Op-Ed: State of flightsim

[Soundwhiz]

Many good points there. For years I have struggled with FS9 on a P4 2.4 Ghz (student economy preventing any serious hardware upgrades).

The other day I bought 2 gigs of fast Ram, an E6600 Intel Core 2 Duo, a mid range graphics card and a dedicated hard drive. I immediately cranked the sliders to the max. *laughs* I almost cried when I set down my Level-D 767 in the VC at a positively bustling O'Hare, with excellent FPS never leaving the high twenties. I couldn't even taxi the default B737 at KORD on my previous rig. I can't get into a new sim right now where people with better hardware than myself are reporting "satisfactory, I suppose" kinda performance. FS9 is smokin'. I'm going to enjoy the living shizzle out of my trusty FS9, now that I have the hardware required to experience the sim the way it was intended.

I would have felt different if the simulation of the aircraft systems had been given a notable upgrade. I will join the FSX revolution eventually. Now I just want to enjoy the moment.

[metro752]

word

[aserna]

Ill second that!! :P

[Paul Smith]

Paul Hansen touched upon a number of interesting points in his Op-Ed. Most especially, how more and more people seem to be complaining about new versions of FS, when "back in the day" things were a lot happier.

Perhaps it is merely because we have come to expect so much, perhaps too much, from Flight Simulator. As FS has gotten more and more advanced, with better graphics, default aircraft, ATC/AI traffic, autogen scenery, excellent addon aircraft, virtual cockpits etc. etc. etc., with each new version of FS we come to expect more and more, and when things don't work out to our artificially high expectations we tend to throw the dummy out of the pram. This seems to have become much more apparrent with the last couple of releases of FS. We seem a lot more obsessed with "frame rates" and "realism", whereas in the old days we used a bit of imagination and had fun.

I must admit I have been tempted into this way of thinking . I latched on to FS fairly late, starting of with FS2000 (almost 8 years ago, unbelievable! I was still at school!). I can remember the excitement of the (at the time) good graphics, the thrill of flying Concorde at Mach 2, trying to land a fully-laden 777, trying (and failing) to tame the twitchy Lear 45, and teaching myself to fly properly in the C182 and the 737. I can also remember the "Illegal Operation" error messages that appeared frequently, but to me this was a minor irritation. I can remember buying the World Air Sim British Airways Boeing 757 pack and being almost elated at getting the chance to fly my favourite jet airliner... it was most enjoyable.

Then, about two years later, FS2002 appeared. I noticed the new features - autogen scenery, new aircraft (Caravan Amphibian and - holy mackarel - a 747!) and perhaps most important of all, interactive ATC and AI traffic. A major step forward. I had to have it.

I loved FS2002, so much so that I had it for 5 years. I was so pleased with the graphics, the performance etc. Sure, there were still the glitches - the flight dynamics of some of the aircraft, especially the 747, were a little dodgy. But hey, it was just a game, right? I had plenty of addons too - like Combat Jet Trainer and GB Airports. I had a lot of fun with FS2002. For this reason I decided against moving to FS9.

Then, along comes FSX. Hook, Line, etc. I was drawn in by the lovely smooth graphics, more new aircraft, improved ATC, missions, weather, yada yada. I had to have it. I tried the demo and that was it. I looked back at my old FS2002 and thought "Wow, that looks a bit... old." So I went out and bought FSX. And the trap had worked.

In a classic case of confirmation bias, I had convinced myself that the poor performance on my machine of the demo was "just because it's a demo". Hah hah. Well, I wasn't laughing when I was getting only 12fps maximum, with only moderate grapghics settings. "It's fine, I'll put up with it", I told myself. Although when the FPS creeped down to about 3 in areas like Heathrow it began to grate, and I finally accepted that my PC wasn't up to running FSX. I part-exchanged it with a friend for FS2004 (one of the FS2002 disks was broken, so I couldn't re-install), and here I am today, happy.

However, it's not Microsoft's fault that I can't run FSX on my machine; you can't blame Microsoft for it.

Perhaps we just need to cool our expectations a little, and chill out - majorly. Along with the rest of our "want it now" society...

