By David Pickett (11 May 2007) Hello! After a long break away from FlightSim.Com I have come back. This is a report on Microsoft and FSX, then and now. We remember those days when flight simulation was something of the future. Well Microsoft has decided to bring that future to us with FSX. Although released a while back and much of the hype has calmed down we can still find things to talk about. Now that Vista has emerged; and Microsoft after all intended FSX to be run on Vista, we expect FSX to run like clockwork and very fast. But is this the case? I think not. We thought that with Direct X10 cards and new processors all of our FSX problems would be solved. No; we still have the problems and this makes us wonder why we even bothered to buy all that new kit. Nvidia brought out the 8000 series of card and new ones are to be on the way but what difference does this have? Not a lot without the latest kit. Of course Microsoft being Microsoft they overlooked some key points about today's gamers. They did not include dual core compatibility or support for using two cards in crossfire or SLI. This was a shock as Intel had released dual cores quite a time ago. The processor can be the system bottleneck as it has to do all of the calculations about where you are and real weather effects and so on. The new graphics cards, however, will take some of this work on themselves although games are not written for this, yet. However rumors are spreading of FSX SP1 which is going to include lots of fixes and new things. The game itself is great but in every one of us is the desire to find and get the test kit that Microsoft used whilst testing. This kit must have been superb or else Microsoft wouldn't have been able to produce those spectacular screen shots. This is all very well but we have to remember planning for the future. FSX is definitely for the future and when we all have more money and parts we can build the ultimate FSX machine. The 3D graphics engine is very far ahead and rivals most other games, which is impressive. Microsoft has tried to bring in a mission idea. This has worked and now instead of having to purchase add-ons to try your hand at all kinds of real events it is included within FSX itself. FSX is a game which provides good graphics and new features. Many things are improved and the new features are good, but wait until FSX is playable on everyone's PC before buying. Despite the low performance on today's PCs FSX is built for tomorrow's PCs.
