FSX has been out for over half a decade now and it was made clear that it would be the final version of flight simulator. Is this for the best from both a consumer and developer standpoint?

 

Here's my take on it..

 

Consumer: Hardware is catching up and it's at the point now that I believe we can run the sim at a high level of detail without slaughtering our computers. And with 3rd party development, I see this sim looking better and better as time goes on.

 

Developer or third party: No more new code to work with, no more headaches to update a previously released product to a new version of FS. You guys can sleep at night knowing that your quality products will still be up for grabs in 5 years since we won't be 2 versions of FS further down the road.

 

As the old saying goes... " Saved the best for last."

 

Sorry if this has been discussed at an earlier point. This was just a thought that came into my mind that I wanted to throw out there.

 

Sent from my gs3 w/ Swype ( hence the typos, extra spaces and any other errors )

I believe one of the performance issues with FSX is that it still used coding that went back to FS2002.  I think MS was working on a Flight Sim 11 when the ACES team was disbanded.  FSX SP2 was sort of a bridge between FS9/FSX and the developing FS11, hence FSX SP2's incompatibility with many FS9 aircraft.  I feel certain that FSX's days were numbered well before MS dropped all flight sim development.

Trans_27 Pilot Chase, on 06 Apr 2013 - 07:24, said:

Sorry if this has been discussed at an earlier point.

Hey, no need to apologize, but this topic has been discussed at very great length lately in the context of new flight simulators under development, XPlane 64-bit, Prepar3D and others. In summary, a key issue w/ FSX is that its code cannot exploit hardware in the same direction that hardware has moved, which is not in the direction of increased clock speed like FSX can use, but in multicore, multithreaded parallel processing, native 64bit code, sharing processing tasks by offloading to the GPU better, using advanced graphical APIs like DirectX 11 and future versions. FSX cannot use these technologies very well or at all, so becomes a dead end. Many people, recognizing these issues, are clamoring for a modern simulator that can exploit these factors and stay in step w/ the trajectory of hardware development, and in doing so have the potential to take the hobby to a much higher level. What FSX has had is the right mix of 'magic' in the context of a platform good enough to spawn committed development by the 3rd party community. It would be quite possible to model the next sim engine on these same factors and take advantage of that mix of depth and scope. It's there to follow. Here's a thread of a recent discussion:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/403367-new-fsx-flight-simulator/?view=getnewpost

 

In that thread there are links to their blog...

 

Cheers!

One of the ACES team told me to really improve MSFS it would take a complete rewrite of the FS graphics engine.

 

I can't imagine a FS graphics engine write for 64bit with no backward compatibility. I would be waiting at the store,

cash in hand the 1st day it went on sale. By "cash" I don't mean $59.95.....I would gladly pay close to $200 for it

if I knew it came with a guaranteed 3-4 Service Packs and at least a 5 year lifespan.

 

Ken

All I know is that FSX with all addons to make it worthwhile continues to slaughter my system...and that is unacceptable in 2013.

All I know is that FSX with all addons to make it worthwhile continues to slaughter my system...and that is unacceptable in 2013.

Agreed but not by much

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone5 using Tapatalk 2

I'm really loving prepar3d....

I thought FSX was the peak of Flight Simulator technology until I purchased Wings of Prey.  When I saw what a flight sim could do with today's crop of video cards I was amazed.  While Wings of Prey is not perfect, and limits the scenery and visibility, it has an amazing high level of detail and has great ground textures, lighting, and most of all, amazing performance (60 fps on my system).  FSX gets about 30 fps on my system but doesn't have the detail, especially when it comes to trees and buildings on the ground.  However, the biggest thing FSX has going for it are the aircraft add-ons, and the fact that Tileproxy gives a great photoreal experience.  I know Tileproxy is a challenge to set up but once set up, it really adds to the VFR flight experience. 

 

FSX is known as a sim to be tweaked, but my tweaks and tileproxy setup have been set for a couple of years now.  I don't change things, other than I adjust the fps lock if I am flying with an aircraft that taxes the system, so my tileproxy textures stay sharp.

