3D Graphics Acceleration

As mentioned earlier, FS2000 does not compromise the state of the art of current 3DGAs, but it doesn't stop at the present. It keeps an eye on future, faster systems while working to support any level of graphics sophistication you current might posses.

Andy: We never go so far as to recommend specific pieces of hardware. But we do require z-buffering now,  which is something that was not the case in prior versions of Flight Simulator. Because z-buffering is now a requirement, that puts a certain restriction on how much memory on a video card is required because now you have to store a z-buffer too. We are still making sure that we are working down to older first generation hardware. 3Dfx Voodoo 1 with four meg of memory for example. First generation stuff will still work but obviously with a smaller texture buffer. We are not going to be able to do all the same sort of grand and glorious texture variations and transitions and things but that’s what I was talking about (before) when it scales back, it still runs and you’ll get the performance you can out of that hardware. And it’s a very acceptable experience. Cards coming out now with 32 and 64 Mb of texture memory and AGP, those things can only help you. You can run at a higher resolution because you have room for the texture memory, the frame buffer and the z-buffer all on the same card. The general rule for Flight Sim has always been – "Buy the fastest machine you can".

Bruce: It's important to remember that Flight Sim is a very popular product. It reaches a broad spectrum of users, some of them are very casual users and some that are really dedicated users, like the people that visit your site FlightSim.Com. We have to appeal to that broad spectrum, which is why we don’t aim it at a narrow band in the hardware. If you have all the bells and whistles it’s a great benefit like Andy said. But we also want to make sure that it’s a product that people can enjoy on the machine that they got last Christmas,  even if they are not going to go out and buy a new video card or upgrade their system just for that. So we really focused on the broad audience. That is part of the reason for the two products. (Scot: That is also why Michael Abrash did the software renderer which is part of that strategy.) That is for supporting those kinds of people.

Andy: There will be some people that don’t even own a 3D Card.

Bruce: Let me give you the sports analogy – If you take a sport like baseball or football. There are people out there who are absolute fanatics, they read all the stats, watch all the TV shows, they listen to sports talk radio, they go to or watch every game, they wear the team shirts, they are really into it. But there are a lot of other people who have a passing interest. They go to a couple of games a year, they’ll watch a few games on TV and maybe read the sports page and so forth. There is that whole spectrum and Flight Sim is the same way. There is a group of people who are very, very dedicated to the product, They build add-ons, and are reading your message bases everyday etc. But there is a whole bunch of other people for whom it's an interesting hobby. They enjoy the product but are not at quite that level of interest. We have to appeal to that whole spectrum. That is one of the reasons we decided to do the two versions.