L.Adamson,You are, I think, very much correct in your view.I only happen to feel that the other side of the simulation (non-graphical) has been left to too little attention. But I don't think that graphics are unimportant in the whole. Not at all.My expectations toward the flight model, out of the box, are a bit higher. But in the end of the day it of course counts if 3rd part devs can make something happen or not. There's just that tiny feeling of "cheating the FS engine", when things are accomplished through tweaking, instead of building on top of existing functionality.Let's agree to disagree for this part :).rgdsTero

Frank,I do buy this view also. And I fully understand what would be the consequences of MS solely concentrating on flight sim engine issues.I am not saying they should drop the eye-candy stuff. I only wish that things that some of us in the Avsim (and other communities) community have been highlighting for years, release after release, would be corrected / made better at some point. I am not going to list those things again, you can find them in my many postings around the forums, mostly environment physics and flight model physics related stuff. And at least one graphical ;).But instead of putting attention to these issues, they are giving us giraffes and car headlights... and missions. This is what bothers me, the continued ignoring of one slice of the sim users.Eye candy people should be happy. Most enhancements have been graphical, again. What I am trying to say is that I appreciate the graphical work that has been done, and is being done. But I hope to see something else in the Flight Simulator for the future, too. In my opinion, the Flight Simulator as it is now (FSX) only barely touches some of the things that are very true and serious in real-life aviation. As I see it, MS seems to think (at least interpreting from their releases, year after year) that their "flight simulation" part is now complete. Only things left to do are to boost up the graphical environment and create more accurate geo data. Real pilots and people with knowledge about real aviation should know what I am talking about when I say that many things are dumbed down in MSFS. And yes, it is a matter of only opinion (as we don't decide anything here) that what is needed in MSFS and what is not.rgdsTero

bj00rn,Browse through my other postings in this thread, and you will see that my doom and gloom is based on experience from MS FS releases. Simply put, I am not satisfied with where the design emphasis is set. Nothing more complicated than that.rgds,Tero

I agree with you, Tero :)

> As I see it, MS seems to think>(at least interpreting from their releases, year after year)>that their "flight simulation" part is now complete. Only>things left to do are to boost up the graphical environment>and create more accurate geo data. >>Real pilots and people with knowledge about real aviation>should know what I am talking about when I say that many>things are dumbed down in MSFS. And yes, it is a matter of>only opinion (as we don't decide anything here) that what is>needed in MSFS and what is not.>I'd hope that your aware of the fact, that Microsoft always invites many 3rd party developers into the beta process. And as is known, many of these 3rd party developers are real pilots, as some of the ACES team are, as well as many of us beta testers for both Microsoft & third parties.It's been well known for years, that 3rd party developers have gained many years of expertise with specific issues of the flight envelope, and have perfected them. I really question why the need for in house perfection of so many varibles. As an example, X-Plane could only wish for the amount of 3rd party expertise that follows the Microsoft releases. It's the lack of third party releases, that tends to hold X-Plane behind MSFS in many areas. As to myself, I'm a real pilot, build real planes, have quite a vast knowledge of what makes them work, but prefer to buy "flight models" from 3rd parties who I've either worked with, or have known from these forums, over the course of many years. And yes, I still want graphical "eye candy"! :D L.Adamson

YES...AND GIVE US A PRODUCT THAT WORKS WELL OUT OF THE BOX WITHOUT ALOT OF SYSTEM TWEAKS TO MAKE IT WORK RIGHT.

>YES...AND GIVE US A PRODUCT THAT WORKS WELL OUT OF THE BOX>WITHOUT ALOT OF SYSTEM TWEAKS TO MAKE IT WORK RIGHT.I tossed FSX onto the old CPU and it didn't work well at all.I then tossed it on to the new, but not top of the line CPU, and it's close to flawless with absolutely no tweaking as of yet. And what's it been, two or three months?There is nothing new here. It's just like FS9 that works well for some, and not for others. Too many varibles in CPU's, graphic cards, ram, etc.

