New post from Steve on his WordPress site...

[jewel77 6]

So it is planned to be a retail program for purchase or what?

Yes it will be a retail program.

 

One question: will we still need add on convertor x?

NO! I have add on converter x and it's useless! After this final fix the DX9 and tweaking age will end forever! All sliders to the right and fly, fly, fly...........!

[Jude Bradley 659]

If it will fix the Aerosoft Zurich (LSZH)lights issue,I'll buy it.

[Paul J 349]

So it is planned to be a retail program for purchase or what?

Correct, VB.

[MarkW 1,490]

Yes it will be a retail program.

 

NO! I have add on converter x and it's useless! After this final fix the DX9 and tweaking age will end forever! All sliders to the right and fly, fly, fly...........!

 

Well not completely useless.  My grey planes show just fine with ConverterX.  Can't say the same for some airport textures.

[Britfrog 37]

I am so very happy to thank Steve on his efforts but equally so dismayed that once again microsoft released an unfinished program (which they are famous for)which had huge potential .

yet once again m.s. are the losers and through Steve's efforts we are the winners

[jewel77 6]

Well not completely useless.  My grey planes show just fine with ConverterX.  Can't say the same for some airport textures.

Just the opposite for me :smile: My PMDG planes were fine and I purchased it for grey airport scenery. So yes if it's good for planes is not completely useless.

[Paul J 349]

Microsoft released version 1.0 of it's Flight Simulator back in November 1982, and have modernized it, with coding improvements, technical changes, have kept it amazingly backwardly compatible, and in that time, through the SDK releases, have allowed anyone, any commercial developer to freely add and improve parts of the sim as it has grown over those years.

 

Microsoft is a business: it's ROI on the flight Sim market was very likely the major reason for canning what must have been a diminishing return for many years - yet they continued to provide us with world-wide 24-hour support over all of that time - however good or bad you might have considered it to be.

When DX10 was introduced in/around '96 it was a brand new technology with few experienced programmers, no in-depth coding history, such as with the zillions of coding hints and tips that are available nowadays, via Google. The differences between DX9 and DX10 are enormous - it has completely changed the graphics of the gaming world, and to expect a wholesale conversion of this huge and complex application from DX9 so that it will work using the new DX10 shader language - in a service pack? We are lucky that Phil Taylor and the ACES Team were able to push it along as far as he did. 

 

The Microsoft Flight Simulator has been my hobby since 1986 - 27 years, and in that time I have enjoyed thousands of hours of terrific flight entertainment and a great learning experience which no other hobby could ever have done for me. On top of this, we now have the - almost - a resurrection of FSX, through the brilliance of Steve Parsons, and it is providing even more excitement - all being generated through the sharing of experiences and ideas which we have here on the Avsim forums! 

 

No my friend - Microsoft is not a loser.. they should be very proud that 31 years ago they began to produce a little "game" that fitted onto a 360KB floppy, and worked on a 16-bit proc, and that now is, (in many homes), exceeding unheard-of sizes of disk space, with installations of 80GB and more.  

 

Thanks Steve; thanks Microsoft - I owe you bigtime!  :hi:

[flying_w 58]

I may have imagined this, but is a fix for performance problems in clouds with high levels of SGSS on the radar? I thought I read it here somewhere that Steve understood something about the issue and may be able to fix it, but I can't find that now.

 

Simon

[SierraHotel 976]

Microsoft released version 1.0 of it's Flight Simulator back in November 1982, and have modernized it, with coding improvements, technical changes, have kept it amazingly backwardly compatible, and in that time, through the SDK releases, have allowed anyone, any commercial developer to freely add and improve parts of the sim as it has grown over those years.

 

Microsoft is a business: it's ROI on the flight Sim market was very likely the major reason for canning what must have been a diminishing return for many years - yet they continued to provide us with world-wide 24-hour support over all of that time - however good or bad you might have considered it to be.

When DX10 was introduced in/around '96 it was a brand new technology with few experienced programmers, no in-depth coding history, such as with the zillions of coding hints and tips that are available nowadays, via Google. The differences between DX9 and DX10 are enormous - it has completely changed the graphics of the gaming world, and to expect a wholesale conversion of this huge and complex application from DX9 so that it will work using the new DX10 shader language - in a service pack? We are lucky that Phil Taylor and the ACES Team were able to push it along as far as he did. 

 

The Microsoft Flight Simulator has been my hobby since 1986 - 27 years, and in that time I have enjoyed thousands of hours of terrific flight entertainment and a great learning experience which no other hobby could ever have done for me. On top of this, we now have the - almost - a resurrection of FSX, through the brilliance of Steve Parsons, and it is providing even more excitement - all being generated through the sharing of experiences and ideas which we have here on the Avsim forums! 

 

No my friend - Microsoft is not a loser.. they should be very proud that 31 years ago they began to produce a little "game" that fitted onto a 360KB floppy, and worked on a 16-bit proc, and that now is, (in many homes), exceeding unheard-of sizes of disk space, with installations of 80GB and more.  

 

Thanks Steve; thanks Microsoft - I owe you bigtime!  :hi:

A very loud here here with accompanying applause.

[Reader 2,009]

Just the opposite for me :smile: My PMDG planes were fine and I purchased it for grey airport scenery. So yes if it's good for planes is not completely useless.

and the opposite for me, I purchased it to make the MaamSim DC 3 textures work in DX 10.

This model was originally designed for Fs2002 and it does.

To be fair, they do not claim to fix all the problems and within their advertised claim,

"Addon Converter X is a plugin for FSX that makes many add-on aircraft and sceneries developed for FS2004 compatible with FSX SP2 and FSX Acceleration Pack.

Many existing aircraft and sceneries suffer display problems with these FSX versions, such as missing textures or missing scenery objects in the DirectX 10 mode. Addon Converter X resolves many of these problems on the fly, thus allowing you to enjoy thousands of sceneries and aircraft developed for previous Flight Simulator versions with FSX."

it is effective.

 

It seems as if Mr Parsons' software may well make it redundant but I have no regrets in using it as a stop-gap, after all, who knew how much he could achieve, or even what he was working on at all?

 

As to FSX not being "finished", it was always Microsoft's intention that "after market" developers would improve on their original product, which is why they published the SDKs.

There was no way that a company even as large as theirs could afford to employ people of the calibre of the top developers and then pay them to put in the millions of hours that have resulted in the likes of PMDG or FTX or the hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of photographic scenery.

Nor would there have been the colossal amount of freeware aircraft and scenery that people have done for love of the hobby.

The result of this policy can be seen in the best screenshots and You Tubes, many of which are barely distinguishable from actual

photographs or films.

As Paul says, Microsoft is not a loser.. they should be very proud.

 

Regards,

Nick

[wulfbindewald 5]

Hi guys, there are some news with respect to jet shadows in the VC.

Simply saying: a dramatic improvement, have a look here:

 

 http://stevesfsxanalysis.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/jet-shadows/

[mobsky 0]

nice! great work

[jewel77 6]

Steve rocks!!!

[bukeyolacan 24]

When this is gonna be released?

[Purr 115]

Wow, so impressed with the shadows, but the idea that this could really open up dx10 compatibility with some other airport scenery (esp. aerosoft, and flight beam) is amazing! That opens up more airports and combined with orbx ftx global....this sounds like a potentially huge improvement for dx10 fans.

 

Any further info on scenery compatibility beyond what has been said so far? I will gladly buy this as soon as it comes out!

 

Regards,

 

Alex M.