Be carefull what you wish for - DX10

ccartmel · 9 Nov 2007

What are peoples views on FSX Acceleration and SP2???

I received mine (late) and installed eagerly, anticipating achieving the benefits of the DX10 card I paid over £300 for in 2006.
What a bummer. Why read on:

FSX takes 4 minutes to load
most Add-on aircraft (Ultimate traffic and My Traffic amongst many) untextured when in DX10 mode
When it rains the view outside of the VC goes an opaque patchy blue
changing aircraft causes a fatal error and FSX restarts
loading a saved flight causes a fatal error and FSX restarts
shutting FSX down causes a fatal error and FSX restarts

Added to this I am unclear what changes are due to acceleration and which are SP2. I am assuming this has been installed only because some media comment say that it is included with Acceleration. No information provided in the manual or the installation script.

Yes, it is a nice video card and graphics improved considerably, but I may have been better getting a top range DX9 card and saved a few pound.

Accelerator has been uninstalled as in my opinion it is a bag of [enter your guess here]

Microsoft have again released something which totally negates the add-ons which make their Flight Sims so attractive.

Now where is my ebay registration...

lmoelleb · 10 Nov 2007

1) Why are you blaming Microsoft for the price you paid for hardware not manufactured or sold by Microsoft?
2) Why are you blaming Microsoft for your lousy driver?
3) Why are you blaming Microsoft for something that might very well be the addon vendors fault? As far as I remember those AI packages use some pretty old AI planes - and if they are created with the FS2002 SDK Microsoft didn't promise anyone they would work for FSX in the first place.... Have you considered complaining to the addon vendor who sold you an addon created with deprecated methods?

I am tired of paying the enormous price of backwards compatibility simply because people do not know enough about software development to realize how much it actually cost. I am greatful Microsoft killed a lot of old code instead of forcing me to pay to keep it running. I hope they will spend the time freed up to improve the feature set in the newer API's (gronud polygons, conditional display, seasonal textures - you know the list and I am sure Microsoft does as well).

BASys · 10 Nov 2007

Hi Folks

Charlie -
None of the issues you've listed are due to Acceleration itself.
Acceleration is only the new 50+ missions, 3 new aircraft, & 37 matching repaints.
(No it's not a plug

).

Issues 2 thru 6
are due to incompatible addons
which clash with the SP2, (released on the Acceleration disk vector),
particularly noticeable when operatng in DX10 mode.

Either stick with DX9 mode,
where you should experience minimal issues,
or,
those addons need to either be re-authored, (see their providers),
or reworked yourself, (or by other users),
or dumped entirely.

Choice is yours.

PS
Fully agree with Lars's sentiments.
Roll-on a root rebuild.

HTH
ATB
Paul

ccartmel · 10 Nov 2007

Not totally blaming Microsoft

Lars.
I think Microsoft is partially to blame as the 'alleged' issues with DXT1 and DXT3 formats are of their making. OK for a new edition FS XI perhaps, but to issue a patch which removes some functionality in the base product is in my mind bad news.

As I stated, MSFS is strong because of it's extensive library of 3rd party add-ons, If Microsoft provided the aircraft makes and models in multifarious liveries then you have a point, but they dont, and the 'airlines' they provide are simply pathetic.

There are a very large number of dedicated people out there who provide aircraft and textures for us users, I have done a few myself. This is what to me makes MS Flight Simming interesting. If you alienate these people with the attitude that 'we don't care about the little people and their old technologies' then the support will dwindle, and some smaller corporates may well go under as they do not have the resources to re-engineer their products.
MS did this with FSX SP1 to some extent.

Yes the add-on manufactures are to blame in some part, but MS promised backwards compatibility for FSX with FS9, this includes graphic formats, and compatibility with DX10. They did not say these were mutually exclusive.

I was naive when I thought that FSX would be backwards compatible so bought the kit on that belief.

Incidentally I am running the latest drivers both from Microsoft and NVidia.

I assume you are also having a dig at others who moan about SP2 as they must be using old technologies with rubbish drivers.
I know of one top scenery guru who has uninstalled

This is my take on the whole thing, it is my opinion and either you agree or not, se-la-vie.

