FU3 was a programme which was way ahead of its time a few years ago.It was a programme limited in area coverage but was a highly immersive sim.People are talking about Birds well FU3 had animals running onto the runways.You had missions, flight offices which you could move around. You had weather systems and fronts.The big thing with FU3 was the fact that it was fun.You could ridge fly in a motor glider and hear the wings and structure creak as you picked up rising air currents up mountain slopes. You could struggle as you hit sinking air.In many ways my perfect sim would have been FU3 with world coverage and FSX Graphics.People who say you cannot have this or that because it will bring the computer down to its knees only have to look at FU3.FU3 was designed at a time when we had relatively slow machines yet it had literally every feature we are talking about in its code.It is Graphics which makes the computer struggle not coding? (correct me if I am wrong)I am wondering if MS are taking FSX into the areas that FU3 was strong at but with the world wide coverage and superb graphics?Peter

yes, Microsoft has stolen the source for FU3 and is just rereleasing that as FSX with a larger scenery set.Now are you happy?

Wow,There was no need for that sort of cantankerous response. The guy's just expressing his pov and as an old FU3 stalwart I can see where he's coming from.Have a nice day :-rollSatchmo

Not wishing to stoop to Jwentings Level I have deleted my initial response. What I will say is that MS appear to be adding features which will make the programme more immersive for the wider audience. In that process they have stated that they intend to make the world more alive. If that means the ground AND the sky then YES I for one will be happy.What I added was that all these features were available in FU3 and noted the similaritiesPeter

FU3 was a great sim and its too bad they couldn't build on it. The times I had flying around in FU3 were great but then again FU3 was going againist a gaint such as MSFS.As for jwenting's response, I just wanted to know if you work for Microsoft? Or if you own Microsoft stock? Because you and a few others on here are very pro-Microsoft. It's like any anti-Microsoft comment hurts you and others on this forum and you feel the need to come back and give a weak and immature response.

Yeah, good move I suppose.Just ignore the guy. He's always pouncing on any post that expresses any doubt, or (perish the thought!), critisism of Microsoft. It's just one of those things. Whining trolls on the one hand, business suits on the other, and thankfully, most people in between, as is natural.Best,Martijn

Hi there Peter you are right about FU3 being "ahead of it's time" in fact I still have it. As for what kills frame rates well that's the 64000 thousand dollar question. It has a lot to do with how the code for the graphics is implemented and what needs to be drawn to the screen at any given time. Yes what graphcs card you have is important but a lot has to do with what is being drawn to the screen like I've said things like clouds can kill frame rates because clouds are voloumetric I.E they have depth (thickness) so every time you have to draw something like clouds the number of calculations that has to be performed greatly increses. So what someone has to do when you write code is to look at the math and come up with the most efficent way to do it based on what the API (in this case the current version directX allows you to do)So in short if one does hishers home work and writes good code and keeps the data clean I.E. has clean models the result is efficent code calling efficent models (your data in this case) giving you a nice smooth running sim. The other things that's been hard to do is dynamics you know things like the interaction between the airframe and and the simulated air as an example again efficent code goes a long way to getting your hardware to do it's thing and draw each frame. Now as for the newest video hardware is going to have more and more ability to do the math behind all of the dynamics behind what we see in every frame.I have read that ATI's dual card GPU's have the ability to split the work between the cards so that one card will do the math in hardwareand pass that info to the second card so it "only" has to do the math to draw the screen that if implemented properly will indeed help with frame rates. Because at present most (if not all the math) behind dynamics is done on your CPU and not the video card. Hope this has been of some help Dan Martin

My thoughts on clouds were that you could still use the same clouds we have now (rotating 2D), but when you enter one, it has a calculated "depth" to it and the program could "white out" your view for the amount of time required to cross through the cloud.This would give the performance of the 2D rotating clouds, but the simulation of 3D depth with the "white out" that we would be looking for.

