Things that should be in FSX

**Payt** · 01-06-2006, 10:19 AM

Here's another of those lists of things i'd like to see in FSX. Add to your hearts'content if you like, but try to keep things a bit realistic :)

1- Directional sound
I't'd be a great improvement if you could have different sounds for different angles of a plane. Ever noticed how an airplane (especially jets) sound quite different when, say, approaching you andgoing away from you? First there's a piercing whine from the engines for example, and when it goes away from you, you get to hear a low rumble of jetblast. It'd also be nice to have a delay in sound as the airplane gets farther away from you. This would be vrucial especially for supersonic aircraft, whose sound you only hear after the plane has long since passed.

2- Grass. Nowadays any decent graphix card is capable of furr-modeling, which should be applied to generate grass, hay and other such vegetation when you're close to the ground. We've seen is in many other games before, and i don't see why FSX wouldn't be capable of it. It would make such a huge difference in the appearance of runways, roads.. well just about everything.

3- Movement. What i mean is simple things like trees and other vegetation waving in the wind. Apparently there are already birds in FSX, which is a great step in the right direction. How about some more critters roaming the earth? How cool would it be to chase a herd of giraffes in africa in your little chopper? lol. Or to just have some cows in meadows, whales swimming just below the surface here and there.. stuff like that. Also, i'd really love to see the roads being populated by those things they were made for in the first place.. cars! How about trains? I mean.. the tracks are there, so is anyone actually going to use them now? How cool would it be to actually have people walking around on airports? They're invaluable in getting a sense of scale.. and perhaps you can actually jetblast a few of them into the ocean at st. Maarten?

4- Speaking of jet-blast, we've seen some interesting effects being generated by some add-on planes which had smoke that actually left the impression that the engines are genrating power. I'm talking about the magnificient concorde and vulcan add-ons which have smoke actually being emitted by the engines, instead of popping up some distance behind it and just hanging there statically. What we need is heat-waves (just like in Lock-on) and smoke that spouts from the engine according to the amount of power is generated, and which then goes on to be blown in the wind (Think X-plane here, but make it a bit more grapically interesting).

5- A physics engine which can properly handle VTOL planes. It seems a bit strange to me that in it's legacy of 20 years of flight simulation, MS hasn't been able to properly simulate something to the likes of a harrier or on osprey. Mind you, those are incredibly fun planes to fly, and it would be a very welcome addition to finally see an engine capable of simulating them.

Well, that's my wish-list so far. Bring on the comments and the additions ;)

***n4gix*** · 01-06-2006, 01:16 PM

>1- Directional sound

FSX will feature 5.1 surround sound. What more is there? ;)

>2- Grass.

Possibly...

>3- Movement. What i mean is simple things like trees and other
>vegetation waving in the wind. Apparently there are already
>birds in FSX, which is a great step in the right direction.
>How about some more critters roaming the earth? How cool would
>it be to chase a herd of giraffes in africa in your little
>chopper? lol. Or to just have some cows in meadows, whales
>swimming just below the surface here and there.. stuff like
>that. Also, i'd really love to see the roads being populated
>by those things they were made for in the first place.. cars!

Vehicles are shown on highways in the screenshots previewed. Jason W. has already confirmed that they are fully animated.

Guess who owns the "Zoo Tychoon" game title? It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that may be included in FSX. Let's hope! :)

**Payt** · 01-06-2006, 01:51 PM

What more is there than 5.1 sound? Well, it's all really nice have the sound surround you, ofcourse (which is what 5.1 does), but if it's just going to be the same old static looped engine sounds, it's going to be just adequate instead of a really convincing airplane sound.

I'm a bit of a sound geek actually. With my background in music i've noticed that nowadays it's possible to generate sounds built on physical models of things. In the music industry there are already physical models of things like guitars, flutes, brass instruments which sound indistiguable from the real thing. Now how much of a stretch would it be to apply such a model to the generation of airplane sounds? Especially jet planes shold be easy to do convincingly. Instead of endless multisamples to represent each frequency properly, now all you do is enter the dimensions of jet-angine, the materials it's made of, the frequencies at which things are spinning and the physics come up with the proper sound.

One could even go as far as having the sound being influenced by such variables as the weather, distance, whether you're inside the plane or outside of it, your position in the plane, etc.

It's just an idea, but i'm convinced that that's the way of the future. The things that's kept it back untill now was that such physical models eat up a lot of processor time. This is not the case anymore though.. i think it would eat up 5% at a reasonably equipped pc nowadays.

In any case, what i was referring to with the directional sound is something similar to what was found in flight unlimited (2 or 3, not sure). So it can be done.. question is: will the MS team go through the trouble of implementing it?

I'll have another look at the screenshots to spot the cars.. which one were you referring to?

**jcmissionary** · 01-06-2006, 02:58 PM

Here's one.

http://www.flightsim.com/notams06/fsx0104/grab_021.jpg

I've also seen one of a police helicopter hovering over a freeway, with some fairly dense road traffic on it. Hopefully, it won't be a FPS killer like AI traffic can be....

Edit: It's hard to tell by this shot if those cars are real or just part of the ground texture. Sure wish I could find that police chopper one.

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**DK8290** · 01-06-2006, 03:35 PM

"Vehicles are shown on highways in the screenshots previewed. Jason W. has already confirmed that they are fully animated."
----------------------

Wow....do you mean their doors open! (just kidding ... I'll wait for FS20 for that small detail)

The pic 3 from the bottom of this page has a nice bunch of highway traffic

http://www.simflight.com/modules.php...ticle&sid=7502

**Payt** · 01-06-2006, 04:21 PM

This does look pretty encouraging

Icmissionary, the screenshot you posted sems to show 'traffic' that is as flat as a pancake. It's a bit hard to tell indeed, but it seems to me that it's just textures.

Also, a lot of the other screenies seem to show the good óle tumbleweed-world roads.. i.e... completely deserted. I am rather encouraged by the screenshot which does show traffic though, and hope that it represents the way things will look in FSX.. and that it's animated in a proper fashion :)

**Payt** · 01-06-2006, 06:53 PM

After a second look at the traffic, i started to notice something of a scale issue. Either the trees and houses are incredibly huge, or the traffic is incredibly tiny.. something just doesn't seem right about it.