Hey everyone.Umm forgive me if this has already been posted but I found this quite interesting...This is what the FSX demo was run on :

http://blogs.msdn.com/tdragger/archive/200.../08/510634.aspxOf note a quote from the blog: "In the meantime I worked to acquire the machines we were to use. After several false starts I finally settled on two Dell Precision 380's I got on loan from the Vista demo team. They came with 2GB of RAM and an ATI X850 video card with 512MB of memory. I installed a recent build of Windows Vista and the chosen build of FSX and off we went. Everything had to be finished, tested and buttoned-up by December 19th so the machines could be boxed and shipped to Vegas. As you'll see in the next installment, Flight Sim was just a tiny part of the overall scheme."Looks like some hardware upgrades are definately in the making...Regards,RobFAJS

Thanks for the info.RH

Nah, I'm not worried about it. My new stuff will smoke FSX...What do ya think Microsoft is testing FSX on right now? It ain't FX60's with 4 gigs of ram, I can assure you. It ain't 65nm Presler core Intel chips, either. It's machines like 3500+'s and P4 3.0 ghz's with a gig or two of ram and nVidia 6800 or ATI X800XL video cards.

Well Bill, I hope your machine is up to it too. However, with the history of FS in mind, I would not be too optimistic about it.RH

I think the real question that hasn't been been clearly answered yet is this:Will FSX be a DX9 title, or a DX10 title?

FSX will ship using DX9 and will be followed up (hopefully shortly) with a release that adds DX10 support. That's all I can say for now.

That's certainly a good question. Mike Gilbert, the FSX Program Managers, says that they are currently focusing on utilizing DirectX 10 features into Microsoft Flight Simulator.RH

Thanks for the clarification, Mike. That will hopefully set some folks minds at ease that they aren't going to have to "rush" to upgrade right away! ;)

Who says you won't want to upgrade? The DX9 stuff we're doing (shader 2.0) won't run on many older machines and will, of course, run better on new stuff.

"...they will then utilize Shader 4.0., which will include high dynamic range light scattering, geometric subdivision for water, cloud shadows, and multipass techniques."All those things are available today with shader 2.0/3.0 and DX 9.Cheers,jason

just out of interest: what can we expect in terms of shader 3.0 functionality? Will we see HDR? Distorted shadows on water surfaces? Christian

>just out of interest: what can we expect in terms of shader>3.0 functionality? Will we see HDR? Distorted shadows on water>surfaces? >>Christian>We don't really speculate about that in public. Saves explaining why something wasn't in the product. Would much rather surprise folk.Cheers,Jason

Maybe the only difference then is that DirectX 10 is much more efficient and dependent less on the CPU.RH

Fair enough.Thanks,Christian

@tdragger or anyone from MS: Will the dx10 compliant release come as an upgrade or as a separate purchase?Kind regards,