FSX Upcoming SP1

[757FO 143]

Hi all,I was just reading PC12 blog and it seems that they are working on a SP for FSX... Thanks again ACESlink to PC12 Blog... http://blogs.technet.com/p-12c_pilot/default.aspxJohn

[Mochi 82]

Good stuff indeed - no specifics yet but this is very promising.I have to say I'm loving this simulator, it really is making flying (and it really feel like your're flying a plane now) enjoyable. I discovered that having moving traffic doesn't hit performance very much and adds even more to the incredible realisim to the sim - great stuff.So keep up the fantastic work ACES team - I'm sure there are many folks who are enjoying the sim as much as me but hardly write many words in public.

[Guest cwright]

I agree. How things have changed over the last year! A few years ago I never believed Microsoft would become so user-friendly! May it long continue....About the traffic. I think it's one of the great new features in a great flight simulator. During the demos it was noted that the road traffic could drag down the frame rates. I ended up with a low setting (15%) which I still use.A few days ago I was flying in Japan and admiring the heavy traffic (outside Tokyo in the vicinity of Mt Fuji, so the frame rates were still good).I wondered what it would look like with traffic set to 100% It was completely amazing. One could only describe this setting as 'insane' (a setting that does appear in some games!) This was one case where turning up the sttings made it look unrealistic, because there was simply too much traffic. 15% is more realistic, as well as frame-rate friendly. Even with this setting the traffic can be very dense. This really helps to bring the world to life.Best regards, Chris

[slip-stream 5]

15 percent? Where do you live, outer hebrides? LOL

[G7USL 117]

Does this mean that the Beta testing is finished? ;-)

[Mace 1,957]

Just about...RhettAMD 3700+ (@2530 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[B777ER 2,492]

Jeff Greth wrote this in another forum and it is very true. Those FSX diehards that have thier head in the sand and believe everything ACES says need to pay attention to this because it DOES come down to multi-cores and no little SP patch is going to fix this mess they gave us:until MS can create a sim that is a true multi-core application, all the upgrades in the world aren't going to help. MSFS is the most CPU-intensive 'game' that I've ever seen. Until the core speeds break 5 - 6 gHz ( Which we know isn't going to happen, they are just going to put more cores on a single die ) then you aren't going to be able to run FSX like people run FS9 right now.In their defense, they had no idea ( which I'm sure is why you made the post you did ) what the systems would be like now. To make the sim true multi-core, it will take a LARGE re-write of existing code. Then you go into another few MONTHS of basic testing to ensure all is working as it should. Basically it was an early design decision that cornered them. Halfway through the development the dual cores started coming out and getting popular. By then they figured it was too costly ( and time-critical ) to re-code the core of the application to use multiple cores.Anyhow, FSX will never run like FS9 ( with lots of addons ) does now. If they re-write the core and make it a true multi-core application then FSX does have hope. If they don't, it will fade out. Now I can only hope that not all the developers are FSX-only or this niche community will die out. The developers won't be getting money and the community won't be getting any addons

[Mike T 211]

At this point EVERY little bit helps and if SP1 provides even a 5fps increase across the board it will be better than nothing. It won't place FSX on my HD for now because I fly heavys therefore all flights begin and end in a large city...and right now FSX cannot handle that type of flying.With that said, the way forward must be lead by ACES. Remember, its not just us hardcore minority that are seeing issues, its also the general public who are not going to go tinkering with the fsx.cfg and therefore have seen only the worse side of FSX.An official SP will be welcomed not just for us, but for the sake of the entire MSFS franchise...of course I can only home that those who do not regularly come to sites like Avsim or the official MSFS site will get the SP somehow and furthermore that it is part of future burn runs of the product destined for store shelves.At the end of the day, SP1 will not be he holy grail, multi-core and DX10 rewrites are necessary for that and that will be no small undertaking. But for now, for the sake of the fact that the longest journey starts with the first step, SP1 will be the first step of a long and frustrating journey that we all hope will end in success.