I do agree strongly that MS must grasp new technologies and do a major rebuild, but as a new product and not deprecating working code in an existing product.

ccartmel · 10 Nov 2007

rework it

Paul,
I thought it was SP2, just wish I could separate it from the Acceleration product.

I agree in part to the rework of the add-ons (see previous post), but it is a damn pity that this is needed.

I was looking for the features of Acceleration, but cannot just uninstall SP2 (or just install acceleration). Having the two tied together makes the whole purchase a waste of time. Running in DX9 mode did not solve the crashing and blue fog.

The error on the weather I am sure cannot be due to an add-on as I have none in this area. I know - blame the drivers.

What's the bet that the 'flow rate' of 3rd party add-ons for FSX SP2 (DX10) with reduce.

I see both yours and Lars' viewpoints, but the FSX world is bigger that just MS who just seem to change the rules with little advance notice. If they advised private and commercial developers well in advance of the changes to formats etc. then I could sympathise more, but the response from some development houses to MS shifting the goalposts suggests otherwise.

BASys · 10 Nov 2007

Hi Folks

Charlie -
Just to put this in perspective.

Compliant == We've followed all the SDK rules.

Compatible == Bugger the rules, this is what we think we can get away with.

If you bear that perspective in mind -

You'll most likely find that anything
genuinely compiled with the FS9 compiler
has none or mininmal texture issues.

Where the real issue lies is -
users assuming/believing that models are -
or creators & marketers passing off their models as being - FS9 compliant,
whereas in fact they were only FS9 compatible.

Likewise this applies to items being sold for FSX.

If they say they're "for FSX" or "FSX compatible",
I suggest you withdraw your bargepole, immediately.

If however,
they say "FSX compliant" or "compliant with FSX",
then by all means rake 'em in.

As for the weather,
for any FS9 models compiled with the appropriate flag,
and you've copied across the animated FS9 rain textures.

If the following is set -
[Weather]
WindshieldPrecipitationEffects=1

Then you'll see animated rain on the VC windshield.

HTH
ATB
Paul

lmoelleb · 10 Nov 2007

ccartmel said:
Lars.
I think Microsoft is partially to blame as the 'alleged' issues with DXT1 and DXT3 formats are of their making.

Could be. Implementing a new rendering engine WITHOUT any unexpected and unfortunate side effect is not something that is likely to happen.

OK for a new edition FS XI perhaps, but to issue a patch which removes some functionality in the base product is in my mind bad news.

Of course it is bad knews, the question is if the alternative would have been worse. Unfortunately DX10 came too late to fit into the FSX release cycle and too early to wait for FSXI. Starting to support DX10 through a patch is not ideal, but neither is not trying to support it at all.

As I stated, MSFS is strong because of it's extensive library of 3rd party add-ons, If Microsoft provided the aircraft makes and models in multifarious liveries then you have a point, but they dont, and the 'airlines' they provide are simply pathetic.

There are a very large number of dedicated people out there who provide aircraft and textures for us users, I have done a few myself. This is what to me makes MS Flight Simming interesting. If you alienate these people with the attitude that 'we don't care about the little people and their old technologies' then the support will dwindle, and some smaller corporates may well go under as they do not have the resources to re-engineer their products.

I do nothing but addon design with Flight Simulator (Beside an hour or two when I got Acceleration I can't remember the last time I started it to do anything but checking my addons). And yes my scenery is impacted by FSX and I need to work on getting it fixed. Yes I hate it. But I also know enough about software development to realize the cost/benefit calculations behind things like this.

MS did this with FSX SP1 to some extent.

In your oppinion. I do not share it even though I am clearly one of those people you claim should have been "alianated".

Yes the add-on manufactures are to blame in some part, but MS promised backwards compatibility for FSX with FS9, this includes graphic formats, and compatibility with DX10. They did not say these were mutually exclusive.

First of all you have to remember there is a difference between "can run anything designed for FS2004" and "can run anything FS2004 can run". The SDK's I have seen never promised the latter.

That said there might indeed be problems with FS2004 SDK content as well. To that I can only say I fully agree it sucks and Microsoft made a mistake - they should never have made promises they where not sure they could keep (and there is NO way anyone could have known at the time the promise was made if it was feasable or not).

The point I am making is I am complaining about the promise, not the technical "this sucks the least" solution delivered.

