A FSX team member blogs about the performance issues FSX is having. Very insightful post and to me, there is hope but that will not be until Vista/DX10 is out (like many of us have been surmising).Read here:http://blogs.technet.com/p-12c_pilot/archi...ce-Anxiety.aspx

That's a very good post...although his background and font colors somehow gave me a major headache. :)On top of the hopes from the ACES. I'm personally made more positive about FSX by all these recent fixes and tweaks going on here. I don't remember so much of these happening when 9 came out.

I tell you..the ACES team have been great! I read P-12C Pilot's blog. He gets it. I am hoping it would be addressed. Our feedback on what we find (atleast most of us here) is not a personal attack on anyone at ACES. Its the situation. If the Intel guys were here, I may as well be posting..why they are NOT taking care of us single threaded and gaming folks and why they left us high and dry. Why are they not making a 9Ghz Processor instead of moving from Dual core to Quad core? :( I like FSX by itself in all its glory. Its is very very very nice running on a high end machine. Wish there were more room for addons. However that is addressed. If there were real fast single core CPUs out there now or in the Pipeline, for me atleast, it would not be an issue.But I certainly don't understand folks who say there is no issue...and that we are just whiners.Manny

Interesting read - thanks for the link. I'm hopeful that one way or another there will come a day when FSX users will have the headroom to support future addons. So far I've not seen a single screenshot that tells me the hardware exists that can support an LDS or PMDG level product at say KATL at peak traffic and heavy o'cast. Not ACES' fault mind you, they primarily ship a product that works out the box for the average user.Guess we'll see - I know for their part the devs are working hard on performance in the new sim. regards,Markhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpgXPHomeSP2/FS9.1/3.2HT/1024mb/X700pro256

Thanks for the link... :-)Sounds like their watching what's going on and concerned. I guess we'll see what they come up with. I believe the community can do some things but Aces will be the main ones to turn this sim around for the better. It's in their hands...

Well, I'm very surprised considering how FS9 went. That was frustrating to say the least. I sure hope the team can come up with some solutions and a patch or two that'll fix these major problems. I've been very critical of the ACES team and FSX, but previous versions dictate my response. If ACES can provide the support to patch the software like we expect them to, then I'll be much happier about the whole thing. I do appreciate the fact they aren't sitting silent.

------ quoted --------Flight simulations are the only entertainment product that I know of which require open and unrestricted sight lines out to the world. Comparisons are constantly being made to first person shooters which have incredible frame rates and amazingly rich environments. I'm as impressed with them as the next guy, but they cannot render a realistically scaled and open representation of the Earth. If any of them actually can do that and do it in a way where I can go anywhere on the planet seamlessly, then I would like to see it. And if they can do it with frame rates users often quote with great enthusiasm, then we won't be in business for very long.----------------------I found that an interesting statement. Maybe some people, who always ask why MSFS cannot perform like some 3d shooter should read that over and over again until they understand :)

Wow! So all we need to make FSX work is to spend upwards of 500 quid on a brand-new, untried - and unreleased - Operating System and a new graphics card to run DX10 (also untried, untested, unreleased - and yet to be shown in a working capacity to a waiting world) and then all our problems will be solved!. Gee thanks genius! Wait, I have a hot tip. While you're at it upgrade your processor, RAM, motherboard and sound card too! Now I'm a genius! I've solved all the problems!Truly, this man must work for MS in a marketing capacity. While I think quite a few people here have suggested we might need a hardware upgrade to get this baby to fly, no-one but an MS person would dare say the solution to the duff performance from developers who, if you read between the lines, are slowly realising they've ballsed it up completely (mainly I suspect, because of the continuing farce that is Vista), is to upgrade the computer with prototype, pre-production MS software they haven't even tested on, let alone developed for! OK, you go first. Vista does come with a moneyback guarantee for improved FSX performance doesn't it? It had better.Allcott

