A Disappointment with SP2

[Guest Daniel42]

If you have gotten that far, the problem is not .Net, but probably me.Update: My bad... if you turn the logging function on... it will work.(Maybe better to move this to another thread.)Daniel

[Guest ccartmel]

I have read right through this thread and have seen no mention of the advance warning given to developers on the FSX design rules as outlined in this thread http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7314 on fsdeveloper forum. Many of the issues raised here were raised by myself as originator.One contributor to this thread slags me off as having no appreciation of the software development costs. This is not true as I have been a senior IT professional for many years. Costs in development can be minimised by meeting customer expectations and doing it right as close to the first time as practicable. Ongoing support for products is a great cost when it doesn't meet requirements both in functionality and software build quality. This comes down to understanding the customer (users) needs and expectations and managing them throughout the design and build phase.I believe in this case MS did not understand the impact on users of removing functionality in SP2, users expectations were not managed thus leading to gross dissatisfaction. Perhaps some of the features were removed accidentally, if so where is the all covering test plan. Had a risk assessment and plan been drawn up for those 'what if' scenarios?As in any big organisation resource needs to be allocated where it is most likely to add value. In my experience the areas hit most are those outlined in the previous paragraph, testing especially as this is at the end of the cycle and gets squeezed out as marketing-set deadlines loom. MS were perhaps in a lose-lose situation here.Discussion it seems is now circular and no more can be added it seems, however there seem to be many lessons to be learnt by users, MS and 3rd party developers.My lesson is to only use aircraft which have textures in the .dds format, these are more likely to work in DX10 although I continue to use the DX9 mode until fixes received.My bottom line is that I have lost faith in Microsoft and will not purchase any of their games until this is restored. (Son very disappointed).Charlie

[MD83 1]

"Even in the payware realm, I've seen announcements for Airbus, MD11, etc that are still just that: announced, after a year. I suppose those will be released (eventually), and six months later be obsoleted by FS11?"Probably!

[Guest SpeedBird192]

John,You really don't care about DX10 Preview mode? Seems like a very strange statement?I'll have to disagree with you on the efficiency of DX9 and DX10. With nVidia's latest drivers 169.25 (these are Beta) I see better performance under DX10 than I do in DX9. I'll admit, some serious issues around DX10 preview mode. DX10 was introduced to deal with the many limitations of DX9 API, there are real performance gains to be had in DX10 even when Aces didn't exploit those features to their fullest to show case what can be done.Perhaps you were referring to the OS (Vista) as not being efficient? If that is what you meant, then I agree, across the board Vista incurs about a 10-15% performance penalty. nVidia drivers have matured a lot for Vista (ATI is slowly catching up).No, Crysis does NOT look identical under DX10 when compared to DX9 -- that is just not correct, not even close. FSX does almost look identical, but not Crysis. Also, Crysis with nVidia 169.09 drivers now fully supports SLI (along with key Vista KB downloads). You should think about getting your uber PC booted and updated with latest KB's from Microsoft and nVidia drivers then -- world of difference.Take a look at COD4 DX10 -- it's truly amazing what they were able to do graphically and retain amazing frame rates.But hey, if you plan to leave DX10 alone for the next 24 months, just one less group of developers I have to compete against ;)Cheers, Rob.

[Guest koorby]

Hi Rob,I absolutely respect your right to disagree about DX10 with me - it's just my opinion and I am sure many users' experience with DX10 has been different and far more positive than mine.I'm a bit puzzled though about why you think an FSX developer's support for DX10 will provide them with a competitive advantage, when the SP2 codeline is locked down, won't change and the net effect of DX10 in FSX is cockpit shadows and frothy wave crests - a marginal reason at best for running a less efficient OS and buggy beta GPU drivers. I think there's some confusion about SP2 - it's not exclusively a DX10 service pack, but supports both variants of DirectX. Given the minimal net gain in effects in the DX10 code and recent code conversion that took place to achieve it, for me the stability of the DX9 codeline under Windows XPSP2 is a no brainer.

[nateanderson 1]

Ron,No question it is unrealistic to think MS would work with an open source project, however, it is something they and others may have to consider. FSX has not been well accepted by the MSFS community as a whole. Look at the new FS9 aircraft being uploaded here and elsewhere which far outnumber the new FSX aircraft. Consider all the "SP2 broke my computer" posts in this forum. If FSX cannot achieve parity with FS9 in 18 months from release (assuming FS11 after 3 years) then it was a failure in the overall perspective. Somehow there has to be a better understanding (more transparency) between MS, the consumers and the 3PDs. Is MS willing to open up that much?I use FSX regularly. In fact, I haven't loaded FS9 in a year. My system is modest, but I have had no problem running FSX and installing SP1 and SP2, except for slow frame rates in certain cities. I have no intention of upgrading to Vista from XP unless I see something dramatic. If that means no DX10 then so be it. I have played Crysis and FSX in DX9 and am quite satisfied. No, I do not want to buy a new DX10 graphics card which costs as much as a console and will probably still give me a lot of grief looking for drivers and tweaks. Worse yet, it would lock me into Vista. Who knows which of my other thousand programs which run fine in XP will not run right in Vista. I skipped from Windows 98(SE) all the way to XP on all my computers so it really won't be a problem to skip Vista.Personally, I think this whole XP-Vista-DX9-DX10-DX10 Preview-RTM-SP1-Acceleration+SP2-SP2 Alone thing all within a year has been a fiasco. I also question the Vista+DX10 and Acceleration+SP2 links which MS forced on us initially. There were simply too many changes at once and no one including MS and Aces was able to keep up with all the variations. How much less for the consumers and 3PDs? Although I am not one of them, I certainly understand why most flight simmers have said, "I think I'll stick to XP, DX9 and FS9 until someone really figures out where we go from here."I have been a dedicated flight simmer from FS2 up to and including FSX. I am sure I will buy FS11 as soon as it comes out assuming I have reasonable hardware and OS for it. My concern is that when I look around, I fear that many others are going to drop out due to frustration (exhaustion?) long before then. This thread has been great for looking at ways to improve flight simming. Let us hope we see great performance, stability and creativity from FS11.Ben

