Gents, gents...the point of my post which I linked the video to was simply this....the technology is out there (someone mentioned that what you see in that video is already almost 2 years old) for us to have a better sim. ACES surely has the means to create a whole new engine that will likely make us think FSX was designed back in the late 90's. The problem is will they? Or will they stick with the engine they have now that is very long in the tooth and inefficient?I sure wish Phil from ACES would comment on this issue. And Phil if your reading, we are not talking about FSX fixes...we are talking about FS11 and the future.

>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.>Actually, the military can be extremely interested in aesthetics. Pilots of strike aircraft need to learn to pick out crowded targets in changing amounts of shadow that may be much different than what the recon imagery looked like. Target recognition and fratricide avoidance through changing weather conditions definitely would interest the military...so much so that the company posted a shot of M1 Abrams tanks through their weather engine. And commercial simulators are just as interested at providing accurate weather effects as our 'hobbyist' market. A visual approach is a visual approach, whether we're on our own PC at home or in a level D sim at the Delta training center.But the real topic is simply the fact that it's out there, as Eric reminded us. What makes it interesting is simply the fact that it looks completely different than anything else we've seen. As Marco said, it looks like this new way of rendering light sourcing makes it possible to enhance realism by a very great level with little overhead, and I don't think anyone would knock that kind of breakthrough. Please remember though, this is a proprietary algorithm as of yet, and the company has a patent pending on the process. Right now this is not simply a new technique to render weather and light effects, it is a privately owned way of doing so. Unless Windwardmark prices the license within a reasonable budget for ACES to use or ACES can parallel the engine without infringing on intellectual property, all we can do is wait for this sort of technique to become part of the public domain.-Ivan

Windlight does look interesting. But as others have noted, it does lack a few things we already have, the "full world" perf isnt clear, and its a major integration across the entire rendering engine.Its not clear that Nimble and the clouds piece is enough to be interesting. Then there is the licensing. Since FS is a platform, our licenses need to cover the 3rd parties extending the technology. That is often tricky to work out.So its not as simple as one would think. In terms of our inefficiencies; some are indeed ours, some are D3D 9's.As far as FS11, its just too early to talk about. Let's get this further thru this years roadmap.

Instead of thinking why nots, try thinking whys. It looks like a small company, why not call Bill and discuss buying it!Think about when FS11 is intalled and the users getting 100+ FPS!Think about how many copies FS11 would sell..Think about how many other MS apps could leverage this technologyOnly you can change the face of flight sim and MS forever!Who you gonna call Phil??

LOL, I wish it was that simple.

The screenshots look amazing- but the videos aren't as good.

>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. Just because the models themselves are not more complex, does not mean the work the vid card has to do is not more complex. The shader programs needed to produce the effect may be very complex compared to FSX's current shader programs for all we know.

Put this in FS9 and I'll be in Heaven:9