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Guest Len

DX10 Release Announcement - Not Impressed

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>Honestly I agree with the OP and some of the other posters. I>have never seen the relevance of war type aircraft in the>context of a civilian flight simulator program. And not>because I'm a peacenik but because what's the use of flying>around an F18 if you can't shoot things and that kind of>simulation belongs in a combat flight simulator not in FSX.Kirk Olsson's F-16 Viper was one of my favorites in FS9 for years. Just liked the open visibility of the canopy, as well as speed and manuverability. It didn't shoot things either, but it's the type of sim flying I really prefer. I prefer GA as a general rule, but enjoy Airliner magazine as well as very detailed (graphic wise) simulated airliners. This includes current models, and well going back to the Connies, DC3's, and even the trimotors.What the heck, just simulate them all! :)L.Adamson

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Len, ever tried shooting an ILS down to a carrier in an F-18, in a thunderstorm with a gusting 30 knot crosswind?I'll take that challenge any day over staring at a lovingly crafted FMS for hours on end at 34000 feet. What would be the point of ACES creating a high detail airliner? The market's saturated with them. You have your Level-Ds and PMDGs, 3rd party ATC addons, FS2crew, your high detail airports, the list goes on and on. 90% of the addons out there are designed just for your tastes.Be happy for the low and fast crowd, the rotorheads too. We don't always want to have to check six in a combat sim you know, some of us just like to rocket through FSX's beautiful atmosphere in peace now and then, with our friends on our wing and some good tunes on the headset. :)The way I see it, if it has an airfoil it deserves a place in flight simulator.Cheers,


Mike Johnson - Lotus Simulations

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>Len, ever tried shooting an ILS down to a carrier in an F-18,>in a thunderstorm with a gusting 30 knot crosswind?>>I'll take that challenge any day over staring at a lovingly>crafted FMS for hours on end at 34000 feet. What would be the>point of ACES creating a high detail airliner? The market's>saturated with them. You have your Level-Ds and PMDGs, 3rd>party ATC addons, FS2crew, your high detail airports, the list>goes on and on. 90% of the addons out there are designed just>for your tastes.>>Be happy for the low and fast crowd, the rotorheads too. We>don't always want to have to check six in a combat sim you>know, some of us just like to rocket through FSX's beautiful>atmosphere in peace now and then, with our friends on our wing>and some good tunes on the headset. :)>>The way I see it, if it has an airfoil it deserves a place in>flight simulator.>>Cheers,>>>Man, this is probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen written on this forum.

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I really do not know what to say. You are talking way past what I said by accumulating tidbits from other messages and assembling them to fit pre-conceived views of the world. I do not care if Microsoft doubles the military aircraft. I just do not want the objectives we have expected, to be compromised. Once again, I said that it would be quite nice if gaming or military brought in added revenue to fund further development. Just don't dilute the basic elements that a civilian aviation sim has.Seriously, I apologize if you were offended. I did not say some of the things you attributed to me in your message. Anyone in the military deserves our thanks and much more. In fact you, and only you, can call me whatever you want! While hard to believe I spend a lot of my retired time watching the military channel. I have watched most of the footage on TV about carrier operations (I was Navy). It is not just the pilots but the deckhands that every minute of operations are doing a potential dance of death on that deck. You could possibly create an entire simulation around carrier operations and a carrier battle group. You hear the almost trite phrase "thanks for your service". I wish there was a way to be more expressive of how we thank the military for doing what they do, not only in a dangerous circumstance, but in one that is very confusing. SO THANKS.Finally, to repeat once again. I do not care if a military aspect or a gaming function is created "within" the FS series. If that happens the concern is that there will be compromises in the airliner and GA areas as well as the several support functions such as ATC, flight planning, and good interfaces to addons. The other fear I have, if this path is taken, is that in order to appeal to a segment of a large market violence would become yet another addition.Now it is time to DUCK AND COVER -- bombs away7!


regards,

Dick near Pittsburgh, USA

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>>The way I see it, if it has an airfoil it deserves a place>in>>flight simulator.>>>>Cheers,>>>>>>>>Man, this is probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen>written on this forum.It's perfect, isn't it...