[N400QW 205]

Ben, we understand what you're saying and in many cases agree with much of what a lot of people have to say about the recent past.Speaking from our perspective we feel pretty good about the future simply because Phil/Aces finally got it right for FSX with SP2.Notice I did not mention Acceleration since that product is an addon to the base FSX similar to what we and other 3DPs provide. Granted it is feature rich due to the financial backering of that product from MS but folks need to understand the Acceleration is NOT FSX any more than our Cirrus SRR is FSX. Both are addons to the base FSX product.What I mean by that is the 3PDs now know exactly where they stand going forward and the path is much clearer now than just prior to SP2. Phil has said that SP2 is final FSX build so now we are all on the same page and the target is not moving around quite as much as before.See my thread called "A positive for SP2" to get a better grasp of what we think is the primary cause of most complaints about FSX. From our perspective, there are three main concerns that simmers have with FSX and SP2... 1. Sim Performance and Visuals2. Backwards compatibility issues under DX9 3. Forward compatibility under DX10 previewSolutions to those concerns will likely end up similar to these three... 1. Clean installs on better hardware: Simmers resources will play a large roll in this solution. 2. Backwards compatibility issues under DX9: 3PDs will need to be FSX SDK compliant for the DX9 rules. This will take a bit of of time for some 3PDs3. Forward compatibility issues under DX10: 3PDs will need to be FSX SDK compliant for the DX10 rules. This will take a bit of of time for many 3PDs.Hope this helps:-)

[psolk 3,037]

Wow,What a good days worth of reading ;)I am not even going to go into my opinions on FSX at this time just ask a simple question considering it isn't often that you get Steve, Andre, George, Jeff and all of these experts in a single post...My question is how do you get VC rain drops in the first place? (specifically back in the FS9 days) Why is that planes like the LVL-D 767 and the PMDG fleet have them and the PSS 757/777 don't? And please, no wise A** comments like one is good and the other is ****, I don't want a PSS slam thread here, jest want to know if there is any way to add the VC raindrop effect to a plane that doesn't have them.Thanks in advance!!! Hi Andre, hi everyone,-Paul

[N400QW 205]

As Phil stated, FSX and its Service Packs do NOT support VC rain at all.Aircraft built for FSX under DX9 rules can display VC rain in FSX as a "happy accident" to quote Phil.Aircraft built for FSX under DX10 rules do not support VC rain.Hope this helps.:-)

[psolk 3,037]

Hey Ron, I was actually asking for FS9 LOL... I know I am really off topic, completely out of line and hijacking the thread but I just figured how often do you get all these brilliant minds in one place and said oh well... ;) For example, is there any way to add the VC rain effect to the PSS 757/777 in FS9?FSX is a whole nother can of worms for me and I don't want to go there. The fact that I am asking how to get VC rain effects in FS9 should say it all LOL...Thanks Ron,-PaulPrimary RigLiquid CooledIntel C2D E6600 @3.2 gigsAsus P5N32SLI-Plus2 gigs Corsair XMS PC6400 4 4 4 12 @810Dual OC'd XFX 8800GTX @ 2 gigs24 inch Widescreen LCD 16XAA/16XAFDual 19 inch LCD'sRaid-0+1PCPower and Cooling 1k Quad SLIhttp://home.comcast.net/~psolk/3monitorsa.htmlBackup RigAMD 4000 San Diego @ 2.72 Gigs Kingston Corsair XMS CL2XFX 7900 GTX Raid-0

[N400QW 205]

Sorry, don't have a clue about other developers products...too busy with my own:-)

[psolk 3,037]

How about this, with the EagleSoft products are the VC rain effects built into the model or an entry in a .cfg? LOLI am going to try and get it out of you... (just kidding, trying to keep the thread light-hearted ;)Thanks for all the years of biz jets btw, I have never taken advantage of the G/A product lines but love the biz jets... -Paul Primary RigLiquid CooledIntel C2D E6600 @3.2 gigsAsus P5N32SLI-Plus2 gigs Corsair XMS PC6400 4 4 4 12 @810Dual OC'd XFX 8800GTX @ 2 gigs24 inch Widescreen LCD 16XAA/16XAFDual 19 inch LCD'sRaid-0+1PCPower and Cooling 1k Quad SLIhttp://home.comcast.net/~psolk/3monitorsa.htmlBackup RigAMD 4000 San Diego @ 2.72 Gigs Kingston Corsair XMS CL2XFX 7900 GTX Raid-0

[N400QW 205]

Thanks for the kind words on our Corporate Jet products. The answer to your question is both because we use our own technique. The question is moot though since Phil stated that FSX does not support VC rain.

[Guest PPSFA]

>Thanks for the kind words on our Corporate Jet products. The>answer to your question is both because we use our own>technique. The question is moot though since Phil stated that>FSX does not support VC rain.Ron, I love your products and I have the next product for you....http://www.wxpnews.com/0Y7K1V/071218-Supersonic-Jet:-)

[n4gix 4,947]

>For example, is there any way to add the VC rain effect to the>PSS 757/777 in FS9?No. There must be special "window" polygons created IN the model specifically, to which the chained animation VC Rain textures are applied.