Saw this post on the MS blogs and wonder if any of the improvements (including HLSL) translate into anything in FSX...guess we'll know on the 18th!

 

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/appbuilder/archive/2013/10/14/raising-the-bar-with-direct3d.aspx

Be careful because FSX isn't running with Windows 8.1 preview release. Many complaints at the MS forum. I hope they solved the problem with the final release.

Spirit

Thanks for the heads up Spirit - I'll take a look around there.

Running FSX in Windows 8.1 RTM currently. Everything is fine, but DX9 mode no longer works for me, however. I am having very good results with DX10 and Steve's fixer though. Your joystick/controllers will also "drop out" on you if FSX isn't running full screen, but that's remedied by mapping your joystick through FSUIPC.

 

The improvements to Direct3D apply to games written for DirectX 11 and are not applicable to FSX. There's no difference in quality or performance. Honestly, unless you have a Surface RT (in which case, you're not flying FSX), there is almost no compelling reason to upgrade to 8.1 apart from an all-in-one patch roll up. It's more of a service pack for Windows 8.

 

And no, the START button they promised, is not the START button you know and love. It behaves nothing like its predecessor and is just as useless as the rest of Metro. Use Start8 or any number of other third-party solutions for this.

Saw this post on the MS blogs and wonder if any of the improvements (including HLSL) translate into anything in FSX...guess we'll know on the 18th!

 

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/appbuilder/archive/2013/10/14/raising-the-bar-with-direct3d.aspx

I don't see how it could, since it requires that the app be DX11 compatible. P3d 2.0 may take advantage of these features, though. We will have to wait and see.

 

What I took away from the presentation is that the XBox One uses some version of DX11, which means that it will continue to be possible to port games from the new XBox to the PC, at least in theory.

Running FSX in Windows 8.1 RTM currently. Everything is fine, but DX9 mode no longer works for me, however. I am having very good results with DX10 and Steve's fixer though. Your joystick/controllers will also "drop out" on you if FSX isn't running full screen, but that's remedied by mapping your joystick through FSUIPC.........

 

Thanks for the additional information. I'll wait for a while until updating to Windows 8.1. My experience with the preview release was quite frustrating because it was not only FSX, there were also issues with USB ports. That's why my Corsair water cooling system didn't work properly anymore.

Spirit