Simviation Forum - System requirement estimates

Apr 5^th, 2011 at 4:15am

F35LightningII Offline
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Here you can have a say on what system specs you think will be needed for good performance on MS Flight.

I think:

Quad core @ 3.0Ghz
4GB RAM
20GB Hard Disk Space
1GB DirectX 11

I've had my say. So what do you think? Huh

« Last Edit: Apr 6^th, 2011 at 1:31am by F35LightningII »

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Reply #1 - Apr 5^th, 2011 at 1:57pm

Travis Offline
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I think you're overestimating (except for the graphics card), but I could be wrong:

Dual Core @ 2.5 GHz
3 GB RAM
10 GB HD Space

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Reply #2 - Apr 6^th, 2011 at 1:28am

F35LightningII Offline
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I am talking about the specs that will give you best performance, not the minimums. I have a dual core @ 2.4Ghz and my fps can go bellow 10 sometimes. I don't think 2.5Ghz will be very good.

i5 3570K @ 4.3GHz, ASRock Z77 Pro3, EVGA GTX 670 FTW, 8GB DDR3, 128GB Samsung 830, 500GB Seagate Barracuda, Thermaltake Armor A60, Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, Logitech K800, Logitech M510, Windows 8 Pro x64, FSX Acceleration

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Reply #3 - Apr 6^th, 2011 at 5:44pm

Strawberry Yogurt Offline
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Let's all remember here, MS said the game will be nicer to our hardware... I'm thinking we are probably going to get something that delivers more than we think - we might just be surprised.

I went outside once. The graphics weren't all that great.

Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me.

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Reply #4 - Apr 6^th, 2011 at 7:20pm

DaveSims Offline
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Strawberry Yogurt wrote on Apr 6^th, 2011 at 5:44pm:

Let's all remember here, MS said the game will be nicer to our hardware... I'm thinking we are probably going to get something that delivers more than we think - we might just be surprised.

I am hoping another reoccurence of the FS2000 to FS2002 upgrade. I could run 2002 10x better than my system could handle FS2000.

Dave

www.flymcw.com

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Reply #5 - Apr 6^th, 2011 at 8:25pm

Steve M Offline
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If you can run it on your I phone I don't want it. I prefer at least a bit of a challenge. Saying that, I think the only way to make 'everyone' happy, no matter the hardware would be some form of cloud computing. A central bank of servers that send your graphics to you. But then there would be bandwidth and speed problems. Undecided

Flying with twins is a lot of fun..

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Reply #6 - Apr 7^th, 2011 at 2:33am

Travis Offline
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F35LightningII wrote on Apr 6^th, 2011 at 1:28am:

I am talking about the specs that will give you best performance, not the minimums. I have a dual core @ 2.4Ghz and my fps can go bellow 10 sometimes. I don't think 2.5Ghz will be very good.

Running FSX, I'm not surprised. However, as Yogurt said, MS has already stated that Flight will be easier on the hardware than FSX is. I hope that a dual core with a decent rate (2.3 or above) will suffice, while a cutting edge graphics card will have to be available.

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Reply #7 - Apr 7^th, 2011 at 10:38am

Daube Offline
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With Flight, MS is supposed to improve the multi-core distribution of the various tasks of the game, which means that the number of cores will become even more critical than it already is in FSX.

Also, it's obvious on the screenshots that the terrain in Flight will be even more complex than it is in FSX, so the various cores will be more taxed, power-wise.

I'm not expecting Flight to run smoothly on a CPU like a dual core. Dual cores are already not enough for FSX, they won't be enough for Flight either.

Got bloom ?
Got mountains ?
Got damage ?

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Reply #8 - Apr 7^th, 2011 at 3:49pm

Rocket_Bird Offline
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Does rendering terrain really require that much CPU power? I always thought that this was just one of those optimization problems with FSX. Seems everything requires that up-a-notch CPU if you want to move sliders up. This didn't seem so much of a problem with FS9, or X-Plane for that matter, so I'm curious whether or not this can be optimized a bit for better performance.

