FSX Design Priorities Flawed

[Guest BOPrey]

RE: You can't just split a program into "threads for simulation and display" as if it's some simple taskAs a programmer for 10 years, a software architect in real time control for 15 years, and went on to start my own software company 8 years ago, I can tell you that it is just as simple as that, a thread for simulation and a thread for display. To take it further, a thread for simulation, a thread for display, a thread for ATC, a thread for AI, a thread for player input. Why, because in real live, these are independent things happenning at exactly the same time. The way I look at it, the ACES spent a lot of time creating a mission engine, reinventing the terrain engine, adding capabilities so addons can be easily develop. Just the SDK alone can cost a lot of time and resources. From MS's point of view, also my point of view, the ACES team did the right thing. In the software business, time to market and a stayable product out weights a fast running product. These days, if the software is too slow, you can always get a faster machine, which doesn't exactly take too much time. Not the same can be said about re-architecting a software product.Just my 2c.

[Guest SilverCircle]

>RE: You can't just split a program into "threads for>simulation and display" as if it's some simple task>As a programmer for 10 years, a software architect in real>time control for 15 years, and went on to start my own>software company 8 years ago, I can tell you that it is just>as simple as that, a thread for simulation and a thread for>display. To take it further, a thread for simulation, a thread>for display, a thread for ATC, a thread for AI, a thread for>player input. Why, because in real live, these are independent>things happenning at exactly the same time. You can do that if you have a much more predictable environment, maybe a well defined hardware with realtime abilities and maybe a rt operating system. Then yes, it *could* be that simple.That approach might even work on a game console like the XBox where the hardware and software environment is well defined and the software can be tested in that well-defined environment so that developers can be sure their software will exactly behave like on their testing systems on any other system out there.Unfortunately, a PC is far away from being such an environment. So that approach wouldn't ever work.

[ryanbatc 12,820]

Here John, check out this thread:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...&topic_id=18110Near the bottom, one guy compares current FPS games like BF2 and Ghost Recon etc to FSX....Notice the small use of the 2nd core with FSX?

[Guest BOPrey]

I agree with you one hundred percent. However, flight simulation is an exception. It is probably one of those few simulations that can take advantage of massive multi-threading. For instance, the simulation of aircraft movements (I am not talking about display here) is totally independent of ATC which is independent of player's aircraft simulation. You know what, if MS can just give us a terrain program with a programming interface to insert the player's plane and all the ai planes. Third party devs will create the physics simulation themselves. Also, third party devs will come up with the ATC as well.

[Guest]

it seems like ACES was dragged into the design room by Microsoft, and told to concentrate on 90% eye candy while refusing to accept that not everyone is going to want to upgrade a system they just upgraded a year ago. I can pop in any other game and run full settings and it almost always plays perfectly. FS is a different story. I understand the huge scope of the game, but it seems Microsoft doesnt care about hardcore simmers, they know they can sell tons of copies off the name only, and these casual gamers make up their biggest market. So they push off all the hard work to addon developers who have to make complicated scenery and airplanes for this engine will still catering to the people with slower systems even though MS doesnt have to do that.like all talented developers, ACES kept trying to add to the feature list instead of fixing as much as was broken in the last version

[FaxCap 13]

>Personally, I expect to see FS11 to be highly multithreaded.I agree. If the ACES team reads this I would like to say this...I am quite willing to wait longer than the usual 2 years between new versions. If that's what it takes to rewrite as much of FS as possibleto take advantage of the new multicore processors so be it.Your FlightSim has moved well beyond a "game". It's more like a way of life! :-) I can't believe the friends I have made through MS FlightSim.I will buy every new version until I'm too old to use a joystick.FaxCap

[Guest Derek D]

I personally don't know how MS came up with their bizarre marketing strategy. They design each version of FS so that it won't run very well on current machines, but will scale up as new technology is released over the course of a couple years. This is a common strategy for a number of games because they want to remain competitive well into the future--but that paradigm doesn't work well for FS because they release a new version every couple of years! There is no need to "design for the future" when you are re-releasing a brand on a regular basis.If you consider that during any given FS release approximately 95% of the population is using computers below the de facto requirements, that is 95% of the population that can be considered as lost sales during the "hype period" which is the most profitable sales period for a game release.In my opinion, MS should seriously consider sliding their compatibility curve a year or so to the left for future versions of FS. This may mean that the next version of FS won't be as dramatic in its feature set, but at least it would run great on most computers out-of-the box with all sliders to the right. It is also going to become more essential when you consider that processor speeds haven't really improved in the past few years.

