Well folks, we sure are getting close to next version of FS. A few months ago I was laughing at those threads asking about FS10? "Where is FS10, why no announcements?" and "FS10, XBOX only, blah blah blah" and what not. Now that we're getting closer, I'm starting to get excited!Jeff

Well, I'm still skeptical but this could very well be FS10 or at least a modified FS9 engine. The effects shown are nothing ground-breaking, the technology has existed, and been used in other games for years. In fact, I'm not satisfied with the shot of the runway. Clearly the reflection and bumpmap is not affecting the centerline (which is probably an alpha texture or overlaid polygon) which looks unrealistic. They still have some work to do. Other than seeing the basic effects used, those shots aren't good for much, they're not detailed enough to tell accurately, but it also looks like city autogen is more dense and possibly forests as well.If you have anything newer than a Geforce3 (2001? Don't even remember any more) you have the technology for those kind of effects, it's just that mostly everything except the legacy DX6-DX7 parts (the water "effects" of FS9 are DX8 but very basic) of your GPU are inactive when you're playing FS9."OK, so how did the French get the insode scoop and photos of FS10 before U. S. magazines?"Uhm because those were supposedly taken at a UK flightsim show and not a US one ;)

It would be difficult to imagine that MS would show these kind of pictures and state something to the effect that, "This is possible" and then release FS 10 with less features. It's coming and will probably look as good or better than these shots. I'm excited!RH

That's a modded FS9 engine. I hope that's not all there is to FS10, and considering it's questionable information at best, I'm not too concerned in that respect. MS has been pretty silent about this one, more so than usual... If this was all there is to it, there would be no reason to do so.I'll just wait and see before judging the pictures.Daniel P.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpgMember of SJU Photography. [A HREF=http://www.jetphotos.net/showphotos.php?userid=9004]Click Here[/A] to view my aircraft photos at JetPhotos.Net!The official psychotic AA painter. :)

FS2004 already uses multiple threads, although perhaps not to the extend that it could. As for 64-bit, it's not clear that would make as big a difference as people think. After all, it's just the processor. You still have to consider the bus and the GPU.

Message to MSFS Team:I hope that wet runways/taxiways have reduced grip! ;)

The second picture of the wet runway looks real -- the first picture with the bright blue water looks like a painting , very unreal.Barry

That's interesting. I just read John Carmack's keynote speach from this year's Quake Con, and his opinion was that multi-processors won't make a difference to games. His argument was that to get a good AI experience you can mainly script it, running a complex AI simulation in the background wouldn't make any difference in the outcome and in regards to physics, processors just aren't powerful enough yet. The real world is too complex and you can't do smart culling like you can with graphics. (I realise that FS is not your typical game, but I could see that the AI comment would apply to FS also, the AI planes don't have to be overly smart. In regards to physics, I would guess FS could do with more processing power, but probably it's not just straight forward to rewrite the physics sim to leverage that extra power).Would be interesting to know how many resources FS is using for AI and physics currently. I suspect not all that much since once you scale the graphics down FS2004 doesn't seem to demand all that many resources...Cheers,Christian

FS10 man. WOW!!JimCYWG

>On a kinda related theme is anyone a beta-tester for the new>version of Fs? I almost put my name to the Microsoft beta>form - http://beta.microsoft.com/ - requesting flight>simulator. And if they were they obviously won't offer>details but would they even be allowed to tell us that they're>beta-testing it??>>>P.Microsoft has in-house testers who do all the testing and some people from the public get to try out late stages of the builds for their own comments, bug reports, etc. So anyone working for Microsoft is probably told not to speak about what they are doing. When we get closer to release is when things start to leak out because more people from the public have copies of the game on their personal machines.

>The second picture of the wet runway looks real -- the first>picture with the bright blue water looks like a painting ,>very unreal.I agree. The first one is very good, but the second picture (water with boats), the reflectivity is exaggerated, and the blue is saturated. Looks like a painting indeed.

I think the colours are satureted because of poor quality of the original printed material, or because of a poor scan. I highly doubt the actual sim used those types of colours.

Hello,I was reading Marc St

They know what can be done using unlimited resources and no restrictions on what hardware the system can run on.They show that as a technology demonstrator, just like car manufacturers show their concept cars at carshows around the world.Do you expect your next car to look like those concept cars? If so, welcome to the real world when I tell you they won't.Those concept cars cost millions or dollars each and are pure one offs.Some of the individual features prototyped in them will over time trickle down into the production vechicles, but many will always remain specialties that are at best available as expensive optional gimmicks on the highend models.It's the same with software.

True, but I would be surprised and dissapointed if features like true reflective and animated water (already available in games like Morrowind and Farcry) and bumpmapped runways (roads in most racing games these days use this technique) didn't make it into FS10, as well as a significantly improved autogen system and more.