That's awesome. Say what you will about FSX and Acceleration but that sounds cool.

>That's awesome. Say what you will about FSX and Acceleration>but that sounds cool.Paul and I both wrote blog posts about the multiplayer races at Reno and there was a crowd cheering and people from the actual race teams came over to be a part of it.It is very challenging and a lot of fun.

OK Phil many thanks for that.I'll order my copy and hope that Amazon are up to speed. They usually are.As an aside I would like to say that I have followed all the posts regarding FSX.I guess I must be lucky but I have not suffered from a fraction of the problems that most people seem to be experiencing. I do feel for those who have spent loads of money on new gear/systems only to find they were no better off.I did increase my RAM to 3gb from 1 and installed an Athlon dual core,however these have improved the WHOLE system not just for FSX.I get a frame rate, depending on what I am flying and where anywhere between 25 and 115. I have installed the better freeware aircraft and scenery addons and also Horizon Gen X and am enjoying the sim. No blurries and no stutters and all is crisp and clean. So much so that I have confined FS9 to the shelf.The only problem I have is with the scenery popping up when using the hat switch to view from 2D mode however it is not so bad that I can't live with it.My only other problem is when to make the decision to upgrade my system entirely to take advantage of DX10. However I'm sure that I will be able to make do with what I have for some before I have to make that decision.I take my hat off to you and the team as you have had to put up with a lot of stick since FSX was released but I am sure that all will be well in the fullness of time.RegardsRichard.

Hi Phil,I don't think the realists here were really expecting anything like the 'magic screenies' anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.The most exciting thing in your post as far as I am concerned, is the fact that it would appear in FS11 you will be ditching the old 'backwards compatible' code and redesigning the FS engine. Is this a fair assumption? I don't think ANYONE with a forward looking viewpoint can be too upset at that choice......except maybe some payware developers.Keep up the good work and honesty Phil. Look forward to hearing about FS11 when dev starts.Glenn

As someone who has bought a brand new computer with an 8800GTX in January this year, mainly in order to be ready for the FSX DX10 update, I have a lot to say... ...but I think it's better to wait until some good screenshots are posted. Or even until I can give the patch a try myself. It's better not to say too much right now...

This brings up a question on performance gain. Will only DX10 users see a performance gain or will DX9 users see a negligable performance gain as well?

Indeed....and maybe using the hoist on the helo to pick a carrier pilot up out of the drink in a storm at night if he bolters too many times and runs out of fuel.... so don't worry, I got your back if ya miss the wires!!! ;)

I was in two minds as to get either an 8800GTS and Vista or a new motherboard and CPU.Based on the DX10 improvements and probable lack of support for DX10 from developers, I think I will stick with my X1900GT and Win XP and get the new mobo and CPU.Glenn

2 items of good news for me:1. FS11 will do away with backward compatibility which should hopefully give us a fresh new engine with much better performance. I'm convinced backward compatibility over so many versions was dragging down performance so the fact that FS11 will be a brand new engine is good news for me. It will be painful for the addon producers to get on board but after so many versions dragging backwards compatibility this just had to happen.2. "Optimization of terrain IO for photo-scenery and

There are some times when I regret not taking the "Z" man up on his Dev Con invitation, but since I'm not in the business anymore, I'll speak as an 'ex-dev' and as a consumer only for this post.Glenn,I'm not picking on you, but I'm going to use your quote: "......except maybe some payware developers" as an example and a plea once again, for the love simming, so that we may all enjoy the future of flight simming for many more years to come...LOL:9 I know what you really mean and what you really want, so I'm not chastizing you, honestly.Phil,The community has a very, very, very, wrong definition on what backwards compatibility actually means from over the years, please understand. I think for FSX you guys took it to literally to a certain extent.When the consumer says 'backwards compat.', they really mean: 'I'd like to have the same product working in the new sim which has been further optimzed for performance and new features" They don't care about SDK's or how the dev does it, nor should they."respectable" 3rd party payware developers don't want to use an SDK from 3 versions ago which creates 10X the amount of new work to cost them 20X the amount of money (dev time-labor) versus profit, which in turn causes a 30X% performance loss for the customer, in turn...causing 40X the amount of support forum posts...and 50X the amount of 'when is the next product going to be done' posts....better yet, there's no way I can possibly write here what I'm trying to convey...lol. I need someone far better then me to tell it.I'll call the "Z" man, it's been far to long, and tell him, and maybe he can convey it at the conference, because I know it's generally along the same lines as what the ACES team is trying to get to as a whole. Hope he's still around.:-)Once again, congrats ACES!

>"So far I have spent 1200 to move to an unstable unsupported>OS">>No, you haven't spent squat. You state so in all your "I>need", If I wanted">parameters.>>Most folks can't afford a real plane. Sounds like you can't>afford>a simulator.>>Are we supposed to "chip in" to help you out?>He's doing a simple cost/benefit equation to see if the full FS-X / VISTA / DX-10 / Acceleration works out for him.While I'm disagreeing with some of his numbers I agree with the outcome. There is no benefit investing all that money now just to get the full FS-X / DX10 experience. There are to little DX10 benefits to justify the costs. You might get a positive view if you are upgrading anyway but if your machine gives you a satisfactory FS9 or FS-X DX9 experience its a lot of money for little gain.Better put the money in the bank and wait for FS-XI (or X-Plane XI if that one keeps on closing the gap it has with the FS series) and buy the software and hardware to run that.

Thanks for keeping us informed of what's going on Phil. I don't know about anyone else, but personally I'm very much looking forward to SP2. Bring it on. :-)

>4) Optimization of terrain IO for photo-scenery and

>>I'm still unclear about calling the DX10 stuff a preview. IS>is safe to say that what we'll be recieving is more along the>lines of proof of concept, and that the 'true' 'native' DX10>engine will arrive in FS11 where the backwards compat is being>dropped?>That was my impression of it. FS11 will have a lot less (perhaps very little?) backwards compatibility, but at the same time the FS11 SDK will contain updated methods so that 3rd party dev's don't have to resort to using pre-FS2004 methods...(To me the implication is--ground textured polys in the mdl WITHOUT using the FS2002 gamepack with asm tweaks.) :)The decision to reduce or elminate backwards compat is a big one, I'm sure they didn't take it lightly.>I'll do a Penryn in January Me too. A quad Pen. Maybe February. We'll see what happens.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

by only wish from the update was alpha fade. The autogen pop takes so much away for me! sigh.. Hopefully FS11