Classic British Flight Sim

DaveB wrote:Tks for that Paul ;-)

I've not tried ANY of the missions in FSX as I'm really not interested.. I'm not a flightsim mission sort of chap. I've not even flown (or looked at) all of the default aircraft (the Extra included) so you can probably tell my overall current level of enthusiasm for FSX. I can see where the racing module will appeal to some and will probably earn M$ a few more customers but it's just not for me. Suppose I'd better go out and buy a Mesh computer and become a Tony Madge clone!

EDIT.. I'd tend to agree with that last statement James ;-)
ATB

DaveB :tab:

You should give the missions a crack Dave. It's the only thing I will fly in FSX at the moment because they are usually designed to showcase the better areas of the sim, from my point of view until there are things like country-wide UK2000 and FSNavigator amongst others FSX isn't ready for free-flight yet. Some of them are very enjoyable, I must admit I do like the JANET Area 51 ferry flight.

Sl4yer wrote:

Chris H wrote:Given what some payware developers charge if the Merlin, Hornet and Mustang are as detailed as the default FSX aircraft then it's worth it for the three aircraft alone, I've no doubt I'll pick it up when it's released just to see if the SP2 fixes make it playable to be honest.

If they're as detailed as the A321 with it's moving throttles, I might give it a miss!

No, seriously, I'll probably get it at some point. Especially if the patch is going to be several months behind. I can understand the anger of some though - the DX10 'upgrade' is now a 'preview'! It's been on the box since release: "Works great on Windows XP, works even better on the upcoming Windows Vista". I bet a lot of people upgraded to DX10 cards and Vista waiting for this, and they'll feel a little short-changed now. And Phil Taylor knows it.

James

Many members of the community have been saying all along that you shouldn't rush out to upgrade to DirectX 10 and VISTA as the technology needs a lot of time to bed down; I'm frankly astonished at how quickly people have taken to these new products as they seem to have become the de-facto standard far quicker than any other new directX or operating system in the past. I can only assume that's because of products like FSX promising the world with an infant technology and not delivering. Incidentally forcing people to upgrade so early on in the development cycle of these two products is reprehensible in my opinion and again I don't recall a userbase ever being forced to upgrade so quickly. I suppose we should be thankful that FSX has a measure of backwards compatibility and works fairly well under FS9.

I hate to say it but I do blame OEM manufacturers as well as the media; the amount of hype surrounding Vista when it was launched was phenomenal and I think it's just a symptom of how popular PC's are these days. I'm sure the vast majority of members on this board remember when having a PC pretty much meant that you had to know how things worked, fix and service it yourself, even knock up the odd bit of code every now and again. But now we have the unwashed masses popping over to PC World and picking up "Windows for dummies" and thinking they are the bees knees and OEM's forcing VISTA on them as the next greatest thing without waiting for the technology to mature a little. Anyway, I digress, I've had a busy fortnight fixing umpteen friends and families computers and I'm at breaking point, hence the bitterness

Some absolutely stunning screenshots over at Flight Sim World:

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/in ... 28136&st=0

That Merlin looks stunning.

Some of those shots, especially the Red Bull ones, look great. But I suspect they're probably taken on that 8-core system... ;-)

Still haven't seen any cockpit shots of the Hornet.

James

Sl4yer wrote:Some of those shots, especially the Red Bull ones, look great. But I suspect they're probably taken on that 8-core system... ;-)

Still haven't seen any cockpit shots of the Hornet.

James

Page three of the thread I posted.

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/in ... 8136&st=40

Oops! Thanks for that.

Looks as good as the best payware ones I've seen. And the HUD looks fantastic.

James

Hmm, I think (despite my dislike of FSX) that I will be getting this, underslung loads were one of my favourite challanges in the real world, so it will be of interest to see how FSX handles them. Visibility will still be a problem, perhaps a Skycrane, flown from the rearward seat would be a good project!

If it speeds things up too, that will be a bonus. I have waiting to upgrade to dual core (which will do nothing for beloved FS9), perhaps in the new year now! If photoscenery is better, perhaps that Horizon stuff should go back on too! I swear it slows the default Spain (but not other areas :doho: ) by 70%!

I've just looked at those new FSX shots and MS have put a US Navy scheme on the Merlin RTFM
Can DX10 be used with good old XP or does the OS have to be upgraded too :roll: , some guys have a 50% FPS improvement with DX10 on the beta of the new pack.

Trev,

DX10 only runs under Vista.

I've not seen enough performance increase to justify upgrading yet. It seems to be the way that new graphics technology is always relatively slow when it is first introduced. I would expect MUCH increased performance (in DX10, not DX9) from the next generation of DX10 cards, which can't be far away now.

As far as dual cores go, great. But the quad core Q6600 (2.4GHz, 8MB cache) can now be bought for £165 here, which seems a bargain when the Q6700 (2.67GHz) is more than twice that!

James

I've just looked at those new FSX shots and MS have put a US Navy scheme on the Merlin RTFM

Nothing wrong with a few fun hypotheticals. I plan to sort the stock F/A-18 out in Fleet Air Arm colours once it's out just for giggles. Obviously it'll be nowhere near as good as the forthcoming Superbug version from VRS (I doubt the MFD's will work properly and suchlike and it won't have any systems modelled) but I imagine it's a great "hop in and fly" aircraft.