I'm going to stick with FSX as long as I can and when they release X-Plane 20.0 (Austin is halfway there) it might be good enough to move away from FSX.

 

 

X-Plane 20.0

 

I heard it was in beta already.

Oh my lets hope not! can you imagine the ######ing!!!  :lol:

Oh my lets hope not! can you imagine the ######ing!!!  :lol:

 

No, it's true. I read it on the Internet.

good weather and smooth landings. Oh for !%&£ sake!!! ........ how about hoping ATC knows where you are? (not that 

I use default of course)  -_-

P3D 2.0 is the most exciting thing to look forward to - DX11, hardware tessellation, stutters eliminated (according to the developers at least). Microsoft Flight was just a side track, an accident.

 

I only wish that they'd tackle more than just the visual performance. AI and ATC coming to mind...

I'm going to stick with FSX as long as I can and when they release X-Plane 20.0 (Austin is halfway there) it might be good enough to move away from FSX.

I while ago purchased X-plane 10 partly to show support and also keeping on track where the sim goes and to be able to install some great freeware sceneries and other addons, also payware. IMO by no means X-plane is a joke and with verison 10, there are tremendously good qualities with it. At the same time, many its best qualities are IMO greatly exaggerated, like the often claimed superior performance compared to looks of the sim. Thus, it is by no means replacing Prepar3D as my main civilian sim (and perhaps never will), but I still like to take flights with it every now and then. Civilian sims are so damn rare that there is no harm owning every single one of them. You have some options and you are able to enjoy every one of them to your like. It doesn't require huge investment to get started: I've bought couple of affordable payware planes and most likely next I'm going to get X-Plane's "PNW" sceneries from Tom Curtis. Bunch of freeware sceneries with phototextures and autogen takes care of the rest.

I only wish that they'd tackle more than just the visual performance. AI and ATC coming to mind...

 

They're still better than any other sim, IMO. The AI in X-Plane consists of 4 planes that follow you around, their pilots occasionally stuttering robotic messages that make the AI voices in FSX sound downright expressive.

 

There are also add-ons that vastly improve the ATC in FS/P3D, and for the ultimate in realism you can talk to real people online. The visual aspect and performance cannot be fixed by third-party add-ons. OrbX and others have pushed the current graphics engine as far as it will go.

The future is P3D!!! 

Hope springs eternal, I hope P3D 2.0 (2015??) and XP10 continue with development ... on a technology front I think XP10 has a huge advantage over P3D -- DX11 isn't going to fix OOM. 

 

But, I tend to lean towards products that are 64bit (it really is the future for Global sized games/sims) but that's because OOM avoidance (even in P3D) is a daily chore and after several years, the "fun factor/challenge" to get FSX working well has most definitely shifted to the side of "being a chore".

 

I've code an application just to manage the complexity of getting FSX to run and I find myself spending more time coding my FSX manager application than actual flying.  Some of the things my little personal app manages:

 

1.  Turning off background windows services and applications not essential

2.  Managing FSX.cfg, DLL.XML, entries etc.

3.  Changing (enable/disable) scenery areas (part of my flight plan process)

4.  Managing registry entries specific to FSX

5.  Validating latest DX10 shaders from Steve's work, copy them back if they somehow got overwritten

6.  Managing GoFlight interfaces specific to selected aircraft

7.  Keep my scenery.cfg duplicated for FS Commander (initiate a rebuild as needed)

8.  Validate/avoid some REX files that seem to cause issues with my FSX

9.  Managing NVidia Inspector settings

 

And probably some other things I do around specific aircraft I plan to fly.  It's a pretty ugly process even when somewhat automated with my own custom application (but I still have to know my flight plan and setup accordingly).  I've got FSX on full life support going as far as I can go.

 

And yes I know I'm using FSX beyond it's "intended" usage ... but if I didn't, I wouldn't be using FSX at all.

 

Rob

They're still better than any other sim, IMO. The AI in X-Plane consists of 4 planes that follow you around, their pilots occasionally stuttering robotic messages that make the AI voices in FSX sound downright expressive.

 

There are also add-ons that vastly improve the ATC in FS/P3D, and for the ultimate in realism you can talk to real people online. The visual aspect and performance cannot be fixed by third-party add-ons. OrbX and others have pushed the current graphics engine as far as it will go.

