Flight Simulator X Parallels

[Anonymous Freak]

directx 9:

directx 10 (same image):

directx 9:

directx 10 (dont be fooled, this isnt real, but can happen on directx 10):


theres alot more of these comparisions here: http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9550

Sorry, those were proven to be fake.

Or, more precisely, the Flight Simulator comparison was a hoax (someone took a real DirectX 9 shot, then a 'render' to claim that's what DX10 will look like.) And the faces are comparing a four year old game with the theoretical maximum quality of a game engine; not even an actual game.

In short, completely bogus comparisons. (You might as well compare a game to a CGI movie. The CGI movie isn't rendered in real time.)

See this link for the "It's fake" disclaimer. The real kicker for the Flight Sim screenshots is that these were taken in August of last year. The Flight Sim team wasn't even working on DX10 yet! (They were only planning to "get fully into DX10 development" at a future date in JANUARY. Obviously they can't have been very far along four months before this blog post.)

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Here you go . . .

Here is a real DirectX 9 to 10 comparison. Apples-to-Apples.

 

[bluedoggiant]

Bluedoggiant: you say directx10 is a "compliant video card" - you mean that current computers either HAVE such compliant cards or NOT??? Also, Vista 32 and 64 bit BOTH offer/ support upcoming directx10? For example, the nVidia GEForce 8600Mgt installed in current MBP is directx10 compliant?

regarding your point 2.: fsx on 4 gigs - must rock indeed/ does pretty good on 2 gigs! You say the video card is "what makes it great, it's the latest": what v.card are you talking about if I may ask?

Thanks again - your subsequent pics rendered via directx10 ARE awesome - the water ripples especially!

- Roger T

64bit doesnt work on bootcamp, it may wen leopard comes out, a compliant video card is available for download for free, windows xp comes with like directx 7, so u need to upgrade to 9 (the latest for xp), vista comes already with directx 10 built in, it makes things look more realistic, its like ur digital video card, so to get the best realism out of fsx, u need a power ful video card: nvidia geforce 7800 GTX, 9800 XT, or sumthing like that, for ati radeon (built for gaming, nvidia is recommended by most CAD programs), 2600 hd PRO, or anything in that neighborhood, i really dont know exactly, directx works with all video cards, the video card im talking about is the ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory video card, it would work on ur video card, sorry for the lack of order

 

[bluedoggiant]

Here is a real DirectX 9 to 10 comparison. Apples-to-Apples.

so those were wrong???? damn they looked so cool, those other comparisions u linked were TOO small, i couldnt really see them

 

[DjAndy]

If I install FSX to an external drive connected to my MacBook Pro via firewire, will that result in any loss of speed or should it run just like if it would be installed on internal HD, because it´s quite big with all the addons.

br, Andrej

 

[Anonymous Freak]

so those were wrong???? damn they looked so cool, those other comparisions u linked were TOO small, i couldnt really see them

Click on them, they get bigger. (There is a second page of comparisons, too; including at least one 'full-screen' 1600x1200 comparison if you click on the pictures.)

 

[bluedoggiant]

If I install FSX to an external drive connected to my MacBook Pro via firewire, will that result in any loss of speed or should it run just like if it would be installed on internal HD, because it´s quite big with all the addons.

br, Andrej

yes, it will slow things down, its 15GB, u can bye and external hard drive for ur pictures and music, but for fsx, you'll notice a decrease in performance, and use bootcamp and winvista 32bit if u can, it wont work on parallels

 

[Anonymous Freak]

64bit doesnt work on bootcamp, it may wen leopard comes out, a compliant video card is available for download for free, windows xp comes with like directx 7, so u need to upgrade to 9 (the latest for xp), vista comes already with directx 10 built in, it makes things look more realistic, its like ur digital video card, so to get the best realism out of fsx, u need a power ful video card: nvidia geforce 7800 GTX, 9800 XT, or sumthing like that, for ati radeon (built for gaming, nvidia is recommended by most CAD programs), 2600 hd PRO, or anything in that neighborhood, i really dont know exactly, directx works with all video cards, the video card im talking about is the ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory video card, it would work on ur video card, sorry for the lack of order

Sorry, what?

64-bit works just fine on Boot Camp, if you have a 64-bit Mac (Mac Pro, or any model with Core 2 Duo.) The whole point of Boot Camp is that it is not dependent on the host OS (The Mac OS) for anything, so Leopard doesn't matter. I know more than one person successfully running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition on their Mac Pros. Apple doesn't provide 64-bit drivers, but for almost all of the hardware in Apple's computers, you can get drivers from the actual hardware manufacturer (video card, etc.) Only the Apple-specific bits won't work. (iSight, IR sensor, etc.)