Also, I cannot name a single game out there that requires so much state of the art hardware to run smoothly (multicore or otherwise). If Flight performs anything like FSX, this might be a cause for concern. Thus I certainly hope they deliver a little something more palatable to today's hardware.

Cheers,
RB

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Reply #9 - Apr 8^th, 2011 at 5:27am

Daube Offline
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Rocket_Bird wrote on Apr 7^th, 2011 at 3:49pm:

Does rendering terrain really require that much CPU power? I always thought that this was just one of those optimization problems with FSX. Seems everything requires that up-a-notch CPU if you want to move sliders up. This didn't seem so much of a problem with FS9, or X-Plane for that matter, so I'm curious whether or not this can be optimized a bit for better performance.

Actually, the terrain rendering is one of the only things that were really optimised in FSX, thanks to the multi-core distribution of the terrain building processes in SP1 and SP2.

Sure in FS9 you didn't need that much power, but FS9 terrain was nowhere as complex as FSX terrain. If you consider just the ground textures as an example, FS9 ground textures (like XPlane9) were in 5m/pixel resolution. In FSX, the default textures are already in 1m/pixel, that is, 25 times bigger !! And that's just for default, addons texures can go down to 7cm/pixel !

Same goes for meshes and the landclass variety in FSX, all greater than what you can get in FS9. All this combined together explains why you need more power to render FSX terrain compared to FS9 terrain. And let's not forget about the autogen density.

Quote:

Also, I cannot name a single game out there that requires so much state of the art hardware to run smoothly (multicore or otherwise). If Flight performs anything like FSX, this might be a cause for concern. Thus I certainly hope they deliver a little something more palatable to today's hardware.

First, there are not so many games that simulate things that are as complex as in FS9 or FSX. Most "normal" games are just focused on graphics, the CPUs don't have much to do. Also, "normal" games are not as dynamic as our sims, thus there is much more room for optimizations and power saving.

Push the sliders in XPlane 9 and you'll quickly run into problems too. And in XPlane 10 it's going to be even more critical.
Don't be too optimisic for Flight either.

There are other "normal" games that require CPU power, mainly strategy games. Push the sliders and the number of active units in a game like Homeworld, Supreme Commander or something like that => you'll quickly kill the computer.

Got bloom ?
Got mountains ?
Got damage ?

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Reply #10 - Apr 8^th, 2011 at 1:35pm

Fr. Bill Offline
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Yes, FS (any version) is bogged down by the rendering process, given that everything seen on screen is dynamic...

The only way around this would be to have everything except the user a/c , AI a/c. and weather be "pre-rendered," which would increase the frame rates by a very significant factor, but...

...the scenery would no longer be easily modifiable, and the end result would end up taking more than 100x as much hard drive space!

Bill
Gauge Programming - 3d Modeling Eaglesoft Development Group Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600-4GB DDR2 Crucial PC6400-800 GB SATA-ATI Radeon HD2400 Pro 256MB DX10 NOTE: Unless explicitly stated in the post, everything written by my hand is MY opinion. I do NOT speak for any company, real or imagined...

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Reply #11 - Apr 8^th, 2011 at 3:16pm

alrot Offline
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Strawberry Yogurt wrote on Apr 6^th, 2011 at 5:44pm:

Let's all remember here, MS said the game will be nicer to our hardware... I'm thinking we are probably going to get something that delivers more than we think - we might just be surprised.

