Well in SimFlights review they said that the mission facility was put into FSX because MS received 300,000 requests for it. Therefore, when it comes round to 'Your say for FS2008' then simply ask for sloped runways. Then if they receive enough requests surely they should give it their all.

>Well in SimFlights review they said that the mission facility>was put into FSX because MS received 300,000 requests for it.>Therefore, when it comes round to 'Your say for FS2008' then>simply ask for sloped runways. Then if they receive enough>requests surely they should give it their all.Re-programming 24,000+ runways by hand, shouldn't be a problem! :( As mentioned previously, and the problem that X-Plane has run into...Just too much difference in the data-bases, which results in floating and exaggerated roller coaster type runways. It would really have to be a 3rd party effort for a few airports here & there.Kind of like the "bridge" problem of FS2004. L.Adamson

>>What I find interesting is that with DX10 coming down the>>road a bit, most everyone has seen the screenshots of the>>"anticipated" FSX with DX10 graphics. And if rendering that>>water and sky, etc doesn't hog poly's, then I don't know>>whatwould?>The water and clouds in those pics aren't actually polygons.>They're shader effects. Animated textures and/or particles.>Basically, fancier versions of FS9's wave effect. That's how>games like Far Cry and Half Life 2 do their water. I've yet to>see any other game simulate the gentle lapping of flotsam and>jetsam like Far Cry. That's part of it. Instead of using more polys, it actually will end up using less in the long run. This is because you add shading as was said above plus bump mapping (aka Normal mapping). With a bump map, you can take a model with 200 polys or more and have the modeling program create a "map". This map includes height/depth data that is assigned to pixes or groups of pixels. The real brunt of reconstructing the map is done by the vid card's GPU, not the computer's CPU that already has it's hands full.I have a tutorial where they take an entire monkey's head and map the front half of it, then texture a single polygon plane with it and render an image.Held up against a rendered image of the high poly model, you can't tell the difference... even as it rotates and the light plays across the "high" and "low" spots.ATI used this same technique in thier car demo for the 9800 when they did the Ferrari model.So, in the end, it will result in fewer polys... and, for once, our GPU's are going to have to actually work hard to keep up!Scott / Vorlin

>I have a tutorial where they take an entire monkey's head and>map the front half of it, then texture a single polygon plane>with it and render an image.>>Held up against a rendered image of the high poly model, you>can't tell the difference... even as it rotates and the light>plays across the "high" and "low" spots.>>ATI used this same technique in thier car demo for the 9800>when they did the Ferrari model.Ah yes... Normal mapping is what that's called. All the latest games and systems are referred to as "next gen", and as far as graphics go, normal mapping is the number one reason why those graphics look, well, next generation. The Unreal 3 engine makes extensive use of it, as well as other games like Oblivion, Prey, etc. It'll be nice to see what sort of normal mapping support-- if any-- the FSX engine will feature. Can a developer comment on this, please?Thanks!

x-plane is not the stardard to compare, flightgear is. Flightgear does sloping runways and besides their flight model is by far superior. You can interface with matlab/simulink and/or NASA's CONDUIT to interface the flight contral data. But then Flightgear is for real enthusiasts not the "looking for shine in the rivet" enthusiasts.For add-on developers I think it would have been so easy to develop products on flightgear and they woould have been that much more real but alas who wants to earn money the hard way!

I've managed to get the FSD Cheyenne 400 into Lukla at near max landing weight (out was no problem at all, in was challenging but possible).Needed almost all the space available to stop before hitting the rockface.767 is almost as long as the airfield, doubt you could stop in time :)

AWESOME website link there Manny!! I'll be using it probably the 1st day I get FSX to explore new territory!Carmine http://forums.avsim.net/images/wave.gifhttp://img155.imageshack.us/img155/7118/phoenixtp8mg.jpg

>x-plane is not the stardard to compare, flightgear is.>Flightgear does sloping runways and besides their flight model>is by far superior. You can interface with matlab/simulink>and/or NASA's CONDUIT to interface the flight contral data.>But then Flightgear is for real enthusiasts not the "looking>for shine in the rivet" enthusiasts.But then, reading an X-Plane forum last year, where Flightgear was compared to X-Plane, the X-Plane people thought that X-Plane seemed to be a highly polished sim in comparison. Most preferred the X-Plane flight models too!As to the Flightgear sloping runways; does this mean that the 20,000 airports of Flightgear have sloping runways that exactly match the ground surface, or is it a case where some poor souls need to match them all by hand, and not much is done yet?As to superior flight models, and being a real airplane enthusiast, plus a "shiny" rivet enthusiast, since I put 14000+ flush rivets in my airplane.......... I do prefer some 3rd party flight models for MSFS above all else! But, there was some models I really liked in Microsoft's CFS2 & IL2 Sturmovik, too.However, since the X-Plane people were not to thrilled with Flightgear, I've never personally bothered with it.L.Adamson

OMG... never heard of flight gear before... I'll have to download and play, plus its free! :-jumpy

OK...tried it out.. very very good... smooth fps no stutter... of course nothing like the amount of features or addons in FS2004 but still great fun.