I went and preordered Dovetail Flight School

Thanks data!

We're waiting with baited breath for your report.:rolleyes: I hope it makes through your bored issue.

Lol, I thought x-plane would help but, same old-same old.

There you go! Maybe this is the biggie!:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Hope springs eternal, but if you've grown bored with FSX, the most successful flight simulator program in history, with military, commercial, ga aircraft - thousands of sceneries and airports, missions, everything from gliders to spacecraft - if that's not enough to keep you engaged, why would a training scenario program keep your interest? :confused:

"What you put into life is what you get out of it."

- Clint Eastwood

Lol, I thought x-plane would help but, same old-same old.

Not quite the same because X-Plane nicely models hard landings, with bits flying off..:)

But overall FSX is my favourite, have a rummage through this thread to see the wondrous things you can do with it-

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?248567-How-do-you-keep-FSX-interesting

Hope springs eternal, but if you've grown bored with FSX, the most successful flight simulator program in history, with military, commercial, ga aircraft - thousands of sceneries and airports, missions, everything from gliders to spacecraft - if that's not enough to keep you engaged, why would a training scenario program keep your interest? :confused:

 

Lol, I've been simming since FS98. In 98-99 the multiplayer was awesome and I would spend countless hours with friends filing flight plans on fsnav and the cracking open a beer and flying all night long. Those days seem to have passed. I've tried multiplayer from time to time since and it always gets hit by trolls looking to crash the party. i am a casual flyer so vatsim is out of the question for me. Also, and this may sound non-hardcore, but FSX is showing it's age. I have become used to modern graphics and eye candy. I have a multitude of addons but even with those it's getting old.

I guess I'm just ready for something new. It's as simple as that.

Not quite the same because X-Plane nicely models hard landings, with bits flying off..:)

But overall FSX is my favourite, have a rummage through this thread to see the wondrous things you can do with it-

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?248567-How-do-you-keep-FSX-interesting

I love x-plane, however there are things that take me out of it such as the different, and in my opinion, less user friendly auto pilots, the lack of included, high quality heavy jets, and the lack of rendered cities and airports. Having said that, I think that x-plane has far better general scenery and performance, not to mention the great flight models. I guess I'm just looking for something that bridges the gap.

..I think that x-plane has far better general scenery and performance, not to mention the great flight models..

It's amazing how we all see things differently! I found the X-Plane default scenery to be bloody awful, and as for performance I found it to be no better and no worse than FSX.

But what kills X-Plane for me is the fact that light prop aircraft have no natural stability and a roll begins slowly developing, and no amount of careful trimming will make them keep their wings level, as if they're balanced on a knife edge.

It seems that the product has been pushed back a month...oh well, I still have 10 other sims to fly until then.

I sure hope you didn't make a deposit!! Since computer programs were first written there has been a lot more Vapor Ware than software ever published.:p How many years have we been waiting for 64bit FSX?:cool:

Yes someone will now say there is 64bit simware out there. True, but it doesn't sim in the manner I expect a sim to sim.:rolleyes:

Yes someone will now say there is 64bit simware out there. True, but it doesn't sim in the manner I expect a sim to sim.:rolleyes:

That would be me. And my point was exactly that, although XP uses all 64 bit, it is not in any way better than FSX or P3D. I am just curious as to why you expect so much of a 64 bit ESP sim - what is it supposed to do better? I rather expect that we won't notice any difference at all - if we are lucky, the OOMs are gone, but that is not sure either.

FWIW, I recently decided to give XP another spin. It has its own HDD and its own Windows, so no cross compatibility issues. I even bought a couple of addons (727, MU-2, SkyMaxx) to give it a fair chance against my huge FSX/P3D setups. Unfortunately it failed. I would second Scatterbrain, the default scenery is really awful, especially when you run it directly against P3D V2 let alone V3. I don't like the water rendering, it looks like a light blue mirror, not at all like an ocean. I was very disappointed in the FDE of the payware aircraft. In my experience RW airplanes aren't this "nervous" in the air, especially not on takeoff and under full power (yes, I have flown a real plane myself a couple of times). People seem to think that this instability is somehow more "real", gives them a superior "feeling" of flight - but that IMO is just because there is more movement on the screen. In RW you hardly notice those forces, because your eyes and equilibrium counter these effects. In RW even a small C152 is very stable in flight, a lot more so than my FJS 727 in XP. But I admit that part of the "wrongness" of the FDE could stem from the fact that there is no DHM, and I am not used to a rock solid dashboard anymore. Other than that, the UI (menus and in-sim interaction) IMHO is a typical engineers product with little regard to useability. Performance wise I have irregular stutters and blurry textures, so basically nothing new here. Textures don't seem to have seasonal changes, which is a bit of a letdown.