Do you really believe what M$ said? does any one remember the Minimum requirement for FSX ? after saying that a celeron 1gz and a 256mb video card and 1gbram we end up with the real deal a computer 4 years from the future
I hope they smart this time ,YES many of us BUY the higher and powerfull video cards and CPU due only to FSX ,My machine bearly runs FSX , More friendly Hardware MORE PEOPLE WILL BUY IT ,remember there's also a world beyond your frontiers that also would buy Flight (Examples India, China, Brazil), and CAN'T afford a super PC like in USA or UK so easily
...But don't worried owners of super computers Wink

I'm sure neither your PC would be able to run it , we will need Skynet hardware to run it Grin

(without Terminator I hope )

Venezuela

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Reply #12 - Apr 8^th, 2011 at 9:18pm

Rocket_Bird Offline
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Quote:

First, there are not so many games that simulate things that are as complex as in FS9 or FSX. Most "normal" games are just focused on graphics, the CPUs don't have much to do. Also, "normal" games are not as dynamic as our sims, thus there is much more room for optimizations and power saving.

Thanks for the response.

I understand the whole complexity issue here. What makes me itch though is whether the optimization can be improved on and whether if there are some other way that a sim like this could possibly be more fitted for hardware of today instead of hardware half a decade later.

Is pre-rendering and state-of-the-art hardware really the only two solutions?

I mean, its so weird. Taking FlyTampa's Hong Kong scenery as an example. The FS9 and FSX version seem almost identical; you have the same buildings, same textures pretty much (I think), and theres hardly any terrain because the city is at sea level. And yet the framerate difference is so significant that it is just difficult to fathom.

I have an okay system that can run most of FSX at near max settings, but some of the things that I see makes me wonder if there is room for improvement and whether such improvements could exist in Flight. In FSX, my video card doesn't even run at full load; it seems most of the work is generated by the CPU. I know whats holding things back, but I can't help but feel as though there is something inefficient here Huh

.

The rendering was improved slightly by multi-core distribution post SPs, but I dunno, it didn't seem as though it made that much of a mind-blowing experience. Perhaps I just didn't notice it.

Cheers,
RB

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Reply #13 - Apr 9^th, 2011 at 6:44pm

JBaymore Offline
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Strawberry Yogurt wrote on Apr 6^th, 2011 at 5:44pm:

Let's all remember here, MS said the game will be nicer to our hardware... I'm thinking we are probably going to get something that delivers more than we think - we might just be surprised.

And I've got a nice slightly used bridge near NYC for sale too. Grin

The past history of MS's simulator offerings points to the likely fact that the hardware requirements will be well higher than most anyone currently owns to get "maximum" features (all the great sounding stuff in the marketing) running at anything other than a slide show.

I hope I'm wrong...... but I doubt it.

best,

..............john

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Reply #14 - Apr 9^th, 2011 at 7:03pm

Travis Offline
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John, you do have a point, but try to remember that we got those previous promises from the ACES team using outmoded coding techniques left over from 2000. With a new team and a brand new software, I hope that MS has finally pulled it's head of the proverbial donkey . . .

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Reply #15 - Apr 10^th, 2011 at 2:40pm

Daube Offline
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Rocket_Bird wrote on Apr 8^th, 2011 at 9:18pm:

Quote:

First, there are not so many games that simulate things that are as complex as in FS9 or FSX. Most "normal" games are just focused on graphics, the CPUs don't have much to do. Also, "normal" games are not as dynamic as our sims, thus there is much more room for optimizations and power saving.

Thanks for the response.

I understand the whole complexity issue here. What makes me itch though is whether the optimization can be improved on and whether if there are some other way that a sim like this could possibly be more fitted for hardware of today instead of hardware half a decade later.

Is pre-rendering and state-of-the-art hardware really the only two solutions?

I'll give you a concrete example. A bit extreme for a comparison, but that will show you the principles.

Let's consider an old style Doom-like game, where you go through corridors and visit various rooms, ok ? The rooms are expensive to draw, in terms of performance, for the video card. So we want to avoid drawing "unnecessary" rooms.

One of the major optimizations, in this case, is to consider "where you can see what". Let's say there are three rooms, but when you're in the third one, you cannot see the two others because the corridor makes a corner, or something like that, preventing you to see. In that case, you don't need to draw the other rooms. So when you build the "map", the scenery, you place a logic check that prevents the computer to draw those rooms because they are not visible by the player when he is in there. This way you save a lot of power, thus you get smooth FPS.