[nobicus]

Surely the tweaking and refining is part of the hobby?
I started with FS4 - it feels like a million years ago.
I bought FSX when it was first released and then bought the GenX Photographic scenery of England when that was released ‘cos I like GA flying VFR rules. The sim stuttered like it had Kangaroo Gas in the tank (remember when you first started driving?). After two crashes of the whole computer I put it away for the spring and summer.
A fortnight ago I bought a chip upgrade ( an Athlon 64 X2 4400) to go with the twin Gforce 6600GT PCI Express graphics card already in the box.New twin 250 GB SATA drives completed what I could afford.
Wow!! Gen X scenery still stutters like it has St. Vitus Dance. So – tweak,tweak – I have reinstalled my FS2002 VFR Photographic scenery. Now with very satisfactory graphics (1280x1024x32 on a Benq flat screen and the sliders a respectable way to the right ) and Active Sky 6.5 running, for real world weather, I can fly at 1,000 feet, recognise the landscape from roadmaps, use the real world turnpoints when soaring and all at between 28-30fps on a full screen. My cup runneth over.
I have now started to learn how to decompile, alter and recompile scenery files so that I can move runways etc to fit the photographic scenery. Thank you Microsoft for doing it all in xml, which reads almost like English, and makes it easier for old geezers like me to learn. (Mind you I have to learn C++ so that I can use the simconnect.dll. properly to use the new thermals Microsoft have written ready) And thank you Microsoft for all the authoring tools contained in the SDK. Thank you flightsim.com for hosting all those files and thank you the many, many authors for all your free scenery library files. I have a veritable plethora of 3D objects to choose from to drop into the landscape.
It could be that if I wanted to climb into the latest mach 3 jet fighter and fly around the landscape at 500ft and 600 knots I might find it all unsatisfactory. But I don’t.
I love my old computer kit, I love FSX and the way I have got it organised. If you don’t like yours could it be the way you have organised it?

[Soundwhiz]

Tweaking is definitely part of the hobby. I must confess I love to tinker with the settings and I have accumulated plenty experience with that. The tweaking is no different than an automotive enthusiast working on his car. Down the road when the developers of my payware addons make my already purchased stuff run on FSX and I get double graphics cards I'll move onto FSX, and I am very aware of that tweaking will be the order of the day, that it's not going to be possible to fly it straight out of the box. That's not a problem. I love tweaking, and I love seeing the sim performance benefit from it.

As for the hardware. Of course Microsoft can't be blamed if you don't pack enough muscle. I'm not whining and griping about FSX. I'm waiting for the hardware that will let me run it as fluidly as I'm running FS9. Until that happens, FS9 reigns supreme not just from a performance perspective, but also visually. I could run FSX on my rig now I suppose, but I have tweaked, modded and enhanced FS9 to such length that only a demigod could have a better looking FS9 installation. I've got the sim running right now. 68 - 70 fps observing an onslaught of AI from Just Flight at Sydney's airport. And with my own cocktail of textures, drawing from freeware and commercial offerings, it's unreasonable to stuff it away in my abandon ware chest.

I don't want to be part of a FSX boycotting horde though, impeding the development of addons. That is why I bought a copy of the DeLuxe version. It is sitting beautifully in the bookshelf waiting for me to install it. It's not a question of if, but when.

[nobicus]

I forgot to mention that I have kept FS9 (with three years tweaking in it) 'cos some soaring stuff does not run properly in FSX. Horses for courses!!

[Paperflyer]

I bought Flight Simulator X Professional right when it came out. Of course, like so many of us experienced it, it didn't run well at first, but since Service Pack 1 I simply love it. Even though I am using somewhat medium settings, it looks quite a bit better than FS2004 and is so much more fun! Those missions are great and the new multiplayer features are fantastic.

Many of those who cry about everything FSX has to offer, did never really try it. I hated it until I flew the first missions. I complained about the graphics until I learned (in X-Plane) that the fun part is flying, not watching a beautiful slide show.
So lower your settings and have fun! It's worth it!

[Soundwhiz]

"I complained about the graphics until I learned (in X-Plane) that the fun part is flying, not watching a beautiful slide show."

If FSX offered new flight models and tools for developers to simulate more advanced aircraft systems I would wholeheartedly agree. If we have to go on with the same ole' for a another couple of years, I'd rather have top notch visuals as opposed to significantly lower one's settings.

Those who have had first class gaming rigs at home wouldn't have an opinion about it, but I am like a kid in a candy store right now. I can fly without having it look like Super Mario World outside my windows.

[flightman]

People still complaining about FSX seem to ignore the improvements that SP1 brings. I'm using FSX much more now. SP1 has also broken the development log-jam for FSX add-ons and these are now beginning to appear.

As FSX patches and upgrades are relased for my old FS9 add-ons, I can begin to migrate from FS9 to FSX, but I'll keep both installed for the foreseeable future (I only deleted FS2002 when I installed FSX).

It's a shame FSX is mainly an eye-candy improvement. Higher fidelity flight models would have been very welcome, as well as more realistic ATC. The user interface is still extremely poor, and should have been upgraded.

Some people will only be happy when they can run FSX with all the sliders at max. But it will be expensive to achieve this in the short term. Instead, Microsoft should be praised for producing a product which can grow with the developments which will come in the next year and more. In the meantime people will have to learn to live with sliders at more conservative positions and lower framerates (anything over 30 is not strictly necessary).

Kevin