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It's actually going to be a while, I think, until we see commercial games developed exclusively with DX10, and probably only games on the horizon have been able to work from the start with DX10 as their core platform, as even the API is relatively new in comparison to the standard development cycle.I found this in an interview regarding WiC and DX10, dated June 2007.http://www.yougamers.com/articles/4553_wor...nterview-page7/Westberg: DX10 performance is hard to comment on, because we only recently started optimizing the engine. We got the DirectX 10 renderer fully functional maybe two months ago. We're working closely with NVIDIA for optimizing the drivers for World in Conflict. The DX10 and DX9 and on par right now in terms of performance, DX9 might be slightly ahead but it's not a huge difference. It's hard to say what's going to happen with a few months to go with optimization.You can do a lot more on the video card in DX10, draw calls are cheaper - you can put a lot more on the card, and just tell the card, "now do that thing I told you to do earlier", instead of sending a lot of information every frame, which is what you had to do with DX9. You save a lot of data transfer this way. We have high hopes for DX10 [...] but that's really all I can say right now.YouGamers: How much extra work is it for you to develop for both versions of DirectX?Westberg: It wasn't too bad for us, because we have a really nice engine architecturally. All the DX9 stuff has always been separate from the rest of the renderer, so adding the DX10 path was only 1-2 man-months of work. From our perspective, that's not very much at all. So that was quite easy, and we had a lot of help from the NVIDIA guys, who've really prioritized our title. It's been great - when we've had a problem, they've helped us - they're actually in our office helping us./end quote...Their engine was designed to have the DX9 layer separate, so the calls out could be routed either way, it seems. This seems like the best current approach. And I have to say, for the level of detail in the game, performance is great on DX9, even on my slightly older card, so the engine is well designed anyways.But that's the thing that still gets me. The DX10 renderer is separate from the engine, so latency from translating from DX9 over isn't a factor, their are just a few graphics perks (very nice, I think but nothing ridiculous...) and still performance is just equal to the DX9 renderer. I think World in Conflict is a perfect example of how either hardware, drivers, or render code is not up to snuff yet. But I've also seen the demos and examples of specific effects, and I think once the applicable problems are remedied, we will see some awesome results out of it.I think you're definitely right about judging the possible FSX performance. I do, however, think current offers can at least give us some insight on the state of development with the API and the hardware so far.

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Guest Hocking

I think it comes down to us to start managing our expectations about DX10 a little better. I do agree with other posters when I say that DX10 was oversold completely by Microsoft in an effort to push Vista sales. Many of the major improvements, or new great features, that were supposed to come with Microsoft's next OS were canceled late in the development cycle of Vista in an effort to get a product to market after five years of nothing. Microsoft needed to sell Vista, and they needed to find some things to talk about that were "REALLY BIG" that would only be found within the new operating system. This is where "DX10" comes in.As a result, most of us gamers think that this new "DX10" is going to change gaming for us completely because of the way it was hyped. Many of us completely overlooked the fact at how many game developers were simply not "WOWED" at all by what they were seeing from DX10. It was really Microsoft who kept talking about it, not game developers. Microsoft sold it as the "REALLY BIG" feature that we all need to rush out and buy Vista to get. Now, we are all left disappointed because we are finding out that it isn't the "REALLY BIG" thing that we had all created in our minds to be. There hasn't even been one game released for it as of yet that was designed specifically with DX10 in mind. We may get one or two games by the end of 2007, but regular DX10 game releases won't become the norm until late 2008 or early 2009 at the earliest. We will get some DX10 patches (FSX for example), but up to this point these game patches have not been very impressive for most gamers. We are told, that was only a DX10 patch, you need to wait on a DX10 game to really see it in action. Goes back to that managing expectations thing.I have already changed my expectations about DX10. My opinion is that DX10 won't be the "REALLY BIG" thing in Flight Simulator until FS11. The DX10 patch for later this year may be nice, but it is not going to "WOW" us like we all thought it was going to. Many will be completely disappointed with it because there expectations were set to high on what the DX10 patch is going to do for FSX. To put my money where my mouth is, I am building a new computer later this year, and as of now I have every intention of installing XP on my new system. I may change this plan if Vista becomes better supported by hardware developers between now and them. The current driver issues with Vista nearly a full year after its release scare me to death. There is no "REALLY BIG" selling point to rush out and get Vista currently. When this changes, perhaps sometime towards the middle or late 2008, I will then go get my copy of Vista. Who knows, I may completely end up skipping the entire Vista ordeal and just wait on their next OS. Microsoft does seem to get things right every other release it seems.The bottom line, don't set your expectations to high on what DX10 is going to do for gaming as a whole, and FSX specifically.