I am sure that there is room for improvement - I just don't see me troubleshooting this. I will add a few things like the OSM and photoreal sceneries, see where that takes me.

I stand by my initial assessment - it shows that Laminar Research has nowhere near the resources that went into building the ESP sims.

My system: i7 5930K @4,0 GHz, 32 GByte RAM, Asus Strix GTX 980ti, triple full HD NV surround.

Exactly! XP is the 64 bit sim I was referring to. And I also don't like it at all.

What I want is a quality sim such as FSX in 64bit so it can use more memory and process faster, better. Hopefully this sim will utilize all the cores your CPU has, use a high quality GPU with its' RAM, and all or most of the board installed RAM as well. If that be true, the new sim will "fly" and can be be hyper detailed compared to what we are limping along with now!

If done correctly, this sim will almost certainly not be backwards compatible. However, if it uses 64gig or even just 32gig of RAM rather than just 4gig, plus the better GPU capabilities available today, it will be IMHO more than worth the cost of replacing every piece of add on software for FSX I own! :cool: And yes, that means I'll be out a bunch of money because I own a lot of extra (scenery) software! :rolleyes:

Exactly! XP is the 64 bit sim I was referring to. And I also don't like it at all.

 

What I want is a quality sim such as FSX in 64bit so it can use more memory and process faster, better. Hopefully this sim will utilize all the cores your CPU has, use a high quality GPU with its' RAM, and all or most of the board installed RAM as well. If that be true, the new sim will "fly" and can be be hyper detailed compared to what we are limping along with now!

 

If done correctly, this sim will almost certainly not be backwards compatible. However, if it uses 64gig or even just 32gig of RAM rather than just 4gig, plus the better GPU capabilities available today, it will be IMHO more than worth the cost of replacing every piece of add on software for FSX I own! :cool: And yes, that means I'll be out a bunch of money because I own a lot of extra (scenery) software! :rolleyes:

Well... as you probably know, P3D V3 already does all that - except of course the memory limit.

People always make it sound like the ESP platform is somehow not capable enough, that it is in any way limited because of the way that it uses the resources available, especially the CPU. That is not the case, and XP in a way proves that point. It is just how this type of application works, you cannot process everything in parallel just like that. I think that there will not be a quantum leap in home computer flight simulation performance any time soon, there hasn't been one for 10 years now. And that is not because nobody tried, dismissing companies like Eagle Dynamics, LM and LR is just ignoring reality IMHO.

Btw. there is no reason at all that a 64 bit ESP sim should not be backwards compatible, unless the developers decide to make it so. Almost all sim addon aspects are just files to be read and processed, and these are by definition independent from the program that reads them. The only things that probably will break are programmatic addons that are too close to the sim core (= not using SimConnect), but again, the "makers" could provide an API wrapper for that too if they want.

I'm interested to see how Flight School and Dovetails other as yet unnamed simulator pan out, but I'm afraid that the golden days of Flight Simulator are well and truly over and I fear that they will continue down the path set by FSX:SE. Judging by their Train Simulator series, I fear it'll be just as un-optimised as FSX.

One of the reasons I'm still playing FS2004 is because FSX is increasingly a pay to play game. FSX freeware has never reached the lofty heights that FS2004 did. Of course, increasingly realistic and complex add-ons are going to require investment that needs to see a return, and that's great for the people that can afford them but many of us can't. Others don't want to take the game so seriously. Some people just want to fly the planes that they like how they want. Etcetera.

Every time I've tried to jump to FSX (Gold Edition and later Steam Edition) it's just turned into a massive faff to get performance anywhere near what I get from FS2004 (a constant 60fps now) and it would cost thousands to get the equivalent aircraft and scenery library that I have for FS2004. It just isn't worth the effort when a single addon can break the game, or an update through Steam can prevent an addon from working.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what comes next.

"

Well... as you probably know, P3D V3 already does all that - except of course the memory limit."

 

Wow!P3D already does all that!! On who's computer?? Not mine and I have a pretty nice machine which runs at 4.6 to 4.7GHZ plus a good GPU with ram and lots of 2400 ram on my motherboard.