"a compliant video card is available for download for free"? What? A video card is the physical piece of hardware. In the Mac Pro, it can be physically removed and replaced, in every other Mac, it is a permanent part of the main board. (It is on a daughtercard in at least the previous-generation 24" iMac, but I don't think anyone ever found a source for replacement cards.)

The original release of Windows XP came with DirectX 8.1. If you have Service Pack 2, and that's it, then you have DirectX 9.0c, the latest version. (There have been patches and bugfixes, but 9.0c was the last 'feature release' of DirectX 9.) And, yes, you need Vista for DirectX 10. (And Vista comes with it.

However, the software is one thing. The hardware is another, and the drivers are a third.

Just because you have the DirectX 10 software doesn't mean you'll get the better graphics. The second step is the hardware. Usually, hardware is referred to by what "class" of hardware it is. This refers to the sub-specifications of DirectX, the "Pixel Shader" and "Vertex Shader" versions that the hardware fully supports. Generally, hardware that is called "DirectX 10 class" means that it supports all of the features that were added in DirectX 10, Shader Model 4. However, even older hardware can run "DirectX 10" software just fine, you just won't have all the "eye candy", and/or it won't run as fast. (Some of the new features in new versions of DirectX make it so that it takes less code or effort to to achieve a certain effect; while others add new capabilities, like better transparency.)

The third 'crutch' is the drivers. Just yesterday, I ran into an issue where a customer of mine had an old Dell laptop with a Mobile Radeon 7500 video chip. This chip is technically a "DirectX 7-class" chip, meaning it isn't capable of the features that were added in DirectX 8, 9, or 10. But ATI offers DirectX 9 compatible drivers for the Radeon 7500, so that the game can run DirectX 9 games. You just won't have all the visual special effects. and the game would be slow.

However, for mobile chips, ATI forces you to go through the laptop manufacturer for drivers, and Dell didn't have DirectX 9-compatible drivers. That means that even though DirectX 9 games work just fine on a desktop Radeon 7500, they won't work on this Dell laptop, because Dell never provided the newer drivers.

Finally, the game must support the DirectX features. For example, Flight Sim X does not yet support DirectX 10. It only runs through DirectX 9, even in Vista. The link in my previous post showing DirectX 9 to 10 comparisons shows a game (Call of Juarez) that does support DirectX 10 fully. That means that to run Call of Juarez in its full glory, you need a DirectX 10-class video card (nVidia 8x00 series, or Radeon HD 2x00 series,) Windows Vista (for the DirectX 10 software,) DirectX 10 compatible video drivers, and, of course, Call of Juarez. By comparison, even if you had all the other pieces, Flight Sim X will look exactly the same in Windows Vista as it would in Windows XP on DirectX 9 hardware. In fact, it would be faster on fast DX9 hardware (GeForce 7950GX2, for example,) than it would be on slow DX10 hardware (ATI Radeon HD 2300,) while looking exactly the same.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

yes, it will slow things down, its 15GB, u can bye and external hard drive for ur pictures and music, but for fsx, you'll notice a decrease in performance, and use bootcamp and winvista 32bit if u can, it wont work on parallels

I run FSX from an external hard drive as my primary storage for it. (I have a very small Boot Camp partition, and have an external hard drive for actual storage.) It runs just fine.

And I don't even have a fast external hard drive. I have a 7200 RPM internal hard drive on my MacBook Pro, and an external 2.5" 4200 RPM hard drive in a USB enclosure. I used to have a bigger Boot Camp partition, and had Flight Sim loaded on that, and haven't noticed any speed difference, other than that Flight Sim takes slightly longer to load after making major settings changes. Once I'm in the game itself, it is the exact same experience.

If you loaded Flight Sim on a fast external 3.5" hard drive connected via FireWire 800, the external hard drive would even be faster than the internal.

 

[ca805458]

Flight Sim X on new iMac

if anyone is wondering how good flight sim x is on one of the new 2007 imac's...well it's amazing. I loaded bootcamp which was easy, and loaded flight sim x easy. i have most setting on medium high, on the 20" native resolution at 32 bit, and it looks amazing, and with fast enough frame rates to give smooth gameplay.

 

[dimme]

Glad to hear that flight similar runs smooth on the iMac. I have my eye on one. I have one question, does the computer get hot after extended flight times?

 

[shongohan]

Cider can make that posible

Try with a ciderized version of Flight Simulator. A lot of games works with CIDER
Windows directx9 games without windows!

 

[dimme]

Try with a ciderized version of Flight Simulator. A lot of games works with CIDER
Windows directx9 games without windows!

