FS2004 vs FS2002

[MD83 1]

"FS9 vs FSX" is completely different to "FS8 vs FS9". The community reaction has been completely different. There were tons of new files when FS2000, FS2002 and FS2004 were released.You can always find messages dating back 5 or six years with similar arguments. It doesn't mean that the current situation is comparable :)

[LAdamson 240]

>Joey I've tried the demo which more than covers the basics as>to what one could expect with the full product. I have many>friends who own FSX and have either shelved the sim or>returned it. I also have friends who are hold outs for the>patch. I've toyed around with FSX countless times.snipped> Anyone>able to tell people to turn off key features like Autogen at>this late stage of FS's evolution and actually get people to>do it has the gift of gab far better than I ever could. I put>that right up there with telling people to go back and using>2D clouds. The price of moving forward by going backwards is>a hard sell but these guys are more than capable of doing it. >They'd give a used car salesman a run for his money.>And another famous display of low level auto-gen in FS9 versus FSX without those cartoon houses. It doesn't look like reverting back to 2D clouds to me! :D And I should also mention that this aircraft in the FSX shot, fly's with even more refinements in FSX, than was possible in FS9. Of course, someone just "toying with the demo", wouldn't really know -- would they?http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/164353.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/164354.jpg

[LAdamson 240]

>>For the record, Geofa and L.Adamson are in way more threads>than me touting FSX. In the year of 1998, Geoff Applegate & I, both "touted" the strong points of "Pro-Pilot" over Microsoft's FS98.Afterall, it had a real topography data-base, more realistic startup procedures, and a much better "feel" and control of flight! Of course, as Geoff & I fly real aircraft, and we DO know what the feel should be. In 1999, Pro-Pilot released the look of real clouds, while MS continued with shaded blocks.In '98/99 , We were both known as anti-Microsoft, and as Pro-Pilot shills.:) Back then, even the famous "four letter word" could often be seen in heated debates! Happily, along comes FS2000 with real topography, an excellent data-base of airports & navigation, and a big improvement in flight dynamics. At this time, Microsoft's CFS2 had some of the best flight dynamics possible in any sim, and CFS2 is still some of the best.And now we're in 2006/2007 with a new sim that's upped the feel of flight, uses much improved resolution, has the ability of improved flight dynamics, especially with addons created with FSX in mind, and yes, we're going to "spread the word" so to speak! We are aware that FSX won't fit all scenarios; but as more than casual demo users, we're also aware that FSX is capable of much, that FS9 is not. Simple as that.L.Adamson

[Ramasurinen 0]

If it's ugly in here I can't imagine what its like to work at Aces right now. A lot of people who work on games aren't really all that invested in the outcome of their work because they don't really enjoy the type of game they're making or whatever. A job is a job sometimes. I've worked on a few that I had no passion for because, well, we all need a paycheque. However, I doubt that's the case for most of the Aces crew. Flight sims are a very difficult niche product to develop, so to work on one and remain sane it pretty much has to be something you enjoy. I suspect morale there is a tad low currently, given the bashing FSX has received since day one. I'm not deriding anyone for giving it a good thrashing, fair enough, it's buggy and slow, just saying I've been there and its less than fun when your audience starts throwing tomatoes. ;)Franchise games, even ones much simpler than FSX, will always be hindered by legacy code for two reasons, cost and domino effect. It's prohibitively time consuming and expensive to rewrite everything from the ground up and in something like FS it's nearly impossible to do and still keep the retail cost at what we expect. Doing so means you have a lot of expensive artists and sound engineers twiddling their thumbs for a long time until they have something functional to build content for. As well, when you start changing even seemingly small things in the graphics engine late in development you'd be amazed at what gets broken 'down the line'.In my ten years of game art development I've had several cases occur where I literally had to throw out *months* of work and redo it simply because the programmers had hit a roadblock in their design philosophy and needed to rewrite something important. This usually resulted in me grabbing my coat and heading to the nearest pub. :)Not long ago when I worked on the NBA Live franchise at EA we had some AI code in there that dated from 1994, which when discovered gave us a good laugh and a bit of a chill. That tells you how willing programmers are to rewrite something that isn't broken just because there might be a more efficient way to do it. It's just the way game development is, hate it or not. Unfortunately for Aces, they've hit a real barrier this time, one that cannot be avoided. They're all too aware by now that they made some fundamental design errors (dual core, fixed function graphics pipeline etc), and now that rewrite the franchise been lucky enough to avoid for so long is finally gnawing at them. The performance patch they've mentioned isn't going to be easy by any means, let alone what they're up against for DX10. Unfortunately it was released before it was ready, which is the hallmark of a publicly traded company. The bottom line is what matters to shareholders, the shareholders are what matters to management, and the product is nearly always shipped before it's complete. We and the developer are left to pick up the pieces and try to make the best of them.FSX runs like a dog, but looking past all the problems with it, it is a pretty good dog overall. I'm not going to sing its praises or bash its problems, it's been done to death, but having walked in their shoes I'm willing to cut Aces some slack and see if they can pull a rabbit out. Stranger things have happened.Cheers.

