News on DTG Simulator is coming soon!

[magnetite 38]

True, but eventually you are simply putting lipstick on a pig.  It would also break every add-on currently available, if you are going to do that (with no guarantee the market will support you) why not go for a shiny new engine?  As others have suggested, keep the world data, but replace the old ESP engine with something new and better. 

 

How are you so sure the engine is the problem, as regards to performance? Phil Taylor came in here a few years ago and said the engine has held up quite well.

[WotanUK 289]

How are you so sure the engine is the problem, as regards to performance? Phil Taylor came in here a few years ago and said the engine has held up quite well.

 

I actually wasn't making a specific comment regarding the FSX engine as such; i was suggesting that in adding numerous tweaks and fixes to anything, eventually it becomes better to start with something new.

 

FSX came out in 2006, that makes it at least 10 years old, i am sure that it could be improved upon.

[magnetite 38]

They probably haven't gone that route, because it takes a lot of money, time, and resources in order to do so. It's a lot easier to just remove the old stuff and upgrade what's already there.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

 

 

FSX came out in 2006, that makes it at least 10 years old, i am sure that it could be improved upon.

 

And don't forget that FSX was designed when it was believed that CPU's were going to higher and higher speeds, and what they actually did was go to more and more cores. (with incrementally higher speeds) Now it's the GPU that's the dominant factor in modern gaming, and FSX is simply not made for the computers that are actually on our desks right now. It's past time to be moving on.

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

I am still waiting for news and as usual we have 7 pages of nothing but speculation.....again

 

 

And don't forget that FSX was designed when it was believed that CPU's were going to higher and higher speeds, and what they actually did was go to more and more cores. (with incrementally higher speeds) Now it's the GPU that's the dominant factor in modern gaming, and FSX is simply not made for the computers that are actually on our desks right now. It's past time to be moving on.

 

This is the truth. It is what is under the hood that needs a revamp as various other engines have moved forward over the past 10 years. and Flight Simulation is left in the dust. What Lockheed Martin has done with P3D isn't anything compared to what real software companies are doing. An aircraft manufacturer is far from being innovative by patching up an over 10 year old engine, they are many things but they are not a gaming studio or an industry leader in this area.

 

The old Gaming / vs High End Sim argument that comes up in these type posts are flawed as well because it is the gaming studios that are the most innovative in moving technology forward. Companies that claim to be delivering high end simulations borrow and backward engineer from gamers. People have to stop bashing gaming when they owe so much of what they have to the gaming studios Innovation.

 

I'll just wait and see what DTG's does, if it is flop so be it, if they address some or all of what Devon has just posted then that is pretty awesome, even of it looks similar on the surface.

[Pastaiolo 1,688]

Well, at least now we know that news are coming since the message i originally quoted is from DTG-Martin.

Other than that, i really agree with what you said, ytzpilot.

[Steve Cannell 4]

I've been flight simming about 34 years and without going into all what's wrong with this pastime, it has evolved into quite a mess. Yes, there are some amazing sim combinations of platform and addon, but it's all so fragemented. I have orbx addons i'm stilling waiting for updates to, while they're probably busy working on the next cookie cutter airport.

 

All I can say is thank goodness for Star Citizen and the vision of one man, Chris Roberts.

Our flightsim would benefit from this same kind of approach.

 

Cheers

[magnetite 38]

And don't forget that FSX was designed when it was believed that CPU's were going to higher and higher speeds, and what they actually did was go to more and more cores. (with incrementally higher speeds) Now it's the GPU that's the dominant factor in modern gaming, and FSX is simply not made for the computers that are actually on our desks right now. It's past time to be moving on.

 

FSX does use the GPU. For a lot more than just resolution and anti-aliasing. The water, shadows, HDR lighting, texture sampling, wireframes, instancing, etc are all done on the GPU.

 

How do I know this? I've looked at the HLSL shader files, as well as run graphics performance tools to tell me what FSX is doing when I'm running it.

[oskiatl 27]

I was reading earlier in the thread about how people were saying DTG train simulator was full of DLC you must purchase. There is freeware out there and yes you can buy DLC but MSTS was also the same. I do both rail and flight simulator. And I have both MSTS and Railsimulator. Well I'm give it the wait and see tactic.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

FSX does use the GPU. For a lot more than just resolution and anti-aliasing. The water, shadows, HDR lighting, texture sampling, wireframes, instancing, etc are all done on the GPU.

 

How do I know this? I've looked at the HLSL shader files, as well as run graphics performance tools to tell me what FSX is doing when I'm running it.

 

I have never seen any real changes from this, except maybe with DX10 mode.

 

What is the CPU doing?

Filed under: Aerosoft Mathijs — aerosoft @ 1:56 pm

Amongst bloggers there is a contest to see who has the longest interval between posts and as you seen I entered that contest. I won’t even apologize. My last blog was about FSX and why we have so much problems running it. Basically I said the users were behind on hardware but I now realize that’s not true. Let’s see facts as they are, FSX has problems. Serious problems.

No matter what Microsoft tells us (not that they tell us a lot), if we see exactly the same and do exactly the same in FSX and in FS2004, we see half the frames in FSX. So MS told us to start using the special FSX code and different tools and we did. We got better looking objects but even lower framerates because there was more calculation to be done on every visible polygon (the shape that makes up the things you see). Now this is new.

