Bob, You're not the only one, ROFL. I just started to read this thread and I've never seen such a brain game with words in my life...OMG, they give new meaning to the phrase ..'.50 cent words'.Ancient Chineese proverbs have nothing on these 2...HAHA. I'm still laughing as I'm writing this...IMO those were worth a good buck-50.Sorry I just had to take a good natured jab at this one.:(

>>I have seen many people comparing FSX's low framerate>against>>many other products including first person shooters and>saying>>how they don't buy the whole "It's pushing the limits of>>hardware" thing.>>>>>>You really can't compare the FSX engine against most games.>>Invest five minutes of your life. Go check the Alan Wake demo>from idf ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGoiQaMM61E ). They>use all four cores of intel's quadcore to accomplish what you>see there. Come back here and tell me that nothing of what>they must be doing to accomplish that could be used in flight>simulation.>>Regards,>>http://www.bremmekamp.com/img/misc/avsim.jpgThat's completely different. I don't even know how to comment. First of all, the game only renders with the GPU, and in case you didn't read Ace's post on multi-cpu- they are ALSO using multiple CPUs to stream data. Flight sim simply doesn't need an entire CPU for physics as well. Would true multi-cpu optimization help? Sure- AI, and most certainly weather- but the way it is now is good. There are quite a few people here that are calling the FSX engine unoptimized with nothing to substantiate those claims.I wanted to add something else too (some more background info). A GPU as you know is a processor dedicated to graphics rendering- However, when asked what exactly that means most people don't really have any idea. First and foremost, the GPU is used for filling textured polygons- VERY QUICKLY. That is what 'fill rate' in a cards specs is. Basically, in the old days you'd write an assembly routine that would take three triangle points and draw a triangle using a texture map. Your routine would basically rotate and stretch the pixels of the texture map, and then clip it. As you can imagine, this is not really quick, and that is why before GPUs graphics were... well... crappy. Along come the GPU (and skip ahead a few technologies) and now you have a dedicated piece of hardware where you basically just pass it the texture, and the polygon points, and it would rotate and draw it for you- letting the CPU do other things. That was a great innovation. And then with 'transform and lighting' the GPU would translate, scale, rotate, and apply lighting to the polygon(s) as well. So only one problem remained... How do you know which polygons to pass to the GPU? Well guess what... that problem still exists... Your engine has to parse the data before it decides what to send to the GPU. So with a smaller map, you are parsing less data. The bigger the map, the more you have to calculate on what is going to the engine. Again, most engines can accomplish this quite easy since the maps are usually divided into small 'rooms'. Those loading screens in most games is what that is. See, if those engines had to parse all the game data every frame it wouldn't work so well. Now, FS can divide the map into somewhat small areas- but what about say, New York City? Thousands of buildings and other objects have to be loaded and ready to get sent to the GPU if the engine decides it needs them. And keep in mind that because of the way flight simulator interprets data that it has to do extra steps every frame. How do you think a 'flatten' object works? The engine takes the terrain mesh and squashes the vertices. Whether this happens every frame I don't know, but it may be part of the stutters?I'm not saying the FSX engine is as good as Unreal or Source or that other one- but it's certainly not as bad as people are saying. Personally, I use FS as a tool to supplement real flying and only play around with a bit (flying helicopters) so the graphics are not important to me any- nothing will ever compare with a clear night VFR to Bridgeport in real life :)

Not sure in which context you used the word receptive, but really all I want is to help those who are suffering with bad performance, especially when they appear to have the hardware needed. I genuinely feel bad that some folks can't use FSX because of their hardware, even more so when they can not afford to upgrade. So I'll just come out and say what I spent, I spent more than a thousand and less than two thousand to get a new PC, I'm not going to lie it hurt my wallet, but to me, it was worth it, because I love flight sim, it's one of the only things I really ever spend any kind of money on (that and real flying). Also, just wanted to say that had I purchased my system from Alienware or some custom company like that, I would have spent much more, so if you are reading this and you are thinking about a custom computer, please get the hardware as cheap as you can find it and have someone put it together for you, that's what I did and I think it saved me some money.Thanks,Jeff