Well Ken you are thinking along the right lines. What I was talking about is how one implements the code for drawing volumetric objects so that the hardware (your video card)can draw it in the fastest possible time because the effect must done when you are outside the cloud as well, although rotating a 2D object (simple poly with a texture on it) is much less work for your card to work with. But the problem with useing the above "trick" comes when you "enter" the cloud it would be hard to get the effect right as you enter the cloud in real time without you seeing the move from drawing a 2D "cloud" to adding a fog(again a 3D volume effect) but like I was trying say in my last post nothing is really simple!! I make my living in 3D (I am an animator although not in gameing and every time I go to a movie I hear people say "Oh that's done on a computer so they just push some buttons and vola you have your effect done" I just sit there and smile. I have spent months on a caracter as part of a team of people and can tell you that NOTHING is simple. Dan Martin

One problem with that approach:It does not allow for the fact that when you enter a cloud, your vision isn't necessarely blocked equally to every direction. If you're flying at the very "bottom" of the cloud, for example, you might see the ground through a haze, but you wouldn't see anything ahead of you. "Whiting out" the screen could only cater to one of these two aspects: either you see the ground (and by extension everything else) through the haze, or your view to the sides is completely blocked, but you don't see the ground either. The former option can make clouds appear more see-through than they should, while the latter causes you to "suddenly" pop out of seemingly dense clouds, without a nice gradual transition as different parts of your view outside approach the edge of the cloud.I was actually under the impression that this is how FS9 does it already (when you enter a cloud, your view outside the cockpit is "fogged out"). Perhaps I've been mistaken?

Yeah, rather discourteous response. Your post deserves better.My thoughts are that MS on the FS side (and maybe other areas as well) is reflective of an entrenched programming mentality (since that's what were addressing now) which can only view change as inevitable. This kind of mindset means that change only occurs didactically and slowly, not with quantum leaps. And so you're right. FU3 had an immersiveness which the FS series has always lacked but will finally start to be addressed in FSX - the birds and missions for example. I mean, it was only this present incarnation of FS9 where the clouds finally moved away from those non-immersive cardboard cut-outs. I would also like flight offices to be included at some point and more, the ability to drive your sim car from suburbia to the airport, file a flight plan, prep your plane all in a virtual world.

Hi:That could still be done. The program knows where in the cloud you are, so if you are near the bottom/top/edge, it could allow viewing out the appropriate direction while keeping white out in the other directions.FS9 does "kinda" white out when you enter the 2d cloud, but as soon as you pass the cloud (which is 1 pixel thick), you get a view again. I haven't really seen a true white out condition in FS9.This is especially evident if you look out a side window while passing through the cloud.

>And so you're right. FU3 had an immersiveness which the FS series has always lacked but will finally start to be addressed in FSX - the birds and missions for example. I mean, it was only this present incarnation of FS9 where the clouds finally moved away from those non-immersive cardboard cut-outs. I would also like flight offices to be included at some point and more, the ability to drive your sim car from suburbia to the airport, file a flight plan, prep your plane all in a virtual world.

LOL I hope I wasn't implying that it would be easy!I design hardware/software in the telecom world. I also get to hear the "well it should be easy to be able to x" and then I think about how many man-hours of design, unit testing, then integration will be involved. :-)I think you can do the "trick" with some clever transitional effects. The sim knows where you are in respect to the cloud, so depending on where you are (head on, on the edge, inside on the edge, etc.) it could simulate complete white out, or a certain percentage of opacity based on location.Of course I'm talking out of my rear here, since I have no idea how much impact this would have on the sim, etc.But I just have a feeling this could be done.

Hi there Ken No I did not think you thought doing the above would be simple (sorry if I did!) And of course the sim "knows" where you are so that the people at Microsoft could and indeed have many tricks up their collective sleves I would think. I often post answers to help explain to people who may not understand what is involved in putting together something like a simulator and how many things have to come together tomake it all happen. It all is an art from the people who do the codeing to the lowly artists like me who just have to make the visuals. Dan Martin