>>What is this magical 'future hardware' you talk about?>>DX10 hardware, I hope. Magical, no, but lots of possibility here for an increase in performance, especially for the "sliders maxxed" crowd. The new GPU architectures that will (and do) run DX10 are significantly more powerful than those used for DX9...a 128-fold increase in the number of available registers, a unified processing architecture, direct VRAM paging etc etc. The API overhead bottleneck that is so apparent when the default.xml scenery objects are all in play is one example of a problem DX10 very well could solve for us. Bottom line, though, DX10 is not just a clever newly-written video device API...it will unlock massive new potential built into the new GPUs that the hardware giants have been working on for years now.>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.There's lots of hate and discontent over the fact that FSX does not leverage multi-core CPUs very well. But before I give up on FSX as a platform, I have to let my imagination run loose with the possibilities becoming available to an add-on developer. In a multi-CPU environment, I could, for example, put all the database processing for the FMS onto that 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th) core. This is something that bogs down even some of the best add-ons available today. I could also write an external program to do the processing for an EGPWS (enhanced ground prox system) that does the heavy-duty grunt work of analyzing flight path data and the massive terrain database and just pass back a matrix for the terrain display and EGPWS warning state data, again making something possible that I have yet to see implemented on any add-on yet. Add to that the external processes we already have available like ActiveSky, Radar Contact, Flightdeck Companion etc running on a separate core, and I have yet to accept that we've completely missed the multi-CPU revolution. But we can't just lay all our expectations on MS here.There are significant possibilities ahead, but to see their benefits we're going to have to wait a while for some developers to catch up. In the meantime I'm content to still have FS9 as a solid and well-developed virtual world to play in while we sort through the process of building the next. I never had any major expectations that I wouldn't need good add-on enhancements to FSX just as I've needed them to spice up FS9 and every version before it. The desert landclass problems in FSX are already solved with a FSGenesis add-on...Radar Contact 5 will make me completely forget that FSX even has an ATC subsystem, ActiveSky was already available so I didn't even need to try "Real Weather" in FS etc etc.FSX is just another incremental step for us. I see SimConnect, as the first-ever open API straight to the guts of FS, as a far more promising development than animated birds and boats. I see direct interaction by the ACES team with the user community as a huge improvement that gives hope for better things to come. And I see a platform that, like those before it, offers a lot, so much in fact, that you can't turn it all on at once. But I'd rather make the call as to which is more important to me--AI, or clouds, or airport scenery, or autogen--rather than have had the MS ACES programmers dumb it all down so it would run well with sliders maxxed on a 2.2GHz P4 with 512MB of RAM and a Ti4600 video card on release day in Oct 2006.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile

Craig wrote:"...You should really receive some type of award for a person that likesto speculate on what will work and won't before it even happensthus just stirring the "I hate FSX" pot more than it allready hasbeen.I believe I would call it the "1st Annual Ismet Moron wrapped in anIdiot" award.And by the way Thankgiving is usually capitalized...."I'll apologise for one thing and one thing only Craig, and that is for not capitalising the word 'Thanksgiving'. An oversight on my part. Speculation? try the Eaglesoft aircraft for FSX in FSX or read what others have to say for a preview of what's to come.As for FSX, in my opinion, it's release can be likened to the release of a duff film, coloquially termed a turkey. . . very apt I think for a flight simulator that does anything but fly. If you strip it of most of what it offers by way of eye candy and the like, it gobbles, gobbles, gobbles up frame rates like Thanksgiving or indeed Christmas was tomorrow. Nicely bloated and ready to roast. Certainly not ready for any addons of worth and in need, immediately of a major patch, and two years at least ahead of its time as far as hardware is concerned. Anyone new to simming who comes on here and wants to find out whether to buy it or not needs to hear not just from people like Jimbofly for whom FSX can do no wrong (despite the fact that if he were to do a wider search of the larger FS community he would discover that I am far from being the only one who feels like this about the 'shinny' new , as someone above termed it, FSX) but also from people who have problems with it and to what degree those problems interfere with using FSX. Finally, as for Tingoose, my friend Jimbfly, (?) look it up!

So how many times do you have to complain about it? Once would suffice. And by the way I am currently using the Eaglesoft CitationX and the Aeroworx KingAir with no adverse effects on the sim.

Perhaps as many times as posts like yours are posted. No adverse effects. . .? despite the fact that many have given up on it or are tweaking ad nauseum, you're alright Jack!

>>>>>Yes and sorry to be a hope killer but do not expect an>>improvement in performance with your current CPU with>>Vista...>>>>Do not forget that hardware sound acceleration era is over>>with Vista, no more EAX and stuff like this. Vista's sound>>mixer is completely software now (dont ask me why ... DRM ?)>>>>>So all your CPU performance gain over graphics will be used>>for sound thingies. Hopefully you'll have the same average>>performance than with XP.>>>>>>PS: sorry for my English, french inside ;)>>>>>>Wrong. Go to the hatrdware forum and LEARN something.>>>AllcottDid I miss something ?I've read your reply about EAX and Vista in the hardware forum, but what's wrong about my statement ?Sounds will only be software rendered with Vista unless they use the OpenAL thingie.http://www.openal.org/openal_vista.htmlI didn't read anywhere that FSX uses OpenAL, I might be wrong.Thanks.