FS11 - Will the scenery engine improve?

[Guest]

you can't run it with everything maxed out because it was designed like that, period.It was designed so that people who buy the product and later upgrade their computers will be able to see the benefit of that upgrade in higher detailed scenery (among other things).That's been the case with every single FS version where you can change settings, and is unlikely to ever change.P.S. with your machine specs you should never have expected to run everything maxed out in the first place, probably not even with FS2004, and get decent results.It's underpowered by today's standards, midrange by the standards of 2 years ago.

[Guest sfgiants]

Thanks for your reply but for the life of me, I can't find a response to my question that I proposed. Maybe you posted on the wrong thread.My question was about FS11 not my PC Specs or what FSX wasn't suppose to be.Tim

[jmig 100]

None of us know what MS has in store for FS11. Seeing how it is still early in the development cycle, I doubt they know. That being said, as jwenting said, MS has a history of pushing the hardware with each new version of MSFS. By that I mean, the software is always designed for the future. For a PC that hasn't been yet built.If we extend this logic and, using past experiences with new versions of MSFS, we can assume that FS11 will suck right out of the box, just like every other version. Although, it may have a new graphics engine?So the answer to your question is, NO! FS11 won't run any faster when released than FS10, FS9, FS8... did when they were released, regardless what MS does with the graphics engine. However, two years later it will be awesome.

[maxter 0]

Actually I would not expect even ACES to have signed on to whether the Scenery/Terrain engine is updated or not, well not yet anyway.One would expect that the graphics engine would receive a serious tweak, but there is IMHO some difference between that and the "Scenery/Terrain" engine. I would expect some tweaking regardless of the outcome/deliberations, to take advantage of new hardware capabilities available in a year's time at a very minimum.As to running with sliders full right, there I have to agree with Jerome and the others. I do not believe you will ever see this on initial release of any version of MSFS.Cheers,Chris Porter:-outtaPerthWestern Australia

[Guest UlfB]

>>My question was about FS11 not my PC Specs or what FSX wasn't>suppose to be.>This is the FSX forum ;-)Ulf BComputer, mouse, monitor.

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,I cannot say too much, but because TS is a "ground based" sim, there are some differences.Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[Guest cbuchner1]

I would imagine they are seriously looking into vertex shader approaches to terrain detail, as well as per-pixel displacement mapping. So you can get more elevation detail without increasing the number of vertices and triangles. The elevation detail could instead be stored in textures. It is basically a glorified bump mapping technique, except that it doesn't just affect lighting, but it truly affects geometry.Here is an overview of terrain technologies and you will find some papers have authors from Microsoft Research (Hoppe):http://www.vterrain.org/LOD/Papers/index.htmlFor designing a new terrain engine, I'd put my bets on GPU based clipmaps right now.Microsoft is already on top of this techology, a tech demo is available here:http://research.microsoft.com/research/dow...e1/Details.aspxChristian

[Guest]

>Thanks for your reply but for the life of me, I can't find a>response to my question that I proposed. Maybe you posted on>the wrong thread.>>My question was about FS11 not my PC Specs or what FSX wasn't>suppose to be.>>Timread again... You're suggesting that FSX is fundamentally flawed because you can't run it with all the sliders maxed out and its replacement should be "fixed".I explained why it's not flawed at all (in that regard, it's not perfect) and therefore you're not going to get your wish in FS11 (let's call it that for now) because there's nothing to "fix" except your expectations which ARE flawed but there's nothing Microsoft can do to change that.

[BobP 56]

>you can't run it with everything maxed out because it was>designed like that, period.>>It was designed so that people who buy the product and later>upgrade their computers will be able to see the benefit of>that upgrade in higher detailed scenery (among other things).>That goal was certainly met.:) But, I do not understand a design philosophy of software resources outdistancing hardware by years. In fact I don't believe it is that cut and dry. I have managed many small and large capital projects and rarely did the "as built" exactly match the original design. Along the way, problems were solved, new ones found and modifications created. It is never a straight line from goals to project completion and that squiggly progress is generally the largest contributor of bugs and performance issues. Bob..

