I see you guys are really wet behind the ears concerning the history of Flight Simulator (geeze)...http://www.geek.com/gaming/gamerevs/video/monster.htm http://www.intelligamer.com/hardware/monster/monster.asphttp://www.webreviews.com/9805/monster_3d2.htmlThis was the main card people used for FS98. Go read and educate yourself...

Ryan, I agree with you 100%.I'm not a programmer (though I do work in computer tech support) but after using FS2004 for a good 9 months now, at the rate of about 15 hours of flying a week and installing many sceneries, planes, panels and sounds, and also reading informed Flight Simmers' comments in forums like this one, I have definitely seen a need for much more efficient code (source programming).All of you who don't think a revised source code (engine) is necessary look at the problems people have when frame rates gradually slow from the time you take-off to the time you land, down due to what I believe is now known as a memory leak in FS2004. Today, I had another slow-down in frame-rates which happens often - after landing in Honolulu Airport (scenery made by Bill Melichar I think) and starting to taxi, the frames started being quite choppy - I could SEE the choppiness, so I don't need to measure the fsp for that! This happens with many add-on aircraft, scenery and even panels. I have a Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB and an Athlon XP 3200+ with 1GB of Kingston HyperX RAM - not exactly a slow or even a medium slow system is it now! -> It's nonsense like this that requires to be corrected in (hopefully) the next version of FS... and, as stated already, you can't improve on a dead-end source code (and even if you can, then MS has to make a real effort to do so - much more effort than it's been making so far!)Another example of nonsense with FS2004 - unexplained crashes still occur occasionally with me, particularly (and in fact - ONLY) with add-on airplanes (e.g. POSKY, PMDG) but do NOT occur with default planes, even default planes with third-party flight dynamics and third-party panels fly perfectly. My flight today was on a default 747-400 with Pedro Oliveira's amazing FDE and a third-party panel by Gerard Lafaye. Not a glitch. But that panel is no-where near as complex (and hence resource-intensive) as the PMDG 737NG panel; nor is the texture bitmaps as high-res and complex as the PMDG or POSKY textures. If I switch to an outside view of a default plane, the textures paint instantly and I don't notice any lag in seeing the livery. If I switch to an outside view in a POSKY or PMDG plane-the plane is white for about 10 seconds before it is finally painted with its livery... bad code no? -->possibly a good example of the code (or engine) not keeping up with the advances in hardware as already mentioned and I fully agree. Inefficient programming causes most if not all of the nightmares people live through in FS2004.John

Chris you know more than many of us and people still aren't trying to hear you. I've given up... Unless these guys really dig into programming for themselves, you'll never convince them no matter how many facts you bring to the table...Guys Chris has more of an inside track on this stuff and has been doing it for many years now. He knows what he's talking about and he's also developed many add-ons for Flight Simulator.He's also the only real pro developer willing to shed some light on this for all of us. It's amazing even his opinion doesn't count.

Hi Chris,I believe you're trying to make the very important distinction between a NEW engine and a GOOD engine. That's true what you're saying of course... We need a good new engine for FS2006, not just a new one for the sake of having a new one.Microsoft needs to spend either more money paying for excellent developers or give their already excellent team of developers more time and resources to develop a great FS engine.John

Yes this is absolutely true, FS is notriously bad for memory leak; this is compounded by external & shared process' within windows. Ironically, HT CPUs can make this worse depending on your configurationAlthough this major problem could be ailed "somewhat" with a patch or three, it is clearly yet ANOTHER sign that favours the wise in this forum/community.Cheers.