[LAdamson 240]

>Jeff Greth wrote this in another forum and it is very true.>Those FSX diehards that have thier head in the sand and>believe everything ACES says need to pay attention to this>because it DOES come down to multi-cores and no little SP>patch is going to fix this mess they gave us:>No head in the sand here. Since I'm not a die-hard commercial cockpit simmer, I have several choices.Revert back to FS9 where the feel of flight, just isn't up to FSX standards, should I have the desire to play airliner captain...Use FSX with less options, less addon's, but still enjoy it more...Or just say the **** with flight simulation, and spend more time at the airport next door, where I pay hangar fees monthly...This "FSX diehard" mentality just seems "silly". At the moment, my CPU runs this "mess" as you call it, at a rather smooth 25 fps. FSX must have something appealing, because it's tough to return to FS9 even at 35-70 fps.L.Adamsonedit: At the moment, my default FSX Lear is flying on A/P from KSLC to KLAS with real weather updated every 15 mins. Quite fasinating to see the weather changes, as I'm flying in and out of cloud levels at 16,500' msl. Perhaps I'll have to change from FSX's excellent airmass & feel of flight, to FS9's Las Vegas with full auto-gen, when I get there! :7 Just compromises and compromises.........isn't it. :-hah

[neil0311 366]

You know what's funny? Take a look in this forum at posts beginning around August 2003 and going forward for a few months. You could substitute FSX for FS9 in the posts and change the dates and you'd think you were reading current posts. You'll see the same ####, the same moaning, and the same dire predictions that the new version of FS will never be as good as the last. From clouds to autogen to addon compatability, posts galore about how the new version just doesn't meet the mark. It's really funny, and I would guess that some of the folks who derided FS9 the most when it was released might also be leading the charge against FSX. Now I'm not saying that FSX is perfect, and there is plenty that can (and may) be improved, but I've got an average single core system (circa 2004), and I get comparable performance to what I got when FS9 released on my then average system (circa 2002). In a year, with new hardware, maybe a new OS, a patch or two, and some tweaks, I expect a much different experience, just like what happened with FS9.

[frankla 44]

DX10 rewirte? They just need the patch, otherwise it has DX10 coding in it already.

[Guest Babubhai]

Can you point me to several examples, where FS9 was bashed like FSX....

[frankla 44]

While I agree that the doom and gloom people are going overboard, I disagree with you a little. When FS9 came out, there WERE a lot of moan and groans. But a month after its release (FS9), I bought a 3.4 ghz system with a 9800 pro video card. At that time that was THE high end system of its time. It allowed FS9 to run very well with most sliders maxed. In other words, while FS9 was very hard on majority of the systems, there was hope that throwing some cash on it would take care of the performance problem. That is not the case today. The most current systems today, will get a hernia WELL BEFORE the sliders are close to being maxed.Furthermore, the future systems are not getting faster (in terms of clock speed). They are just getting extra cores. So a lot of people don't have a hope of being able to run FSX well enough in any forseeable future. And I do think that the complaints are a lot louder than August 2003.

[Mike T 211]

It's amazing to me that even with Aces here on the forum and their blogs explaining to you that FSX is a STRICTLY DX9 game, it doesn't seem to sink in.FSX is a DX9 game. Period. It has no DX10 coding. Period. I don't now how to set your expectations more clearly. To emulate the spectacular DX10 artist renderings that you may see on the internet requires going back and making changes to the shaders AND to the textures, mappings and visuals that you will see if Aces intends to go full tilt with the DX10. For instance, to see fuzzy pretty trees, you must code that into the game. You cannot simply change the shader and *poof* everything looks different! Sorry, but it doesn't work that way.Aces has yet to specify what upgrades to their DX10 refresh will be included. If all there is is an upgrade to shader 4.0 then for the most part FSX will look much the same as it does now but with subtle differences...but it won't look like the hyper realistic artist renderings unless Aces codes it that way.At the very least a DX10 patch will provide better performance due to the lower overhead in DX10 vs DX9. If Aces does a lot of rewriting then you will get the spectacular visuals. It remains to be seen.But again, FSX is a DX9 game, as it stands now it has nothing (nothing) to do with DX10.

[ryanbatc 13,036]

This one isn't going to be the DX10 upgrade, Phil talked about that in a n earlier post