Webisod 4 Pic Collection

[dazz 69]

Almost right, it's the other way around, Microsoft is adding bits to the old sims..../Edit*

Just to be sure I understand what you're saying Alain, Flight is going to be a souped up FSX, and then MS are releasing a DX10 patch for FSX with SLI support and all the bugs from the DX10 preview fixed? did I get it right?

[alainneedle1 97]

Hey! Dazz, let me cleared up what I said before,What I always said is that Flight is from the same engine as FSX is. I've never said that MS was releasing a DX10 patch for FSX with SLI support and all the bugs from the DX10 preview fixed.If souped up means fixing the engine and adding to it then yes the engine is souped up, it is not a 100% brand new out of the box engine, no matter what peoples think the FSX engine is a very good one.

[dazz 69]

Hey! Dazz, let me cleared up what I said before,What I always said is that Flight is from the same engine as FSX is. I've never said that MS was releasing a DX10 patch for FSX with SLI support and all the bugs from the DX10 preview fixed.If souped up means fixing the engine and adding to it then yes the engine is souped up, it is not a 100% brand new out of the box engine, no matter what peoples think the FSX engine is a very good one.

Ah, ok. I found your original thread. It was SLI for FSX but DX9 only right?Well, thanks for the clarification, we'll see what the future brings. I certainly hope you're wrong and Flight sports a new and improved engine with better flight dynamics and better SDK.

[alainneedle1 97]

Ah, ok. I found your original thread. It was SLI for FSX but DX9 only right?Well, thanks for the clarification, we'll see what the future brings. I certainly hope you're wrong and Flight sports a new and improved engine with better flight dynamics and better SDK.

Dazz, do you know how long it take to build a game engine like the one use for FSX from scratch and have it ready for release after all testing done....two years is not enough.Here, I posted this before, this is about FSX and SLI + multicore http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ptaylor/archive/2007/03/03/fsx-more-on-sli-and-multi-core.aspx

[dazz 69]

Dazz, do you know how long it take to build a game engine like the one use for FSX from scratch and have it ready for release after all testing done....two years is not enough.Here, I posted this before, this is about FSX and SLI + multicore http://blogs.msdn.co...multi-core.aspx

Yeah, I've read that blog entry of PT before. I dunno, reworking an old engine like that to make it GPU bound and properly multithreaded can't be trivial either, especially if it's not the same team who coded it originally. I don't know the internals of FSX, but as a software developer I know it's often easier to start from scratch than to try to make something work in a way it was not designed to. For what I know FSX had the ballast of a requirement for backwards compatibility with tones of legacy code from past versions of the sim (somebody correct me if I'm wrong here) and then there's also the Flight team claiming it's being coded from the ground up for the most part.Not trying to argue with you, time will tell who's right or wrong, but it doesn't add up. Care to elaborate on what led you to believe all that please?

[Fsau 0]

How about MS writing a new engine but using chunks of code from FSX where they can to save time? Like a frankenengine.

[frankla 45]

..... but as a software developer I know it's often easier to start from scratch than to try to make something work in a way it was not designed to. .....

Amen. Well said. To make it multithreaded, they really have to start from scratch. Its like trying to make a sky scraper on top of an old multi story building by adding stories. It doesn't make sense to add to the old building. Its cheaper and faster to demolish the old building first. By the way It has been nearly 4 years since they started development of Flight not since they told us about it last August. Finally I wanna know how we will ever prove Alain wrong if MS never tells us about it. This could be an endless debate.

Dazz, do you know how long it take to build a game engine like the one use for FSX from scratch and have it ready for release after all testing done....two years is not enough.Here, I posted this before, this is about FSX and SLI + multicore http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ptaylor/archive/2007/03/03/fsx-more-on-sli-and-multi-core.aspx

Its been nearly four years. It doesn't take four years to enhance preexisting code.

How about MS writing a new engine but using chunks of code from FSX where they can to save time? Like a frankenengine.

