I've been on this board for quite awhile, and it seems that always two or more topics seem to dominate the boards.Performance, and Piracy (or need to have CD in drive).Well, I don't know how feasible this is, but given that Microsoft does have an X-box division that can make "hardware", and given that more often than not, it's the CPU that is the bottleneck in most flight sim installs, I wonder why Microsoft does not do the following.Sell 2 SKU's for Flight Sim, go back to standard and professional versions. Only this time, instead of some lame extra planes and such, give us a REAL reason to buy the professional version.Create the code that is optimized to work with a PCI add-on card that could be installed in your PC. The card would contain very fast Ram, and a CPU with a streamed line instruction set, and some cache that would allow you to offload quite a bit of work off your main CPU and minimize Hard Drive Access.The Flight Simulator code could be optimized to work with the card so it could be very efficient. The Professional version would not require copy protection, because it would only run with a PCI card supplied by Microsoft. Microsoft could still sell standard version with decreased graphics, and more CPU dependencies, but for us diehards, we would spend 50 to 75 bucks extra and get a piece of hardware that would eliminate the need for us to have a CD-key or other forms of protection, and the hardware would allow us to have more eye candy and smoother frame rates because some of the processing could be offloaded onto the PCI card.Add-On cards are nothing new. 3DFX built a fortune building 3d cards that did nothing but provide 3d graphics. Microsoft could also use this "enhancement" card to release "enhanced" games for the PC so that the card would be worth more than just flight simulator. The demands of the flight sim community have always been high, and Microsoft's Flight Simulator has always been taxing on many systems.Microsoft could also license this technology so that other manufacturers could develop applications that would utilize the card to take some of the CPU overhead off the main CPU. The result could be a level of gaming never before seen in the computer arena, as well as minimizing the need to upgrade to a whole new computer just to run Flight Sim.Just a thought.

>>>>Just a thought. I'm responding because your post seemed really interesting and informed about the hardware of this thing and it deserves a big response. It is also a lot more than 'just a thought'.

Sadly, Ithink this is unrealistic, both from the likely performance benefit, and also from the expectations of a developer like MS.Although the Flight Sim franchise has always been renowned for its CPU usage, there's much, much more to it than just a fast processor. What would be the point of developing a secondary CPU if the ports limited the usage? PCI is actually very slow in data transmission terms, and AGP is on the way out. PCI-Express is allabout pushing bandwidth up, but that is to do with pipeline limitations, no CPU speed. And of course, as FS-GS has proved, its not aout how fast your processor is, it's how well it integrates with the REST of your system! Can you see the complaints if someone with a late-90's graphics card bought FS200X expecting it to run like the wind on his steam-driven system?Say MS produced such a game. How long before other game developers followed suit and you had to reinstall a game every time you wanted to play it? And reinstall Windows XP to get it to recognise the `hardware` change? Soon run out of XP installs that way!Finally, MS have always been very wary of getting into hardware development - they even pulled out of hardware controllers and stopped development of force feedback becasue the costs outweighted the benefits. Software can be supported by almost anyone. Hardware requires the manufacturer.Sorry, but I don't see this as a workable idea, Allcott

It's important to determine what would be the functionality of the card from Microsoft.If it's graphics, I think nVidia and ATI are pretty good at that and the investment in chip development is much larger than our community of flightsimmers could justify. I think about $20M total for a chip; mask charges for one spin are about $1M. Since nVidia and ATI sell their cards for several hundred dollars, it seems to me unlikely that Microsoft can produce a card for less that would outperform them. Building an XBox is a way different proposition than development of accelerator chips. I do think FS could be enhanced graphically to take advantage of the shaders etc supported on modern graphics hardware, tho. I'm sure they haven't done so because the installed base of these cards didn't provide a large enough market early in the lifecycle of FS.If it's specialized CPU, they'd be competing with Intel and AMD, same story as above. If you're saying an additional CPU would help FS performance, remember that both AMD and Intel CPUs will be multi-core pretty soon so it will probably be more cost effective for everybody to take advantage of that. Hard drive access isn't a function of CPUs as much as it is a function of available memory (and use of memory by FS). You can already buy faster RAM for your CPU. It's expensive, though. And they use pretty fast RAM on graphics cards already.Shifting copy protection to existence of a hardware device changes Microsoft's business model. The software could be replicated and they would have to make money on the hardware... a whole different structure for production, distribution, support. I'm not sure tying the software to a proprietary card would be less irritating than having to have the CD in your drive anyway.Net, I think you'd have to get pretty specific to define offloadable hardware function that would have better performance or cost-performance than off-the-shelf CPUs and graphics that serve broad markets. It's amazing to me that the compute power on our desktops is as cheap as it is. I think the opportunity will be in optimizing FS code to take advantage of multi-core CPUs and more modern graphics. Perhaps these could be differentiators between high-end and low-end versions. An alternative could be to modularize the sim code to allow varying functionality in the graphics engine, the sim engine, etc for additional cost per module of course. And there may be some specific hardware functions that would accelerate FS, or some specialized configurations, but I haven't seen any analysis to determine what they would be.Hope I didn't miss your point in all this... I've had some experience in this sort of thing and thought I could shed some light on the kind of things that go into system design.Dick Bixler

hey gang, prior to the release of FS9, i attended a flight sim focus group here in Chicago. Some of you may remember signing up in your city. One of the things they really hammered on was multiple versions of FS. Since i dont fly any jets in FS, just GA and Bush flying. They wanted to know if i was in favor of "FS GA" or "FS Bush" or if you were a heavy fan "FS Tubes" j/k This seemed like an important issue to the MC. I left with the feeling that this WILL happen someday. I think we will see a generic version of FS, then addons that enhance the type of flying you like. not so good for the fence riders, but I think this would be good for MS and me.just chiming in...joe