In the past we were used to see a drop in framerate in the default simulator with every update, but per polygon we always had the same framerate. The default sim would look better and that costs frames, but with the same objects loaded we had similar framerates. Not so in FSX, even if we dress FSX down to use FS2004 aircraft and FS2004 scenery we get half the frames. And that CPU power is not used for better flight dynamics, better weather or better ATC, because as we all know, that is simply not there. So we lost half the frames and gotten basically nothing in return.

In fact things are even worse. One of the big steps forward was supposed to be the better use of the GPU (graphics card) power. If you have a modern GPU you got a little computer there that might be as powerful as you main CPU! Using Direct X the software can send a ‘object’ (say a cube), a texture (say wood texture) and a light source (say the sun) to the graphics pipeline and your GPU will put the texture on the object and calculate how the light will affect it, create shadows etc. Your CPU is at that time free to do other things. In FS2004 the CPU had to do a lot of these things but in FSX it is supposed to be DirectX and the GPU who handles a lot of that. And to a certain degree that is true, updating your graphics card for FS2004 could make it look better but hardly mattered for your frames. In FSX a fast graphics card does make things faster and looking better. But it is well know that FSX is still basically CPU limited. Your FPS depends on a lot of things but the speed of your CPU determines at least 80% of it.

So we lost half the frames and the CPU is supposed to have less to do. What is that CPU doing? We can look at processes that are running and we see for example a very strange amount of disk handling (some files are loaded dozens of times in a matter of seconds). We also see the expected huge amount of I/O with the graphics system. But per polygon FSX is just a whole load less efficient.

So what is the CPU doing?

[magnetite 38]

I posted something about FSX's performance in the FSX forum a few months back, but I don't think anyone replied to it. The title was called FSX under the hood. I did a few captures at maximum settings (with PMDG777), and minimum settings (default). There was no bottleneck with the minimum settings, but it showed me that the bottleneck on maximum settings doesn't lie in the CPU or GPU, at least on my system. The task manager may look like it's at 100% on one core most of the time, but this was an under the hood look of what's going on. The task manager doesn't have all the details that Intel GPA does.

[Wobbie 938]

Unless I'm mistaken, this particular thread is not about GPU & CPU's performance with FSX, with PMDG add-ons.

Surely, as we have absolutely no idea as to what engine DTG will be using, that kind of discussion is pretty much irrelevant?

Can we get back to speculating as per what news DTG is going to give us? (as per the headline)

[Jimmy RFR 406]

I've been flight simming about 34 years and without going into all what's wrong with this pastime, it has evolved into quite a mess. Yes, there are some amazing sim combinations of platform and addon, but it's all so fragemented. I have orbx addons i'm stilling waiting for updates to, while they're probably busy working on the next cookie cutter airport.

 

All I can say is thank goodness for Star Citizen and the vision of one man, Chris Roberts.

Our flightsim would benefit from this same kind of approach.

 

Cheers

 

Oh my, I'm not sure I've ever both agreed and disagreed so completely with two paragraphs in a two paragraph post! :smile:

 

I posted several posts back when P3Dv2 was just coming out about the danger of fragmenting our fragile ecosystem.  I really think that what we're starting to see, where FSX/P3D developers are hard pressed to update their products before the next point release is out, is only going to get worse as time passes.

 

However, oh my, would I ever shudder to have something like StarCitizen come to pass in our flight sim world.  I don't doubt that Chris Roberts has vision, but perhaps a wee bit too much... The StarCitizen project has pretty much redefined the term 'feature creep'.  And what started out as a method of funding, selling digital ships, has truly evolved into something completely... staggering, what with how much it allows people to spend.  There are currently six different hulls that cost over $400 each... for a game that hasn't been completed. it leaves me flabbergasted and terribly uneasy at the same time.  I can't say as I'm in favor of it at all, and I say that as someone who pledged $60 a long, long time ago and have quite enjoyed the alpha releases as they've been rolled out!

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Unless I'm mistaken, this particular thread is not about GPU & CPU's performance with FSX, with PMDG add-ons.

Surely, as we have absolutely no idea as to what engine DTG will be using, that kind of discussion is pretty much irrelevant?

Can we get back to speculating as per what news DTG is going to give us? (as per the headline)

 

Eh. The upshot of my post was essentially that I hope anything from DTG is something that takes much fuller advantage of modern hardware. MSFLIGHT started down that path and P3D is continuing, but the takeaway I have so far is that it's a slow and laborious process refurbishing FSX, and God knows when, if ever, 64 bit will arrive.

 

My hope is that they've stepped back, pretty much scrapped the engine and started over.

 

I'm also hoping that the scourge of the weekend reinstall will end forever, and that if you make all your purchases through Steam, you'll be able to essentially just hit a button if anything goes wrong, and all of your dozens of add ons will just reinstall themselves while you go wash the car or something.

 

Third hope is that like trainsim, they have basic in-sim tools for EZ content creation that will allow average users to once more step into a process that's become largely commercial in the current ecosystem. (Steam workshop FTW!)

[Wobbie 938]

HiFlyer.. that will be ideal. No more hassles of some installs going astray, no more fiddling, perfect!

More time for flying instead of sorting out headaches.