Newsgroup: it.comp.giochi.simulatori.volo
Titolo: FS2000 e frame rate

Io penso di avere le idee chiare.
FS2002 esce in autunno no? Bene il mio PC sarà vecchio di un anno. Direi
che è troppo presto per cambiarlo. Posso accettare di cambiarlo quando
sarà 2, 2.5 anni vecchio. Al momento Fs2000 ci gira abbastanza bene
nella maggiorparte delle situazioni.
Può anche darsi che gli sviluppatori della MS abbiano creato un motore
grafico più efficiente che malgrado il programma più complesso abbia un
frame rate migliore. In teoria lo vedo possibile. Nel qual caso sarò il
primo ad aquistarlo el caso contrario continuerò a far andare il mio
FS2000.
Dopodiché quando avro un nuovo computer dopo un altro anno e mezzo sarà
fs2002 ad essere vecchio quindi continuerò a non comprarlo e vedrò che
altri simulatori ci sono in giro.
    Leo

Beh, leggiti quanto scritto su The Mag: in pratica si ipotizza che FS2000
non sia altro che la beta di FS2002, come FS95 lo sia stata per FS98. La
cosa non mi sembra del tutto inverosimile.
E' quello che ho sempre pensato io: in fatti non ho preso Office 95, ma il
97 che uso ancora senza problemi, e cosě per altri programmi.
FS2002 - Special Report
by Mike Clark
Occasionally Microsoft's range of simulators get stunning reviews but at the
same time receive harsh attacks from their hardcore critiques. Yes, TheMag
holds its hands up to that one. However, Microsoft Flight Simulator is
considered to be a fairly decent and stable title. It must be because the US
Navy use it to train their fighter pilots AND it does have the seal of
approval from John and Martha King. But seriously, will FS2002, announced
earlier this week, surpass all previous releases and will we as flight
simulator enthusiasts get the usual raw deal on performance? We take a look
at the facts...
It is a fact that MS plan their simulators in two's. Take a look at
Microsoft Flight Simulator 95 and 98 for example:
When it was released, FS95 (V6) was considered to be a complete mess by
people in the industry. It was fairly advanced for its time but it was soon
discovered that the sim that "just couldn't handle it". It suffered terribly
from rendering and frame rate problems but more noticeably hardware
conflicts. Not surprising really because people were still using 166
machines and serious 3d graphics cards were still on the drawing board.
Nobody seemed to be able to create add-ons for it either for fear of killing
an already sick sim. Microsoft in their wisdom said nothing at the time but
LISTENED intently to what public had to say and soon started taking notes.
The crazy thing about it was that FS95 sold hundreds of thousands of copies
worldwide. I bet there are still people using it today and having a whale of
a time in the process.
A couple of years later Microsoft released Flight Simulator 98 (V7). There
was a lot of hype about this release, and rightly so. With a similar look
and feel to FS95, FS98 was very much improved upon. Even though it contained
a lot of components found in FS95, the bugs and hardware conflicts were all
but ironed out. Apart from two official updates; a patch that fixed a couple
of minor issues and a converter that allowed people to use aircraft created
in BAO's Flight Shop, virtual pilots started happily, if somewhat
h-h-h-hesitantly filling up their flight logs. Even the commercial sector
got a jump start and finally got around to taking serious orders for flight
sim add-on products. Many people still use FS98 to this day and swear blind
that it was and still is the best flight sim ever created. The only near
rivals to FS98 were ProPilot, the Flight Unlimited series and later Fly! by
Gathering of Developers. We mustn't forget to mention Xplane that has always
been underestimated and under marketed in our view.
More recently, FS2000 (V8) has had a relatively new "engine" (program or
.exe) designed. It does contain some old, outdated but reliable code from
FS98 and even FS95. One of the reasons behind the inclusion of old code is
backward compatibility. By that we mean that add-ons created by for previous
versions can be used within FS2000. But the main reason in our view is that
FS2000 is a BETA version of Flight Simulator 2002 (V9). Can you see a
pattern emerging now?
