IUBrian

Attorney, private practice, primarily criminal defense. Started simming in middle school on SubLogic's flight simulator for the Commodore 64.

There is another point that occurred to me regarding the relative lack of interest in flight simming amongst the younger generation, at least from the American perspective. I'm 47. My grandfather flew a B-17. My dad wasn't a pilot, but he had an interest in flying because of his dad that transferred to me. There was a glamour to the planes of WW2, and there were a lot more former pilots who could pass down the love of aviation. I don't mean there's a glamor to the war, but the role of the allied air forces was glamorized for a younger generation, and there was a direct connection to those who flew those beautiful planes. I think because of that there are lot more people who are roughly my age who grew up with an avid interest in aviation. Sorry I've strayed afield from the OP's original comment.

I'm ambivalent about whether visuals make a significant difference to kids when it comes to flight simulation. My interest in flight simulation is because I was always interested in flight, thus SubLogic's crude flight simulator on my Commodore 64 was awesome. But I was a kid who always loved airplanes, and always has. My three children, on the other hand, aren't interested in flight, and also laugh at me for flight simming - because it's "boring." I even engage them, try to let them fly some of the simpler planes, tak about how cool it is to "fly" something that very accurately models a real airliner. They don't care - not because the graphics are inferior, but because there's no "goal;" you're just flying from point A to B. I think the same thing is true with models. I used to make plastic model airplanes (and cars) all the time as a kid. In all respects model technology is far superior to when I was a kid, but the enthusiasm seems to have waned - like flight simulation, plastic model making has an enthusiastic but small market. I think if anything kids today have much more limited attention spans when it comes to leisure activities. I think that more than anything contributes to the lack of youth enthusiasm.

To say "it doesn't say much for the platform when it takes so many years to produce a half decent model of anything of even minor complexity" begs the question; compared to what? How long should it take? Look at the "Call of Duty" series - the game is released every year, but by alternating studios, Treyarch and Infinity Ward for example, so that a developer is on at least a 2 year development cycle, with a game that earns numbers exceeding Hollywood blockbusters, and studies that can afford to employ a development team proportionately. Flight Simming inevitably will be more of a niche market - it's awesome for us, but more many people it's boring. It's never going to have the degree of popularity of the big console games, nor will the revenue justify the type of development teams that big budget games from Bethesda, EA, etc. can justify. And even those studios can be years between major releases. Frankly, given the return on investment I think the add-ons released for FSX, even in terms of development time, are remarkable. My point being, I think the relatively small user base is the reason for "limited" development, not the other way around.

In some respects I believe that abandonment of FS by Microsoft has been a blessing. If they were continuing to develop it, they would have the financial incentive to continue to make "new and better" iterations to FS that weren't backwards compatible, like EA Sports coming out with a new Madden or FIFA every year with only incremental changes. Would developers have been able or willing to create the spectacular add-ons that are now being made if the base platform was changing every two years? It may be argued that it would have been preferable if development had stopped with a 64 bit platform, but I think the stability of the platform has been beneficial from that standpoint.

Completely disagree - it seems to me that if anything, development has picked up; based upon my observations every new development project for P3D is developed for FSX, or perhaps conversely, they're developed for both platforms concurrently. And scenery? Whereas before there seemed to be a handful of developers capable of making high quality airports, the number seems to have quadrupled in the past couple of years, and the regions covered have likewise expanded, not to mention more general scenery add-ons. P3D may be driving it, to some extent, but it's not the entire explanation. The past year seems to have exploded . As to aircraft development, it may have slowed, but I believe that's more a consequence of the demand for high quality aircraft with incredible fidelity that require more time to develop. If the acceptable standard was pretty but simplistic aircraft models you'd probably see more.