I was naive when I thought that FSX would be backwards compatible so bought the kit on that belief.

Yes, it is unfortunately very naive to:
1) Beleive marketing.
2) Beleive software development is so simple it can be predicted.

Incidentally I am running the latest drivers both from Microsoft and NVidia.

I hope you are not think "latest = no bugs"?

I assume you are also having a dig at others who moan about SP2 as they must be using old technologies with rubbish drivers.
I know of one top scenery guru who has uninstalled

Just because you are a "top scenery guru" does not mean you know anything about development processes and/or getting your computer optimized. No one outside Aces know the cost of full backwards compatibility - we might know (or think we know) the benefit, but that is just one variable in the cost/benefit calculation - and without the other you have no idea what so ever if this was the right move or not.

This is my take on the whole thing, it is my opinion and either you agree or not, se-la-vie.

I do agree strongly that MS must grasp new technologies and do a major rebuild, but as a new product and not deprecating working code in an existing product.

Of course this would have been the best, but timing just wasn't right. It happens ALL the time in software development. If you have a general solution to this problem you will be rich - very very rich (as in richer than Bill Gates).

n4gix · 10 Nov 2007

ccartmel said:
I see both yours and Lars' viewpoints, but the FSX world is bigger that just MS who just seem to change the rules with little advance notice. If they advised private and commercial developers well in advance of the changes to formats etc. then I could sympathise more, but the response from some development houses to MS shifting the goalposts suggests otherwise.

Well, ACES did - in fact - give such notice. It's no longer a state secret that several years ago, ACES invited both payware and freeware developers (at least all the ones of which they were aware), to join their new flightsim developer's network. ACES also asked those who accepted to forward the contact information for anyone else who should be invited to join. I sent contact info for at least twelve freeware devs whom I knew hadn't been "noticed." I know other devs did the same.

For whatever reason, not all who were invited accepted, much to their own loss.

For whatever reason, some who accepted "fell asleep during class," much to their own loss.

Some dev's own hubris got in the way of fully appreciating what was "taught" and "discussed." Imagine that...

However, most of us did pay attention, and now that due diligence is begining to pay off - in spades. Witness the runaway success of our FSX Twin Comanche, currently outpacing by a wide margin sales of the FS9 version.

ccartmel · 12 Nov 2007

advance notice

Bill,
Thanks for the information, and I sincerely apologise for my derogatory statement as regards advance information.

I wonder how many smaller software houses and non-US based developers attended.

I have calmed down now

, but have wasted money on Acceleration as I want the aircraft etc. but not SP2 which for whatever reason crashes my system. It seems I can't have both.

I have read many more threads wher SP2 causes crashes to Desktop on a wide variety on system configurations.

Regards

BASys · 12 Nov 2007

Hi Folks

Charlie -
Have you tried renaming your fsx.CFG
and allowing FSX to rebuild a valid new one ?

Does FSX crash in both DX9 & DX10 mode ?

It may well be one of your old a/c has an error in its aircraft.cfg
and/or one of the imported gauges is causing the crash.

Move all your old a/c & gauges out of FSX.
Does the crashing still happen ?

I keep all my addon a/c on a seperate disk entirely,
and just uncomment/comment a line in the fsx.CFG to enable/disable these.

HTH
ATB
Paul

n4gix · 12 Nov 2007

ccartmel said:
I wonder how many smaller software houses and non-US based developers attended.

I have calmed down now , but have wasted money on Acceleration as I want the aircraft etc. but not SP2 which for whatever reason crashes my system. It seems I can't have both.

You would be surprised. I know that I was. As it happens, non-North Americans outnumbered the NAs by a large margin. Of course this isn't simply limited to events such as the DevCon held last week, but is an on-going discussion on private newsgroups hosted by ACES.

The problem is - the new features of the three new aircraft depend on new features included in SP2.

There's something amiss either in hardware, operating system, and/or drivers that's the proximate cause of Accel/SP2 not working for you.

ccartmel · 12 Nov 2007

starting from scratch

Thanks for all your input folks.

FSX crashes regardless of DX mode. Instead of disabling all and sundry I have decided to move fsx to a backup disk, then rebuild fron scratch.
I would have done this yesterday but coincidentally my 'games' disk developed a fault and it took 2x5 hours of chkdisk to get it running again. This manifested as the uninstall failing amidst endless clicking from the 400Gb SATA unit.
I intend to put in a new disk, copy over what I can, then rebuild from scratch.

