As you may already be aware, Phil Taylor from the ACES team has provided details on his blog about the forthcoming Acceleration add-on pack for Flight Simulator X, and Service Pack 2 which is included with the add-on, and will also be made available for free download a short time afterwards.
Since before FSX was even released, there have been screenshots (which were actually artists impressions) floating around the internet of what Microsoft had planned for the Direct X 10 features in FSX, and since then Vista and Direct X 10 graphics cards have become available, with a lot of serious flightsimmers really looking forward to the anticipated huge leap forward in improvements….
However initial reaction does seem that the impression from many people that I’ve spoken with during the last few days, is less than completely positive. A degree of dis-satisfaction has always got to be expected, and some people are never happy - as Scotty has detailed in his blog posts before - but there does seem to be an overwhelming level of disappointment, possibly caused by uncertainty and confusion, and generally just feeling a little mislead.
Some of the latest screenshots, showing what we will actually be getting with the “DX10 Preview” enabled, seem to show very little difference, as has been hammered out time and time again by people talking about the screens in various forums, and in some cases the DX10 improvements actually look a little less impressive than the DX9 version that we’re already used to - the glassy water with mountains reflecting in it like a piece of artwork might look nice, but is it really what you’d see if you were looking at that location in real life? And no matter how many glossy shiny features are added to improve realism, if the ground textures are still random blocks and the autogen doesn’t look anything like the buildings that you’d expect in the country that you are flying over, then the illusion is (to a degree) shattered.
There certainly doesn’t seem to be that gobsmackingly great difference in the screenshots showing the difference between Direct X 9 and 10. In fact on first glance you’d be hard pushed to see any difference, and if you’d have been shown the DX10 screenshot in between a bunch of others you’d probably not have batted an eyelid. Yes there are differences, of course there are, but are they the difference you were expecting/hoping for?
Certainly Microsoft have some great treats in store with the features included in the Acceleration pack and the SP2/DX10 update, so they should be praised for the continued excellent good work that they’ve put in to the simulator and adding features which previously haven’t been possible. A view that I’m sure many would agree with.
“Crepuscular rays”
Another criticism, and one that I largely agree with, is that the information being supplied by Microsoft is too confusing for the “average” person. The developers behind FSX are talking in terms which most people simply won’t understand, and I don’t think this is because they’re trying to confuse people with big words and acronyms, but because they’re simply too close to the product and completely wrapped up in the whirlwind that surrounds it because it’s their life day in day out.
Obviously we face the same problem here at Just Flight, because we’re not only developing our own software on the one hand but have Microsoft (and other companies) on the other side of us feeding information such as that from Phil Taylors blog, in various discussion groups, and very technical information which often never becomes public. The problem seems to be when the same jargon starts to filter out in the public arena without people knowing the full details and reasoning for things - but they really shouldn’t have to know the full background and shouldn’t be faced with such a barrage of overly-complex information. It needs to be distilled down in to non-developer terms, something that a novice flight simmer would understand. That’s not to say “give them rubbish information and leave out the facts”, but give decent information that actually means something.
How many readers would have fully known what was meant by “Acceleration has RTM’ed” (people still ask what the slightly misleading “gone gold” means, yet alone using a “TLA“), and would you know what a “crepuscular ray” was if it fell out of the cereal box in to your breakfast bowl? Google has the answer, as you’d expect, but why use fancy words which it’d seem everyone I’ve asked has not actually know what it meant and sat at their PC gormless wondering if it’d been made up. When people are asking what something seemingly simple like “bloom” is, can developers really expect even more complex terms to be understood?
Admittedly it’s more likely to be real FS fans that are keeping an eye on Phil’s blog and those of other people who are working very closely on the development of FS, checking several times each day pouring over the latest information the moment it breaks, but it’s that very information which gets out in to the eye of everyone else via forums and game news sites, and when the people who have read it didn’t fully understand what was being said, you start to see confusion arising and the wrong information being reported - or the whole thing being copied verbatim and not being of any real benefit to people who want the information given to them in a way that lets them go away feeling they’ve been given some information worth knowing, and hopefully something they can be exicted about rather than feeling slightly alienated…
…and that’s before they find that add-ons published for FSX, or FSX+SP1, might need a patch to work with FSX+Acceleration/SP2 - its going to be a busy few months ahead for FS developers and publishers, as if the past few haven’t been busy enough!
What do you think?
Leave a comment below saying how you feel about the Acceleration/SP2 announcement, and we’d also like to hear if you feel the terminology used really makes enough sense to you, or if explaining it in more layman’s terms would have made it easier to take in and understand properly? Let us (and the rest of the FS community) know what you think…
Posted by: Simon, in: Technically Speaking
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