Did you have to do any tweaking for FSX to see all your cores? I have read different accounts and tried a few different setting and I do not see a increase in frame rates. I using Windows 7-64 bit on a 2008 8 core machine.
Thanks
Yeah, I did have to do one of those tweaks. Basically, you are shifting FSX off the first core, which is often used by the OS to do things, and maybe other addons like Active Sky Enhanced which does use a bit of processing power to simulate real world weather for you (it does it very well too). That can eliminate the stutters you sometimes experience and keep the frame rates more steady (instead of the wild fluctuations people sometimes see).
I also had to tweak some of the texture loading settings a bit to get it nicely smooth.
I'm on Mac at the moment - so not sure how to get to the CFG file right away, but it's the AffinityMask setting. I think it needs to be 14 (AffinityMask=14). I'll get back to you with some of the settings I'm using.
The other places you'll score big wins in performance are things like a very fast HDD. An SSD or something like one of those Western Digital Velociraptors (10,000rpm) will do wonders. Given the cheap price of HDDs these days and the superb ease-of-upgrading the Mac Pro, it's worth it.
I do hope that Microsoft Flight uses are computers more efficiently than FSX does. I expect that as usual, the developers will get the inside look at Flight well in advance and should have their addons ready to go by release date, assuming no big architecture changes for the models happen.
That said, FSX was developed at the time when there wasn't much idea if computers would go to ever higher clock speeds or more cores with lower clock-speeds - it was at the turning point. They also gave us SimConnect and the Max plugins, along with great insider support - those are the best things that ever happened for developers, and probably part of the reason the developers have remained so loyal to the FS series.
dmr727: They always tend to show the basic planes - but if I may be so bold, that's probably because they only really do basic planes - and not real simulations. The full-on simulations are left for the addon developers to do, think FSLabs Concorde, FSLabs Airbus A320, PMDG planes, etc.
MS doesn't have the time to do the full-on simulations, they take an enormous amount of time to develop, let alone test them.
I can't think of any flight-simulator addon/plane so complex and realistic as the FSLabs Concorde. It's amazing how well it turned out. I had a real grin on my face when for the first time I started the descent from 57,200ft over the Atlantic, I throttled back the engines slightly too fast and sure enough "bang"! There was a slight engine surge.
And later, when I tried it again, being more careful - no surge.
And when I started the engines at first, it went through the rotating stall after I switched on the HP valve for that engine - "whoop whoop, pull up, whoop whoop, pull up".
Just wonderful.
Debow starts are possible. I was even more thrilled to find that if one of the air-groups needed to be shut down, that when I retry it in the air, the temperature sensing goes full hot, until enough air goes through the group and then the temperature goes down to what it should be. And when you open the cross-flow valves between the air-groups (meaning they share their air), you do get more air flowing through them. You can control the pressurisation properly. You can even do the reverse-air-shutoff check when taxiing, and it works like the real thing.
Being able to follow the real world checklists and procedures to the letter is amazing for something on the computer and costing less than $100. In the old days, to get something with that level of detail, you'd be looking at professional simulator setups.
It just goes to show how far computer technology has come. Anyhow, enough of my ramblings.
