I didn't tell the Aces team any such thing. Read my entire post again.I said that the words P-12C wrote didn't engender any confidence. I didn't choose his words, he did.As for the beta testing, no. I really don't have a clue. I can only "go" based on the results reported... and like P12C's blog, I'm not sure I am completely impressed.Holy Geez!

No, I don't think I did.I was trying to point out that the cost of developing Simconnect was much less than that of developing those cool features you want (along with all the other features that other people want), and that now the market will drive which of those features actually get developed. You won't have to worry about developing those features. But now other people can. As you know, despite the general concensus, MS has limited resources that can only do so much. By giving us the tools, those of us who are interested in buggering around can, and you will be able to reap the benefits of having a development team 100 or 1000 or perhaps even 10,000 times the size of ACES.I guess I was responding to what I perceived to be your trivialization of Simconnect. Whereas, from my point of view, it is the key to getting those features that you want. If it was easy, somebody else would have already done it.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

Ok-now you get my ire. Beta testers test and report-and some things get taken care of and some don't. This is deja vu-first the complaints about performance-then the trashing beta testers-I've been thru it for 20 years now and it is getting tiring.Please don't go there-it really is unjust.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

You CANNOT be serious.If the trees were made more voluminous, and the clouds actually 3D, then the performance of FSX would plummet.You don't look terribly intelligent arguing for performance improvement whilst complaining that trees and clouds aren't true 3D.James

>I didn't tell the Aces team any such thing. Read my entire>post again.I really have no desire to go round and round about this with you, but... yes, you did. You said that the statements made on the blog "smacked of impotence driving onward toward incompetence". You are implying that the ACES team is impotent and incompetent. The allusion is clear as day. If you're going to make such an allegation, you should at least be man enough to stand behind your words.>I said that the words P-12C wrote didn't engender any>confidence. I didn't choose his words, he did.And you chose your words very carefully too, didn't you? Impotent and incompetent.>As for the beta testing, no. I really don't have a clue. I can>only "go" based on the results reported... and like P12C's>blog, I'm not sure I am completely impressed.Which reported results are those? How exactly were you able to ascertain that the internal and/or external beta teams were somehow incapable of - or unwilling to be - thorough?You know what...never mind. I'm actually not interested in your answers.>Holy Geez!Indeed.

Hey Alcott, do have a gypsy fortune-teller available? Because we could use one right now to tell us what sort of computer we'll be working with two years from now. For that matter, send her back in time to two years ago to let the ACES team know...it'll help us all out.Seriously, considering the changes in direction that the hardware market occasionally takes, it's amazing that we haven't been stuck with a dead-end sim yet, and the reason for that is that the developers appear to simply trust to the fact that overall computing power will advance, rather than subscribing heavily to any particular technology. Do you take the risk involved in heavily supporting dual-core processing, despite the fact that few existed as recently as a year ago, and it was very uncertain whether dual-core was even viable? It could very easily have been an evolutionary dead end, and then where would we be? SLI? You may have more of a point there, but the devs explanation about the multi-monitor issues does a neat job of striking that one down...if ACES had come in here talking about removing multi monitor support, there would have been a firestorm of angry criticism. (yes, a different one).I understand your concern, I really do. But has the computing industry ever yet failed to provide more overall power to the desktop unit? Microsoft has bet "no" for 25 years, and they haven't been wrong yet. Flight Simulator continues to evolve along with the power available to it. Just because we don't see the way forward right now doesn't mean that there isn't one. Right now, nobody can really answer the questions you're asking. There's still too much to do, and too little hardware to experiment on. If FSX is just too much risk for you to take, don't take that risk...wait for more information. You don't have to update, and there are more than a few conservative people that will do just that. Or, you can do what others are doing and jump in headfirst with the hope that they can make it work. Either way, blaming the developer for not seeing all the twists in the road from two years ago seems a bit much, doesn't it? What exactly are we asking from these people?-Ivan

Touch

My mistake then. :-beerchugFSX looks great. It's going to take alot of tweaking though. Even though many of us have specs that soar past the minimum requirements, why cant we run the sim at a fair performance level? It just doesnt make sense to me. Its pretty aggrivating itself. Ill buy it here before long and play around with it. Maybe I'll squeeze a decent 20FPS out of it.