Unfortunately the "fence sitters" as you call them are 99% of FS users. They want the ability to fly a CRJ-200, a B747, an A320, a deHavilland Beaver *and* a Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopter. That's what makes FS sell is the fact that you can fly all of these and many, many others as well. If you limit a version to one type of aircraft and environment, you limit it to one kind of buyer. How many people would buy every version you mention above to get the full range of options?Very few could *afford it*, I suspect.IMHO, that idea would sink without a trace in the real marketplace.On the other hand, it's about time they made the helo and glider flight models work a bit better, from what I hear at rotary wing forums...Ian P.

>>"They want the ability to fly a CRJ-200, a B747, an A320, a deHavilland Beaver *and* a Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopter."Yup. And that's me too.There's not a snowball's chance in hell that I would buy dedicated MS Flight Sim hardware, that was not also 100% compatible with other simulation and games. The economies of scale also make that a very poor path. But if your FS-optimized hardware can

I agree. I hope Microsoft concentrates on providing a flight simulator "operating system", which provides basic services (e.g., graphics rendering, flight equations, standard file formats, etc.) efficiently and well. Just as you have all manner of specialized programs running on top of a conventional operating system, you can have specialized flight simulator programs running on top of a flight simulator operating system.

I like the thought but sadly we would have to pay significantly more than 50 or 75 bucks for this piece of hardware, it would come in at least the several hundred dollar range. The problem is that they would have to develope something that is currently not on the market per se' and then with the limited use and market it would get they would have to keep the cost very high to pay for the developement of it as well as the manufacturing. I also agree with someone above, PCI is a very slow means of moving data so PCI express would be a better way to go but once again you have the problem of the vast majority of users unable to use this in their older systems. Again, I like the idea but it would be far to expensive to both Microsoft and the end user to make something like this happen. Now if something like this was developed to run all computer games and there was a large demand by the gaming public then maybe it could be affordable to everyone but that is not going to happen, and then you would still have to insert your CD every time you wanted to load up FS. Philip OlsonI'm the luckiest man in the world, my girl friend has a yoke and rudder pedals! Eat your hearts out!http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

"Sell 2 SKU's for Flight Sim, go back to standard and professional versions...Create the code that is optimized to work with a PCI add-on card ...we would spend 50 to 75 bucks extra and get a piece of hardware..."Let's see. MS spends $tonofbucks to develop two radically different coded flight sims, then we get to spend the extra "$50 to $75" just to run a game which will now cost over $100.00? Oh, yeah, and the avid flight sim guys who don't do their own PC work, well, they just get stuck with the "dumbed down" version.Sounds like a good way to kill the genre."Add-On cards are nothing new. 3DFX built a fortune building 3d cards that did nothing but provide 3d graphics."I loved 3Df/x cards. Held on to my Voodoo 5 long after better cards came out; it was "Glide or nothing!" for a long time. Then I wanted to run Forgotten Battles...Sure, 3Df/x did okay selling specialized graphics cards using proprietary technology; then went belly-up because they were selling specialized graphics cards using proprietary technology.

The original posters idea sounds interesting enough, but i think there is no way in h*ll that MS would start making a FS-dedicated"card".

Anybody remember back when 386 CPUs didn't have a math-coprocessor built in? It was an add-on card you had to by. And Falcon 3 had a "High Fidelity" flight model option if you bought the add-on card. I bought the add-on card :)It would definately have to be a solution that had other uses- For instance, if it could compile code or render animations, or something else that would make it a cheaper but effective solution that having another high-end networked PC.Would I buy a card that doubled or tripled my framerates for a few hundred dollars? Hell yes- I spend that on a video card which really doesn't do that.

>or if you were a heavy fan "FS Tubes" j/kor "FS Big Tylenols" :-lol(From a quote in the movie "Airplane!", if you don't know what I'm talking about... :()

Very doubtful that Microsoft would invest the kind of money required in an addon card that would leave either standard PCI or PCI-Express users in the dark, depending on which PCI version they made the card for. Of course, they could always spend even more money to make 2 addon cards, one regular PCI and one PCI-Express... Costs outweigh the benefits, and those costs would ultimately end up being passed to the consumer in a much higher price tag.If a hardware anti-piracy check is desired, then just make a simple dongle that plugs into your printer port (with passthrough for your printer, obviously) or even USB, as long as the total cost to the consumer would remain under $80-100. Even that may not be economically feasible, so I guess the best solution would be a simple cd check.