 

If the makers of Wings of Prey ever make a civilian sim, I'd buy it.  For now I am also happy with FSX and even still fire up FS9 from time to time.

 

John

 

I thought FSX was the peak of Flight Simulator technology until I purchased Wings of Prey.

 

Are these not two completely different things ? I mean FSX being a simulator with emphasis on realism and system modeling and Wings of Prey a pure game with emphasis on good graphics but no attention to systems and realism ?

One cannot even compare something like Wings of Prey with a sim like FSX and X-Plane. Forget systems and realism, Wings of Prey features a single "map", not a fully geo-referenced round earth model with land class data, vector data for roads, masses of airports, etc etc. It looks pretty and it is fast because there is not much happening in the background. Yes, the graphics pipeline is very modern and takes full advantage of modern hardware.

 

The only thing that MS Flight did well was that it had a modern graphics pipeline. We will never know if this same system could have been adopted for FSX. 

 

All I do know is that if MS kept working at FSX, hardware would have caught up with the sim well before it did. At stock settings (without ini tweaks), FSX is still a pig on many modern systems. Fortunately members of the community found a lot of these tweaks, and with newer shader tweaks and DX9 END mods and more, it is finally performing as we hoped it would shortly after its release.

 

No. FSX should not be final. Yes, it can be done better, and it should be. Will Microsoft be the knight in silver armour? Probably not, and only time will tell. If only MS could let the source code out the bag, seeing that it needs to be rewritten and all  B)

I believe one of the performance issues with FSX is that it still used coding that went back to FS2002.

 

That's not correct, FSX dosen't have FS8 code "built in", and it wasn't "used" in the making of FSX, but users of FSX commonly put ADDONS that have old FS9/FS8 code into FSX, slowing it down (such as WOAI), and causing performance issues.

 

And of coarse, there can be many other factors (settings, hardware) that affect performance as well.

 

I think MS was working on a Flight Sim 11 when the ACES team was disbanded

 

No they wern't. They were working on supporting FSX with DX10.

 

FSX SP2 was sort of a bridge between FS9/FSX and the developing FS11, hence FSX SP2's incompatibility with many FS9 aircraft

 

FSX Sp2 fixed errors in FSX, and added a preview mode of DX10. It wasn't a "bridge", because FS9 ports worked before SP2, but now, after SP2 and DX10, old FS9 polygons don't work at night.

 

I can't imagine a FS graphics engine write for 64bit with no backward compatibility. I would be waiting at the store,

 

Yes, but I am afraid, (with today's hardware atleast), that a "64-bit" FSX would reach to such low FPS due to such advanced addons, than the game wouldn't be much fun anyway..

No they wern't. They were working on supporting FSX with DX10.

Yes, they were and some of us saw a preview of it.

Back to the OP: what has killed the PC is, ironically, the long, expensive and complicated rapid evolution of all the technologies, to the point where software and end users could no longer afford to keep up.

 

People rushed en masse to simpler, cheaper and more stable platforms.

 

If we hadn't all had our wages frozen for the past thirty years while the overall cost of living quadrupled, maybe there'd have been sufficient discretionary income and enthusiasm to have kept things rolling even so.

 

But no; the greed of a few has destroyed all progress, in so many ways.

 

And it will probably be two generations before the damage really starts to be undone, that is, assuming further chaos and catastrophe doesn't ensue in the meantime.

 

So yes, FSX is frozen in a certain state of development that allows the relatively small audience of enthusiasts to keep developing for and buying add-ons for a known target, one that isn't going to go fleeing off into the distance requiring Unobtanium to keep up with along the way.

 

The sad thing now is how naive newcomers to FSX are about exactly how amazing it really is, witness comparisons to simple, restricted 3d render-engines such as runs Wings of Prey.

 

Yes, they were and some of us saw a preview of it.

 

I believe I remember all of this. Wasn't it a big deal and big news at the time?

 

Does anyone ever see X-Plane replacing FSX? I won't lie, I'm extremely interested in it, enough so to pick up a copy.

"Ever" is a long time. Let's see if they work out the 64 bit bugs and add seasonal textures.