[GHarrall 494]

Did anyone actually READ traggers article?It states quite clearly WHY FSX is not able to utilize the second core to a great degree.Some terrain features have been offloaded to the second core, so there is SOME benefit, just not a lot.

[Staffan 12]

Hmm,...it is quite amusing, reading threads like this.I said it before, and I say it again....People was sent to the moon with computers 1969,...yes 1969...But it seams impossible to make a Flight Simulator Game program stutterfree 2006 for a "normal" computer system. :-rollYou can flame how much you want,..but I am positivly sure that MS is very capable in making a stutterfree program, like FSX today. The reason they don

[Manny 1,293]

When FS9 came out.. It may not have run well on machines owned by 95% of the people, but if one had the latest PC at that time, it would have given them a 74FPS. So the solution at that time was..to go buy the latest PC at that time. So...No, FS9 was not out of sync with the H/WThis time its different. And that is because of the track deviation HW manufactueres took. They have moved from increasing the single core speed to dual and quad core. We have been requesting for FSim to follow that Multi Core HW track, but they have said, (thats my understanding) that its not viable for FSim. Fsim is mostly a singly threaded app. Hence the disconnect. Manny

[boshar 6]

I'm guessing that the whole thrut is somewhat different. Dual core optimalisation is possible but if your tied to the original code, backward compatibility and limited development time there is only so much you can do.Its all a matter of cost. Rewriting FS-X from scratch to support dualcores would cost a lot of development time and it would cause problems on single core PC's. Maybe the market is not yet ready for a Dual core supporting FlightSimSome technical info about dualcore game engine writing and optimising:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051117/gabb_01.shtmlhttp://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060906...kkonen_01.shtml

[Manny 1,293]

>Rewriting FS-X from scratch to>support dualcores would cost a lot of development time and it>would cause problems on single core PC's. Maybe the market is>not yet ready for a Dual core supporting FlightSim>>Possibly true. The same reasoning for not going 64bit.So, now we are at an inflection point. Where the HW development is going in one direction and the FSim can't afford to follow that track (weather its the cost of a rewrite or just the nature of sim). And there is a cost associated with that too. Unless and until that cost exceed the cost of dual core rewrite (if it is possible or 64 bit or whatever is needed for these two to converge) its not going to happen.In the meantime..move the sliders to the middle somewhere. :)Manny

[Murmur 3,941]

>I personally don't know how MS came up with their bizarre>marketing strategy. They design each version of FS so that it>won't run very well on current machines, but will scale up as>new technology is released over the course of a couple years. >This is a common strategy for a number of games because they>want to remain competitive well into the future--but that>paradigm doesn't work well for FS because they release a new>version every couple of years! There is no need to "design>for the future" when you are re-releasing a brand on a regular>basis.I agree with what you said Derek.95% of people though, prefer to fly with a lot of eye candy and 10-15FPS, rather than with less autogen, no super-fancy effects, no airport marshalls etc. BUT robust 30-35FPS.And I'm not referring just to the average Joe, but even to the people in these forums.So, in this regards, MS choice is (unfortunately I'd say) right. :)Moreover, nothing prevents you from turning the sliders to the left and increase FPS. :)Marco

[GHarrall 494]

But the "Sims" doesn't model the physics of flight and render the entire world in 3D does it?Slightly different application to say the least........

[Guest BOPrey]

All we are expecting is that FSX runs as well as FS9 with the same visial on the same machine. FS9 models the physics of flight and render the entire world in 3D too.BTW. Your overclocking is too conservative. Should be able go 3.2+ with stock headsink.