I thought Cider was for game developers. I did not know a end user could buy/use it? Where do you go for more info and instructions.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Try with a ciderized version of Flight Simulator. A lot of games works with CIDER
Windows directx9 games without windows!

Uh, sorry, but no.

Cider is a technology that game developers can use to modify their games to run on OS X more easily than re-writing the game from scratch. It is not something that an end-user can use on their own.

The same company makes software called Cedega that does what you imply, but it is for Linux, not OS X. Cedega is a piece of software you run on your Linux machine that effectively 'pretends' to be a copy of Windows so that your unmodified Windows game runs on Linux.

I'll use a rather bad car analogy. Let's say Windows is a gasoline-powered car, Linux a natural-gas powered car, and OS X a diesel-powered car. Software for each is their type of fuel. You can't put gasoline in a natural-gas or diesel car.

Cedega is a modification to the Linux natural-gas car that lets you pump standard gasoline (Windows games) in, and the "Cedega module" converts this gasoline into natural gas on the fly. The gas station (game developer) doesn't know anything about it. It's your car (the OS, in this case Linux,) that knows the difference.

Cider is an additive to gasoline that the gas station has to add to make it compatible with diesel engines (The OS X car.) OS X users cannot do this additive themselves, it needs to be done by the gas station (game developer,) and comes out of a different pump than standard gasoline (a different CD than a standard Windows game.) But it can be the same pump as normal diesel fuel because it is now indistinguishable to the OS X car from standard diesel ('normal' OS X software.)

So, the difference is that Cider has to be implemented by the game DEVELOPER, not the computer USER. And I really doubt Microsoft is going to license this to make an OS X version of Flight Sim. (Although I would really love for them to... I've missed MSFS on Mac OS since version 4 was discontinued.)

The only way you can even tell if a game is a "Cider" game is if the game developer tells us! (Although any games you see that say "Mac OS X - Intel processors only" is likely a Cider game, since Cider can't do translation to PowerPC; and I believe EA has outright acknowledged that all of their OS X games will use Cider. I don't know about Aspyr-customized versions of EA games, though; since before Cider came along, Aspyr handled all the translations of EA games to the Mac, by actually re-writing them for the Mac, a very long process compared to using Cider.)

 

[imacfi]

Not a techie, need advice on MS Flight Sim on Dual Boot Mac

Hello folks. Been reading this thread but I have to admit I am not a computer geek and some of your comments/suggestions are going over my head. Would one of you be kind enough to explain to me in laywoman's terms your recommendation for running MS Flight Sim V.9 on a dual-boot Mac. I currently own a PowerBook G4 which is my primary business machine and I love it. I am a flight instructor and need to obtain a second machine that will allow me to run MS Flight Sim as a teaching tool with clients, but I hate the idea of buying a PC just for this purpose. I'd love to get the 24" iMac on which I could run MSFS, but I understand there are some issues with that because the woman at my local Mac store said the iMac only comes with the Radeon ATI 2600 card, and MSFS requires Nvidia 8600. I've also heard from fellow Mac users that Parallels is not so hot. Any advice? Thanks!

 

[micvog]

...I understand there are some issues with that because the woman at my local Mac store said the iMac only comes with the Radeon ATI 2600 card, and MSFS requires Nvidia 8600. I've also heard from fellow Mac users that Parallels is not so hot. Any advice? Thanks!

The current iMacs would run FSX very well. Instead of using Parallels or Fusion, you would get the best performance by using BootCamp (included with Leopard) and dual-booting Windows and Mac OS X. You would need to buy a license for Windows if you don't already have one. An nVidia 8600 is not required for FSX; the ATI 2600 would provide good performance but would support DX10.

 

[Thunderbird8]

I am reading this thread with growing interest.

Having visited a few dedicated flight sim forums I have been led to believe that even with the highest spec imac I would be better off sticking with FS9.

I understand that the majority of people with opinions on this will have been PC users, and have perhaps been doing a straight hardware comparison from their Dell or PC World machine with the imac.

I am looking at purchasing a new imac soon and would be very interested to know what settings and frame rates people are experiencing with FSX.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I am reading this thread with growing interest.

Having visited a few dedicated flight sim forums I have been led to believe that even with the highest spec imac I would be better off sticking with FS9.

I understand that the majority of people with opinions on this will have been PC users, and have perhaps been doing a straight hardware comparison from their Dell or PC World machine with the imac.

I am looking at purchasing a new imac soon and would be very interested to know what settings and frame rates people are experiencing with FSX.

