wow, somebody really takes their game seriously... perhaps too seriously?
Like I said, I don't know anything about this game, nor do I really care. What I do know however, is how to control the remote for my TV. Every once and a while I'll flip through the Discovery Channel to find them showing
real flight simulators. They're huge, and they're controlled by banks of computers, not just one.
Now, granted, that might be a prop simply used to convey grandiosity and really it's just one little P4 doing all the work...
or real flight simulators do indeed require a lot of cpu power. I'm guessing they really do? So, if they can manage to fit all that onto a DVD you can plop into a home PC, then that tells me that what you're playing isn't a real flight sim, but a game, just like the rest of us... so you can drop the pretentiousness about it.
Lastly, your usage of quote trains here has been, imho, a wee bit rude and disrespectul; especially considering the OP asked for our opinios... opinions which you seem to think are there for you to rip into as you see fit. Not exactly a good way to make friends.
There are a number of reasons why an industry standard flight simulator requires some much processing power and to the best of my knowledge, I will give you some of them.
[1] A civilian airliner may carry several hundred passengers and if it was to crash they could all be killed along with the crew and several hundred people on the ground, aswel as the loss of a multi-million dollar aircraft. For that reason, a flight simulator used by an airline has to be perfect in its reproduction of what a real aircraft would do. To get the last twenty per cent of realism has a huge cost in processing power and other computer power.
[2] Modern Commercial Aircraft simulators are full motion devices, in that they are capable of moving up and down, forwards and backwards, left and right, the Microsoft simulator does not move anything, therefor it does not require any processing power for that task but commercial aircraft simulators do.
[3] Microsoft simulator does not seek to model every aspect of an aircraft and I never said that it does, a commercial Aircraft simulator has to be able to model every aspect of an aircraft both in normal flight and in a failure situation e.g. a commercial simulator would have to be able to model the specific effect of loseing a turbine blade.
[4] The supervisory staff in a commercial simulator need to have the facility to influence the simulator in real time, so that even if the crew respond in a timely and appropiate manner to an un-expected threat, the supervisory staff can add on additional problems, this facility simply does not exist in MS flight simulator .
[5] The Commercial simulator has to produce audit trails of everything that happens whilst a training crew is using it, there is simply no requirement to do this in MS flight simulator.
[6] MS flight simulator produces one single view, the commercial simulator must produce a realistic view of what can be seen from any of the windows of the cockpit which would in effect be greater than 180 degrees.
[7] If there is a triplex autopilot with three computers and that equipment is not actually installed in the simulated cockpit but that work is done on the simulator computer with only the switches for the autopilot installed in the simulated cockpit, then the work of those three powerful computers must be done by the commercial simulator and a similar issue would exist with the flight management computer, the engine management computer and the fuel management computer, etc, etc.
I was not trying to make friends or enemies with you, your opinions are your opinions and other people have the right to have their opinions just as you have the right to your opinions. I never said said MS Flight simulator was an exact simulation of an aircraft and even if it was which it is not, nor as it so happens is even the most advanced and sophiscated commercial simulator [ the latter happens merely to be more accurate but not exact to the real thing ], I would have no reason to be pretentious since anybody with a computer and sixty us dollars to purchase FSX, can play FSX, which is hardly an elite club. Since you have no reason to accuse me of being pretentious, that accusation says more about you than it does about me.
As for being disrespectfull, frankly I haven't a clue what you are talking about and it was you who was made a personal attack not me.
like you say
Like I said, I don't know anything about this game, nor do I really care.
but at the same time, you feel fit to make a personal criticism of me on that basis.
I never said that FSX/FS2004 was an exact simulation of a real aircraft, nor did I claim that it comes up to the standards of a multi-million dollar commercial simulator what however is true is that within its cost and equipment constraints it does provide an exceptional degree of realism to the extent that many professional airline pilots will use it both for hobby purposes and as a study aid.
Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer
Threads like this suggest that the problem with Flight Sim is the game, not the hardware: Anyone have a GTX 280?
