So.. what Ben means when he says he has a 'pretty decent spec machine' is that he has intels fastest CPU running the fastest memory off the fastest HD's known to man. That makes things much clearer now Nice to know that a pc capable of running a small country can run FSX in a satisfactory manner
It is my understanding that it is for the processor only.....and as it is pretty new, I guess it might not had hit the streets yet, but I can be wrong.
But as development continues, my guess is that it will be in the stores at an affordable price within the year or so....
Best Rgds
Dan
Who's General Failure, and why is he reading my harddisk?
I've left my config file well and truly alone Ben. I did a complete uninstall then reinstall of FSX prior to installing SP1. I'll wait for the dust to settle and the right tweaks to be tested before venturing down that road.
The only reason I would tweak would be to try to sort out the stutters in Gen-X; without Gen-X the sim is absolutely fine.
One thing that troubles though is the apparent lack of texture focus where only the immediate local beneath the 'plane is actually in focus. I've a mind to do a repair of FSX so as to remove SP1 and take some before and after screen shots to see if there is a measurable change between the two.
Hmm. I'm not sure that this is so unusual again Brian.
It's pretty obviuos now that the SP1 has made quite an improvement on XP looking at the general comments, but I bet we'll see a whole lot more improvement on Vista when the DX10 patch comes along... We might even see FSX perform better on Vista with the DX10 patch, than FSXSP1 on XP
I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
Best Rgds
Dan
Who's General Failure, and why is he reading my harddisk?
I wouldn't be too sure about that. The core engine of FS is the same as it has been for the last two or three versions, and in order to maximise the benefit of the new render technologies the package needs redesigning from the ground up.
I suspect a DX10 patch might enable FSX to run under DX10, perhaps even add one or two visual enhancements, but not even DX10 can offload the CPU requirement of FS to the extent required. That needs an engine change, not merely a new oil and filter and an exhaust!
What we will probably see is the `squared-off` corners of FSX SP1 being `rounded-off` once more, to restore the visuals to the original intended level. `Original` in this case being a DX10 game running under Vista, the original design choice.
What DX10 should be good at is texture throughput - the volume of data that is capable of being transferred at a usable rate. Clearly, that is what the adjustment sliders in FSX were actually designed for - to cope with the volume capabilities of DX10 cards at various performance levels.
With that said, there must be some limitations in the existing engine still to be exploited - the SP1 results speak for that most eloquently, so perhaps if much of the rendering can be offloaded to the card and its GPU, the CPU might have a much easier time? For proof, change the clouds to `simple`and see what that that still does for smoothness and fps, post-SP1.
Now, cloud rendering is one of the things that DX10 ought to be very, very good at... :think:
Nice to know that a pc capable of running a small country can run FSX in a satisfactory manner 
