All I can say is that on my average system the demo performs very well indeed. Bearing in mind the great improvements, for example the much higher resolution terrain textures and the reflective water, I'm actually very impressed.To answer your question, Microsoft have learned a lot and it shows. Once again I'd like to express my congratulations to the team for a job very well done. Best regards, Chris

<<>>ACES has commented extensively about the nature of the rendering engine in MSFS. Although DirectX (and a good GPU) are performance factors, much of the rendering is still largely "CPU bound". Adam Szofran @ ACES has written a comprehensive paper on this subject. Section 8 is of particular interest.http://www.fsinsider.com/articles/Global_T..._Technology.htm

>>Regardless which API is the 'better' one: We won't see>OpenGL>>for FS. DX is a Microsoft API and any expectations of MS>>releasing a game with OpenGL support would be the same as>>expecting MS to develop a game for Linux. It ain't gonna>>happen and therefore the suggestions are pointless.>>>>Pat>>Reminds me of the time a friend first introduced me to APIs>back when 3DFX and Voodoo cards were the rage. He was an FPS>gamer who loved OGL and Glide....he told the story that MS>made the decision to build their own DX API to eliminate the>competition of the other APIs. If true, then there is no>reason to expect MS to ever support another API but its>own:-)>>> Ah the good 'ol days Ron ;-) when 2 Voodoo 12 meg wonders running in SLI mode drove Need for Speed and Half-life to perfection. Who would have thought we would be running 500 meg video cards? We've come a long way indeed................Randy J. Smith................CAUTION! My views represent no one but my own. While I do help companies test products - this in no way means I represent them in ANY fashion.[h4]Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations[/h4]

"Ah the good 'ol days Ron when 2 Voodoo 12 meg wonders running in SLI mode drove Need for Speed and Half-life to perfection. Who would have thought we would be running 500 meg video cards? We've come a long way indeed."Yes sir we have! As I recall, the 3DFX cards required special drivers or some aircraft had blacked out windows and other anomolies:-)

> Ah the good 'ol days Ron ;-) when 2 Voodoo 12 meg wonders>running in SLI mode drove Need for Speed and Half-life to>perfection. Who would have thought we would be running 500 meg>video cards? We've come a long way indeed.Heh Randy.Quake 2 ( the day of it's release ) was my first (true) 3D game (Q1 was sprite-based).I remember spending a lot of money for my 4MB Diamond 3DFX Monster card. :)The 3DFX team was great. I used to travel around the country competing in Quake 2 competitions and have won some nice hardware upgrades from them. At a competition in Dallas, we were all staying in the same hotel. Everyone in the same hallway created a giant LAN party so we could all play network games all throughout the weekend. ( sleep? wussat? ) Our ( my Q2 deathmatch clan (BushiDo / bSd), we were ranked #1 in the OGL {Online Gaming League} Deathmatch ladder) room was across the hall from the 3DFX team. They challenged our team to a 4v4 DM match for 4 not-yet-released Voodoo 3's (back when Voodoo 2's were the top still). We accepted. I wish I didn't have a hard drive failure since then (lost the recordings :( ) but needless to say we all walked away with Voodoo 3's. Poor 'Immortal' ( was ranked #2 in the world, second only to Thresh - Quake fans will know who I'm talking about ) was too young to really do much. He was like 15 or 16 at the time. All of us were around 21-24'ish. His mom [yes you read that right] didn't let him party much :( Oh man the memories.... thanks for bringing me back in time Randy. ;)Okay I'm done talking about Quake... sorry. :(

>Depends on how you look at it. Most of the topics around here>are of a negative conotation,??????Rhett

>I think we'd>see much better results, especially when combining the otherNo, we'd see about the same results. It doesn't matter that OpenGL has more or less overhead than DirectX. That doesn't matter one iota, because the problem is not the API. The problem is all of the CALCULATIONS that Flight Sim is making every cpu cycle. It is far more than in IL-2, far more than in Quake4, far more than in Civ4, any game, you name it. That is the reason why the API really doesn't matter. And that is exactly why FS has been cpu-bound for many many years.Rhett

>>Yes sir we have! As I recall, the 3DFX cards required special>drivers or some aircraft had blacked out windows and other>anomolies:-)>Are you talking about MSFS? I don't recall MSFS ever having Glide drivers. (???) Maybe I missed out. I had a Voodoo3 card. Was that FS5.x or FS98?Rhett

>You know Bill, I didn't exactly come on here to be flamed by>you. I put this topic for discussion, not sarcasm or flaming.>If I had wished it to be for negativity, I think it would've>been more of a complaint topic, not a discussion on>suggestion.I'm sorry you read that as a 'flame,' as it was - in fact - a conclusion based on what you yourself wrote. I'll try to smile wider next time around.ISTM though, that - as was already pointed out - the very words you chose to use for the "Subject" were quite inflammatory already. IOW, you brought the perceived "negativity" into the "discussion," before authoring a single word.I'm fairly certain that if one chooses to make assertions with the scope and breadth you've made, one should be prepared to have some solid facts with which to support said assertions. Opinions are simply unsupported assertions with no developed foundation; they are as vacuuous as cotton candy, and as epheremal... ;)Now as it happens, some of my friends and I have in fact run extensive benchmark comparison testing of OpenGL vs. DX9c vs. Anti-Grain Geometry. The net result of such testing concluded that there were no significant advantages of one over the other, when aggregated as a whole. YMMV, of course... but please, bring replicable facts to a discussion... :-beerchug

Look at the big brain on Bra... er Bill. ;)What's with all the 'net acronyms? You're hurting my brain man!! :(ISTM? IShouldn'tTry to think tooMuch:-roll

>I am getting a tad tired of people expecting the ultimate>graphic sensations and best performance and complaining at the>same time that their 4 year old computer can't handle it. How>does this expectation makes sense? It's like complaining that>a DVD can't fit on a CD.>>Solution: Turn the sliders down!!!>>PatI have a computer built recently up with the Dell XPS and I still get studders. Well above the min. system requirments. So I should be able to have the graphics all the way up. A nice thing to do would have been to post specs on their website about what you do need to play on all high settings or medium. Not many people do that if any but it really needs to have some more information regarding system requirements and at the level of scenery

>I have a computer built recently up with the Dell XPS and I>still get studders. Well above the min. system requirments. >So I should be able to have the graphics all the way up. A>nice thing to do would have been to post specs on their>website about what you do need to play on all high settings or>medium. Not many people do that if any but it really needs to>have some more information regarding system requirements and>at the level of sceneryThe problem with the specifications is that there are more hardware combinations than stars on the sky. Even with a newer machine you are not guaranteed to max all settings and get acceptable performance. It has been and will stay that way with all new releases.For example, noone was able to max out all the settings on the release of Oblivion, AoE3, FEAR, just to name a few. All games that deal with bleeding edge graphics at the time of the release are virtually unplayable with everything maxed. Why would FSX be any different?FS9 was released 3(!) years ago and we're just now touching the level where frame rates are acceptable with the latest hardware.Pat

>Look at the big brain on Bra... er Bill. ;)>>What's with all the 'net acronyms? You're hurting my brain>man!! :(>>ISTM? LOL! ISTM:It Seems To Me; YMMV: Your Milage May Vary