 

About the only real difference I see in FSX & P3D is one (FSX) has a Kodachrome like screen tint and the other (P3D) has Ektachrome. I have both and find if I use detailed scenery and a detailed plane I have the same issues with each.

 

However I'm not dismissing anyone or any of their products. I've said often "if you like P3D or XP better, use them. I don't and that's why I don't even bother downloading my ORBX and other good software to P3D."

 

Even Vic admits P3D also has problems with far right sliders. Can we say memory limit??:cool:

 

BTW: I don't doubt that backwards compatibility is possible with 64 bit. However I have seen a lot of other software that is backwards compatible to totally outdated software which IMHO would be better as a clean slate rather than jumping through hoops to make old software run.

 

Trying to make everyone happy by providing backwards compatibility is, I feel one of the biggest problems when you otherwise could make a "quantum leap" with parallel software .

And, why would you go to all the expense to buy or even design a true 64bit running program and then run your old stuff on it anyway? How could you gain anything? If that's what you want to use, stay with what you have.:rolleyes:

I'd like to add a comment from W2D2 concerning a new flick he just watched.

 

"The biggest problem I see it that the stuttering is just as bad as FSX or P3D. If the full sim is as bad as that you can count me out for sure. That's as civilized as I can get given that it's a real disappointment.....

 

Doug"

 

As I said, FSX-P3D, are truly the same program!! I just prefer the Kodachrome tint of FSX.:cool:

Trying to make everyone happy by providing backwards compatibility is, I feel one of the biggest problems when you otherwise could make a "quantum leap" with parallel software .

And, why would you go to all the expense to buy or even design a true 64bit running program and then run your old stuff on it anyway? How could you gain anything? If that's what you want to use, stay with what you have.:rolleyes:

Well we already saw that happen with Flight... it's a shame no one stuck around long enough for an official SDK. The difference this time I hope is DoveTail is a bit more committed and just a little smidge more effective at listening to their target audience. :)

But still there are people playing TS2 when TS2016 is parsecs better than that old ancient game. But people have their preferences.. at this moment there are just as many people browsing both forums on the flipside of this site.

Well we already saw that happen with Flight... it's a shame no one stuck around long enough for an official SDK. The difference this time I hope is DoveTail is a bit more committed and just a little smidge more effective at listening to their target audience. :)

 

But still there are people playing TS2 when TS2016 is parsecs better than that old ancient game. But people have their preferences.. at this moment there are just as many people browsing both forums on the flipside of this site.

"The difference this time I hope is DoveTail is a bit more committed and just a little smidge more effective at listening to their target audience. :)"

Dove Tail or whomever is out there! We need to break free from the 32 bit single core CPU based software! And that truly isn't P3D!

The bottom line is that if you can't make FSX (or Accel) work at (locked) 30 fps then (for how many reasons - you count them - I don't have time) then you probably can't make ANY sim work at 30 fps. And will get stutters. And texture tearing. And ___ (blank - you fill in). It's that simple.

Chuck B

Napamule

BTW: I don't doubt that backwards compatibility is possible with 64 bit. However I have seen a lot of other software that is backwards compatible to totally outdated software which IMHO would be better as a clean slate rather than jumping through hoops to make old software run.

 

...

 

Trying to make everyone happy by providing backwards compatibility is, I feel one of the biggest problems when you otherwise could make a "quantum leap" with parallel software .

And, why would you go to all the expense to buy or even design a true 64bit running program and then run your old stuff on it anyway? How could you gain anything? If that's what you want to use, stay with what you have.

Please, there really is no need to mystify something into 64 bit software that in reality just isn't there.

At some point these past years your whole operating system switched from 32 to 64 bit (and multicore processing too) and you probably didn't even notice the difference. An example from our special case: scenery definiton is an XML file packed in a BGL. This has absolutely no bearing on the way the software that reads and processes them works - just like it does not matter with which version you open your JPEG files. A flightsim is just a really complex file processor (apart from active code in addons), nothing more.

A clean slate in software mostly also means a barren slate, and at least for me it would be a rather uninviting scenario to start my hobby from scratch again. Time flies and I expect a certain level of sophistication too.

And what Chuck said. 64 bit will not make any difference for the issues we are facing with this type of application - it is no accident that all simulators past and present suffer the same problems.

But - of course all this is just my 2 cents. I have been a professional enterprise software developer for 35 years now. I know what I know, and I have my opinions for a reason.