I say throw out the old and bring in the new. Let's move on to greater day in FS. Let those that want the old, do it with FS9.We have a new DX-10 standard coming, and let's use it to it's fullest this time around.Also, to me, increased multi-threading in ongoing released patches is the only long-term answer to where FSX needs to head. People have to do some upgrading to at least dual core, after all of the blood has been squeezed out of their current turnip. I think they know that.And along this same line,I most certainly hope the decision to avoid multi-threading at this time, was not made as a business decision, that might allow some people to circumvent upgrading to Vista. Based on what I've seen, those flight simmers that can afford it at all, are all going to have it anyway.Bob (Las Cruces, NM)

Whether I like it or not when I post to my blog or on these forums I am representing the team to some degree, but I can't speak for all members of the team as there are many different opinions and levels of urgency felt by each one. For some people the level of urgency is extreme, and for others, especially those that may not be as close to the metal, it isn't as high. What is important is that we are talking about it and working through how to deal with the issues at hand. However we aren't the sort that are likely to fly off the handle and run screaming down the halls.As for the beta team, we had the best beta effort ever in the history of the franchise this time around. I found the beta process and what we got out of it to be great! Unfortunately we didn't have the time or resources to address all concerns and issues as well as we would have liked to, but that doesn't mean we won't as we move forward.

Now that's a great response :)

> As for the beta team, we had the best beta effort ever in the history of the franchise > this time around. I found the beta process and what we got out of it to be great!I'm not surprised with the release of the demo n all....

It's like with every FS release. The performance for the average machine gets worse and worse.About three years in development and what do we get? Missions, birds and boats. In my opinion the "FS world" from FS9 to FSX has improved maybe 5% visually (not taking the birds into account!), somewhat more maybe in other areas. But what we have here is a slightly enhanced FS9 that's a frame rate HOG. Now that this performance/looks discussion has been started by other people, I feel that my very first impression of FSX has started to materialize itself in other people's minds too. Given the development time from FS9 to FSX, I had expected a lot better looking environment that was optimized to its peak, and that would run in Average PC platform, and run WELL in a "normal" high-end PC. Instead, what we see is a version of FS that seems to require AGAIN endless amounts of TWEAKS (for God's sake, the release hasn't officially even taken place yet, and already the forums are full of tweaks or people requesting tweaks!) to run even near-acceptale level for Real high end PCs, and to go with that we are told to throw another 500-1000 euros out the window to get this Software to work.Is there any end to this trend of making FS users time after time buy buy and buy new expensive HW? The MSFS seems to always be so HARD on the hardware resources that everytime we need to wait for like 1 full year until the needed HW is available that can run the newest version! How about sometime making the release run with the CURRENT HW!? And maybe concentrate on something else than the visuals, if making improvements in that area seem to be so difficult and so hard on the performance.I know I'll be running FSX, like all the others. But given that flight simulation's one primary requirement is to simulate flight, it's not gonna happen in a 10-12 FPS environment. For a decent performance, you would need 4-5 times more FPS. Tero

DJ,My thoughts exactly. You summed it up well in your previous post above.Flight Sim should be about accurately simulating FLIGHT with all its hazards, in a smooth, yet accurate environment. Notice how I left the word "accurate environment" last. It's because if the price of getting birds, cars and turqoise water costs the lack of smooth and accurate flying, then it shouldn't be attempted.There will be a time when the HW is powerful enough to give an amazing environment with all the details of flight. The time is not now, nor will it be in the near future.MSFS in my opinion is drifting farther away from being a flight simulator. Instead, it's becoming a flight game with a "simulative" component. If it takes to strip all the new goodies away to get a smooth performance, then something hasn't gone quite like expected, has it ?Also, I was expecting some new things in FSX like more realistic runway modelling (in terms of looks, friction), modelling of icing and ice contamination on the flight control surfaces, better modelling of the wind (x-wind namely), and great improvements in the flight modelling. Now yet again, what we get is more graphics content that doesn't even look realistic to begin with. And this content is eating up all the HW resources. Pretty "arcadeish" if you ask me. But that's just me...Tero

As someone whose academic and professional background directly involves the study and use of words, that is, rhetoric, I analyzed and gave my opinion of what was written. That's not a "you have to think this way" opinion; it was simply a rhetorical analysis of what was posted on the blog. If you (or anyone else) take that as insulting or condescending, sorry dude, you've completely misinterpreted both my intention and my meaning.P12C said they/Aces don't know what "the problem is...", why different people with apparently similar setups get different results, etc. That's outright admitted ignorance (lack of knowledge, not stupidity). One would think that those who wrote the software would normally be most qualified to figure the problem out best. That they do not have a solution "to hand" suggests incompetence.He said that they are reading the forums looking for the "community's" answers and solutions. That's admitting impotence - an inability to figure it out or to solve it on their own. Now do you understand the rhetoric? Notice, I did not write the words... I interpreted what was written.As for reported results... I assume you have read at least 2 or 300 posts by now reporting "results", some good, most not so good, in terms of FSX performance. Those ARE results. Sorry... if you haven't you must be new here and I don't think you are. Don't read into what I write. I DID write my post very carefully - including both caveats and disclaimers. I also stated that I hoped my interpretation was NOT what really IS - however, given the tenor of the blog and the wealth of "unsatisfied customers" tacitly acknowledged in the blog, I said I'm sticking with FS9. Simple as that.I won't apologize for either my rhetorical abilities or the lack of such by someone else reading my words. I did not insult anyone. If insult was taken, that's not my responsibility.