[Geofa 108]

Historically flightsim has always outdistanced the hardware by quite a bit starting with fs1.What changed in the 90's was the introduction of sliders-which fuiii was the first sim to introduce. (Up till then you just took the sim the way it was- it never ran well on a new rig-and you just accepted that). Fuiii being very imaginative in many areas tried adding sliders so the end user could customize what was important to the user-and the new ability to actually achieve good performance on a present machine by careful adjustment of these sliders which was unheard of at that time.Of course with fuiii-instead of accepting where the sliders went for defaults or customizing them for good performance-everyone including me dragged them all to the max to see what was possible-then faced poor performance.Once seeing what was possible maxed, no one wanted to drag them back. The complaining about performance started-and fuiii went under directly as a result. The original idea of what sliders did was somehow lost in the process-but the other sims copied the technology (a mistake perhaps?).I suppose fs11 could come out ready to work with sliders maxed right out of the box. But then it would probably look like fs9-as that is presently what would work today with the sliders all maxed on todays hardware! Would most simmers be more satisfied with that? I know I would not, but if I were MS I sure would be looking at this as an option. http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[boshar 6]

Don't know if they will change the engine but reading the ACES team blogs I get the impression there are a lot of changes in personel at the moment (lots of guys moving on). Who knows? new programmers, fresh idea's, new insights. Lets hope that FS11 wil be less controversial then good old FS-X

[Guest]

fresh people, loss of experience, temporary loss of productivity.EVERY FS version has been "controversial" for one reason or another, the crowd of complainers and whiners is always there, always about the same size as a fraction of the total user community.

[Guest Zevious Zoquis]

I just got a new PC a month ago. It's a Dell with an AMD X2 64 5600+ at 2.8 ghz. It's got an ATI HD2600 XT vid card with 256 megs on it. I don't have FSX and don't plan on getting it anytime soon (and doubt it would run all that great on the new machine if I did) but I'm loving FS9 all over again. It's a special sort of joy being able to turn the sliders up nice and high, flying around in all sorts of detailed add-on planes and scenery with lots of autogen and locking the framerate at 33fps and having it STAY there the whole time. Having said that, there are still circumstances under which the frames drop a tad (and I still don't have the sliders completely maxed - close though). The issue here isn't that theres something wrong with FS9. The problem is with human psychology. When we fire up the sim and see those sliders sitting at a third or half the way to the right we immediately think "if I don't have those sliders pushed all the way over, I'm not experiencing this sim the way it's meant to be experienced." The fact of the matter though is this: when I was flying FS9 on my previous P4 1.8 ghz system, I'd say I was running it with the sliders at about 60%. In other words, I had scenery density at "DENSE", autogen at "Normal", a bit of fsaa and aniso @ 1152x864x32 res, etc etc. I got good performance - usually 20-24 fps, sometimes dropping down to the low teens in dense clouds or really dense scenery but mostly 20 and up. If I'd have gone back and re-installed FS2002, I could probably have maxed it out and gotten similar or maybe even slightly better framerates, but it wouldn't have looked much (if any) better at all than FS9 @ 60%. I'm sure the same applies to FSX compared with FS9. I'd imagine FSX at 50-60% slider settings looks as good as or better than FS9 maxed out. I think that 50-60% slider zone is what the sim is designed for and anything "further to the right" is the icing on the cake. Look at it this way - if MS wanted to end all these complaints about how inneficient the engine is all they'd have to do really is make the sliders full right setting equal what is currently the 50 or 60% level. who'd be the wiser? Would that make you feel any better? (that question is directed at the OP btw)

[Guest Zelensta]

Flight Simulator releases every 2 years... 1998,2000,2002,2004,2006...2008!!!!Thats means we're getting a NEW ONE THAT NO BODY WILL BE ABLE TO PLAY THIS YEAR!!!! (unless you have 10,000 dream machine that you buy this year, anything else would be antique for flight sim)

[RobbieHe 0]

FS2000 was released in late 1999FS2002 was released in late 2001FS2004 was released in mid to late 2003FSX was released in late 2006FS11 probabily won't be released until late 2009.RH