Fsau

It means exactly that, they removed a lot of old unnecessary legacy code to trim it down (something FSX was in dire need of).

Low settings looks like: no anti-aliasing, low object density, simpler and fewer clouds, no water shaders, lower resolution textures, more or less the same thing you get between high and low settings on FSX.XP and DX9 is a must if they want to stay true to their commitment of wider appeal, I'm sure there are plenty of users out there who are still rocking DX9 cards and XP. If they took this away it would completely exclude that group. Possibly it will be DX9 and a fully functioning DX10.I think even though the water in the first shot might look prettier, it looks far more realistic in second.

Yes, I actually did this DXT conversion (I think this is what you are talking about) on my FSX textures on a previous install. It did nothing noticeable for my frame rates, and depending on the information present didn't reduce the size of the files by much but this is certainly a possibility. The problem is smaller files contain less info and therefore look comparably worse. I tried DXT1 and did notice a difference, DXT3 is the way to go if you ever give it a go yourself, the performance gains are very minimal in my experience, the FSX devs tested all these formats and came to the same conclusion. Back on topic they may have reduced the number of textures used or done away with the raw bitmaps, I'm sure there are plenty of areas where FSX is a little unnecessarily heavy.Edit: so many mistypes.

It's possible they have just slimmed down the initial install and then you buy high definition areas.10GB is still quite massive, even for a global simulator when you consider that a large percentage of the world is covered in a small amount of repeated textures.You could be right, it may just be Hawaii, the latest screenshots certainly don't offer any evidence to the contrary but I hope you are wrong.Honestly if it does turn out to be a region specific simulator I will lose interest in Flight pretty quickly, there is something so fundamental about a Flight sim retaining complete global modeling, I have fond memories of those transatlantic crossings, or just starting up a flight from an airport whose name I cannot even pronounce. If Flight were to lose this I won't be too keen on buying it, maybe I will pick it up when it goes on sale. At least we aren't stuck without alternatives, Xplane is looking better each day and with engines like Outerra I don't think we will be stuck without choice.

LOL Mike! It's time for me to come clean... I am only here to convert the tea drinkers to the one true hot beverage that is coffee. It's not going too well.

Just saw the update today. One of the best news updates to date, it comes across with pretty definite information, min specs and even comparison shots between low and high settings. The screenshots are stunning! Looks beautiful. I did notice at first glance though there was no rain effect on the wind shield :( Let the speculation begin indeed FSXMinimum System Requirements Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista / Windows 7 Processor: 1.0 Ghz RAM: Windows XP SP2 - 256MB, Windows Vista – 512MB Hard Drive: 14GB Video Card: 32MB DirectX 9 compatible Other: DX9 hardware compatibility and audio board with speakers and/or headphones Online/Multiplayer Requirements: 56.6 kbps or better for online play I wonder what they did to reduce it by 4GB???Looking forward to "an exciting announcement"...

I disagree, it may be true for titles like COD, but with flight simulators it's such a niche market. What MS are attempting to do with Flight in my view is just broaden their core user group, maybe there is just confusion to what a core user group is. I am talking those who will buy a title over and over and the fact that you do need that group of consumers to have long term viability. Do you think they are just out there to make a one-off buck, or create more flight sim fanatics that will strengthen their future sales? Maybe, maybe not, who knows. I was just replying to the comment that they couldn't care less what we want from Flight. It does make future sales a safer bet than if they are just relying on only new users. Returning customers are always better than new customers, simply because it takes a lot less effort, time and money to gain profit from this group. To me this just makes good business sense.

Didn't say anything about revenue mate, but wouldn't you agree that it has been the core users that have kept it going as long as it has? The casual user will more than likely put it down after a month or two and then would they even bother with the sequel? only if they are hooked, which is when they become part of the core users.Lets hypothetically say they released a little kiddies game, where you fly around and drop paint on targets; completely ignoring what long time fans have enjoyed yet still appealing to a certain range of consumers. This might work out well for short term profits but it would be better to build a long term relationship with returning customers. This is how you would want any business to run, it's far better to have returning customers than constantly having to pull in new ones.

No way it will require SLI/Xfire lol

This is not true, the people here represent the core user base, many long time series have completely failed because they stopped listening to their core users.

This tells me we are at the very least a year away from release.

Looks really good, especially the airport shots. Much more impressed by these screenies than anything previous, they look a lot cleaner, shows how much a difference AA can make. Any performance figures?

Who are you taking a stab at here? What does this mean?

In a presidential speech no less.

Would you really want to drive cross country?

Going off the most recent screenshots Xplane 10 is looking like FSX or FS2004 and in many cases somewhat worse.

Honestly Horatio, I'm all for fun and humor but why say "Oh Gawd Not another suggestion post" only to post this running joke about tea.I love all those ideas Simmerhead, a couple like the medivac are done in FSX and aren't that great, not the concept just the execution is a little poor. The missions where you need to lift cargo onto the back of trucks and boats in FSX is a prime example; The behavior of the cargo is so frustrating, at times for no reason at all it would shoot up above the heli in mid flight and swing uncontrollably, the difficulty of that mission for me came from the awful physics engine rather than task itself. There is nothing more frustrating in a game when the world you are in acts in such an unintuitive way, the brain does adapt to the poor coding but it makes it virtually impossible to develop and learn skills when basic laws like gravity have a mind of their own. Hopefully we can look forward to something a little more polished in the Flight missions.

Now that's enough of this, sometimes I wonder about this forum when I start seeing facts being posted.

Crop dusting would make a great little set of missions. Another similar idea would be to have firefighting, with aircraft such as the CL-215 and helis.

Call it Passenger Simulation 2012, there must be a HUGE untapped market out there for this type of game!

There is little to no risk provided you educate yourself, of course whether it's worth it or not is up to the end user, some don't want to get too personal with their hardware. Like mike pointed out the biggest hurdle (hurdle not risk) is the extra heat production (where I live we have 95 - 100F summers) but an aftermarket cooler is dirt cheap for the gains. I switched to water cooling about a year ago but before then I ran a $90 air cooler.If you are up to doing a little self education on the subject it's well worth it, I achieved the biggest performance gains from increasing the stock clock speed. I don't know much about AMD, I'd aim for 3.5 GHz, it would depend on your ram and other hardware. Tons of material out their to help you learn.Mike where did you hear that disinfo? lol "serious overclockers routinely expect to fry their chips" is a ridiculously untrue statement. Don't be afraid of your hardware, it's there to be used to the fullest not babied because you spent X amount of $ on it.

Ah yes, the great anti-tea crusade of 2011, it will go down in history as the greatest fight man has embarked upon to defeat the tyrannical rule of nonsensical discussion. God speed my friend, god speed.

Jp don't upgrade anything in the hopes of achieving better performance in FSX, it's an endless race chasing a carrot on a stick. If anything you might want to think about overclocking that Athlon to a real mans frequency More ram is also a relatively cheap upgrade that might give you a small improvement. Just don't expect too much.

Right, so the question what we want from Flight corresponds directly to what MS want from Flight.

Our money.