Microsoft Flight Simulator X

The worst game engine in the world???

Can you tell me any other game that tries to do what it is doing with the level of detail it has. Yes it needs high quality hardware, but it trying to create a huge world. Remember this isn't Half Life 2 or Fear with loading in between levels. I'm more than happy with the quality of the engine. But then I've got the hardware to support it.

Taff
 
FrannoBaz said:
FSX has got to have the worst game engine in the world.... seriously...
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I have to disagree too. There is nothing wrong with the game engine at all. Wait for the hardware to catch up and the DirectX API and associated drivers to mature and you'll have one hell of a flight sim.

Consider the market, it's an enthuiast piece of software and because of such, hardware will likely be more up to date than most. Consider also that FSX will have a very long life as 'games' go. The 3rd party developer market requires time to create addons to evolve the software so when deciding to build the game they had to really release it with future hardware and API infrastructure in mind. What we're seeing is almost compatibility mode. It runs well when you sacrifice complexity and animations. This is virtually all CPU bound, which isn't helped with the fact that Microsoft/Aces Studio 'assumed' that CPU performance would increase by GHz and not by core. This has also affected the performance but I'm assured by other DirectX programmers it's fixable and we should see improvements in the imminent update.

Don't give up on FSX because your Barton doesn't like it. If you've got a fairly hefty PC then you'll need to spend time with the settings to get the best out of it.

My FSX runs great.

{E6300 | 2GB RAM | X1900XT | Vista}
 
brucey034 said:
Call me stupid, but how do you get it to auto land ?
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You need to tune the nav radio to the ILS Frequency for the approch you intend to use. The you need to approach the runway below the glideslope having captured the localiser in Approach mode. If you Aircraft is capable of CATIII Autoland (PSS 757 Level-D 767 etc) then all three autopilots will engage and 'LAND3' will be displayed and autoland will follow including flare and rollout etc.

If all of the above is as clear as mud then pay a visit to either www.avsim.com or www.flightsim.com.
 
spinneR~uk said:
I have to disagree too.

My FSX runs great.

{E6300 | 2GB RAM | X1900XT | Vista}
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A quick search on the internet will show you are in the minority, fsx is totally cpu bound, a little more searching will show that 'sp1' is imminent and this is 99% performance addressing ie multicore support and streamlining the 'calls' something makes which apparently were getting extremely congested.
 
singularity said:
A quick search on the internet will show you are in the minority, fsx is totally cpu bound, a little more searching will show that 'sp1' is imminent and this is 99% performance addressing ie multicore support and streamlining the 'calls' something makes which apparently were getting extremely congested.
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I did mention this in my previous post(s).

Yes, FSX is CPU bound but with the right balance of settings for the hardware you can get FSX to run well, also mentioned in previous posts. A quick blast around the Flight Sim forums also reveals people having varying degrees of success with spending time tuning the settings, something most people will not grant it. I feel there is a culture of buying 8800GTX's and running everything max in 1600+. This won't work with FSX; some give is needed.
 
Looking at the latest blogs i *think* FSX SP1 is on track for a release at the end of this month. Lots of performance issues addressd, better optimisation and more threads for multi core goodness!

Can't wait. :)
 
I installed the VFR Real Scenery Vol 1: South East England today.

Heres a comparison of the default scenery and the VFR Scenery.

Default:

FSX-Default-Autogen.jpg


VFR:
Somewhere near Heathrow.

2007-4-10-62.jpg


2007-4-10-156.jpg


2007-4-10-187.jpg
 
Looking at the default scenery I think you need to turn complexity down a touch to improve quality.

As for the VFR scenery, it looks superb.
 
Traffic Add On

Bought the Download version of Traffic last night, wow, what a difference this makes to the game. I love now being at airports and seeing all the planes queuing for take off slots.

Also makes landing at busy airports much harder as you have to hit your landing slot, otherwise you'll be told to go around.

I'd recommend anyone with a serious interest in FSX to go and buy this add on as it's a reasonable price and adds a lot to the game.

Check out the vid on http://www.justflight.com/product.asp?pid=94, it's awesome seeing 3 planes in a line approaching the airport.