As we say above, FS2000 consists of various bits of code stripped out of
other MS sims and had newer routines added to it. Fine! we hear you cry,
what's wrong with that? Well, nothing at all. But we believe that the newer
routines found in FS2000 are experiments for Flight Simulator 2002. If you
are familiar with both versions of the simulator you will know that the
Weather System, GPS, 3D Mesh Terrain, Aircraft modeling etc are all new
"Features" not incorporated into FS98. If you read Internet Newsgroups,
Forums and our FS Ground School feature each week with Ray (below) most
novices and hardcore users say that these features are far from perfect and
work differently on various machines. Some don't work correctly at all!
Now then, the only way that Microsoft can use these new features in their
next simulator (FS2002) is to get that new code tested thoroughly in the
current one (FS2000). Now we all know that testing a new product on every
machine in the world is totally impossible because there are quite literally
millions of combinations of hardware configuration. So, what Microsoft does
first is to use what's available to them. First they have a team of testers
that spend hours and hours flying around on PC's (Joy! Paradise!) and take
notes of the problems they find with the sim. The results from these tests
give the programmers a hot list of technical issues that must be addressed.
The tests also give an understanding of how the sim will perform within a
small cross section of the PC market. These tests do not give the developers
the whole picture though. So, what MS does is make an announcement a few
months prior to release asking for external  BETA testers. This is when a
group of lucky, select, privileged, elite, macho, tanned  [I hate them with
all my heart :)] group of experienced FS pilots get the chance to have their
say in the performance of the product. These results are quickly analyzed,
issues are ever so roughly addressed and then the product is released into
the market. By this point they still don't know if the new code will work on
the majority of machines so what MS then do is rely on us - the end user to
provide them with the results they need.
We then buy their "beta" product, install it on our machines and then phone
their technical support with our individual problems. We provide them with a
host of information including our PC specs, configurations, the serial
number of the product CD (remember that) and everything else we can in the
hope we will get an answer. Most often than not our issues are addressed
there and then. If not we are provided with a fix in the form of a Patch at
a later stage. We also write in frantically to Newsgroups and Forums to
express our viewpoints. All during this time MS are quietly watching,
learning and collecting information about their newly implemented code (with
possibly different versions of the new code distributed around the world)
and how its performing out in the field. The information we provide
Microsoft during our technical support calls and forum visits is invaluable
for their next flight simulator version. Without it, there would not be
another version.
Therefore, we have absolutely no doubt that any problems in the current
release of FS2000 will be fixed or improved upon in the next version. That
is guaranteed! Great I hear you scream! .. HOLD IT!!... The problem is that
even though the existing problems will be fixed or tweaked, even more bugs
will come to light when the new publicly untested features are revealed. You
want examples? We have learned that FS2002 will include Air Traffic Control
and a new FS Traffic type Dynamic Scenery. These are just two examples of
routines that cause major degradation in a simulator/pc performance and have
not been incorporated into Flight Simulator before. I believe that the ATC
will NOT include sound, more like a text based system like SquawkBox - but
we shall see. The last time I mentioned that the roads were awful in the
preview copy of FS2000 MS changed the scenery engine AND then went further
by including moving car lights too! :) I haven't forgotten that MS! So I'm
keeping my mouth shut this time around :) What would be interesting to know
is if anyone has a version of FS2000 with features enabled, disabled or just
"different". Now that would answer your questions about MS field testing new
codes within the product.
We are told by the public that they resent having to pay for a program that
is constantly under development. In our view FS95 and FS2000 are very much
BETA VERSIONS. FS98 and the soon to be released FS2002 are what we like to
call FINALS VERSIONS. Please bear that in mind when thinking about
purchasing FS2004.
Footnote
If you went to a supermarket tomorrow and asked for a BETA BANANA, BETA Palm
Pilot, BETA Cucumber you would get some pretty weird looks wouldn't you? So
what makes this any different? To ask the general public to pay for the
privilege of BETA testing products is not fair and the public do not want to
be made to foot the bill. Remember pilots - Every other Microsoft Flight
Simulator is the best one to consider purchasing. We are due for that this
year so watch this space!
Publisher: Mike Clark
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 97 che uso ancora senza problemi, e così per altri programmi.
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