[LAdamson 240]

>>>Could not have said it better. By the way a thread like this>(or more) has already been posted to repeatedly in the last>few months. FSX is a different ball game entirely. Any of the>contemporary technology with FS9 could easily handle it WITH>frame grabbing addon planes, scenery, 100% traffic, etc. and>FS9 sliders pumped full out. That's not the case with FSX and>will not be for the forseeable future.>In reality, FS9 still won't keep pumped up frame rates with full everything & frame rate hogging addon planes. It's pure B.S. and we all know it! This fact is always brought up on FS9 forums too. I find it interesting, that FS9 "always" seems to work at high fps with all sliders and all addons ----------- only on the FSX forum! :-lol I don't find it too difficult to drag my normally 35-70 fps edition of FS9 into the mid 20's or perhaps lower with a lot of scenery additions, complicated aircraft, AI, water effects & autogen, all going at the same time. And I'm certainly not alone! :)And yes, after all these months of FSX, I still prefer it overall, over brand "9". :-hah L.Adamson

[n4gix 4,947]

>Joey I've tried the demo which more than covers the basics as>to what one could expect with the full product. I have many>friends who own FSX and have either shelved the sim or>returned it. I also have friends who are hold outs for the>patch. I've toyed around with FSX countless times.All of which gives me cause to wonder about your underlying motivation to continue posting in the FSX forum, Dillon. Do you have a "Messiah complex" that drives you to sound the "trumpet of doom and gloom?"It's rather telling that there are no such counterparts posting daily in the FS9 forum(s) of any website, who're attempting to sow the seeds of dissension and persuade folks to abandon FS9 in favor of FSX...Note carefully that I'm in no way suggesting that you've no "right" to be negative, much less that you've no "right" to post what you wish - where you wish. I'm only curious as to your reason(s) for doing so...

[timers15 11]

Excellent post! Thanks Mike!

[aerdt 0]

Mike, you put the words right out my mouth.I still remember that I was pretty disappointed with the FS9 release. During the course of the FS9 lifecycle, I continually upgraded my machine and went through 3 CPU generations, 3 GPUs and from 256MB to 1GB to finally got some really nice fps that allow me to fly precisely and enjoy the experience. Before the FSX release, I was finally able to max out my FS9 sliders and, of course, I wanted to achieve the same result in FSX. Sure enough, I was greeted by 5fps. By gradually reducing my sliders on the recommendations by nVidia, I have found now the optimal compromise between performance and quality.Yes, Aces has not followed up with the latest developments of multi-core CPUs, which have become mainstream and also the timing with the non-release of Vista/DX10 has been unfortunate.Some people are perfectly content and still run FS2002 on Windows 98. Some others like to be on the bleeding egde and are not satisfied until everything is "maxed out".Technology moves ahead and I will be the first in line on Jan 30th to get my final copy of Vista. I know I will re-partition my hard-drive the same day and my copy of WinXP will rest in peace on the pile of Win95, Win98, WinME and Win2000 CDs.Naturally, people will always compare the most current releases with previous releases, but in the case of FS it really is not an easy task, because there are a tenfold of variables involved: If you compare FS9 to FSX "out-of-the-box", then the clear winner is FSX on modern hardware. If you have previously ran a stock FS9 on 4yo hardware, then the experience may be a completely different one. If you compare a highly add-on'ed FS9 to FSX then the comparision is even more difficult. To me, FSX is FS9 + UT + GEPro + FSGenesis + Active Camera + hundreds of more detailed airports (about a $400 value in FS9 addons, if you calculate maybe $2-3 per semi-detailed airport) and that alone justifies my purchase.Additionally, the number of add-ons have truly exploded in FS9. We have never seen so many excellent and highly-detailed add-ons like for FS9. Personally, I have invested more than $1000 in add-ons and I am certainly having a hard time to let go of a PMDG or Level-D, but I also know that new versions are on the horizon and, again, I will be the first in line to purchase them. Flight simming is a never-ending money pit, but it's a hobby, which cannot be compared to any other computer 'game'. Other people spend $10k building their own ultra-light or spend $40k climbing Mt. Everest. My hobby (although not my only one) is flight simming and from time to time renting a real plane and zipping across the countryside.To say that nothing has changed in FSX compared to FS9 seems to be a little ignorant. Yes, most of the changes are graphical gimmicks and enhancements, but all of those enhancements still add greatly to the realism and immersion factor while flying. You should also not forget that FSX came with a complete new SDK, which will allow the developers to create even more complex and exciting add-ons. Vastly improved multiplayer, wet runways, improved flight dynamics, improved AI traffic, greatly improved "stock" planes, fly-by-wire, just to name a few.It has always been a fine line between the purists who value excellent flight dynamics and are perfectly content to fly in a low-polygon, monochrome environment and the realist junkies who want to feel immersed in the flight simulator experience with moving gates, environmental effects, AI traffic and photo-realistic scenery.Pat