>Not sure in which context you used the word receptive, but>really all I want is to help those who are suffering with bad>performance, especially when they appear to have the hardware>needed. I genuinely feel bad that some folks can't use FSX>because of their hardware, even more so when they can not>afford to upgrade. So I'll just come out and say what I>spent, I spent more than a thousand and less than two thousand>to get a new PC, I'm not going to lie it hurt my wallet, but>to me, it was worth it, because I love flight sim, it's one of>the only things I really ever spend any kind of money on (that>and real flying). Also, just wanted to say that had I>purchased my system from Alienware or some custom company like>that, I would have spent much more, so if you are reading this>and you are thinking about a custom computer, please get the>hardware as cheap as you can find it and have someone put it>together for you, that's what I did and I think it saved me>some money.>>Thanks,>JeffThat can be a headache though- I would go with a homebuilt unless you know what you are doing (same thing as if we were talking about airplanes!)I bought all top of the line stuff, checked compatibility, set memory timings according to manufacturer specs. etc....Have had a ton of problems.... One video card went bad (under warranty), power supply died (CompUSA wouldn't take it back, so had to warranty that also!). Lately, I've had the computer just shut off while browsing the web or something, and then to get it back on have to unplug the PSU, wait a minute, plug it back in. Blue screens etc... TOTAL NIGHTMARE. And this is probably the 50th computer I've built- my last P4/Intel mobo was flawless- this AMD dual core SLI thing might be too bleeding edge for me. I think I will go with a single GPU next time.Oh, and I have 3 120mm case fans, and a video card cooler- it runs at about 35 degrees so it's not a heat problem.Anyway... Alienware are more expensive, but they are really nice computers.

>"Shooters use a technique called binary space>>partitions which actually optimize the map so only visible>>polygons are rendered.">>Indeed, they did 5 years ago. BSP hasn't been around for a>while now in modern FPS. Plus, it doesn't work in outdoor>environments.>>The point is BSP as a LOD scheme is outdated and has been>replaced by others. In my opinion there is no reason why FS>should perform much worse than modern limited area FPS - if it>would use the right LOD algorithms...>>I think it's not a question of technical feasability rather>than one of economic feasability - ie would it cost too much>to build a sophisticated FS engine (in the minds of MS>accountants).>>Christian>I can't really agree with that on the basis that no flight sim has ever had detail that matched a first person shooter AND the performance to match. And with my (15 years if you only count starting in college as a CS major) programming experience I just don't see any easy way to make a database of the whole world run like a small handcrafted, optimized map. I've read Michael Abrash's books and read all about Carmack and Romero's latest and greatest. Unfortunately nobody has really had any 'magic hat' performance tricks for flight simulators.Oblivion is awesome BTW- just finished it last night... sorry OT...

>I can see either what the deal is with rendering power in>FSX. The terrain tiles are simply 2D textures slapped onto a>polygon. The only things that's truly 3D are the aircraft,>vehicles and autogen. Now in Oblivion I have tens of thousands>of tiny 3D grass polygons that move with the wind or move when>I pass them. On top of that there are many more things to>render with a way higher LOD than anything in FSX. I don't get>it. Please enlighten me.I suggest that you go to:http://www.flightgear.orgIt's a free and open source flight simulator which means that you can download the source code, start reading it (you may have to learn a programming language first, but that's only a matter of a few weeks as long as you have basic knowledge about how computers work) and enlighten yourself how complex a well working mesh terrain engine can be. And then add all the other things FS has to calculate and figure out for *each game tick* (and this means, at least, 20 times per second if we want a good framerate - and we all do). It's probably 10 times more than this freeware sim does, btw.And when you have understood all this, come back and tell us how "easy and simple" it is.