It is however a lowish priority task as without realistic looking AI my simming experience is greatly diminished. Without the PA38 Tomahawk which I fly in real life I am basically grounded.

I will report back if I succeed just in case any other users have had similar problems.

Cheers

ccartmel · 20 Nov 2007

Rebuild OKish

As promised, I have reported back.
After installing a new disk unit I rebuilt FSX from the original disks then upgraded with FSX X.
This time no problems as upgrade went seamlessly.

Performance however under DX9 much worse, 7fps in areas where 12fps were the norm pre SP2.

Another thread suggested that SP1 should have been applied first (no mention in installation instructions), so I started again. This time performance back up to previous levels but no better.

Some scenery objects show as untextured boxes now, some bridges now solid but with 'visible' parts showing over black rather than open structures. This confirms the view that texture formats relating to transparency are relevant although a post in my SP2 textures thread suggests that SP2 supports all previous formats and it is the underlying materials that are at fault.

One outstanding issue is that I cannot get the SDK (SP1A) to show up in FSXX although it worked fine prior to SP2. I have re-installed this, modified dll.xml to no avail.

Seems FSX X + SP2 is not for me

BASys · 20 Nov 2007

Hi Folks

Charlie -
re: SDK,
please see - FS Developer - Wiki - SDK Installation (FSX)

re: Scenery
Please be specific about scenery sources.
Are you talking about FSX/FSXA default scenery,
or some 3rd party addon, (identify please).

Your other thread was WRT another matter.
Please see - FS Developer - Wiki - Missing Textures (FSX)
After reading, follow the link to texture.cfg from that page.

Try applying a 'correctly path'd' texture.cfg to some of your AI, and see if that fixes them.

PS
Do not use a UK2000 Extreme airport, or Aerosoft's ????, for testing,
as there are AI traffic display issues with those.

HTH
ATB
Paul

ccartmel · 21 Nov 2007

Sdk Sp2

Paul,
Thanks for the link.
I did not realise that the sdk.msi on the acceleration disk was a new version

. As the SP1a was in it's own folder I assumed that it was accessed when SP1a was set-up.My Bad!
I looked at the fsinsider site and saw no reference to any new SDK, and references to Googled searches for download of SDK SP2 came up with SP1a executable.
All installed now and working without changing dll.xml from last time.

After reading (again) the textures sections it mentioned specifically that aircraft textures should be in dds format, so by inference scenery objects need not be, hence the previous post saying that SP2 can still use the legacy formats, just neglecting that it is possibly scenery only.

The scenery objects I am having trouble with are third party. I know the textures are available as the 'visible' components show, but the transparency through the structure of the bridge is just blacked out. This leads me to believe that the alpha channel is not being processed in the same manner. refer to the post about DXT1 and DXT3 transparency issues. I will experiment with the 'bmp' format used to try and get this sorted.
Another issue is with a black box appearing where a building used to be, may be same problem although it seems to show sometimes from particular angles. Again some experimentation needed, however I haven't a clue which texture is used here

OK on the point on the aircraft textures. One of the recommended solutions re the renaming etc. of the default texture on the C172 was one I sussed out early on when the cessna refused to change colour after the 'plain' design had been selected.

Not too sure how relevant the fallback processes are to my now white aircraft in the main, but will look at this when I get bored

By the way including
"[Weather]
WindshieldPrecipitationEffects=1"
did not work. I still got intermittent blue opacity on the windshield on the 3rd party aircraft. OK on the MS provided Bell helicopter, so again a texture anomaly somewhere. Tried changing the DXT1 texture file to DXT3 just to see, but no difference.

Cheers

bob5568 · 27 Nov 2007

@BASys...

Your description of compatible vs complient sdk addons assumes there is profit to be made within the boundary of the sdk complience. Perhaps airplane addons are a different animal, I'm only versed in scenery design, but I would argue that every airport based scenery developed for fs9 or fsx that had/has any market interest were non-complient to sdk boundaries. I would further predict that any airport based scenery that did stay within the sdk had very low (if any) market value (in dollars).