.That I can believe. For example, you won't need to find a way to redo the clouds if you don't intend to change them. It doesn't mean the engine is old

[Attila 2]

You'd be surprised at what stupidities developers are capable of. I am with Alain on this about Flight being mostly FSX code with tweaks. There will be plenty of new code as well, to be sure.You can bet that the entire directory structure will change, names will change and it will generally be a mess to figure out why certain things were done.I bet the user interface will be redone too. It will follow the usual logic of renaming features and moving them around so long time users will have to dig for days to find a feature that they know should be around somewhere - a la XP to WIn 7 or Office 2003 to 2007.The new store will need a lot of new code and be properly integrated into the game. I bet a lot of development is done on this. Then there is the point about actually having something in this store, so instead of developing the game proper, time is spent on this as well.Clearly, some internal code is being reworked to allow some new eye-candy and possibly more game-like features to appeal to the masses, but much of the above is not in evidence from any of the released information.I don't buy the company line of "Flight is being built from the ground up".Heck I would not be surprised if we'd end up having to create an avatar, who has a wardrobe and is capable of walking to the airport lounge, where he can chat with the other avatars about what the best plane is to ram other simmers on-line.

[alainneedle1 97]

Amen. Well said. To make it multithreaded, they really have to start from scratch. Its like trying to make a sky scraper on top of an old multi story building by adding stories. It doesn't make sense to add to the old building. Its cheaper and faster to demolish the old building first. By the way It has been nearly 4 years since they started development of Flight not since they told us about it last August. Finally I wanna know how we will ever prove Alain wrong if MS never tells us about it. This could be an endless debate.Its been nearly four years. It doesn't take four years to enhance preexisting code..That I can believe. For example, you won't need to find a way to redo the clouds if you don't intend to change them. It doesn't mean the engine is old

You still thinking about a 100% brand new engine out of the box, if that was the case I'll be with you 100% on how easyer it is to start fresh, 4 years in the making would have been for FS11, did you read somethiing about that somewhere from MS lately or did you see something remotely looking like FS11 in the webisode.Multithreading means each task can have its own thread, not that each task can split itself even further and run on multiple cores. Listen to what Phil is saying at 1:40 in the vid., he is talking about multi-core not multithreading, today's hardware is 4 > 6 and soon 8 core CPU.

and if you look at today's game (most of them) they are GPU hungry more then CPU bound.===================================================================================================Here is what Ashton Lawson wrote on the subject in the striking software forum, Quote: Ignoring graphics for a moment, Flight Simulator's got the major hurdle of dealing with an entire planet. Aircraft characteristics are determined through, basically, look-up tables on known performance data of each aircraft, but the fact that you've got to have a system in place to load scenery data on the fly onto a giant sphere is a daunting task.I've seen all the powerpoint slides years ago when we were all getting hyped-up on FSX on what was ACES's concept of planetary rendering.Even to this day, you've got forums, articles and loads of resources just on the subject of rendering an entire planet, and dealing with the many issues brought-on by dealing with a spherical world.What sort of coordinate system to use, how to do rigid-body physics simulation in a none-cartesian coordinate system, how to break up the world into chunks of geometry, how to load scenery data, how to create AI flight plans, the list is endless.Plus I haven't mentioned the issue of floating point precision when using the traditional world-view-projection. The further away from 0.0f a floating point number gets the more inaccurate it becomes and then you start getting z-fighting a shimmering if you get too far away from the world's center - a problem fixed by treating the camera as the world's center, which then means that whenever the camera moves, every object's world matrix must be updated accordingly, which is a performance killer if you're not clever about the rendering system.There are so many issues and problems you'd have to overcome. To do all this from scratch and come out with a triple-A quality simulator within two years would be a bit of a stretch.===================================================================================================================Starting from scratch does not mean building a new engine, rotisserie restoration is probably a more appropriate term for what they are doing.

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

I am with Alain on this about Flight being mostly FSX code with tweaks.

There's too many differences for it to be simply tweaked.

[alainneedle1 97]

There's too many differences for it to be simply tweaked.

Compare to what?

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

Compare to what?

Ummm...FSX. :(

[alainneedle1 97]

Ummm...FSX. :(

Did you see something like...Multithreading? Multi-core? PhysX? SLI? DX11?

[dazz 69]

As Frank said, we might never know if it's a complete new engine or not. Maybe the savvy addon developers in the community will know somehow once it's releasedWhat would be the clues?Better multitasking?GPU bound?DX10/11?Latest shaders 4.0?improved SDK and flight dynamics?...I would venture it's absolutely impossible to get that with just a tweaked FSX, even if a new engine uses some of the same solutions for the round world problem than FSX, it would still need be a new engine I guess

[frankla 45]

Starting from scratch does not mean building a new engine,..

Huh? Well that is a convenient way of trying to save face in case you are wrong!! With that statement you could never be wrong!