FSX can be VERY resource intensive. So people who want to have the highest possible settings do want a higher end video chip than is included in any current Mac. However, I play FSX on my first-generation MacBook Pro just fine, even with the settings turned up fairly high. I just make do with lower framerates. For General Aviation type flying, I'm willing to get only 5-10 fps in order to have very realistic visuals. For the more 'action' oriented parts (The 'Acceleration' add-on,) I turn down the visual quality to get better framerates.

A new iMac or MacBook Pro should be able to get noticeably better frame rates than my MacBook Pro.

 

[Thunderbird8]

Thanks for that - and forgive my ignorance - but at what frame rate does a noticeable judder/jerk (you know what I mean, not sure of the correct term) occur?

I am planning to get TrackIR and do a lot of VFR flying in the UK especially, and whilst I love the idea of the extra realism that FSX offers (or appears to), many have said; stick with FS9 with plenty of scenery, airport, aircraft and AI add-ons.

 

[m1ss1ontomars]

Does anyone here know if installing Mac Drive will in any way impact access speed performance by either Mac OSX or WIndows of their RESPECTIVE partitions?? I plan to run apps in both MACOSX and Windows (besides FSX!) which rely on fast disk access. I do not want to jeopardize that so far, the MBP provides for that!

- Roger T

No, at least not noticeably. Mac Drive is really fast; it allows you to access HFS+ partitions at normal speeds as though it were just a FAT32 or NTFS partition.

 

[Trommvaldur]

Hi there, I need help

Hi there I think you have a lot of knowledge so I want to ask you for help.
(everybody allowed to comment but please no guessing(I am maybe investing
so much money and I cant afford doing something wrong))
Thanks

I just bought a brand new Imac

It´s like this:

24" 1920x1200
2.4GHZ intel core 2 duo
800MHZ (something I can´t translate to english)
4GB (2x2GB) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
320GB Serial ATA; 7200 rpm
8 x superdrive (4x DVD+R / 24x CD-R) Reads and writes CD, DVD and dual layer DVD disks
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT PRO with 256MB GDDR3

I want to buy FSX but is this hardware/software enough for FSX to
run smooth and look good?

Do I have to download Boot Camp?
What is is best for a smooth and beautiful ride in FSX Vista or XP something? :eek?
Should I get a Geforce or Nvidia cards or does the ATI work good?

Should I maybe go for Flight simulator 2004 or FS9 rather than FSX for
a better performance?

I am not to familiar with computers and english is not my first language
so I am sorry for all wrong info and spelling!

Thank you SO MUCH if you can help me!

 

[m1ss1ontomars]

Hi there I think you have a lot of knowledge so I want to ask you for help.
(everybody allowed to comment but please no guessing(I am maybe investing
so much money and I cant afford doing something wrong))
Thanks

I just bought a brand new Imac

It´s like this:

*snip*

I want to buy FSX but is this hardware/software enough for FSX to
run smooth and look good?

Do I have to download Boot Camp?
What is is best for a smooth and beautiful ride in FSX Vista or XP something? :eek?
Should I get a Geforce or Nvidia cards or does the ATI work good?

Should I maybe go for Flight simulator 2004 or FS9 rather than FSX for
a better performance?

I am not to familiar with computers and english is not my first language
so I am sorry for all wrong info and spelling!

Thank you SO MUCH if you can help me!

You do not need to download Boot Camp; all the necessary software is included with Leopard, either preinstalled or on the disk.

Sorry, I can't help you with much else, but I'm sure plenty of others can.

 

[dimme]

Hi there I think you have a lot of knowledge so I want to ask you for help.
(everybody allowed to comment but please no guessing(I am maybe investing
so much money and I cant afford doing something wrong))
Thanks

I just bought a brand new Imac

It´s like this:

24" 1920x1200
2.4GHZ intel core 2 duo
800MHZ (something I can´t translate to english)
4GB (2x2GB) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
320GB Serial ATA; 7200 rpm
8 x superdrive (4x DVD+R / 24x CD-R) Reads and writes CD, DVD and dual layer DVD disks
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT PRO with 256MB GDDR3

I want to buy FSX but is this hardware/software enough for FSX to
run smooth and look good?

Do I have to download Boot Camp?
What is is best for a smooth and beautiful ride in FSX Vista or XP something? :eek?
Should I get a Geforce or Nvidia cards or does the ATI work good?

Should I maybe go for Flight simulator 2004 or FS9 rather than FSX for
a better performance?

I am not to familiar with computers and english is not my first language
so I am sorry for all wrong info and spelling!

Thank you SO MUCH if you can help me!

I run FSX on my 2.4 MBP and it runs well with all the settings at high or medium high. The only issue I have is heat, the computer gets hot (80c) after 20 minutes of use. You may want to post your question in the games section of the form.