My comment is less helpfull than an observation. I switched to DX10 almost by accident; I had OOM issues that I thought DX10 would fix; it didn't - it was another issue altogether. But my switch to DX10 was otherwise painless and easy, and after identifying the issue that caused me to switch, I preferred the look of FSX in DX10. It is better - but not Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally better. I think that's probably true across the board - one can chase flight simulator Nirvana, be it through tweaks, upgrading hardware, changing platforms, but I think most of the changes are inremental as opposed to revolutionary. I reached that point a few years ago - consistent frame rates over 30; that makes me drool, with my 2500k at 4.5 and 560 TI. But I enjoy my sim, and enjoy spending my time adding airports and scenery enhancements, sitting down, and taking off. Maybe in two years I'll upgrade everything, do the clean install, maybe change platforms. But for now maybe ignorance is bliss. Not really advice, but if you're happy with DX9 and have consistent performancce, that's probably good enough.

You'll probably get 100 replies, but I think the consensus is in terms of FPS you shouldn't see a significant difference, plus or minus. There's certainly nothing that I've ever read that a frame rate cut in half is a potential consequence attributable to the particularities of your system. However with the incredible number of variables it would likely be difficult to troubleshoot with the community short of posting your cfg, nvidia inspector settings, and Steve's DX10 settings. I suspect the more experienced users may have specific suggestions, but I know for myself when I've had unexplained performance issues the first step is starting with a clean cfg.

That was kind of my thoughts; looking at the screen shots it didn't look significantly different at a glance to the prior version - it may be, but I wasn't moved. And with high quality airports coming out almost every other week at 33% less, it seems a steep price to pay. Unlike others, I'm not dissatisfied with the previous version. By the same token for a flytampa or flightbeam price, it better be the same quality, and while I freely acknowledge they don't have to give a discount to prior customers, it doesn't seem like a compelling upgrade. I'm not bagging on the developer, it's just my honest assessment - I'm willing, and hoping, to be proven wrong.

My question, legitimately, is what is different from the prior version, both in terms of the actual airport and the software?

I stumbled on this on Netflix yesterday; I saw someone posted about this movie a couple of years ago. It's actors recreating several famous plane crashes based upon the cockpit voice recordings. It is macabre, but as a makebelieve flightsim airline pilot, I found the dialogue very interesting, seeing how the flight crew interacted, sometimes tragically missing vital clues, other times acting with amazing calm and competence. The "cockpits" used are crude, but the point of the movie was the people. It also made me realize that thanks to products such as the PMDG NGX and FS2Crew, I actually had a fairly good understanding of what the flight crew were doing and saying. It's sort of an airline pilot horror movie - I have to admit there was at least one time I jumped. If you watch it, I'd suggest not googling the content first. Although I remember two of the crashes, one because it was about 60 miles away from my home and the other because it's quite famous, it was interesting watching it "blind," not knowing what was happening or what was going to happen.

I recently looked this up; in terms of video signal, no difference - both are digital. HDMI can transmit audio as well, but no difference in picture quality.

As a fan of both developers, the ice having been broken, I hope a few frosty libations can bridge the divide.

Needing to do a full re-install is my major concern; like many of us, I have a TON of aircraft and scenery add-ons, and have reached a point where besides an occasional defrag I've squeezed all of the performance out of FSX that I can, and now have a stable and enjoyable platform where I can simply spend my time flying as opposed to tweaking. The thought of having to go through and reinstall all of my addons, plus remember all of the miscellaneous file modifications I've made was not something I was looking forward to. Granted, I'm sure the performance purists will always insist that a clean re-install of FSX following an OS upgrade is the only way to go, and not unreasonably so, if the breadth of the user experience is that it is unnecessary I'll be one happy customer.

I think Abrams will do a good job, as long as he doesn't interject time travel as he did in his otherwise excellent Lost and Star Trek. Star Trek in particular kept the characters true to their original nature, as opposed to a director's ego deciding to put his own "fresh take" on it. Abrams has spoken with reverence about the original Star Wars - I get the feeling that he wants to create the Star Wars universe as he would have imagined it when he was a kid. I too remember seeing the original Star Wars in the theater with my father, as a kid. I think there were still lines a week after opening. If he were alive I'm sure he would be just as excited to see it now as he was then.