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PTaylor's WebLog

Flight Sim discussions; mostly on the core platform ( graphics and terrain, platform team, sim engine, geo tools and geo data, international, internal tools, technical art ) plus news on releases and updates, and the occasional tweaks and tips.

June 2008 - Posts

What is available at the MSDN ESP Developer Center
Almost 2 months ago I briefly noted there is a new MSDN ESP Dev Center. Available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/esp/default.aspx It includes: 1) the entire ESP SDK doc-set, 2) whitepapers, 3) new downloadable samples as well as samples that were Read More...
High-Detail Feature list, and then some
We’ve published a list of Seaplane bases in the article here . I have not seen a list of “High-Detail” features and thought I would offer one up J . There are two features touted as “High-Detail”; airports and cities. It is a bit trickier to come up with Read More...
Confused about FSX-Acceleration? What does it contain, and is it worth it.
I still see a lot of confusion about Acceleration ( aka X-Pack ). X-Pack is an expansion pack for FSX. X-Pack contains the following new features: 3 aircraft 1) F/A-18 (military jet), 2) EH-1O1 (helo), 3) P-51 (racer variant) 4 systems upgrades 1) Carriers Read More...
Intel CPU release cycle update
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=557 has what they purport is the Intel CPU release cycle for the next 3 quarters ( Q3 08, Q4 08, Q1 09 ) and it shows: 1)a decent price drop for current generation CPUs in Q3 08, plus 2 new variants of the Read More...
YAFT
Yet another FSX tweak. Note, it is possible to tweak the shadow quality somewhat. Try adding this to the [DISPLAY] section of the FSX.cfg file: ShadowMappingQuality=n where n can be 0,1,2,3. The 1st 2 values affect the size of the shadow map. The 2nd Read More...
A couple of sweet airports coming up
St Maarten by FlyTampa! is already released, see http://www.flytampa.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2977 Up and coming are: KaiTak by FlyTampa!, see http://www.flytampa.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3063 , its nice to see Martin at work, the scenery around the Read More...
More HW articles
Graphics ATI 4850 accidental viewing, http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Radeon-4850-4870,5667.html looks to be another solid mid-range offering. nVidia GT200 early benchies, http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3334 Hmmm... "Communication between Read More...
Interesting geo-site, map2explore.com
that provides a great level of geo-location search. in the authors' own words: "Map2Explore.com is a merge between Google Maps and Google Earth with Geonames.org, Wikipedia and Microsoft Flight Simulator databases. The GeoNames database contains over Read More...
Beautiful "classsic" airliner coming up
The B-377 Stratocruiser from A2A Simulations, formerly known as Shockwave. Some nice screenies on this thread . Read More...
Nehalem, will it deliver?
Interesting Nehalem preview at Anandtech . Note the test Nehalems are "crippled" by underclocks and immature motherboards. And still rock Penryn performance in overall performance even with that caveat. Check out the 3D performance on Page 7. Relevant, Read More...
Success of FSX and Future of the Franchise
I see questions all the time about how successful is FSX as compared to FS9. I cannot share internal data as that is a firing offense, J , even if it would make it easier to prove my point. However, industry standard data is freely and publicly available Read More...
Really nice screenshots from some amazing add-ons
FSWC http://www.fswaterconfigurator.com/gallery.htm FEX http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=26698&PN=1 http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=25884 GEX http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=26352 http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=26682 Read More...
User Beware:Tweak Info to follow
Warning Part I: Can ‘o worms to follow, thar be dragons here so sail on at your own risk, mate. Warning Part II: This is no endorsement of making the modifications shown here, this is simply information transmittal. A few FSX default files that developers Read More...
Nice post measuring relative aircraft performance
and showing the difference an "SP2 native" aircraft makes, here . its nice to see people flying and sharing information on some forums without the eternal whingeing that occurs on others. Read More...
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