Yes ...Regard,Vern

Yes, there is not much native support for X-Plane, but there are conversion tools for FS9 scenery and aircraft into X-Plane compatible formats, not always perfect conversions. Since scenery and aircraft appear to be the biggest sellers (based on the amount forum traffic they receive) there is plenty for many folks to add-on to X-Plane.Eye candy would be great if it worked well in FSX -- performance wise. There are some key features in DX10 that can be very beneficial to FSX, specifically texture arrays assigned to objects. This will help solve the delay seen with texture swapping that FSX currently performs that I find VERY distracting in the eye candy department, very unrealistic.However, if Microsoft fully leverage the DX10 features (as of todate only two fully compliant DX10 cards are the nVidia 8800GTS and 8800GTX) they will have to dump scenery and aircraft compatibility or provide conversion utilities, but conversions will not look as good as they are not designed for DX10 capabilities. Texture arrays, shader 4.0, ability to draw multiple same objects without CPU intervention will be big benefits.If Ace's elect for compatibility then we're not going to see that much of an improvement. But because DX10 has more capabilities, doesn't necessarily = better performance, using these capabilities will still require extensive performance profiling so the bounders of what can be done are "known" on the hardware of today -- if they continue with the philosophy of "hardware is 3 years away", this essentially means Ace's are not profiling and have opted out of optimization process. Sure optimization takes a lot of resources and time (especially when the product is essentially finished), but it is a critical step (based on the responses to FSX, I don't think Ace's could get away with a poor performer again).3rd party vendors should be encouraging no compatibility as this provides them with a revenue stream for DX10 versions of their products. DX9 scenery was designed for the capabilities of FS9, why would folks want to convert FS9 based scenery to DX10 version of FSX? Makes little or no sense to me -- sorta like trying to extract detail from 2 mega pixel image to make it look like a 4 mega pixel image -- the data just isn't there (and shouldn't be there because FS9 couldn't use it anyway) and what you get in FSX is an interpolated image that looks the same as it did in FS9 or worse (blurry).Rob.

YES!Backward compatibility? What backward compatibility? Right now, I can't use ANY of my FS9 addons anyway -or- I have to pay in most cases for an "upgrade" anyway (with the exception of Carenado and AS). Seriously, there is NO backward compatibility at all in FSX - at least, I haven't noticed yet.FSUPIC?PMDG 737?PSS Airbus?Level-D 767?FeelThere 737?Ground/Flight Environment?Ultimate Traffic?

YES!!I have an average system (2.6 Ghz, 1 Gig RAM, GeForce 6600 card). I tried to fly yesterday out of Phoenix, O'Hare and finally Miami. I couldn't accomplish anything meaningful out of any of them. Big airports are simply not useable to me, so my heavy addons must remain in FS9.

I have a similar system as yours, with the same limitations.However, who is telling that a complete rewrite would result in better framerates ? As was brought forward by ACEs themselves and some others in this thread, FSXI is being prepared now, today. ACEs must have a cristal ball to predict what HW will be available in 2-3 years from now. And I am sure, as time will pass, they will be adding and discarding a lot of features (who remembers the discussion about clouds shadows in this forum 3 months before release ? Imagine how the sim would have run if they kept it in.)I can give another example of software that is pushing the HW to its limits each time a new versions comes out : 3DMark. What we see is that in a couple of months, most new systems can run it reasonably well. I am sure this will happen as well for FSX, just as it did for FS2000, Flight Unlimited 2 & 3, FS2002, FS2004, Fly! ...About the backwards compatibility, I also found that most add-ons do not work out of the box, and need some tampering by the developers.BUT : patching is not the same as a complete rewrite. If you think that you are waiting too long for good third party add-ons to arrive, what do you think would happen if ACEs threw the whole idea of backward compatibity out of the window ? What I have read, is that the learning curve is already very steep as it is now.Bottom line, I am saving for a new rig, and will upgrade a short time after windows Vista comes out.P.S. I tend to agree with L Adamson, and I am enjoying the program as it is running on my system now, knowing that it only can get better ...just my 2 cents, Jan

YES !

Well I like to change my vote from Yes to No! After finding the Texture and Lighting setting (TnL=2 in Display.cfg) I now think FSX's performance is just fine, even in large dense city areas like N.Y., so I no longer think a rewrite of the Graphic Engine is needed. I'm now enjoying frames in the 20's and 30's in City areas and 30's to 40's most other areas, and 50's -70 at high altitude! This is with heavy traffic with UT flight plans, scenery set to extremely dense, Autogen set to Dense (Though tweaked) mesh at 19m, texture resolution at 1m, max cloud detail and distance using ASV6 weather. I even think now there is enough head room to support aircraft add-ons with PMDG or LDS level of detail. At least with high end systems! My system is a Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 at 2.66, 4GB mem, and ATI X1950 Crossfire cards.

>Well I like to change my vote from Yes to No! After finding>the Texture and Lighting setting (TnL=2 in Display.cfg) I now>think FSX's performance is just fine, even in large dense city>areas like N.Y., so I no longer think a rewrite of the Graphic>Engine is needed. I'm now enjoying frames in the 20's and 30's>in City areas and 30's to 40's most other areas, and 50's -70>at high altitude! This is with heavy traffic with UT flight>plans, scenery set to extremely dense, Autogen set to Dense>(Though tweaked) mesh at 19m, texture resolution at 1m, max>cloud detail and distance using ASV6 weather. I even think now>there is enough head room to support aircraft add-ons with>PMDG or LDS level of detail. At least with high end systems!>My system is a Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 at 2.66, 4GB mem, and>ATI X1950 Crossfire cards. hehe, ok: "I now think FSX's performance is just fine"My system is: "Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 at 2.66, 4GB mem, and ATI X1950 Crossfire cards" [plural]. And you're getting a whopping 20-30FPS.my vote: YES for that new graphics engine.