See, the problem that I have with a lot of the statements made here are that what you are saying is essentially no one can ever come up with a better engine so why try? The sound barrier can never be broken so why waste the time to try? Man will never be able to fly, so why try? It really does not matter what people here think, it is what Microsoft's people think they can do and I would much rather they tried to push the envelope than listen to people who say that it can't be done. If that were the case MSFS would still have the graphics of FS4. I do not pretend to know much about what it takes to make a Flight Simulator, but all it takes is one person that says I can make it better. That is the kind of person I will listen to, not the ones who say it can't be done. Chris, I am not sure if you remember but Fly! was forced to use the engine native to their company, a game engine. I clearly remember that they wanted to create a new scenery engine that they thought would be much better but could not do it due to costs or something. The Fly! series engine was the same one used by Nocturne and other games. Personally I would have loved to see their new engine to see if it would have been better but that shall never be now. All I am trying to say here is why put such a negative spin on what is essentially rumor? If there is some truth to it then should we not be happy that we might be getting something better instead of shooting it down with no knowledge of how it will actually perform? As I said in my last post, I and most others here want the most realistic flight simulator possible and that means change, a scary thing but a good thing.Best Regards,Philip Olsonhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

>clearly remember that they wanted to create a new scenery>engine that they thought would be much better but could not do>it due to costs or something. Well, my recollection on the subject is different. FLY! team never complained that they would rather have a different graphics engine, as a matter of fact Richard was always very proud of the fact that they are getting Mark Randall's engine for "free" so to speak (the same company).But this is about their graphics engine because the secenry engine is a different matter. In fact they replaced their scenery engine going from FLY! to FLY2 but many people including myself were very unimpressed by this new scenery engine. As a matter of fact the fact that two vastly different companies Microsoft and Terminal Reality seperated by 1500 miles - neither delivering a "knock-out" FS performance tells us how difficult any quantum leap in this area would be.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

For a developer, he sure has an interesting view on the subject...I wish PSS shared his same enthusiasm, we would have a better update for the A320... :-roll

Hey Michael, You may be right and I may be wrong, I might have used the wrong wording in this case. Later today I will go back and find the post to see if I need to see a memory doctor. :-lol It also does not help, as I said, that I am not an expert in this area so it may have been easy for me to mistake one kind of engine for another. As to your other point, I know that it will not be easy to create a decent engine, but it almost sounds like a lot of people here do not even want them to try. Look how far we have come, all along the way people have said it can not be done, obviously it can. One time my father got rather ticked off because Microsoft was coming out with a new version of Office, so I asked him why and he replied "why can't they just leave things alone, now I have to learn all new stuff." Well I replied that he did not have to buy the latest version and asked him if he liked the older versions better, to which he said no. I then asked why he thought he had to upgrade this time and he said that he wanted the new features but he did not want to take the time to learn how to use them. People by nature are resistant to change, just look at how passionately so many people here argue against it but yet they go out and buy the newest version because they want the new features. I don't hold that against them but I do think it is a bit strange, to tell you the truth I am even guilty of that once or twice. It is just my opinion that we should back changes that will make FS better, if we find out that FS will seriously suffer because of those changes then we should be against them. It was not that long ago that people said that a 3 Ghz computer is impossible but it happened in a very short time period. Just keep an open mind my friends, as I have said we all want as much realism as possible and we are on the same "team".Best Regards,Philip Olsonhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

> As a matter of fact the fact that two vastly different>companies Microsoft and Terminal Reality seperated by 1500>miles - neither delivering a "knock-out" FS performance tells>us how difficult any quantum leap in this area would be.>Throw in X-Plane to make it a "triangle".....They say it needs a new engine too!L.Adamson

And now for something comepletely different and to add a little livelyness to this entertaining thread...."When is the patch out?" :-lol IMOHO this engine is fine, just needs some tweaking and adding to what was used in FS04. Just would like all my PAI traffic to behave, no more go-arounds! :-lolCheers, interesting thread and views! :-wFrank CubillosProjectAI

O.K. guys let's get this thread back on course. I don't know where you guys are getting people are resistant to change. This whole hobby is about change every two years

O.K. guys let's get this thread back on course. I don't know where you guys are getting people are resistant to change. This whole hobby is about change every two years

It would be nice to see a new version of FS, but I don't want to see it at the cost of all the addons I have purchased. Make it totally compatible with existing addon's and I think I would be interested in seeing a new one, otherwise NO.

You know we don't always agree but I have to say, excellent post.It's attitudes like those shown by the complainers in that thread which are the greatest threat to FS.Too much of it and the development team may well start to wonder what they're doing it for and decide that their time is better spent (and more profitably) making the next Doom clone for X-box.