Ever since I started playing FSX, the cooling system design of my one year old laptop was becoming problematic. Every time I played, it over heated...
The CPU/GPU heatsink temperature sensor was reading more than 97+ degrees celcius before automatically shutting down the machine. Nice eh?
That, plus the horrible frame rate (probably due to every component in the laptop being too slow... but let's blame this on the ATI Radeon X700 ;-)) convinced me that the time had come to buy a new machine!

That was exciting, I hadn't done this a over two years! I went to Frys and bought a new nForce 680i with an Intel Core Duo II. For the graphics, I didn't go for the 8800GTS/X yet. I took a 7900GS, which seemed to be the best price/performance ratio of the moment.

I assembled the machine and quickly tried FSX: What a blast!
It's way more beautiful than with my old system! I can crank up the settings almost all the way up and play full screen (1920x1200) with Anti Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering 16x on, sweet!

I flew a couple of times with Bruno. Poor guy is playing on an old laptop, probably at around 10 to 15 FPS... :-) Of course, we did some formation flights. I love to do that in FSX. The connection is super smooth and it's so much fun to fly in close formation!

 You can check out the latest pics I took in this gallery.

Good thing is now that I have a NVIDIA video card, I'll be able to use NVPerfHUD at home on Flight Simulator Project. Not that I really need to optimize the game anymore now with this blazing fast machine ;-)

Flight Simulator X was released about a month ago, it was about time, more than three years after the previous release ;-)

I was really excited about this new release, but it left me with mixed feelings. It has numerous bugs that were not fixed in the RTM and the Multiplayer can be really frustrating! I get disconnected every once in a while. I don't know if it's a Gamespy issue or what, but that can be annoying when it happens while you are flying...

I read on some forums that some people were thinking about switching to Flight Gear or X-Plane. That's funny how it reminds me these people who say they will switch to Linux when Vista is released... How stupid.

Okay, FSX has bugs I'm pretty sure it could have been optimized a bit more. I understand people's frustration: How would you react if with your brand new computer, Vista performed so poorly that you had to deactivate all the new kewl advertised features, making it visually and user-expercience wise, worse than Windows XP ?? You would be sure angry.

No this is not going to make me hate FSX or Microsoft. I think the Flight Sim guys did a great job. FSX just lacks a little polish, and I know how software development can be hard, especially at the very end of a project.
Despite its bugs and poor framerate, I'm starting to appreciate the multiplayer mode. I flew in formation yesterday with Bruno, from Brest to some island I forgot in close formation. It was really a blast!

Let's all wish a patch is on the way to fix the last few remaining glitches!

Here we go, the NDA has been lifted... I was one of the lucky people who had the chance to participate in the beta of FSX.

My impressions on Flight Simulator X?
Well, it rocks ! Of course, it'll rock even more when I'll get a new DX10 video card with a brand new machine.


About the sim, I especially love the new multiplayer mode and the various shaders they have added such as the water reflections of the tarmac/runway reflections. There is also a brand new module to interact with the sim, and it includes a .NET interface !

We can expect a release within the next two months if I believe what I've read here and there.
It's been fun to be close to the development of FS, and all the folks at MS are really nice. I can't disclose anything about the beta process, but all I can say is that MS was very responsive. For example, I was pissed at something they removed, filed a bug, and that thing made its way back in the sim ;-) They should call it the "Matt" feature ! No, I won't tell what feature it is ;-)

Great news for all of the flight sim fans out there !

Microsoft Game Studios just released a demo version of FSX ! It's the first ever demo in the history of FSX.

It's downloadable on GameSpot and on Clubic.fr

Have fun !

Well, I'm guessing all FS fans already know about it, so this one is for people outside of the FS world : check out FSX latest screenshots here and here !

A blog about Flight Simulator Game Design, now that's great !

It's over at Paul Lange's blog.

In one of his latest posts, Steve Lacey writes that he is leaving Microsoft to start his own company.

Steve, if you read this, good luck in your new projects and thanks a lot for all you did !
(Especially for not blowing me off a couple years ago when I mailed you to ask if you would give my simulator a try ;-))

I'll keep reading your blog, that's for sure !

Everyone is talking about it, this is official, the next version of Flight Simulator was announced today !
It'll be called Flight Simulator X (for 10) and will be released at the end of this year !

Lots of screenshots have been released and we can notice aircraft cast shadows, sun reflections on the aircraft fuselage, moving cars on the road (now that's great !), amazing scenery, fantastic autogen, lots of new airplanes ... It'll be hard to wait that long to give it a try !!

Jason Waskey on his website makes a comment about the fact that these screenshots come from different builds of FSX and that there is *really* more to come !

Q&A and Screenshots can be viewed at Avsim !

Yippi !

From what I read on various websites, Microsoft would be about to announce the next version of Flight Simulator. A computer game magazine said it would be Flight Simulator X. I don't know if this is true, but I like this name :-)

Anyways, I guess we are going to have to wait a little more !

... on his blog about Beta Testing in Flight Simulator.

He replies to some critics about FS beta testing he read on a forum. It's nice that Aces team responds to these posts and say the truth about what's really going on :)

I found that too many ppl on these forums "know" how things are done, even though they haven't written a single line of code in their life ...

Thanks Jason, Steve and all others for these interesting posts !

Happy Landings !

I finally got it ! It came in the mail only 4 days after I placed my order on www.megascenery.com. Nice job from both PC Aviator and UPS ;-)

Photo real scenery, I think, is one of the most important aspects of a flight simulator. When I purchased Megascenery Northern California about a year ago, I totally gave up flights over the default scenery. This add on has changed my way of flying.

Don’t get me wrong, I love those big jets and all, but since I don’t fly them for real, it’s less fun for me to fly them that to fly light airplanes. Plus, I like short flights of about half an hour to an entire hour.
I’ve also been a big fan of Flight Unlimited 2 and 3 at the time they hit the market. I just loved those short hops in California with the greatest ground definition ever.
Therefore, I couldn’t skip on MegaScenery titles of the Bay Area !

I’ve flown about 10 hours or so over MegaCITY San Francisco so far. I’m impressed at the amount of details there is on the ground. It’s now possible to spot buildings, streets, even swimming pools !

I’ve taken a Mooney for a 30 minutes flight from Gnoss to Palo Alto, and here are the screenshots !

So to wrap this article up : Mega City San Francisco : A Must Have !

Happy Landings

Proud owner of MegaScenery Northern California add on for flight simulator, I recently ordered a new title from PC Aviator : MegaCITY San Francisco.

 I'm hopping to get it soon by the mail. One note though about the price of the whole thing. Add on price itself is fine. 19$ for the whole area, but the shipping is freaking expensive ! I paid a total of 46$ !

And who knows what the UPS guy is gonna ask me when he'll knock at my door !



Anyways, it doesn't matter, I really want this add-on since I might be moving there soon ... (more on that when I'll have more info ;-))

Happy Landings