Hello can someone tell me if running fsx in vista/dx10 will improve frame rates as well as graphics...I recently bought a dogs bo....of a computer to run fsx,but to me even with sp1 installed it is still fairly steppy.I suppose it is just bearable,but I dread to think what it would be like when i add a bit of traffic or an add on aircraft...I am still running fs 9 and am more than happy with it...So the question is....do i invest in vista and make the switch to fsx,i would dearly love to have it running at an acceptable level,so as i could get some enjoyment out of my investment.

No-one really knows what the performance or features of the SP2 release will be as ACES have not released that information yet.What we do know is that the DX10 version of FSX, with the same features as FSX/SP1, had frame rates 17% higher. So if you were getting 20 fps with SP1, you might get 23 fps with DX10, assuming no frames are consumed by additional features. For most people, running FSX SP1 under Vista gives poorer frame rates than under XP...Cheers,Noel.

I run FSX under Vista and have stopped using FS9 all together! I have my FPS locked at 35 and my game holds a constant 30-35 FPS flying such aircraft as the Lvl-D 767 in and out of major cities. If I set my frames to unlimited they bounce from 30 - 60 FPS. In the end it all comes down to your system. What are your specs?

If you have a look around the various PC gaming media outlets you'll notice that DX10 has had a bit of a lukewarm reception from many. There are a few titles available that have both DX9 and DX10 versions available, and the side by side comparisons show that DX10 has given very little improvement in visuals, and in one or two cases actually runs *slower* than the DX9 version.The common counter argument for this is that these titles were originally developed for DX9 and ported over to DX10 and as such haven't been developed from the ground up for DX10. Obviously, FSX will fall under the category or DX9 titles ported to DX10.The commonly accepted wisdom is that it will be a year or so before we really see the benefits of DX10.In the meantime, MS has announced DX10.1 which believe it or not, will require *NEW* DX10.1 compliant hardware if you want to take advantage of the new features in 10.1 - quite astonishing really! You really have to wonder what is going on at MS... All those people who rushed out and bought a GeForce 8 series or ATI 2X00 series graphics cards will find them obsolete come January 2008!Read more here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX

>All those people who rushed out and bought a GeForce>8 series or ATI 2X00 series graphics cards will find them>obsolete come January 2008!No, they won't. Well, not any moreso than one who buys a computer today will find that it's "obsolete" by the time they get it home and set up!Any game written to utilize DX10.1 specs will still run on that so-called "obsolete" DX10.0 hardware.

Yes you can *run* a DX10.1 title on a DX10 graphics card. However, if you want to take advantage of the full features of DX10.1 you will need to buy a *new* graphics card. That means the DX10 graphics cards will be made obsolete - who will go and buy a DX10 graphics card if it cannot take advantage of all the changes made in DX10.1?I imagine if I had forked out a lot of money for a new DX10 graphics card, *and* a new OS in order to have access to DX10, and then MS announce I will need yet another new graphics card just to keep up with the changes in DX10.1 I would be pretty cheesed off!

>In the end it all comes down to your system. And where you set the sliders. :-)

This is definitely a problem. I can see two possible solutions:1. Everyone should immediately stop innovating and be happy for ever more with what's possible on current hardware and software.2. Hardware developers should employ psychics to look into the future and see what is going to be required by the next generation of games, so that they can support the features of the next few versions of DirectX before the APIs actually become available.Votes? :)Colin

>Yes you can *run* a DX10.1 title on a DX10 graphics card.>However, if you want to take advantage of the full features of>DX10.1 you will need to buy a *new* graphics card. That means>the DX10 graphics cards will be made obsolete - who will go>and buy a DX10 graphics card if it cannot take advantage of>all the changes made in DX10.1?All what changes or features? AFAIK, MS have only tightened the specs for two items, making them required rather than optional, and added one new shader model... * Mandatory 32-bit floating point filtering * Mandatory 4x anti-aliasing * Shader model 4.1In the words of the Bard, this appears to be "Much ado about nothing..."

>No-one really knows what the performance or features of the>SP2 release will be as ACES have not released that information>yet.>>What we do know is that the DX10 version of FSX, with the same>features as FSX/SP1, had frame rates 17% higher. So if you>were getting 20 fps with SP1, you might get 23 fps with DX10,>assuming no frames are consumed by additional features. Phil said those framerates were before optimization for DX10. He has said to expect some performance benefit to the patch under DX10, and I would guess it ends up being more than 17%... although probably some of the extra eyecandy take away from those gains somewhat.One of the potential new features was to actually issue the DX calls from a secondary core instead of the primary core on multi-core machines. If they pulled this off, I think multi-core machines could see a very significant fps increase.But, as you say, we can't really know until its released. And even then, mileage will surely vary across different machines.