1. How about career mode? MS may actually get it right with what they called "missions"...2. pilot-controlled landing lights3. Some basic ground maintainance. I know it is done for some addons, but it is not hard to make it for ANY ac in the fleet. MS started logging engine hours in FS9, for what reason? I guess they might be working in that direction...Cheers

MS,Please give these guys whatever they need.http://www.flightscenery.com/phpBB2/viewto...php?p=3289#3289They'll take care of the rest.

>Please give these guys whatever they need.>They'll take care of the rest.he, he, I actually agree 100%. Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpg

So there is sanity left in the world.

Couldn't agree more. So far all the new FSX features were in games a few years ago. For instance, Far Cry implements a sophisticated flocking algorithm for amazingly realistic birds (and fish!) The Far Cry water effects look far better than in the FSX screenshots. Of course, FSX still has lots of tricks up its sleeve that we will only hear about over the coming months. So far Flight Simulator has lagged behind other games in many ways. I would love to see FSX setting the pace instead of just playing catch-up. Best regards, Chris

The problem here is that the kind of cool stuff you see in FPS games would be extremely hard on the hardware to use on the scale Flight Simulator requires. FPS games can afford to use all sorts of fancy shaders, HDR lighting and massive object polygon counts because your visibility is extremely limited.Some people like to say that nothing short of HL2-like graphics is enough to make FSX worth upgrading to - well, if you haven't noticed, HL2's visibility is something like a mile or two at the most. If you don't believe me, check out the level where you have to cross the huge bridge in your dune buggy. How far down the bridge can you see? Can you see the other side? No. Imagine flying in those conditions.The reason why it doesn't matter in HL2 is because your viewpoint is almost always very close to the ground and your view of the horizon is often partially or completely blocked by buildings and other objects - this allows the use of a skybox which makes it look like you have huge visibility, when in fact you'll only see a little bit. Your attention is essentially kept very close to your location. The bridge section is one of the few examples where HL2's low visibility really shows (for example, the route you take down the shoreline to get to the bridge is winding for exactly the purpose of hiding the "fog" behind a curve or a hill). And where you move up to a higher level (such as the citadel), the ground below you is simply an "inverted" skybox with city scenery. Once again it looks like you can see far, when in fact your visibility is nothing to write home about.This won't work in flight simulators, for obvious reasons. Instead, flight simulators have to spread the polygons over a much wider area, which means lower geometry detail (generic houses have only a handful of sides, instead of intricate balconies and roof structures upping the polygon count). The amount of water FSX will have to (pontentially, depending on your location) shade is also much higher than what you'll ever see in Far Cry. If you look closely, you'll probably notice that even in Far Cry the "very nice" water effect doesn't extend very far (or atleast it didn't in the original 32bit version - I haven't tried the 64bit update).Just my 0.2 local.

Quite right, but fruitless trying to explain it to the punters.I've tried myself countless times, it doesn't work. They either genuinely can't comprehend or are unwilling to comprehend anything that doesn't match with their idea of how things should be.

Having spent many years programming in VB and C++ with OpenGL I fully understand what can and what cannot be done so I am not a normal "punter".These other non FSX games are more detailed because that is how the designers have chosen to display their games. For example if 1 unit represents 1 metre in flightsim, then in the other games 1 unit represents 1 inch. Therefore, the other games are more detailed because of their lower scale but that does not mean that FS cannot implement the same calculations. Regardless of which game, a unit is a unit. It only matters what that unit represents. Therefore the calculation for a falling object in Battlefield 2 is the same calculation as that in FSX. The only difference is the precision (ie Battlefield will be precise to 1 inch where as fsx will be precise to 1 metre).

This is truly amazing quality...Now where do we find the folks to do thousands of airports for us all?And who would be able to afford them if they came at $29.95 a piece? I'll likely be buying PDX, but it is MS that will have to deliver the underlying scenery for our next leap forward, so lets be nice to the FS team.. without them, none of this would be possible.

