core CPUs that never materialized. This will not be the case with Flight, it will be developed for PCs that exist or will exist in our version of reality rather than in Intel's fantasies.Also, any parameters that end-users can tweak via a .cfg-file or similar should be clearly documented from the start, so that the "myths" surrounding FSX.cfg are avoided. Some people insert completely malformed values into the file, claiming it totally changed FS for them, when in fact FS just ignored the line and used the built-in default value instead.

[skully 1,046]

Nice job on the comparison shots Brandon! Really makes the differences stand out.Thanks!

[AWACS 12]

Good job with those comparison shots, Flight has certainly made some large strides visually over FSX. Now, you should put FS9 shots in there too, so we can really see the amazing progression made through the years :(

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

Glad you guys liked the comparisons. :(

Good job with those comparison shots, Flight has certainly made some large strides visually over FSX. Now, you should put FS9 shots in there too, so we can really see the amazing progression made through the years :(

Now there's an idea! If I get around to starting FS9 up sometime soon, I'll hop over to these locations and do the comparisons.

[magnetite 38]

Flight looks amazing. Although it seems for planes all I'm seeing is prop planes. Maybe they'll show us some jets.