Cant wait for flight simulator to have scenery like this!!!! Check out that water animation. MS Flight Simulators water looks like blue bathroom tiles compared to this!(The screenshot is from Far Cry,and if youre into FPS's..get it!)

Hi, There is others type also, but it's a question of performance issue, most game developper are aware about anything 3d techvideo engine. I will not be surprised if this will be implemented on future flight sim.See this water.ftp://ftp.ubi.com/emea/sh3/videos/SH3_E3DemoClip1.zipOthers top notch type of game have always superior graphics and most have better fps, then any flight sim type available, see the past and compare. They don't need to have real weather,3d clouds, landclass gig of season texture, continuous moving aircraft in the sky with gauge, world wide tons of mesh, flightsim 200 mile rendering z, y, z vs others ground game 2040 mile and all the flight sim destructive fps killer, they focus on less thing and use the room left to maximize the graphics.ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

and don't forget the extremely complex physics engine which far surpasses what's needed to calculate the trajectory of someone jumping over something or an arrow in flight...

That would be great

I have Far Cry and the graphics are breathtaking. However it's a much simpler program with a lot less scope than MSFS, leaving lots of free CPU and system headroom to create these kind of graphics. Eventually when PC's are powerful enough we'll have scenery like this in FS. Of course there will then be games with much better graphics than Far Cry has today.David

The graphics in FarCry are almost completely created by the video card guys - it's all DirectX9 shaders. This is really apparent in the benchmarks for the new cards where the X800 series just kills the 9800 and lower in this game... We could have this kind of look in FS if the renderer took advantage of shader stuff. I really don't think the fact that FS needs to show real life mesh etc would hamper it - after all, FarCry is showing made up terrain, but what's the difference between that and realistic terrain - it's all looks the same to the engine... As for those GB's of textures - MS could do away with a lot of them by implementing realistic lighting. In an engine like FarCry, it's not loading separate textures for every level of lighting the way FS does - the engine is actually using DX9 to calculate what light would do to the one texture that's there and then applying the effect to it. If they did this in FS, it would revolutionize the look of the sim. You'd have the sun casting different hues on the ground, cloud shadows, etc just like real life.If any of you have played FarCry game all the way through, you know that the enemy AI and lighting effects are also second to none (the enemies cooirdinate against you, try to flank/distract you etc, I was killed a bunch of times by them outsmarting me...) - don't make it sound like it's a simple program - it's a brilliant engine and it will be very interesting to see if Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 can live up to the benchmark Crytek set...

The FS physics engine is not as demanding as you may think. Just turn everything off - select the lowest res, no AI, no weather, etc., set the framerate to Unlimited (no vsync) - what happens? Hundreds of FPS. Virtually all the performance problems in FS come from the "eye candy", and some from the AI traffic - also when there's a lot of AT planes displayed on-screen, it becomes an "eye candy" problem rather than a matter of complex AI.What it comes down to is the outdated graphics technologies used in the FS engine. There are more efficent and better ways to do most things in FS FS2004 is a major improvement over FS2002, but it still needs to be "modernized".BTW, this sim currently does support reflective water:http://hangsim.com/mf/updates.php

Hello All,Very interesting video for Silent Hunter III . . .pretty cool graphics, makes you wonder where FS will be in a few years, and if we'll need a P8 9.5 gig cpu..LOLBest,clay

The $1,000,000 question that MUST come up:Should MS design Flight Simulator to look this good, taking advantage of modern technologies... would you:A.) Want to hear from the thousands of users without the technology to run it?B.) Want to hear from the thousands of add-on users whos programs are completely useless? A new graphics engine means new models, scenery, and design considerations. I highly doubt they could create a system that would use all the old design languages while improving the image quality. I'd LOVE to see MSFS model volumetric fog, light beams between clouds, and better water - but it's only worth it if the hardware can handle it. Tradeoff - cutting edge graphical technology vs. legacy hardware and software addons. Which will win?! Who knows...I'm eyeballing a new video card right now myself (6800 GT) - so I have a keen interest in getting great graphics. But what tradeoff will we have to sacrifice to get it... I have lots and lots of addons too. :) -greg

In that screenshot you're seeing only 2 maybe 3 miles away. In FS you sometimes need 50 or 60 miles. You want 60 miles of water like that? Get ready for a slide show...-Gary Letona

The screenshot looks TERRIBLE -- completely unrealistic and cartoonish! I certainly do hope that FS200** never looks like this.Maybe it looks better when the water is moving - but the screenshot is BAD to me. Barry

I was highlighting the water anim in that screenshot :) Looks like we will have to endure MSFS's blue bathroom-tile water for a bit! Im sure the day will come when we flight simmers *will* see water like that when CPU power is up to the job! Of course we will have a "slide show" trying to show water that quality with todays processors....

I completely disagree Barry.Cartoonish? Maybe.Unrealistic? No! I've been IN the water in Far Cry. It is the most realistic "thing" ever developed on a Desktop Wintel PC graphic-wise.My 2 cents of course.Cheers,Braun

I agree with Barry, that screen shot would never fool me or anyone else that you were looking at the real world. Real water in particular, just doesn

With some help from 3'rd party add-ons, the water in FS9 can look like this which I find quite good-looking and realistic.But I DO agree with the one starting this thread that there is much room for improvement when it comes to graphics in todays flight simulators compared to other games - Far Cry beeing one of them. Of course it would take tremendous power to have that kind of graphics and detail when you're at FL330 and looking ahead, but I'm sure there are already lots of methods allowing the graphics engine in the game to only give you that kind of detail when you're up close and less detailed graphics for objects in the distance. Who would benefit from having extremely good graphics 100 miles away when you still won't be able to see it - not IRL nor in a game...?I'm sure MS could do much better than this already with both the HW/new graphics engines available today, so...lets wait and see if they realize it's time to freshen up a bit...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/84146.jpg