>------ quoted -------->Flight simulations are the only entertainment product that I>know of which require open and unrestricted sight lines out to>the world. Comparisons are constantly being made to first>person shooters which have incredible frame rates and>amazingly rich environments. I'm as impressed with them as the>next guy, but they cannot render a realistically scaled and>open representation of the Earth. If any of them actually can>do that and do it in a way where I can go anywhere on the>planet seamlessly, then I would like to see it. And if they>can do it with frame rates users often quote with great>enthusiasm, then we won't be in business for very long.>---------------------->>I found that an interesting statement. Maybe some people, who>always ask why MSFS cannot perform like some 3d shooter should>read that over and over again until they understand :)While others ask why they need to design the thing that way in the first place? The only bit of the `world` I am interested in is the bit I'm flying in. You have no need to replicate the Upper Congo when I'm in British Columbia, or Alaska if I'm downunder. It's not beyond the wit of man to create a simulator by new and different `rules`. And MS is not beyond brekaing the rules if it suits their purpose - cylindrical world up to FSX. Fundamentally, the thing that holds MS flight sims back is that it has to be coded in Direct3D which is a poor choice for virtual environments, but good for manipulating images.After all, it's not as if the FS `world` is a true 3d environment, is it? Cruciform tress and clouds that still turn to face you ring any bells?And that's where the first reply to the blog really shows up the absence of creative thinking. What a great riposte. On the one hand they `have to have backward compatibility` then almost immediately we are told that this baby will have to be run on Vista & DX10. Which has no backward compatibility whatosever! FSX was probably the one and only opportunity in the franchises history to throw out all lthe old and bring in something new. Allcott

>What a great riposte. On the>one hand they `have to have backward compatibility` then>almost immediately we are told that this baby will have to be>run on Vista & DX10. Which has no backward compatibility>whatosever!Where on earth did you get that idea? Of course Vista will be "backwards compatible" with any 32bit application. If the app doesn't use DX10 features, Vista will simply fallback to whatever DirectX level support is required...

"Our requirement to support backward compatibility for aircraft and other content is holding us back..."Let's keep framerates down by ensuring old addons work?For many buyers, I would think a performace test might be flying towards New York City with normal autogen on at 1280x1024 and getting 20fps. FSX as is will disappoint them a lot, that test brings my PC to a halt.Suggesting VISTA, DX10 video card, new MB and RAM ($1100) as a solution to improve things just so some users can use $75 worth of old planes just does not seem like a good choice?I'm happy with my FS-X purchase, but I like to tinker with settings, and do most flying in the mountains where FSX performs fine, but if you ask users in general would they would RATHER have a STREAMLINED rewrite for performance and quality at the expense of losing the ability to use old addons. I'd think everyone would say rewrite.We can always use the old addons with FS9.

The bottom line is simply this: why in the world would I buy a product that requires me to spend hours tweaking for decent performance, or to wait several years for better hardware in the hope that my obsolete sim will finally run properly after a several thousand dollar investment? One might argue that FS9 offered enough new features that the tweaking (if any was required - in many cases it wasn't) was worth it but, so far, I have seen nothing in the feature set of FSX that makes me want to run out and buy it.I don't particularly care about water, reflections, birds, cows, autos, group play, or missions (which, IMHO, are for those with limited imaginations). I'm not an FS developer so SimConnect leaves me cold. I do care about decent ATC, good flight models, great weather, and good airport modeling, and - oh wait, I have those in FS9 with the addons I've acquired over the past couple of years and it all runs well on my current machine.Where are the posts that talk about the great flying experiences in FSX that weren't possible in FS9? Where is the experience of fluid flight, real world procedure, and true simulation of the modern and complex flight environment? When I see those, maybe FSX would be a possibility but, at the moment, I won't bother.DJ

>"Our requirement to support backward compatibility for>aircraft and other content is holding us back...">>Let's keep framerates down by ensuring old addons work?>>For many buyers, I would think a performace test might be>flying towards New York City with normal autogen on at>1280x1024 and getting 20fps. FSX as is will disappoint them a>lot, that test brings my PC to a halt.>>Suggesting VISTA, DX10 video card, new MB and RAM ($1100) as a>solution to improve things just so some users can use $75>worth of old planes just does not seem like a good choice?>>I'm happy with my FS-X purchase, but I like to tinker with>settings, and do most flying in the mountains where FSX>performs fine, but if you ask users in general would they>would RATHER have a STREAMLINED rewrite for performance and>quality at the expense of losing the ability to use old>addons. >>I'd think everyone would say rewrite.>>We can always use the old addons with FS9.>>I vote rewrite it everytime a new version comes out. We're going to get charged for half the addons just to upgrade them to the next version anyways, so rewite it all or most.I think a big issue with FSX coming out at this present time is that the hardware and the OS is in the midst of a new generation change over. Heck if Vista came out when it was suppose to we would be in the midst of a refresh for DX10 cards by now.I also can't wait to put my lowly AMD o/c to 2.3 athlon with a 9800pro vidcard through the paces of FSX, because I planned my upgrade ahead of time to fit in dx10 and vista into the picture. Suffer I must now, but once March comes around the new system should keep up for the next 2yrs and be part of the least resistance for minor upgrades (ie. same slot cpu, better vidcard.

>Truly, this man must work for MS in a marketing capacity.I'm not the "spin master" I would have to be to work in marketing. Nice spin on your part though ;)

Okay Allcott, you are pushing the limits. Be forwarned.