Yes indeed, criticism is never welcome when needed, eh?As the wise sage has spoken many times,man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. the Eleventh Commandment,"Thou Shalt Not Criticize Microsoft"Woe to he who does, eh buddy?

I dont want to harp on this too much, but"Why would they continue and complete a SLI and DC incapable FSX"is just plain wrong. I made a blog post about this, since it comes up so often, here http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007...multi-core.aspx.Incapable is wrong, we are not only compatible we are capable - its just a matter of how capable. Precision in language matters here.

Artie,>Are you working on any scenery ? I have to say I'm only dabbling at the moment. Things are in a confluence for me, fs9 scenery development was a turning point, in which I tried out the world of payware with my Harvey Project. While fun, it was twice the work of any freeware I ever did. It also demanded a team, which while wonderful in a way, also demanded focus to schedule.In reflection, it seemed like the activity became a second job...logical I know, but once experienced I decided it was likely not my real future...jobwise I mean.Other issues with me, I didn't really start fs9 scenery in earnest for about a year, while I enjoyed flying the sim. I don't fly much once I get bit by the scenery bug. Right now, I'm flying fsx for fun. In fs9, I kept my hand in early by updating my fs2002 work. No way to do that in fsx....its too different. by the time I re-do all the materials, and find alternatives to the code tweaks used to do stuff like conditional display, or revolve to user, I've reworked the project in a full time way.And, I don't yet know how to make high res ground look good once I'm on the ground, the high res photoreal looks great until you are driving on the taxiway, then its not right.I haven't gotten confortable with the night light appearance of the default, so blending my photoreal into the default at night is undertermined so far. I haven't got my arms around the sdk autogen yet, its so much more complicated than the fs9, it needs my focus before I'll master it.I haven't got my arms around the new materials yet, sure I've bump mapped some models and watched them shimmer, but I haven't developed skills yet. It takes time.So, I've dabbled, I have georgous DAY only, no autogen, photoreal several places around my home now, experiementing with the blend masks to see water details from above. That's cool, but far from skills needed to even release freeware that I'd be willing to put my name on.I've replaced the background of all my local airports with photoreal, but left the default runways and taxiways as I haven't figured out how to make them photo-real yet in a functional way. And I'm enjoying the flying, I finally checked out Princess Julianna airport the other day. I notice their photoreal background looks similar to my Boeing field, in which the overlay runway doesn't completely cover the photo-runway. Odd, eh...I look at that and think, ok..that's not good enough yet. Oh well, not trying to bash...those guys did the whole world, and the island of St Marten is very cool.So, maybe someday....probably freeware if anything. Best,Bob Bernstein

P-51's have little to do with Microsoft. Your anti war machine rant has Nothing to do with Microsoft. How about --- "Thou who shalt criticize a North American P-51, is of little education in real world matters" I like it! :-lol L.Adamson

One thing that does seem to be needed, Brian..and that's some balance, once the avidly angry folks take the floor, they often make it sound like they represent others. Larry makes the point that they don't represent all users.That's important to remember.

> But no, all we get is MORE EYE CANDY? What the hey? If you believe that's all we got; then it's useless to waste my time convincing you otherwise. You wouldn't know what you've gotten, because you simply don't even realize it's there.Of course it's well known, that a pilot's brain will fill in many of the gaps, such as feel, that is obviously missing in a fixed desk bound simulator. It's also known that this brain can interpret what a designer is attempting to achieve.Those that have no background of these particular senses, will tend to not appreciate, nor recognize them.L.Adamson

Phil! I think where you guys made a mistake was using the sliders for future hardware. I'm not saying, you shouldn't had put that capability in the release, but they should have been adjustable via the config file. With human nature being what it is, no matter how you explain how the moving the sliders all the way to the right is meant for future hardware, they will inevitably set these high. When the sim doesn't perform as they think it should, it instantly gets rapped as a poor performer. I think if you set the config settings lower in the release, like the the number of autogen tree and buildings per cell plus not have used the default.xml file (Or fixed it, as this was a known issue in FS9) to the point it would run fairly well on today's hardware at high GUI settings, you wouldn't have seen such a backlash! I have my FSX running pretty good now with the default.xml file renamed (That is the biggest performance killer) with autogen at dense, but set with 800 buildings and trees per cell. Even at these settings FSX delivers greater detail, than FS9, even with the addons like UTUSA and GEPRO. This gives me good performance in most areas, and acceptable though lower performance in areas like NY with non complex aircraft. There still isn't enough overhead to support a complex aircraft like PMDG or LDS, an example of this is how the Captain Sim 757, which gets similar performance to those in FS9 performs in FSX, in a word a slideshow! Hopefully the SP1 patch will help here. The other problem by using the sliders in this way, is you don't provide enough headroom for middle of the road systems, to reach an acceptable performance level. For example, if one with a highend system had to set autogen to sparse, which is the same or greater then max setting in FS9 to get the sim to perform well, the only option after that for lower end systems via the GUI is off, without adjusting the fsx.cfg file. This is even a bigger problem for the average gamer, who don't frequent a site like this, to know what is needed to do to tweak the settings. It seems to hooks are already built in to the config file to make these adjustments, they were just set too high on release.

see #28....

Thanks for the reply, I live in lacey and still enjoy your scenery, nice to have local stuff.

So after every bad experience user we get a nice 'but I don't have a problem here' Larry post together with that nice Hawai sceenshot and that accomplishes what?So maybe if I had the time I could prepare some nice FS9 with add-on screenshots and comment on every such post that with the same computer, some add-ons and FS9 you too can run in ultrasharp 60 FPS stutterfree large add-on ready FS9.5Its pointless if its always Larry posting the same. It might as well give the impression that the whole satisfied FS-X userbase consists of guys named Larry ;-)

Bob,I 100% agree, but the idea that the avidly angry are somehow worse than the avidly supportive, when they're both pulling on the same rope, is ridiculous.

Tony wrote : >I think of Mr Gates often as I try to get some help that he>will not provide as he is busy running around giving his money>away in AFRICA so that he can add that group to his Microsoft>crew. ( someone told him he can't sell computers in Africa>because they have no ELECTRICITY!!!)Please don't call us from Africa "that group". By the way, we do have electricity and use MS products and I am enjoying FSX very much. I wonder why you had to re-install FSX ten times ? .. maybe the problem is with your system and not FSX.Best regardsRobert------somewhere in Africa

Nada. Site down?

agreed, are you equally critical of the naysayers as the sayers, I hadn't seen that.

>Its pointless if its always Larry posting the same. It might>as well give the impression that the whole satisfied FS-X>userbase consists of guys named Larry ;-)The point is its pointless. Now I'm not talking about Larry, but both Larry and the naysayers...Continued Microsoft bashing is pointless. The points have been made, nothing new to say. Why doens't it stop?Bob