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Paul J
January 2nd, 2013, 06:49
While browsing this great site (where I've been a lurker for a long time) a few weeks ago I bumped into a few posts which caught my eye, as a number of questions were being asked about DX10, and seemed to repeat many of the questions I've seen on other sites. I had a bit of a dialogue going with this nice fellow named RogerA, who is for sure, another DX10 enthusiast, and he expressed he "was happy to see me here, on this site"! Wow!! Well, I thought - that was quite an honour from a relative stranger, but it has got me out of the lurker mode, and has encouraged me to see if I can't add something to the forum which will help many of those folks who really want to try DX10, but have no idea where to start.

As lots of you may now be aware, a talented programmer named Steve Parsons has been actively researching - and repairing the DX10 side of the FSX shader system, aiming at eliminating the left-over DX10 issues. These are the ShadersHLSL files which ACES were unable - through time constraints or other reasons - to complete in time for the release of SP2.

The initiative, enthusiasm and work output which Steve - on his own - has displayed in taking on the job of actually finishing that development, is an incredible achievement. There is no such thing as "never intended as a finished product" - they were simply left in that state, a conscious decision, likely pegged as a low-priority item by the Project, Business and Marketing management of Microsoft's Gaming Studios.

It is one thing to 'better' a product with an improvement, or to fix a known issue - but it is quite another to knowingly allow a product to market, and label something like DX10 as a "Preview" with that "Preview " programming barely functional, and not at all representing a true preview of "what's coming with DX10".

Steve's work-in-progess shader repair patch, currently at version 3.2.2, has been successful to the degree that I reckon that a wholesale move for many "simmers" to DX10 is now quite practical. There are now several hundred FSX users - and growing daily, who have completed this transition, and I believe it has somewhat created a new and exciting experience for that avid flight-simmer: an alternate to P3D, a new and smoother FSX, while also creating an extra opportunity for forward-thinking commercial FSX developers to play a role in furthering this change by virtue of making sure their products are DX10-compatible.

If you want to have a shot at DX10, here's a bit of a (constantly updated) guide, started back in August, 2012, which will give you the basic "How-to"'s to get it going. It's available here (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/52676345/DX10_Fix/Notes/DX10%20Notes.doc) as a Word doc, or here (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/52676345/DX10_Fix/Notes/DX10%20Notes.pdf), as a pdf. I suggest reading it through a couple of times before doing anything!

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to ask away here, or I can also be reached at the email addy at the bottom of the doc.

Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year,

Good luck, and All the Best - especially RogerA!

pj

Dangerous Beans
January 2nd, 2013, 09:43
It is good that someone have taken up the challenge to fix what MS dropped the ball on.
I have tried the new shaders but unfortunately I'm one of the group that get an FPS drop in DX10 over DX9, with or without the shader fix :(

Paul J
January 2nd, 2013, 10:00
It is good that someone have taken up the challenge to fix what MS dropped the ball on.
I have tried the new shaders but unfortunately I'm one of the group that get an FPS drop in DX10 over DX9, with or without the shader fix :(

Asus P5Q3
C2D Q9650 @ 3.6 GHz
8Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
GTX580 3Gb
Akasa 1000w PSU
Antec Twelve Hundred gaming case
Asus VE276Q 27" Monitor 1920x1080
Win 7 64bit

That machine of yours should profit by DX10, BD! Coupla questions, though: Is that really your proc speed, or is it overclocked? .. and - can you copy/rename your fsx.cfg to fsx.txt and post it here, so I can take a peep at it?

All the Best,

pj

Roger
January 2nd, 2013, 10:40
Hi Paul,
Glad to see you're out of "lurker" mode and posting more.:wavey: I toyed with the possibility of creating a Dx10 forum here but for now I believe the best idea to to keep the energy concentrated over at your home site. As it continues to grow it might be worthwhile setting up a Dx10 forum here, if only to help promote Dx10 with Steve Parsons shader mods.

Paul J
January 2nd, 2013, 11:12
Hi Paul,
Glad to see you're out of "lurker" mode and posting more.:wavey: I toyed with the possibility of creating a Dx10 forum here but for now I believe the best idea to to keep the energy concentrated over at your home site. As it continues to grow it might be worthwhile setting up a Dx10 forum here, if only to help promote Dx10 with Steve Parsons shader mods.

Hi there!!

Compliments of the Season to you, Sir!! If you had lots of "downloadable content" I hope you (or your wallet) are not hurting too much!! :isadizzy:

I "sort-of" agree, Roger, I don't expect that will change, overmuch, but I saw that you had a very good, very exposed "FSX Guides" forum, and that's something that Avsim doesn't have. I was not thinking in the direction of an "Official DX10 Forum", per se, justr as another "FSX Guide", which it certainly is, and will compliment the already comprehensive threads here. This will certainly create traffic here, which is a good thing.
It's very "spread around" at Avsim, making it a tough job to find instantly - something like Kosta's Tuning Guide, for e.g., I think that not everyone is "automagically" aware of the DX10 forum there, plus it's a semi-hidden forum listed only at the top of the FSX forum. For these reasons, I would like to make use of that better facility here, if I may - at least as a pinned thread in this forum?

All the Best,

peej

Roger
January 2nd, 2013, 12:58
I'll give it a sticky and maybe we'll get some Dx10ers posting with questions and/or solutions:engel016:

Dangerous Beans
January 2nd, 2013, 13:14
Asus P5Q3
C2D Q9650 @ 3.6 GHz
8Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz
GTX580 3Gb
Akasa 1000w PSU
Antec Twelve Hundred gaming case
Asus VE276Q 27" Monitor 1920x1080
Win 7 64bit

That machine of yours should profit by DX10, BD! Coupla questions, though: Is that really your proc speed, or is it overclocked? .. and - can you copy/rename your fsx.cfg to fsx.txt and post it here, so I can take a peep at it?

All the Best,

pj

That's OK Paul, I get great visuals and a smooth 30 FPS in DX9 so I don't really mind.
I'll try the shaders again in a few updates time and see if I can and see if I can coax anything more out of it then.

My CPU is overclocked, its default speed is 3 GHz. It's been running at that speed since Oct 2009 on the same Win 7 install with no ill affects.