>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. Rest assured FS isn't rendering the Congo when you're in BC. But you can see Mt. Ranier from downtown Seattle, and the Space Needle from KSEA. No other game even approaches that level of scale. Consider a game like Oblivion, which is generally considered to be huge, even epic in scale. And their world is only 4 miles across.>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.Not true. OpenGL vs. DirectX is not a perf issue here. Not sure why you would expect that to be relevant.>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?Clouds are 3d objects in FSX, as is just about everything else. The only thing that uses sprites IIRC are particle effects.

>>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 ;)Are you sure? Picking up one general line for comment from a detailed statement while ignoring the rest of the queries and questions at the heart of the issue seems to be the mien of marketing men. ;)So, do we get a Vista-makes-FSX-better-or-your-money-back guarantee? If not, is the ACES team reconvening as a matter of urgency to deal with the substandard performance out of the box? If not, then the requirement for backward compatibility is not being complied with, surely?Do we get an acceptance that the performance is unacceptable and it will be dealt with? Do we get recognition of the fact that backwards compatibility is actually undesirable these days in a fast-changing world? How about instead allowing a single-sale extension to the license, so that simmers updating to the new version could legally sell their old version to someone else? That would provide new customers in the market, and the incentive for the `old` sim to be removed and sold on in favour of the new, offsetting the cost. Which is after all what MS wants.If all you are saying is that the solution is simply to throw money at the problem, then we alreay know that. Could you indicate what hardware WILL optimise the performance of FSX? We've had lots of reasons why things won't work - or `excuses` as they're commonly called in the Real World. An indication of what will run the new product successfully would be helpful. You could start with benchmark results from XP/DX9 v. Vista & DX9 v. Vista & DX10, just to help us out, because: SLI = ruled outDual/Multiple Core = ruled out64-bit = ruled outPhysics chip = ruled outVista/DX9/DX10 = none of us know, because we haven't seen it yet.And there doesn't seem to be very much in the near-future development of hardware that DOESN'T fit into one or more of those categories, so it would be useful to be shown what it takes to make FSX fly.Allcott

Do you develop software?Do you think we would have the addons we have now if the 3rd party developers had to learn a completely new development "language" every three years? I doubt it would be worth it. We are ready to have usable addons right out of the gate of the release of FSX. And others within a month or two. If they had to relearn everything all over again, it would probably take 6 months for production quality work.Plus, it's not so simple to "rewrite from the ground up". It would probably take twice as long between versions to do that, probably longer. Not much hope for a sustainable development cycle for that.If "rewrite the whole thing" were the magic pill, where is the competition? By the "solutions" proposed here, MS would have been blown out of the water a long time ago.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Perhaps simconnect leaves you out in the cold, but it is the key to what will likely be an explosion of development addons within a year to support all the features you are looking for that would have taken MS years to produce on their own.I am positive the near future holds products that FS9 can't even hold a candle to.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

>>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. >>Rest assured FS isn't rendering the Congo when you're in BC. >But you can see Mt. Ranier from downtown Seattle, and the>Space Needle from KSEA. No other game even approaches that>level of scale. Consider a game like Oblivion, which is>generally considered to be huge, even epic in scale. And>their world is only 4 miles across.>>>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.>>Not true. OpenGL vs. DirectX is not a perf issue here. Not>sure why you would expect that to be relevant.>>>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?>>Clouds are 3d objects in FSX, as is just about everything>else. The only thing that uses sprites IIRC are particle>effects.>So why doesn't the performance scale with the performance of the 3d generating device? Maybe not proportionately, but to a factor extent? SLI should be the solution to the 3d needs, well established in 3d games as a performance benefit, but here it isn't. Is that the fault of the architecture, the API, or the developer?What physical benefits will Vista bring, as it is claimed that performance should increase under Vista? Given that the card is required to perform the calculations to supply the 3d operating environment, it would seem a serious mistake to not factor in the advantages of SLI for the increased rendering requirement of both complex sim and complex OS?Allcott

> If the app doesn't use DX10 features, Vista will simply fallback to whatever DirectX level support is required...Thats a pretty big 'if' since if you run FSX on Vista without DX10 your going to see it run slower than on XP! No gamers will upgrade to Vista unless they have a DX10 video card.