All I'm saying is - don't fall for the hypes that today's industry bestowes upon you. See that you make the most of what you have now, and by the sound of it, there is room for improvement there.

OK, I first worked with and adapted computer programs on the Apple IIE. Which doesn't mean anything other than that I'm old.

I'm certainly not an expert on the newest stuff. I haven't even tried to keep up since I retired ten years or so ago. But I am quite happy with the 64bit software compared to the 8bit stuff I started using. And yes I have noticed many changes that entailed.

32bit, 64bit, 128bit, none of those numbers are magic. But 64 bit utilized in a forward thinking way does access a lot more memory, parallel processing, and other advances to make better software. I believe this is really true when the code writers are not spending a bunch of their time making everything they design usable by old machines.

"A clean slate in software mostly also means a barren slate, and at least for me it would be a rather uninviting scenario to start my hobby from scratch again." That's what I thought when we first started using a mouse. However I've survived.

"See that you make the most of what you have now, and by the sound of it, there is room for improvement there." Perhaps a real pro like yourself can drop over and get me up to your special level?:p

What exactly do 64 bit or memory management have to do with parallel processing? As you obviously know software yourself, I am bewildered by that statement. If something can be calculated in parallel is not decided either by the hardware or the software but by the task that it has to fulfill. You cannot parallel process streams that depend on each other's results. And there is a lot of that in computer simulation.

"barren slate = against new tech": that is not what I meant. I just don't have the time or inclination to start again with a barren simulator world, where it will be years again until decent content arrives. For me personally, performace is important but only a close second to content. It took 8 years in FSX until the really amazing content was available, for XPlane it is finally happening after 20 years. That is why I would much prefer that someone thinks about compatibilty and that not the customers themselves claim that it is no problem for them to buy everything a second time if only they get a new simulator platform. That is feeding them the wrong message IMHO and giving them every excuse to milk us time and again. I firmly believe that for a genre like this, the base platform not changing is actually a good thing. Give the developers of the really important things, the addons, time to figure out stuff properly.

Perhaps a real pro like yourself can drop over and get me up to your special level?:p

Just because I develop FS addons on the side does not take me up to any special level, but I do like to think that I know a fair bit about the platform. Ranting aside, it really sounds odd to me that you have issues with P3D V3 on your system, starting with the blue tint that you mentioned. I was sceptical too for quite some time, and P3D idled along at the sidelines, but with the latest 3.2 release, P3D definitely surpasses my carefully built FSX setup. Sure, the old flaws within the content are still there, but performance and visuals wise there shouldn't be any reason not to get happy with it.

While adapting my addons to the new platform I realized that there are really amazing and totally new things that can be done with P3D V3. It seems to me that developers are just beginning to catch on, just now starting to really make use of it. Users who stuff their FSX content in P3D and then rant about that it is nothing more than a polished FSX are missing the point IMO - that outcome seems perfectly logical to me. Give the developers another year or two before you pass the final judgement. Hoping of course that someone will actually develop for P3D...

Wow, I didn't expect all of this. So let me say that, yes, FSX is the best overall flight sim in my opinion but there are things that I like about X-plane too.

The main things that I think x-plane has over FSX are very subtle but they are there. I like that x-plane actually models the lights on the runway and taxiways. Not just the lights, but the physical light fixtures. I like that there are trains on the tracks and deer running sometimes. I like that all of the roads are modeled better than FSX and that there are actual overpasses on the highways. Having said that, I hate the AI airport traffic and the autopilots suck and the default big jets are horrible.

I am not in the tank for either but I am hoping against hope that Dovetail does it right. That's all I was saying in this. Still, when it comes out I'll give a full report.

What exactly do 64 bit or memory management have to do with parallel processing? As you obviously know software yourself, I am bewildered by that statement. If something can be calculated in parallel is not decided either by the hardware or the software but by the task that it has to fulfill. You cannot parallel process streams that depend on each other's results. And there is a lot of that in computer simulation.

that's not what he said. He said they should start from scratch and make sure it gets the most out of the hardware. And if you haven't noticed there is a large amount of work the CPU is doing while every other game with virtual cockpits is entirely hardware rendered. Ie there is a huge amount of code that renders the cockpit instruments and then relays that to the GPU, while every other game out there, just sends the vector commands to the GPU and has a buffer rendered inside the GPU and composited inside the GPU, while getting free things like anti-aliasing... all in parallel to every other graphics task.