All the simmers who fly bushwise in clear weather and never land at airports and are unlikely to see AI flying around due to AI at 0% need read no further. I am now anticipating the next chapter in the FSX release saga. . . the third party complex addon issue! I'm intrigued to see how the creative brains of these developers are going to manage the situation. Cloud9 have just relesed their Orlando International for FSX only and whilst their screenshots as ever, are excellent, there is a distinct sparseness to the scenery so unlike previous releases from Cloud9. They are been given a hard time on their forum as members express concern about how it might run etc etc. It doesn't bode well for the simmer who likes his addons. However pretty FSX may look right now, the novelty will wear off soon enough for many and the simmer will look to addons to refresh his interest. . . so what then?! Addon lock-up? No hardware on the horizon to save the day. Hmmm. . .

>Cloud9 have just relesed their Orlando International for FSX>only and whilst their screenshots as ever, are excellent,>there is a distinct sparseness to the scenery so unlike>previous releases from Cloud9. They are been given a hard>time on their forum as members express concern about how it>might run etc etc. You need not worry. In comparison to FS9 add-ons, Orlando has less of a percentage frame rate hit. Besides, you can download the trial version and test it on your machine before buying. Set your machine up however you like. I'm a little biased, but indeed I was very surprised myself.Cheers,Barthttp://acquiry.com/picts/BartMig110_sml.jpgCloud9 Beta Team

Bart, the trouble with percentages is the smaller the base number, the less relevance for comparison a percentage change actually makes. If you've got 9fps and you get a 33% increase, you still only have 12fps. If you have 15fps and an aftermarket addon `only` affects fps to the tune of 10% it might mean `only` 1.5-2fps empirically, but practically that means the difference between useable and useless, as far as FSX is concerned.The only way ANY aftermarket product is going to make any sense on my computer is if there is either no framerate hit, or it actually improves them!Allcott

>The only way ANY aftermarket product is going to make any>sense on my computer is if there is either no framerate hit,>or it actually improves them!The only way an addon could not impact the fps or even improve it, would be the addon not adding basically anything comparing to the default, or even purposely lowering the quality (for example, a replacement AI pack with lower quality planes, because MS "AI" models are simply too complex for AI use, because they are the same as the flyable models).This, for a scenery, doesn't make much sense: who would want to buy a scenery *sparser* than default, just to increase fps ? Also, I don't think you can go much sparser than default...An Addon scenery will always have *some* kind of impact, the difference between the god and the bad will be how *much* impact it will have. I have a different opinion about fps loss percentage: a badly-optimized FS9 scenery that, thanks *only* to new machines available TODAY (not in 2003 when FS9 was released), put down FS9 from 80-90 fps to 25-30, is stilly flyable, of course, but with the new hardware that, I repeat, wasn't available 3 years ago, you don't really care that much for the lack of optimization, although you got a 70% loss of fps just because the scenery is not really optimized.Conversely, a scenery that loses JUST 10%, and doing by also being distinctivly better looking that default, is first and foremost very well programmed and optimized, and is also way more scalable when future hardware will eventually come because, when you'll buy a new machine (and you will, sooner or later), you'll still have your optimzed scenery with just 10% loss, and it will still work better than the others. Or, at least, it will go into the "flyable" digits sooner than the others.

During the fs9 history we have seen a tendency towards more framerate-friendly addons. Compare the Aeroft FrameRateHog, sorry ... Worthog ... with the same company's cooperative release, the fabulous DO-27. The Hog is a 32 bit monster with the slowest gauges on earth, while the DO is light as a feather (frameratewise that is).Also take a closer look at GE Pro and Active Sky Graphics. They both are top notch addons for fs9, without slowing the sim down. They even can be configured to make fs9 perform better.My guess and hope is that this tendency will continue with fsx ...Eagle

I d/l the Cloud 9 Orlando (KMCO)scenery last night. As far as my PC setup is concerned I did no see any decrease in my average 20-40 FPS(locked at 40) that I've been getting prior to this install. This is including Traffic 2005 set at 60% and Global textures maxed and Autogen medium.Gerry

not everyone has that kind of money for a new system right now, and traffic 2005 is not a good representation of real traffic, to get it you have to custom add it yourself.

No problems here. In fact I'm enjoying FSX much more then when I first bought it. I think Cloud9 has done a great job with Orlando maybe its because I have tried it and seen for myself that it looks and works very nicely for me.Ahhh the joys of FSX so shinny so new.:)

>not everyone has that kind of money for a new system right>now, and traffic 2005 is not a good representation of real>traffic, to get it you have to custom add it yourself.My system is over a year old. In terms of PC technology progressions, quite dated.As for T2005. will do very well fot my needs.Gerry

What is this magical 'future hardware' you talk about?The Intel and AMD road maps focus totally on multi core development for the next two years with only moderate increases in CPU Mhz.As it stands, FSX cant even use 2 cores never mind 4!So no performance increase from hardware UNLESS Microsoft do a MAJOR patch for this title.Hopefully they won't try and cram in new features with DX10 update and concentrate totally on speed increases.

>What is this magical 'future hardware' you talk about?DX10 hardware, I hope. I'm not expecting miracles from future CPU. There IS an advantage using multi-core, even today. Even in FSX itself doesn't use the 2nd core much, when you have MANY Simconnect external process running at the same time, they will automatically scheduled by the OS to the best available cores so, even if FSX will not probably never reach very high fps, it will not probably suffer *that* much from being overloaded with added executable addons, on multi-core machines, of course.Just as an example, let's imagine a possible future addon that does sophisticated speech synthesis for (as an example) improving the ATC. Nowadays there are impressive speech synthesis engines available, much better than those of just a couple of years ago. I guess running such engine from an addon will not probably impact the fps in FSX on a multicore machine, because the engine will *surely* run in a separate and totally independent thread.The same goes for things like chatting during online flying: I do recall very well, when I had a single core AMD, that using Skype together with FS9 resulted in stutters and a noticeably lower fps. Now, I can chat and use FSX on the Core Duo, without noticing any decrease in fps.>So no performance increase from hardware UNLESS Microsoft do a>MAJOR patch for this title.The DX10 patch will surely be a major one, and if it would grant a marked improvement in performances, it will be even better than having to wait for a new faster cpu, because at least the patch will be free.>Hopefully they won't try and cram in new features with DX10>update and concentrate totally on speed increases.I think we'll get probably both, new features, and/or best performances, not necessarily at the same time, so I expect it will be probably faster with *current* features, and roughly the same, with new DX10 eye-candy.Of course, people will STILL try to push the "new DX10 sliders" and options to the new maximum, and will STILL complain...

Virtuali,>So no performance increase from hardware UNLESS Microsoft do a>MAJOR patch for this title.The DX10 patch will surely be a major one, and if it would grant a marked improvement in performances, it will be even better than having to wait for a new faster cpu, because at least the patch will be free.Hi,I just wanted to interject that the anticipated DX10 patch will not be free! You will have to own a copy a Windows Vista!CyberSimmer

As Rayed said so concisely in another post:"I know what it means for 3rd party developers of commercial addons. Most of 3rd part developers will be out of business soon, unfortunately."Possibly perhaps, even probably. maybe keep developing for FS9.

Another hit and run thread by tingoose. Time will only tell since nobody knows what the future holds we will have to wait and see.

>I just wanted to interject that the anticipated DX10 patch>will not be free! You will have to own a copy a Windows>Vista!Yes, you are right, I almost forgot that. The fact MS is surely using FSX to promote the switch to Vista, at least makes for some hope the patch should be of some substance, not just some missing bridges here and there...