NZFF

Come September the flightsim community will get a glimpse of what the future has in store.
SP2 will prepare the sim for DX10!
Silly me, splashing out on a DX10-ready 8-series NVidia card a year ago.
I must've missed something in the fine print.
Might've been under that "Artist's Rendering" picture we all saw of what DX10 "might" look like.
I'm surprised someone in the US hasn't started a class action against Microsoft.

If only they could make NZ green first!

So is this just for people who want to use DX10 and Vista, or for XP (normal) users as well??

It'll be normal users too (otherwise they'd only have two users left!!)

G-HEVN wrote:

QUOTE(G-HEVN @ Aug 26 2007, 12:31 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It'll be normal users too (otherwise they'd only have two users left!!)

Yes they'll do a SP2 for XP/DX9 users at the same time.
My impression is the sim is being rebuilt from scratch.
I hope for the sake of the developers that stuff done pre-SP2 will still work.
You will recall that SP1 kinda put the clock back to square one.

Yeah, right, I'm really looking forward to SP2.

SP1 was one step forward; another step backward. I don't expect SP2 to be any different...

You will recall that SP1 kinda put the clock back to square one.

SP1 was one step forward; another step backward

Can someone explain what exactly is so 'not good' about SP1? I had gathered that it had actually improved things (at least a little)...

HardCorePawn wrote:

QUOTE(HardCorePawn @ Aug 28 2007, 02:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Can someone explain what exactly is so 'not good' about SP1? I had gathered that it had actually improved things (at least a little)...

My shockingly mixed metaphor related to the fact that SP1 changed the way you'd build stuff for FSX.
So anyone who'd spent what? six months? building stuff had to go back to the drawing board.
I don't build stuff for FSX so this is hearsay, Robin is the one to give more insight I guess.
There have also been conflicting views on the SP1 user experience.
On some rigs the sim actually became slower, or died.
Mine showed some improvement in FPS.

Charl wrote:

QUOTE(Charl @ Aug 28 2007, 06:10 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

On some rigs the sim actually became slower, or died.
Mine showed some improvement in FPS.

I think that is people on other fourms, chucking a spaz that there computer that ran FS9 with 20+ FPS does not do the same with FSX

Charl wrote:

QUOTE(Charl @ Aug 28 2007, 06:10 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

My shockingly mixed metaphor related to the fact that SP1 changed the way you'd build stuff for FSX.
So anyone who'd spent what? six months? building stuff had to go back to the drawing board.
I don't build stuff for FSX so this is hearsay, Robin is the one to give more insight I guess.
There have also been conflicting views on the SP1 user experience.
On some rigs the sim actually became slower, or died.
Mine showed some improvement in FPS.

Yes, some things which worked in FSX to start with, stopped working with SP1. They did fix a lot, but broke some things. For instance, there's the 'round earth' issue, which originally broke our ground photo polygons, but they have given us a partial fix with SP1, we just need to redo the polys.
However one major change with SP1 is the lack of DXT3 support. DXT3 (and DXT5) is a texture format which gives us a variable alpha channel, which we used for varying degrees of transparency. We are now stuck with DXT1, which only has a single bit alpha channel -- the transparency is either on or off, no middle range. So my nice blended textures on the ground no longer work well, and I need to revert to DXT1 -- no nice blending, and ugly joins.

However I don't think I'd stick with FSX without SP1 -- it did make FSX flyable for a lot of people.

I'm running a poll on FSX over at Sim Pilot and the feedback on SP1 is very positive (from an end-users perspective). Round about 5% of people do experience problems, but for the rest SP1 has had a positive impact. I think about 40% of people say it changed FSX from being unusable to being usable. There are still 20% of people who find FSX unusable (although improved), this seems to be a problem on lower spec computers (sub 3GHz, and less than 1GB RAM).

Christian

One of the big advantages of FSX over FS9 was that you could use photo sceneries without getting the blurries. In SP1, the blurries are back with a vengeance!

Try this
http://games.softpedia.com/get/Patch/Fligh...lay-Patch.shtml
The photo scenery patch. Been out a while. I don't know if it'll work though

I see two problems with SP 2. Can we now forget all those addons, working under SP 1? It´s only a question but often enough after such critical updates we user´s are in trouble. And maybee no Addon-Company can cost efficient bring out version for Addons for FS 2004, FS X SP 1 and FS X SP 2... ?
Only a question but very serious in my eyes.

The second. I do not use Spy Vista and have no reason to do so. In Germany it is very unpopular. Only new machines came with it but older machines... nobody want it really. I have my Windows XP with SP 2 and i did not need Vista. And to have a bit more fun with the grafics I have not the idea to build up my system around the software. I go the other way and buy software for my system...

In the meantime I hope, that the next version of X-plane is a real threat for Microsoft. I like the Topo from X-plane. It is good. But the optical features of the aircraft are not the best in my eyes... but maybe the next version of X-plane can end this. And then it is time to stop the activities with Microsoft-based software. X-Plane works fine under Linux. I've had it now for one year and it is interesting enough. Problem: No german version and I must learn...