>> If the app doesn't use DX10 features, Vista will>simply fallback to whatever DirectX level support is>required...>>Thats a pretty big 'if' since if you run FSX on Vista>without DX10 your going to see it run slower>than on XP! No gamers will upgrade to Vista unless they>have a DX10 video card.This is precisely what I have been saying. We are allowing these claims for future improvements to go unchallenged because we want them to be true, not that we have proof they are! Although I don't doubt that, at the cost of a small mortgage one can get acceptable performance from FSX. And no-one here has yet seen an FSX running on DX10, nor what impact a DX10 `patch` might have on DX9 functionality. It's obvious that DX10 is intended as a `never go back` manoeuvre, and that once FSX is `converted` to DX10 it's going to run that way. And DX10 implies Vista, but Vista does NOT necessarily imply DX10. Given the costs involved in changing the OS are going to be considerable, I think we have every right to know whether the assertions that Vista by itself will be a performance aid to FSX are true, or whether it takes Vista and DX10 to do it. Or if it actually does.But the questionmark is over the intermediate steps. Suggestions are being made from reptuable sources that Vista aids FSX performance. In the absence of workable hardware and DX10 software that should mean on the same hardware, Vista/FSX (running under DX9) will work bhetter than XP/FSX. If that's the case then it should be possible to show that right now, and then maybe simmers can factor the OS into the upgrade costs.No-one is going to upgrade to Vista as a standalone upgrade unless it brings some benefits. For the money, you could stay with XP and buy some more RAM, or upgrade the sound or graphics card. But if Vista BY ITSELF brings about an increase in FSX performance, then it cuold be a useful halfway house while we wiat to see the real benefits and costs of DX10 and the associate hardware.Allcott

Hmm.. This was a very uninspiring passage:"...we aren't having all-team meetings to discuss performance, but we are reading the forums and looking at what users are doing to try and improve performance. If there is a good solution out there we are going to look at what is going on "under the covers" and see what we can do to improve things."It doesn't make me think they have any sense of urgency - or even, heaven forbid, confidence in their own ability to track down and identify the problems being reported. It certainly doesn't speak well for MS's thoroughness in beta-testing.This is not meant as a bash on either P-12c or MS itself. I'm simply interpreting those statements. They smack of impotence driving onwards towards incompetence -- and I hope that that is not what was intended when written.It sounds like the flight sim community is being "tasked" by MS to not only identify the problems but to identify the solutions themselves. THAT would be consistent with the perception many MS-bashers (and I am NOT one, I support BillG and MS far more than anyone I know) have uttered for years.This is why I'm sticking with FS9 for the foreseeable future. If FSX doesn't get fixed, I've lost nothing. If it does, I arrive at the party a little later. No great loss.

>Rest assured FS isn't rendering the Congo when you're in BC. >But you can see Mt. Ranier from downtown Seattle, and the>Space Needle from KSEA. No other game even approaches that>level of scale. Consider a game like Oblivion, which is>generally considered to be huge, even epic in scale. And>their world is only 4 miles across.You've apparently never heard of or played SecondLife. I'm not saying FS9/X and SL are anywhere near equivalent in terms of flying/quality of flying. However, flying is possible in SL and SL DOES render "distant" objects quite well on systems mostly inferior to what I have seen listed in signatures here. The rendering is streamed over the Net no less, not fetched and drawn from local hard drives. Additionally, all other "players-residents" and moving objects are totally unpredictable from a "local perspective". The "actual" distance being rendered is not what should be argued about here, IMHO.Just food for thought.

I think you missed my point entirely. I'm a developer myself (non - FS) and am more interested in flying the sim than struggling with it. I get enough struggling in my day job.DJ

Allcott, if I guessed that you have decided to stick with FS9, would I be correct? Im completely aggrivated with the whole performance issue. We had beautiful detail out of FS9, we could of just used better terrain mesh and textures though. I basically wish they would of focused more on updating other than rewriting nearly the whole #### code from scratch. Atleast... that's what it seems like, I mean common, look at the performance issues.I've heard several people comment that this is the worst release of a MSFS version ever, and Im starting to (heavily) believe it. Im sticking with FS9 for a year or two or untill I can afford to upgrade again to the top-o-the-line system we all dream of. Something else I saw that is interesting, if not hard to believe and comical. Check this...http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=244533&page=Thanks, and have a GREAT FSX-free day. :-wave

I think he's arguing the other way, that they should have re-written the code from scratch and done away with backwards compatability, though I'm not sure anymore what anyone is saying. Too many attacks from too many angles.To be fair though, it looks like some people are actually enjoying FSX a bit more now that they've had time to play around with it. To each his own.Ian.

I should let the developers answer, but, the answer that's been tossed out is that SLI doesn't support multiple monitors the way FSX required. I imagine even more important was that the development resource support requirement to benefit ratio was not very high. While it may be cool, I'll bet that less than 0.5% of the user base would be using SLI.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

>They smack of impotence driving onwards towards incompetenceHoly Geez!You've got some really - I mean REALLY - big cojones to come in here and tell the ACES team that they are anything but a dedicated and motivated development team.And as far as your comment regarding the lack of thoroughness during the beta cycle...you obviously have no clue what you're talking about.Nick Landolfi

I partied all night-it was so great I can barely go to sleep.So you are welcome to the party-even if late! :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg