YES: ACES, please buy the code ASAP and integrate into FS11 !!NO: I'm already happy with the current graphics and performance, just update it.

YES.

Trolling? I hinted the FSX engine was getting a little old in the tooth.I think that

The screenshots and the videos are very nice indeed. In fact, the way the light sourcing is done looks to be nothing short of an entirely new direction. I would love to see FS pick up on this.The biggest problem I can see is one of cost. Just a quick look through their website tells me that this algorithm is marketed primarily at military simulators (can you blame them?), and was developed by Harvard and MIT students and professors. These guys are some on the very top of graphics design, and they have the credentials to command respect. Without even e-mailing their sales department, I'm going to go out on a limb (a short one) and bet that the cost of this software would be prohibitive. The FAA and the military are able to pay $800,000-$1M per copy of a simulator. The price point for a copy of MS Flight Simulator is topping out at $90 US. Even with the volume of sales that MS could bring in, the software would most likely be too expensive to include.Honestly, this is some brilliant work by some very talented individuals, and I'm sure that this will be the way that future simulators will be looking. But from what I can read from their website and press sheets, it appears that you'll have to fly fighter jets to get to see simulators that look like that anytime soon.-Ivan

I don't know what you wrote-but in case you haven't noticed-things need to be tightened up here for a while. Sorry if it strikes you as heavy handed-I don't enjoy running things like this either but recent activity warrants it.However, I know Tom has a short fuse about nasty comments towards avsim staff-your choice but I think I would edit your comment...http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

I understand that. I don't know what happened to warrant such harsh censorship recently. But he clearly calls me a 'troll', I'm not offended, It's just surprising he can get away with dishing out the insults because he disagrees with me.

>Trolling? I hinted the FSX engine was getting a little old in>the tooth.>>I think that?s a fair point & your deleting, is a clearly>nothing more than an biased abuse of power.>>If you had said "I think the FSX engine is getting old in the tooth", that would have been one thing, but the post was more along the line of "The Vole is pawning off 10 year old crap on us".To be fair, it did make me look up The Vole. That was a new one for me. Can't say I read the Inquirer often.

Thanks for the heads-up. The Nimble demo video looks very impressive indeed. I hope that these products manage to find a market and look forward to the day when the technology filters down into consumer-level products.

Theres nothing Offensive about 'The Vole' It's just a loving nickname name for MS.As for the "The Vole is pawning off 10 year old crap on us" :)

esthetics. Same with professional simulators. This thing looks like a by-product of technology developed with other goals and functions, as so often happens (e.g. Apple/Xerox).The main point is that there are many things available out there, many ideas, many talents, now, with or without Vista, DXnn, etc..., and which have the potential to make a revolutionary sim. Aircrafts with nearly perfect flight models, satellite feeds, lighting, true ATC, true WX, n-core, etc... And that feasability is becoming increasingly difficult to deny.I tend to attribute a large chunk of the ambient irritation to the increased tension between the perception of such a potential and the "belly-of the-curve" compromises currently available.

I agree completely! Sadly, I see it as still being a ways off. But when that day comes....whoooooooooo boy!

>Honestly, this is some brilliant work by some very talented>individuals, and I'm sure that this will be the way that>future simulators will be looking. But from what I can read>from their website and press sheets, it appears that you'll>have to fly fighter jets to get to see simulators that look>like that anytime soon.>>-Ivan>Been a couple days since I read the website, but don't they make a point of saying that their technology works with off-the-shelf hardware. That would imply that they are looking at the mass market. It's just not flight sims that could benefit from this technology on the desktop.Matt

Looking at more of the videos and data - some are the same we saw a little over a year ago in a promotion of an ATC tower simulator the US military was buying. Especially the one of the different weather effects upon a landing view.The program being used by the US military is to train tower operators how to view / see their airspace and aircraft in visual range in different weather conditions.One of the big things in the previous series of discussions on this technology was that it is not suited for a fast moving eyepoint, and lays over existing terrain, landclass and 3D technology.It was also extremely expensive to build each airport - because they were exact replicas of the real world airports - buildings, signs, hills, ground undulations, etc.They were only able to effective create and use an area less than 20 nm from the eyepoint / control tower.Of course, understanding that almost a third of the complaints against FSX are that many effects require Shader 2.0 and that is more than the current graphics cards of many simmers can handle - this technology would be totally unusable by a large portion of the FS community.

>Honestly, this is some brilliant work by some very talented>individuals, and I'm sure that this will be the way that>future simulators will be looking. But from what I can read>from their website and press sheets, it appears that you'll>have to fly fighter jets to get to see simulators that look>like that anytime soon.Hi Ivan,I agree with your observations.But actually, the main point of my post was that proper lighting effects alone seem to be able to dramatically increase the plausibility (and the eye-candy) of a scene at low cost, i.e. without the need to increase the complexity and the resolution of the 3d scene. So, in my view, ACES should strongly focus on developing better lighting effects, this way they could gain a lot with (relatively) little effort (and without raising too much hardware requirements).Marco

>Theres nothing Offensive about 'The Vole' It's just a loving>nickname name for MS.>>As for the "The Vole is pawning off 10 year old crap on us">post :)>>>My reading gave me a different feeling, from the tone of the articles. I've altered my edit to simply say that the post was deleted, as I don't recall the exact wording of the post.