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Guest Len
>Len, ever tried shooting an ILS down to a carrier in an F-18,>in a thunderstorm with a gusting 30 knot crosswind?
Yes I have in the context of Lock On for example i.e., combat flight simulation where it's in the context of a mission involving war not flying around practicing Carrier landing without more.
>I'll take that challenge any day over staring at a lovingly>crafted FMS for hours on end at 34000 feet. What would be the>point of ACES creating a high detail airliner? The market's>saturated with them. You have your Level-Ds and PMDGs, 3rd>party ATC addons, FS2crew, your high detail airports, the list>goes on and on. 90% of the addons out there are designed just>for your tastes.
What's the point of having F-18s etc. flying around doing nothing but landing on carriers or flying real fast? Great in a Combat flight simulation of course because that's where that genre shines but when you try to be all things to all people that's where you fail. This is a civilian flight simulator so if flying around programming FMSs is not your bag of tea then there are plenty of Combat simulators out there where you can have a great challenge of landing on flight decks at day/night etc. or you may be a GA flier flying VFR that too is an FSX speciality but making more missions with combat aircraft is misplaced effort. Now I've flown around with those combat aircraft in FS such as Captain Sim's excellent F-104 for FS 2004 but invariably I get an empty feeling - so what? If I could port it over to Lock On then we'd be talking.Right now there is a dearth of payware Level-D's for FSX. I have the latter for FS9 but I won't buy an upgrade to FSX because of my low overhead for fps. FSX contrary to what you state does not have a huge number of things for it right now so it is quite the opportunity for Aces to develop a quality Dreamliner for example or even a quality Airbus with fly-by-wire and fms.This is simply a case of trying to be all things to all people - minor in everything but a master of none.

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>This is simply a case of trying to be all things to all people>- minor in everything but a master of none. It could actually just be them developing a platform as they've said they are so that anyone can make it what they want it to be.

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Guest Len

>>This is simply a case of trying to be all things to all>people>>- minor in everything but a master of none. >>>It could actually just be them developing a platform as>they've said they are so that anyone can make it what they>want it to be.>True enough.

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So what about military cargo aircraft or Coast Guard aircraft? No place in a civilian flight simulator? Civil air patrol? What about all the military bases in FSX? Should they remain empty? MytrafficX adds all sorts of military aircraft and I've seen no complaints from the FS engine. I live near both Willow Grove and Dover Bases and see all sorts of military traffic overhead including C-130's, helicopter, the big cargo jets (not sure what the name is), A-10's on training flights etc.... They are subject to Philadelphia ATC when flying over my area, funny thing is, I see no explosions or guns firing when they fly overhead, just flight training and troop and cargo delivery.What about the blue angels? They have no guns and have been modified from the military versions. So according to your desires you want no sailplanes, experimental aircraft, hot air balloons, blimps, just airliners and GA flying around. Oddly enough, FS is able to do that, just remove those aircraft from the sim objects/aircraft directory.And, too each his own, but how does having an F-18 in FS take away from any of your preferred flying? I don't think I've seen anyone, anywhere state that the expansion pack uses resources from the core FS engine. Also, the Concorde flew over Mach 2, real fast, but that was in FS one year. Too fast for FS? Or is it just fast military jets, what about the slow ones?And when hasn't FS tried to be all things to all people, you want an IFR trainer, buy one. There's plenty on the market. Leave the detailed airline aircraft to the 3rd party developers. Seems to have worked so far....and who knows, maybe FS will develop an add-on airliner in the future, but then that starts a whole nest of complaints about FS infringing on 3rd party aircraft and the conspiracies begin.Aces seems doomed either way unfortunately.By the way, I hope I don't sound insulting, but I find arrogance in the statement if you don't enjoy programming an FMS or flying GA find something else to use. Since when did FS become an airline/GA simulator only? What about helo's for goodness sakes, search and rescues, how limited is your view of aviation that only Airline and GA are the only 2 reputable options for simulating flight?Sorry for the rant but aviation is many things to many people and that is what Flight Simulator is all about.Ian.

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Guest Len

>>>>>>

Sorry for the rant but aviation is many things to many people and that is what Flight Simulator is all about.
Yes it was a rant. So I'll ignore it and avoid ratcheting up the rhetoric.

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What I was trying to say is that many of the more serious simmers in here will not be impressed with the "Acceleration" add-on and I think that I was correct in my assumption by reading the majority of responses in this thread. I don't think that *my* opinion is the one that counts, but I am merely echoing and supporting the voice of this community here that they would have rather seen some "real-life" improvements, like a flight planner and ATC.I didn't say that people how fly missions or enjoy racing or fighter jets are dumb, but I think that MS is walking a fine line here in turning FS with this add-on into a "Crimson Skies" or "Need For Speed" arcade game.MSFS has always been a simulator for civil aviation and I think that this add-on goes into the wrong direction by merging arcade and simulation. There is a complete other market segment for those types of games.How many AVSIM folks would have loved to see a moving map, a good flight planner and improved ATC in favor of "Acceleration"?I am sure "Acceleration" will appeal to the casual gamer, but I also might be also correct in my assumption that most people who fly complex add-ons do not care much for any of those new features.Pat

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Although I agree with fixes being incorporated, from a business stand point, selling those fixes would not sell well to the masses and I believe most would deem those a free update that should've been included with FSX in the first place.I also believe Aces is expanding the market for FS, which isn't a bad thing, someone may buy FSX and the add-on to race and may try flying the cessna or 737 and become addicted as many are here to the world of civil simulation.Hopefully they'll add the fixes at some point, if not, a 3rd party add-on will be available to fill in the gaps as is usually the case.Ian.

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