[LAdamson 240]

Wow!I don't believe we were in too much of agreement a week or two ago. :)But I generally agree with this one, except one small item. As I beta-tested FS9, I had some more time with it, and had gained a preference for FS9 by the time of it's release. It actually performed better than FS2002 did, fps wise.L.Adamson

[neil0311 366]

>>P.S. These people don't care if your getting good performance,>they'd rather, well, you know.>>Thanks,>JeffThat's the one thing that I find a little hard to take. Many of the people proclaiming that "no matter what, new hardware can't run FSX" don't have new hardware, so how do they know? From what I've seen, many folks who do have new hardware seem to be getting reasonable performance by their own feedback. I just placed an order for a Core 2 Extreme x6800 with a 8800GTX, so I'll know soon enough if I'm wasting my money and buying into hype. I think we all know what the positives and negatives are of FSX, but this isn't a zero sum game. You can acknowledge the negatives without turning it into a religious war, and you can simultaneously enjoy the sim for the positive aspects while acknowledging the limitations. It's not all good and it's not all bad, and it's still just a game that costs less than $75USD. That's still 45 minutes of flight time in a real Skyhawk. If you want 100% reality with unlimited fps, go to your local airport.

[aerdt 0]

Hehe, it's all good. :) We just had some different views on a sensitive and controversial topic and we both got a tad carried away in the heat of the moment.Pat

[Mike T 208]

:-eekI think a group hug is in order!!!!

[Mike T 208]

"P.S. These people don't care if your getting good performance, they'd rather, well, you know."Who are "these people" to which you refer? Why not address the issues intrinsic to THIS release of FSX? Surely, it can't all be smoke and mirrors or are all points made totally invalid and without merit?FYI, I tried Tom's tweak above as it was new to me and it did nothing at all. My video card was not in the display.cfg so I added it but got no performance gains. I've also tried every other tweak from replacing all the textures to the FIBER_FRAME, etc. Right now, can you make a definitive recommendation that the rest of us can apply to get us out of the performance quagmire? If so, please share because I want to begin to make the transition, trust me, I see how beautiful FSX can be.At the end of the day, I think "these people" include the Aces team who are working hard to ensure that EVERYONE with a newer system enjoys the sim. As I said, the final chapter on FSX is a long way off and knowing its being worked on its all good right? *Edit: spelling

[Guest CyberSimmer]

>L.Adamson 'NO' dual core support in FSX is not an 'Opinion'>it's a 'Truism'. >>Now if you can prove me wrong about Dual Core support and FSX>I'm all ears. Show me how FSX fully utilizes Dual core>hardware and I'll shut up. >>It's amazing how you have a talent for scouting out all FSX>critical threads. I mean your in every forum spreading the>gospel of FSX far and wide. How do you have the time to fly>FSX to support your own argument??? Surely if you enjoyed FSX>as much as you claim you couldn't possibly have the time to>catch all these threads for rebuttals (From Simflight to>Flightsim.com your like 'Old Faithful at Yellowstone'), you'd>be too busy toying around in FSX. :-hmmm >>I hardly post because I'm too busy beta testing, developing,>and enjoying FS9...---------------------------------------------------------------------Amen to that!

[LAdamson 240]

>:-eek>>I think a group hug is in order!!!!I'll go open a "Bud" right now!L.Adamson