Windows 10 is losing installations...

[vortex681 806]

And remember that anything using DirectX 12 will only be supported by Windows 10.

[FalconAF 213]

The home computer as a gaming platform is going the way of the dodo bird.  Microsoft is turning the Windows computer into a Mac clone for the home computer user (not necessarily for the commercial IT department though, where there ARE professional people who will know how to "make it work" for that type of environment).  Apps this, Apps that, Everybody Use Your Apps (which IT professionals can also "push" to the end-users in commercial environments).  The average home computer end user isn't (and usually won't get) educated enough to perform their own System Maintenance to keep their computer running properly, so MS is taking it out of the hands of the end-user and making it automated like with the current Windows Updates (when WAS the last time you "cleaned" out your temp files, browser history, and did software updates for your OS, drivers, and "programs" you have installed?  When was the last time you updated your Motherboard's BIOS? (I can hear people saying, "Oh No!!! That's too dangerous to do!!!")  When was the last time (or ANY time for that matter) you made sure even the DEFAULT MS security program Windows Defender was set up correctly to not "real time scan" ALL of your "game related files" while you are using them?).

"Games" are being pushed to "consoles" now.  X-Boxes etc are the future "gaming machines" (along with VR headsets and environments).  Heck, even our historically stand-alone installed flight sims are being pushed to online "cloud" services (aka: Steam-ish).  Install FSX from Steam and it manages everything about the simulator for you...updates, etc.  All you have to do is "play" it.

And I can't blame Microsoft one bit for doing it.  I spent over 30 years in professional IT management and Systems Security.  The end-user is the weakest link in computer use.  We have a saying in IT..."NEVER place your system security in the hands of the end user!!!  They simply WON'T do what is needed to protect the network." And for most end users, that is true.  And it is still very prevalent in our "dedicated" flight sim user base.  You don't believe me?  Ask yourself this......

WHY are so many people having "problems" with Windows 10?  If it was THAT BAD, the commercial IT user base would be trashing it publically and Microsoft would be on the defensive like all the people being accused of sexual harassment on the Internet now.  MS  would be getting lambasted from the PROFESSIONAL community.  But they AREN'T.  That should tell you where the REAL problems are when you go to non-professional forums where the end users are saying things like "Windows Sucks and broke my computer!!!"  Sorry, but if a majority of flight sim users ARE getting their sims to work using Windows 10...and you AREN'T...it isn't the OS that is the problem.

I made a VERY good living pay-wise for over 30 years "helping" Windows users who weren't capable of helping themselves.  Sorry, but that's the real truth.

   

[G-RFRY 1,705]

I think you will find steam not well liked on flight sim forums has in fact saved the desktop PC and done flight simmers a favour, Desktop hardware would not be worth investing in if the market is not there and wait is left would be very expensive. There would be no market for high end graphics card and the few sim PC would make not worth the RD, Take COD WWII first three days $500,000,000. world wide and a lot of that on steam, as for the game console yes it has a major role in supporting game studios but even they benefit from steam and the desktop market. and as long as that continues then AMD , INTEL , NVIDIA , will provide product for that market, A game console`s hardware will be passed by the desktop PC by the time it is released as it`s in production for at least 12 months before release. By then the desktop graphics will be more powerful.

As for big bad Microsoft they got the idea from APPLE and GOOGLE they have been harvesting info for years and selling it and the others are catching on Facebook ECT, There's a lot of truth in the saying there`s no such thing as a FREE LUNCH.

 

[vortex681 806]

7 hours ago, FalconAF said:

The home computer as a gaming platform is going the way of the dodo bird.

Couldn't be further from the truth. As Raymond says above, the advent of Steam has completely turned around the PC gaming market. Although consoles seemed to be taking over for a while, there are now well over 125 million active accounts on Steam alone and the number of concurrent users has been rising, overall since 2012: https://www.statista.com/statistics/308330/number-stream-users/. Last year the PC gaming market generated $35.8 billion dollars compared to $6.6 billion from consoles: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/55607/pc-generated-442-more-revenue-consoles-2016/index.html. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the gaming PC have been greatly exaggerated (probably by the console manufacturers).

[G-RFRY 1,705]

Update on vortex681 a report on tomshardware a few months ago stated that steam had a costumer base of around 400 million, that`s also why on release date game studios release there Games on steam and in shops the same day. The only reason for GPU like the 1080ti is for a high end Gaming PC without which the market would die and the product with it.  

[vortex681 806]

11 minutes ago, rjfry said:

a report on tomshardware a few months ago stated that steam had a costumer base of around 400 million

My figure was based on numbers from last year, so PC gaming is having an even bigger resurgence than I thought! It could partly be as a result of all of the Chinese players coming on board.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

5 hours ago, vortex681 said:

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the gaming PC have been greatly exaggerated (probably by the console manufacturers).

Oh really? Check out actual global sales figures for 2017:

http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2017/Global/

Even in the US, PS4 game unit sales outpace PC unit sales by more than 20 to 1. PC gaming is not dead, it's just sleeping, ala the Norwegian Blue Parrot.

[vortex681 806]

4 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

PC gaming is not dead, it's just sleeping, ala the Norwegian Blue Parrot.

I'm not sure that the 400 million Steam users would agree with you there (not to mention all the non-Steam PC gamers)!

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

Given PC unit game sales, Steam users must buy very few games per user.

[G-RFRY 1,705]

500,000  for one game on steam in a week after launch is not bad at around £50 a pop flight sim devs would be over the moon.

http://steamspy.com/app/476600

A game I mite add that got bad reviews.

[Noel 4,483]

Is there no way to disable updates in Windows 10, even a known backdoor method?  Since I don't surf the web or do anything except P3D and its add-ons and utilities I would rather avoid updates unless they are required for P3D, period end of story.  I believe the path towards stability is minimization of all unnecessary updates of any kind.  There are necessary ones, but again as a P3D platform only I'd like to be able to control updates.  I only desire to migrate to Windows 10 from 7 if DX12 came into play in P3D.  It appears Skylake-X CPUs still work w/ Win 7 so I'm inclined to hold off on what appears to offer no real practical benefits that outweigh headaches from updates or whatever.

[bursco 14]

@Noel

try winaero tweaker - just google it and there are quite a few options in that tweaker, it helped me.

All the best

Denis B

[G-RFRY 1,705]

And you think it`s only Microsoft that's the bad boy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42065650

 

[G-RFRY 1,705]

Who can you trust in todays virtual world.

 https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/news/google-may-have-to-pay-£27bn-compensation-for-snooping-on-and-selling-iphone-users-data/ar-BBFWtKw?li=AA54rU