I'm sure theres a lot more to get out of this upgrade than what I've seen so far, anyone here used it a lot and got any tips for setting it up. As I've just gone for the default install.

Will post some airport flyby's this evening. Just need to add on some VFR Real Scenery now to top it off. Want to download them but seems like the only download version is London. I hate having to wait for deliveries.

Cheers

Taff
 
Some more info about the sp1 for FSX
This from Aces studio:

“Flight Sim X SP1 greatly increases multicore utilization and will scale as more threads are available leading to reduced load times as well as frame rate improvements and greater visual complexity during flight. The Flight Simulator team at Microsoft is pleased to work with Intel to provide our end users with a great gaming experience."

And I wanted to take some time and explain what this means for FSX and FSX flyers.

Our multi-core support will take advantage of both 2 and 4 cores today, and more cores in the future when they become available via a config setting. This is for both Intel and AMD processors.

At load time, we run the terrain loading on threads across the cores. This can result in reduced load times, the actual percent reduction can vary but it could be reduced by as much as 1/3.

At render time, we run the terrain texture synthesis on threads across the cores. During flight on multi-core machines, as terrain and terrain textures are loaded you will notice significant multi-core usage. As all tiles are loaded, the multi-core usage will fall off, this is expected. As the terrain is re-lit, approximately every minute, you will see multi-core usage increase. As you bank and load terrain tiles, or as you fly forward and force a load of more terrain tiles, you will see the multi-core usage increase.

At render time, we now perform more extensive batching of objects to reduce our API Draw calls. The batch rebuilds are also performed on a thread and scheduled on cores.

For those of you on single core machines, we did do some performance work to benefit you as well. The batching work will help even on a single core. Plus we made some changes to animations to make them perform better and we modified how we draw trees to reduce API SetTexture calls.

So we really tried to hit all the wickets with our performance work. I still don’t want to make any final FPS gain claims, and will stick with my conservative 20%. We expect it to be more, but we need to get Beta2 out and see where we are.

As far as the release date for SP1, we need to get Beta2 out and see what remains. The last day of April is still possible, but any significant Beta2 bugs will cause us to fix them and delay – we want SP1 to be right for the community and are not tied to a date.

Note - hyperthreaded is not multi-core. Our current plan is to treat HT machines as single-core since we noticed extensive collisions between threads which caused stutters.
 
Supertaff said:
Bought the Download version of Traffic last night, wow, what a difference this makes to the game. I love now being at airports and seeing all the planes queuing for take off slots.

Also makes landing at busy airports much harder as you have to hit your landing slot, otherwise you'll be told to go around.

I'd recommend anyone with a serious interest in FSX to go and buy this add on as it's a reasonable price and adds a lot to the game.

Check out the vid on http://www.justflight.com/product.asp?pid=94, it's awesome seeing 3 planes in a line approaching the airport.

I'm sure theres a lot more to get out of this upgrade than what I've seen so far, anyone here used it a lot and got any tips for setting it up. As I've just gone for the default install.

Will post some airport flyby's this evening. Just need to add on some VFR Real Scenery now to top it off. Want to download them but seems like the only download version is London. I hate having to wait for deliveries.

Cheers

Taff
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It does make it a lot more interesting eh?

If you want even more of a challenge go to www.vatsim.com and sign up and fly online with real ATC and multiplayer traffic. When its busy its REALLY busy and intense. :D
 
Dashik said:
It does make it a lot more interesting eh?

If you want even more of a challenge go to www.vatsim.com and sign up and fly online with real ATC and multiplayer traffic. When its busy its REALLY busy and intense. :D
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Hi Dashik,

Just had a look at the URL you supplied and it just seems to be an advertising/redirect site with loads of pop ups.?

Taff
 
Supertaff said:
**Snip**
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I have Aerosofts My Traffic X and its very good. I can also highly recommend adding a traffic system to FSX as it makes a huge difference. Sometimes it's hard to get a word in edgeways and ATC keep asking if you've received the last transmission. As soon as you try to respond someone, somewhere jumps in and makes a request. It's great!!!

Hodge said:
**Snip**
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That does sound like the kind of schpiel we're all waiting to hear and conservatively estimating a 20% performance hike is a superb expectation to set. Roll on SP1.
 
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