 

AI and ATC are the two most important reasons why I still use MSFS.

Getting AI to work as it does in FSX is a great achievement, yet there's still things that can very well be implemented into the next iteration of P3D, like proper separation handling, use of SID/STARs and crosswind runways.

In short, the things that are handled by small external tools or AFX files for FSX.

 

Well, the high-definition stuff for FSX has certainly pushed visual appearance, but I doubt that DX11 and better multicore handling will be any kind of silver bullet. You will always need good hardware to deliver fast performance and there are physical limits that can not be overcome.

DX11 isn't going to fix OOM. 

 

 

Depends on what you mean by fix. It may not technically "fix" them but it can help greatly (perhaps eliminating them on a practical level). DX10 preview mode already helps with OOM errors. The more is pushed off on the graphics card the more headroom the CPU/memory will retain.

Well, the high-definition stuff for FSX has certainly pushed visual appearance, but I doubt that DX11 and better multicore handling will be any kind of silver bullet. You will always need good hardware to deliver fast performance and there are physical limits that can not be overcome.

 

It's going to make having a quality video card that much more important.

 

The mainstream gaming market is almost all video card centered at this point with how they are designing games.

It's going to make having a quality video card that much more important.

 

The mainstream gaming market is almost all video card centered at this point with how they are designing games.

 

Yes, sadly. One of the last mainstream titles being *not* entirely GPU-bound was Far Cry 3.

 

Relying too much on the GPU is not a good thing, as it totally neglects the processing power available by the CPU.

One good thing about FS9 was that it is virtually independent of the GPU. Every laptop can run it, because laptops tend to come with half-arsed GPUs but fairly good CPUs.

 

If you want to see what happens when a flight sim relies too much on the GPU, go and give FlightGear a spin. While the procedural real-time lighting, extreme autogen and shader-based ground texture alteration look awesome, they utterly force even the most modern GPUs to their knees on the highest settings.

All while not remotely taxing the single core it is running on.

(In all fairness, multithreading is hard to implement.)

Yep. Nothing will come out of Microsoft now for serious simmers. They are simply not willing to embrace their older business model because they are "missing out" on the revenue made from add-ons. Nothing more than a case of greed - but have heart, there are other platforms that will take us into the future.

Exactly. Microsoft attempted to reclaim the revenue stream by releasing Flight (aka, Flop). And we all know how that turned out.

 

 

Depends on what you mean by fix. It may not technically "fix" them but it can help greatly (perhaps eliminating them on a practical level). DX10 preview mode already helps with OOM errors. The more is pushed off on the graphics card the more headroom the CPU/memory will retain.

 

I've been running DX10 Preview mode for a while (with Steve's/other's various fixes) and although it does give a little more memory headroom before hitting OOM, it's still pretty easy to hit OOM.  DX11 has no additional memory utilization benefits over DX10.  DX10 introduced instancing and several flavors of block compression (DXT).  DX11 does NOT enhance these features available in DX10, it's focus is tessellation which is a nice feature.  However, there is nothing in DX11 implementation that will change the OOM problem of today (in DX10 Preview mode).

 

Don't get me wrong, DX11 should improve visual quality considerably (if implemented well) but it will also require significant texture changes (hopefully no poly changes) ... meaning it will not be backward compatible with many of the existing 3rd party products when running in DX11 mode.  I don't have a problem with this, but I think the FS community expectations are different than mine ... my hunch is the FS community expect P3D V2.0 with DX11 mode to "just work" with all their existing 3rd party products ... this seems highly unlikely to me given what I know about DX11. 

 

But, I'm assuming the P3D DX11 update will also fix all the issues around AA and AF so it's going to have lots of benefits, but fixing OOM isn't one of those benefits.

 

It's still worth investing $10/mo in P3D ... even if it's 2015 before we see v2.0.  But I'll also keep investing in XP10, and investing in existing FSX products that list full support for DX10 preview mode.  But what I will NOT hope for is the return of Microsoft ... given their current problems and a $900 million write-down on failed Windows Surface/RT (http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-900-million-surface-rt-write-down-how-did-this-happen-7000018275/) it's VERY unlikely Microsoft are to re-enter the development of Flight Simulation.

 

Rob.