Check out the new character animation about 0:26 minute into this video clip...Holy Smoke! The engineer waves at you! :)

Bill

Interesting to read from Phil's blog that MS thinks the bottleneck is the bandwidth available for communicating with the GPU, rather than the speed of the CPU - which, apparently, is often kept waiting because of a lack of bandwidth. I am puzzled about how that squares with the CPU-boundness that most of us experience with FSX. Does he perhaps mean that bandwidth starts becoming a problem as you approach 60Hz? If so, it is a problem most of us are never likely to encounter with FSX. But maybe - and hopefully - it tells us that for FS11 MS is really trying to deliver the same level of smoothness as you get in the real-world full motion simulators: if so, bring it on.Any ideas?Tim

The character team from ShadowRun did a great job, looking over the demands placed on the machines to run them i got the feeling that they will need to have two more LOD models or slightly more detailed "imposters" as they called them , the fellow onscreen had 48 bones, thats nearly twice the stated maximum for FSX models and the 14 i use in FSX Avatars.The texture load at one meg per person would also add up with 200 of them , so having a high definition or high poly character in the cab makes perfect sense, those characters used on and around scenery elements could in all probability be further reduced in bone counts and the polycount further reduced as they plan to allow normal mapping to create the definition with "imposters,( technique involves making normal map from a high poly model and applying that to low poly mesh )you can do this now with FSX Aircraft for air intakes etc `) .With the imposters (super lowrez) models being called into play at a distance as planned there might be a chance to reduce demands on the machine, my experience with animating objects for use in FSX has 200 animated objects onscreen being the outside limit(on a quad), of course i have not seen more than the published accounts of rendering engine and platform improvements but can imagine the effect of all those " transforms " being rendered frame by frame as being significant. I stand to be corrected by those more informed on these matters but couldn

Yeah. Totally cool. Thats what is really missing in FS.Who needs a working ATC, good flight dynamics, a functioning weather system and all that stuff.Waving people we need.Looking at all the rave about new cloud and ground textures I'm wondering if the community just gets what it deserves.Alex

"These are steps that did not happen before FSX shipped, so that is a major change in the studio

>Yeah. Totally cool. Thats what is really missing in FS.>>Who needs a working ATC, good flight dynamics, a functioning>weather system and all that stuff.>>Waving people we need.>>Looking at all the rave about new cloud and ground textures>I'm wondering if the community just gets what it deserves.>>AlexHi Alex!When will you learn that constant negativity is tiresome?Just understand what Phil is actually saying!!!!All the best and get off your soapbox! The community, Aces and especially Phil do not deserve what you are dishing out CONSTANTLYAlfred

Constantly? CONSTANTLY?Wouldn't say so. This if my first rant for years.Either you're thinking about somebody else or this is just a canned response.Alex

60Hz is just used as a baseline to perform the computations against, that is all.30Hz is probably a more reasonable goal.sure, FSX is CPU bound, but where? our profiling shows that once you hit high-density areas a lot of time is spent either waiting for a)the bus transfer of the data or b)the GPU driver to churn through the API calls.optimizing the way the engine draws can help with B. content budgeting is the only way to help with A. if the numbers show we should cap the high-res characters at 30 and do the rest via imposters - what happens if we draw all 200 as high-res? bad things for performance, thats what. and those things are content related and cannot be fixed "post ship" in a service pack in the code; instead you need to ship a boatload of content. so the wise way to engineer the platform is be intentional about content budgets up-front, give the artists realistic targets based on those budgets, and manage the content accordingly in the runtime.only if you do all of that can you hope to be performant because no design on the planet can help you if you are 6x overbooked on bus bandwidth due to content issues.that is how you get good performance out of the box and avoid the need for SPs.

>Phil has made my year with this statement.Same with me!So I guess my system WILL run FS11 better than FSX as I have been told? Phil might know?Sorry, this is kind of off-topic.ON-topic: FS11 could be released Summer 2009 or Holiday 2010. I don't think that's correct but that's how I see it.As for the people, great! It would be nice to have a cabin view with people around you! Or see their faces in the window! Great ideas, ACES.

FS11 - The Sims

>Check out the new character animation about 0:26 minute into>this video clip...>>Holy Smoke! The engineer waves at you! :)>>

>>BillWow, that's amazing!I am going to get TS2 + the SDK, and model the "Stourbridge Lion"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stourbridge_Lionin gmax. ;)RhettFS box: E8500 (@ 3.80 ghz), AC Freezer 7 Pro, ASUS P5E3 Premium, BFG 8800GTX 756 (nVidia 169 WHQL), 4gb DDR3 1600 Patriot Cas7 7-7-7-20 (2T), PC Power 750, WD 150gb 10000rpm Raptor, Seagate 500gb, Silverstone TJ09 case, Vista Ultimate 64ASX Client: AMD 3700+ (@ 2.6 ghz), 7800GT

>>ON-topic: FS11 could be released Summer 2009 or Holiday 2010.>I don't think that's correct but that's how I see it.>after Trains2, which is holiday 2009. we are not able to release 2 game titles the same year. which should be broad enough a hint as to the likely timeframe.

The key takeaway for me is that ACES has learned from FSX and they are using those lessons for future versions.We have a good amount of evidence that leads us to believe that there will be major changes in the rendering pipeline this go- not only instancing, but setting up realistic asset budgets for the content teams. Of course, all bets will be off for third parties :)I'm one of those nuts that flies with 100% traffic- in KATL!It works, but not as well as I'd like. If I could get at least 30 fps in that scenario I'd be thrilled, but the cycle will never end- objects will scale up their polys as processing power escalates.I've got a good beefy system and there are still places with issues, but those are worst cast (ORD/ATL at 100% traffic, loaded with AI)Otherwise I'm thrilled with FSX- yes, thrilled. TS2 looks very cool in it's early state. I can see the character models being very cool in (FS11) adventures, but less so (to me) in free flight mode- which is all I do. It's goingto be a bigger impact in TS2 though as everything is on teh ground.I am looking forward to running the Old Colony lines out of Boston- I'm on the train to/from Lakeville every day (and work for the transit authority that runs the subways).

Well, I'm not getting FS11 until MS distributes Windows7. Or whatever MS decides to call the successor to VISTA. Also I won't be waiting to buy Windows7, until I hear and read how well the new OS functions. Unfortunately for now, I'm stuck with VISTA that I purchased with a new computer, believing the latest OS would be beneficial when migrating to FSX. How wrong was I?So I'm not going to budge to FS11 or to Windows7 until the reviews on both are overwhelmingly favorable on both.Tony

Holiday 2010 then.Will it be suited for today's hardware?Thanks,