Hmmm...you seem disappointed in a lot of things here. Tinmouse. FSX.Ever considered taking up water sking?bt

>Speaking of the things we've seen, I'd bet most of the eye>candy and features (especially what you mentioned above in the>short movies) was from FSX/Vista. The FSX/XP screenshots I>saw from E3 posted here on this forum scare me... :-eek Don't be scared...Personally, I'd just as soon see this (and all other) FSX forums closed and padlocked...

1) I am really amazed with people who say "oh, the graphics looked so sh..e at E3" and in the next sentence they add "but look, it will be so so COOL with DX10!". That main reason why the graphics will look so nice is not because the guys from ACES spent sleepless nights working on it, but because DIRECTX guys DID! And little to none credit goes to MSFS for this eye candy.Hence verdict - little effort;2) ATC - 0 to none;3) weather - 0 to none;4) flight dynamics - 0 to none;5) Cockpits - little effort (again DX10 is the key);6) autogen - did not have a chance to look at it properly, so - unknown;7) multiplayer is more or less unknown, but I hope - good effort;8) dymanic scenery - good effortSo to sum it all, what do we have - 3 years to add some moving traffic, very important missions and multiplayer support? A joke, ain't it?update: BTW I have already pre-ordered my FSX copy

The way I see it is this,The reason DX10 is such as big deal is because it allows for much more complex, process intensive effects etc to be acheived with much less instructions. Creating something using DX9 is one thing; re-creating the same thing using DX10 requires much less code, much less processing time with regards to the GPU, so on and so forth. Therefore it allows more complex processes whilst using a similar performance hit as previous less complex processes.Hope this makes sense, it does to me at least :(

> If FSX/XP utilizes all the current hardware options available it should run better than FS9. > It

>I want to know exactly what I can expect from FSX on a 2.6gig>machine.>>It makes no since to require a highly robust machine for a>WindowsXP version of this new sim. Pardon me while I laugh my everloving tukus off. Every time a new version comes out, this point ALWAYS manages to make me giggle like a schoolgirl. Flight Simulator is a GAME. A piece of entertainment software. As such, it does just like every other game that comes out-- it pushes the bleeding edge of technology. Regardless of whether the coding is efficient, or whether the same results can be achieved with a lower-spec system requirement is beside the point. All games, like Flight Simultator... WHICH IS A GAME... do this.Besides, it's only a GAME.

Dillon, I agree with you 100%. The timing to release FSX (even Vista) before DX10 emerges is kinda unfortunate. I guess that we won't see a huge increase in performance until then. But, still, the visuals in the preview are pretty amazing.

I refuse to be disappointed in something I haven't seen running on my computer!Randall

We got a little more than just that - you forgot the DEM mesh, the textures, airport scenery and the autogen seems to be vastly improved, ATC is improved (albeit little) and a lot of things under the hood (ie. AFCAD, parking spaces) has been improved as well.Cockpits - look at the recently released Piper Cheyenne. It can hardly get any better than that. Improvements? Smoother gauges? We don't know.Flight Dynamics - Again, we don't know anything, if there are improvements, so it's too early to comment. What I definitly want to see in to increase the FM frequency.Weather - We don't know, but looking at the screenshots the textures have been improved. Not sure about the weather engine, because those nifty little details have not been released by MS yet.To sum it up: The is quite some new and improved stuff. It ain't the Holy Grail of flightsimming, but we're getting there - incrementally.Pat

The screenshots look great, lots of good info in the review. Looking forward to FSX! :-jumpy

>Flight Simulator is a GAME. A piece of entertainment>software. As such, it does just like every other game>that comes out-- it pushes the bleeding edge of>technology.Not to sound like a naysayer - after all I've enjoyed countless of hours of flying in FS2004 - but FS2004 didn't push the bleeding edge of technology. DX9 was released in late 2002 but FS2004 didn't make full use of it despite being released almost a year later (10 months I think?). FS2004 didn't support hyperthreading either although it had been around for a good while, too (another late 2002 tech).FS2004 was and remains many things, but it never pushed the bleeding edge of technology. Not all the way, anyway; you might need a lot of memory and a fast harddrive to get a good flight out of it, but then again what modern, hardware-demanding game doesn't? To push the bleeding edge of technology you need to do more than what's expected by default :)

>If FSX/XP utilizes all the current hardware options available>it should run better than FS9. It

I can't wait for the comparison shots between DX9 and and the projected DX10 visuals. That's going to be amazing.....I hope.Generally, I love what I've seen so far - the default package looks like all the current high-end addons thrown into one deal AND better tools to develop it still further. I think before you shoot from the hip and criticise the new edition, it would be good to think a few months to a year down the line. That's where the full potential of FSX will come alive.

>>>"That's assuming hardware won't advance by the time Vista is released (whenever that is) or better yet a year from now. I would rather wait as long as I can before getting a new machine because as you know FS seems to always be optimized for computers that aren't on the market at the time of its release..."That's just silly. Of course hardware will advance in the time, it always has and always will, it doesn't get to a point and then wait there until the next major release. Waiting for a better machine is a never ending game, and the release date of FSX and/or Vista doesn't stop you from waiting as long as you want.>>>"Back to the point why would anyone want to invest in a whole new machine for an XP title only to blow everything away again when Vista arrives??? Anyone worth their salt in computer knowledge knows the best way to install a new OS is to fully wipe your hard drive clean and start from scratch. It's never good to install one OS on top of another even if upgrade options suggest so. I

I think it's safe to say that where FS lacks the graphics fidelity of, say, Far Cry or Half Life 2, it makes up for in scope and other behind-the-scenes number crunching like flight modelling, etc. (regardless of whether the flight model is "correct" or not). I'm quite sure there'd be some compromises in games that came out in late 2003 if they had to represent, for example, the entire chain of the Rocky Mountains in reasonable facsimile.