In the Canadian Expo thrread there's reference to Hal speaking of what can be done, I'm interested in any of the following:Current state of DX10 developmeent- is the current project to get the DX9 renderer done (if not already essentially complete), then move onto the DX10 update or is development concurrent?Is there finally DX10 hardware in house to run in hardware and not in emulation? Is there some 'real' DX10 emulation of FSX running at ACES? Granted this may be a horrible slideshow, but proof of concept anyhow.Is there a timeframe for the DX10 update? Six months post Gold (and the resulting vacations) or sooner?Other than the teaser shots from E3, what can we exepect as a practical matter of DX10? Personally, I'm really into lighting (night envirnoment, which, hey, I have NOT seen at all yet!) I'm sure that ACES CAN do lots with DX10, but what is practical? The shots of the Nav lights from the Canadian expo are promising. Too bad none of this happens in Boston....(Where I live)I'm really excited about the possibilites of DX10 since FS exists in a workd where lighting and shading is such an important part of immersion. Especailly since it's a recreation of a real world and not some fantasy planet.I just hope that the first generation of DX10 cards are worth buying. The ATI X1900 is a shader monster, but it's DX9, and I'm still running a 9800Pro! Big upgrade this time...Thanks!Tim

Hey Tim,I don't think the MS guys will be able to say anything about the DX10 hardware itself (including admitting they have seen it running due to NDA) since neither nVidia or ATI have made any announcements yet. However, Extremetech posted a great interview with a couple of guys working on DX10 and it does provide a good technical insight on what changes DX10 will be bringing. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1982031,00.aspJosh

I haven't seen any DX10 hardware yet.

DX10 is still this obscure thing that noone has really seen, because DX10 hardware is not available. From reading the article even the Vista desktop is rendered with DX9 (how would they render it anyway, if noone has DX10 hardware?), but an update is planned whenever DX10 becomes stable and mature. My wild guess is that it'll take at least a year until we see anything DX10.Pat

I'll take that 9800 Pro off of your hands when you're done :)Seriously.~E

I think that the G80 (Nvidia) and R600 (ATI) taped out very recently. Looks like at least another month before even Nvidia and ATI have prototype boards. Spetember is still the expected release.Maybe Intel's integrated solution will be first, just not as powerful as the 'enthusiast' boards.Hey Jason, Got any night shots yet? I wanna see lighting! I Wanna see much brighter cities! (ever fly over Chicago at night)? Or any other major city?I wanna really see Adam's terrain engine pushed too :)Tim

I am sure sure how the entire transition is supposed to work? Now, even if you get a DX10 board as soon as they hit the streets, you will not be able to run anything DX9.Vista for example will not support/render the desktop with DX10 (per ExtremeTech interview with the developers). DX10 is not backwards compatible (no?), so no desktop initially for DX10 hardware. Or I am I wrong here?And before you have Vista, you have to run FSX on DX9, because DX10 will not be released for XP.Conclusion: DX9 is going to be around for a long time. It might not even until mid-FSX lifecycle until we see anything DX10 in FSX. Before DX10 becomes anything closely enough to be considered mainstream, we certainly have to wait AT LEAST a year. Neither the DX10 API, nor the DX10 hardware is finalized, so it is really very premature to speculate about anything. If not even the devlopers have seen anything DX10 in FSX, I guess we can comfortably lean back and not even speculate of how it could/would/should look like.Pat

Here's a brand new good read about MS and DX10.......http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1982044,00.asp

> DX10 is still this obscure thing that noone has really seenOne of the readers on the flightsim.com forums was testing a DX10 card, so they do exist. The FPS shown in the screenshots were over 100 FPS and that was just running the current DX9 Fs2004 flight sim.

As discused in that thread, there is a big difference between something being "DX10 compatible" and being DX10 feature-compliant. There is no way that card he is using is a fully-compliant DX10 card. Think about it for a minute - ACES hasn't seen a DX10 card, no major beta site has seen a DX10 card, none of the major hardware sites have seen a DX10 card, neither ATI nor Nvidea have hinted that such a card even exists, but, yet, this guy has one show up at some school to be beta tested. Doesn't sound right to me. And as far as the FPS goes, I run over 100 FPS all the time with a 9800 Pro and I too am just running the current DX9 and FS2004 :-) .Doug

The DX10 cards will run earlier titles. There's a HAL to run legacy code.If somebody is running a DX10 video card, it's not Nvidia or ATI. Probably Intel, if true.The Aero desktop is coded in DX9 due to trying to develop both Aero and DX10 concurrently. maybe in the next gen of windows after Vista will the desktop run DX10.I still want to see night and a shot of a practical DX10 render in FSX. Not a hypothetical 'here's what we can do, but you'll need a Cray with a render farm to get it at playable framerates'

>I am sure sure how the entire transition is supposed to work?>Now, even if you get a DX10 board as soon as they hit the>streets, you will not be able to run anything DX9.Yes you will.

it would seem that for competitive reasons, any card with DX10 caps will also provide high performance for DX9 apps.Get the June DX10 sdk here:http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/sdk/scott s..

> there is a big difference between something being "DX10 compatible" and being DX10 feature-compliantTheres no difference, being "DX10 compatible" means it is DX10 feature-compliant. This is a key difference between DX9 and DX10 to solve incompatibility issues and make it easier for game developers. They will know with certainty that if a card is DX10 compatible it will support a standard set of features (and only those features).

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