1) The scale is just that - a scale. Making an object fall with 0.01m precision with a one meter scale is no less detailed than a 1cm precision with a one centimeter scale.2) The scale is chosen based on how large an area you have to cover (taking the memory representation into consideration as well - preferable you want to use something the processor can use natively).In FS, it's the Earth they need to cover. What is it in Battlefield 2? Or more precisely, you select a scale making sense (typical meter as it is the standard scale for distance, and it is quite well suited for both small and large objects), then check that it can be used to cover the needed range in a decent memory format, compromising on both as required.3) FS use a number of scales based on what it is doing.Latitude/longitude is used for position, meters for vertexes in 3D objects, a 768x512 (or something like it) grid with each cell devided in 32x32 smaller cells for landclass, etc. 3D objects are as mentioned rendered with a scale of 1 meter, but obviously they can start out with their own scale command and then use inches, feet, cm, mm, km, or whatever.4) A double has a precision of approximately 15 decimal digits. The planet is approximately 40000km around equator. With 15 digits precision you will find that you have no problems specifying the positions in inches (or millimeters). I can't really remember if FS use a double for the position though, it might be a fixed point (it was in earlier versions, not sure what it is now).Notice that 3D objects are rendered using single precision floating points numbers, so to avoid rounding problems the position of the object is typically transformed to a local coordinate system before reduced to single precision (hence keeping the precision for anything close enough to matter, I do not think anyone would notice if the Sun is rendered a few km out of position).5) The computer does not know about inches, meters, or anything else when it is rendering 3D. It does not know if it is rendering 2km or 200km. It is simply rendering triangles. And it can only render a limited number of triangles. Now, the designer of the game can choose if they want to render all these triangles inside a 2km view with high detail, or if they want to spread them over 200km. But they can't simply assume that because they can render it in a 2km area they can just continue adding triangles for another 198 km without performance going down.

You'd have to display a LOT more of those units at once though, I can already hear the complaints about people not getting a thousand FPS.After all, if the latest Doom clone can do that than so should FS...So scale DOES matter.

>You'd have to display a LOT more of those units at once>though, I can already hear the complaints about people not>getting a thousand FPS.>After all, if the latest Doom clone can do that than so should>FS...>>So scale DOES matter.I am quite sure "unit" in this context means "unit of meassurement", not a unit like for example a battleship or a plane.I base this on the sentence:For example if 1 unit represents 1 metre in flightsim, then in the other games 1 unit represents 1 inch.in the post from fsxcess - but I could obviously be misreading something somewhere... it has happened before :)But I do not think I mentioned Unit even once in my post, so is your comment ment for me?

:-eek I can't believe those are screenshots and not photographs.I wonder what kind of computer you need to see that kind of detail.

>And it can only render a limited number of triangles. Now, the>designer of the game can choose if they want to render all>these triangles inside a 2km view with high detail, or if they>want to spread them over 200km. But they can't simply assume>that because they can render it in a 2km area they can just>continue adding triangles for another 198 km without>performance going down.Lars,Fully aggree. It is a simple arithemtic that shows that FS is not like another first-shooter arcade game.Michael J.http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/pmdg_744F.jpghttp://sales.hifisim.com/pub-download/asv6-banner-beta.jpg

Can't wait till the product is released.My two cents, on what is important for the immersion factor.1) Much more realistic ATC. Similiar to what radar contact is trying to accomplish, with regional accents and rules based upon where you are flying. Speed up the speech (listen to a real ATC, they speak much quicker), recognize as many airlines and aircraft as possible out of the box, with different flight level controllers as in real life :). Have a more "radiozed" (is that a word) sound to the radio traffic.2) AI, AI, AI. There is a ton of improvements for the AI programming that is needed. If you can build it in to the game, tha AI gurus can do the detail work.Such as a)proper seperation from your aircraft on approach, and the AI aircraft b)proper speration of all AI aircraft from each other, the ability to slow or speed up aircraft to maintain seperation from each other c) proper runway choice based upon runway length, or the number of aircraft on approach, not simply the heading the plane approaches from, to avoid logjams d) AI and user aircraft flying more accurate routes and altitudes so your dont have AI aircraft down to 2,100 ft 40-50 miles from landing with wheels down. SIDS/STARS etc e)built in AFCAD, or ensure compatibility with current AFCAD This is very important. e) better AI flight charateristics and speed upon landing, speeding em up to the high speed turnoff to avoid go arounds! 3) Improve the resolution that photoscenery can be displayed. The current 4.8 megapixel is not sufficient by today's standards. Think 1 meter/1 foot from Air Photo USA, Windows Live, or Google. Thanks for listening. Brian S.