Since only developers are likely to know what is and what isn't sanctioned by the sdk, and the public only knows what it likes and doesn't like, the system is overly constrained if the expectation is addons will both please the market and will be complient to the sdk.

Said more simply, if any airports for fs9, or fsx as far as I know were built strictly to the sdk there would be very little value assigned to them by the market. Since the SDK is designed to avoid risk to stability, it errs on the side of conservative. The current sdk provides no conditional animation in an easily installable package. High resolution ground polygons have not been sanctioned by the sdk EVER! Try to acheive seasonal variants on your models in fsx. Ain't gonna happen. These features are omnipresent in any quality addon of the past (although they may never have been sdk complient, even in the past). Is the market going to forget what it USED to value, and revalue addons of the present differently? Not likely.

Another way of looking at it is from business theory. If the market is perfectly competitive, no one profits. If some magic force were able to cause all devs to stay within the sdk boundaries, there would be less difference between products, something closer to perfect competition. While profits may remain to some degree, they would be reduced. That fact is in conflict with the level of difficulty facing current devs that drives the time for production of an addon the other direction. If a developer, working alone, could produce 5 products for sale in a previous versions lifetime, now its more like 3....unless one is content to work the same and earn less, then this is a problem. If each of the 3 remaining products is more vanilla and therefore less valuable, the earnings become even smaller.

In conclusion, there is no justice in a market; profits are available only to those that extend the capability of addons beyond the sdk. Profits are more needed now than before if a developer demands economic growth to his/her business. Anyone who remains within the sdk, and complains about competitors who don't appears boorish and incompetant.

So...if there is a sustained, growing, profitable scenery addon community, chances are it will not be sdk complient.

Best,
Bob Bernstein

BASys · 27 Nov 2007

Hi Folks

Bob -
My main point was made WRT
user's unwarranted expectations
that their previously purchased legacy products
should work in FSX.

WRT to new FSX products -
If a developer's new product doesn't work, people won't buy it.
Or if they already have bought it, and it doesn't work, they'll complain till it's fixed.

If anyone can create SDK workarounds
that display correctly in FSX,
and do so without substantially impairing useability
then I'm sure they'll have customers knocking on their doors.

HTH
ATB
Paul

bob5568 · 28 Nov 2007

BASys said:
Hi Folks

My main point was made WRT
user's unwarranted expectations
that their previously purchased legacy products
should work in FSX.

If anyone can create SDK workarounds
that display correctly in FSX,
and do so without substantially impairing useability
then I'm sure they'll have customers knocking on their doors.

In this response you are looking at FSX like its the new "forever". Remember FSX will be the "old version" in a discussion that will take place 3 years from now. At that point these products mentioned in the last of your paragraphs will become the new sources of problems that users will blame MS for, and folks will defend MS by blaming the developers for...and I'm just letting people know this is all predictable, and it won't be solved as far as I can tell. People don't realize it, but they will only pay the needed price for products that impress them as "special". The SDK represents "standard". Good for freeware, not special enough for profitable payware.

ccartmel · 28 Nov 2007

Folks,
just to mention re:

My main point was made WRT
user's unwarranted expectations
that their previously purchased legacy products
should work in FSX.

The product I am having trouble with is for FSX, I have advised the company (Just Flight) who say they will look at the issues but not necessarily in the short-term.
Strangely enough a graphics problem I had with the JF PA38 pre-SP2 has resolved itself

On reading articles on the DXT1/3 issues with SP2 I suspect that it may be the 'rotate to user' property which I know nothing about, but working on it.

Regards all

Daniel · 19 Dec 2007

ccartmel said:
FSX takes 4 minutes to load

most Add-on aircraft (Ultimate traffic and My Traffic amongst many) untextured when in DX10 mode

The 4 minute load time was there before Acceleration/SP2/SP1. It occurs while FSX is parsing the hundreds of variations of all your AI Add-on aircraft.

As far as MyTraffic is concerned... what version do you use? In 5.1 several planes have been converted to true FSX models (among them all the 737's) in the free 5.1a update all the Airbusses 300-380 have been added as true FSX models. There will be another free update containing at least the 747's. Also, from the support forum you can get schedules that only use the real FSX aircraft, that are working in DX10.

Daniel