Now, we have defined a logic here. We know how the structure of the corridors are so we define, once for all, the various logic checks that will save power. Unfortunately, in a dynamic world, this is not exactely possible anymore, because you don't know how much corridors there are, nor their shape, how much rooms, you cannot predict anything. That means that the nice little tricks we used before are gone.

This is the kind of problematic you'll face in a "dynamic" scenery. Of course, what I wrote above is not 100% correct but it will give you a very basic idea on why fixed-scenery games can usually display much nicer visuals than dynamic-scenery games.

Got bloom ?
Got mountains ?
Got damage ?

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Reply #16 - Apr 13^th, 2011 at 2:54pm

markag Offline
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I would be interested to see if they offload some of the CPU load to the GPU. I'm thinking with the power of todays graphics cards, especially Nvidia with thier high count of cuda cores, why can't some of the calculations be moved from the CPU to the graphics card. Combine that with better milti-threaded implementation and you could better utilize the existing hardware.

GPUs are starting to move beyond just 3D rendering. You already see it with video processing and PhysX calculations outisde of flight sim world. Why not incorportate those types of tweaks and optimizations to save processor cycles for the truley important things. Offload that workload to the GPU is what I say.

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Reply #17 - Apr 15^th, 2011 at 12:34pm

Rocket_Bird Offline
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markag wrote on Apr 13^th, 2011 at 2:54pm:

I would be interested to see if they offload some of the CPU load to the GPU. I'm thinking with the power of todays graphics cards, especially Nvidia with thier high count of cuda cores, why can't some of the calculations be moved from the CPU to the graphics card. Combine that with better milti-threaded implementation and you could better utilize the existing hardware.

GPUs are starting to move beyond just 3D rendering. You already see it with video processing and PhysX calculations outisde of flight sim world. Why not incorportate those types of tweaks and optimizations to save processor cycles for the truley important things. Offload that workload to the GPU is what I say.

I was wondering that myself though never suggested it explicitly. Given the fact that my video card doesn't even go full-load (when its more than capable of doing) with FSX while the sim chugs along with the CPU being the sole variable that drives fps, I can't help but wonder.

I get the work load thing and the difference between this and say, a first person shooter. But really, at some point, I think there should be a way to optimize this further instead of making the CPU the limiting factor.

I may be in denial, I admit that, but with technology these days, there has to be a better way.

Cheers,
RB

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Reply #18 - Apr 18^th, 2011 at 6:29pm

markag Offline
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The way nvidia has positioned themselves with the Fermi graphics cards shows that they expect the graphics cards to be doing more processing in the future. You already see how video encoding has moved from the CPU to the GPU, and that has really improved performance. Why can't some of these processing threads be moved off CPU. And now with the sandy bridge intel chips, on-chip PCI Express controller streamlines the connection between graphics and CPU. Granted, not everyone runs the latest intel and nvidia cards, but the technology is there waiting to be used. Why not take advantage of it.

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Reply #19 - Apr 18^th, 2011 at 6:56pm

Strawberry Yogurt Offline
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That's what I'm saying. They delivered FSX, it's great, but you need a supercomputer! Grin

MS Flight looks better, like a LOT better, and they've made a promise. They don't deliver, it don't sell. Wink

_{Let's just hope they do what they say, okay?}

I went outside once. The graphics weren't all that great.

Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me.

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Reply #20 - May 2^nd, 2011 at 7:31pm

New Light Offline
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Quote:

They don't deliver, it don't sell.

Yeah, but a bunch of folks are going to buy it at a premium price the day it comes to market. Unless you are one who learned the hard lessons from the debacle of FSX, I would imagine that there will still be quite a few folks that do buy it right away. I'm going to sit and wait for 1.5 - 2 years before I buy.

Quote:

They delivered FSX, it's great, but you need a supercomputer!

Even if I'm hearing of good early results - most of those folks will have higher computer skills than I ever hope to have and have deeper pockets than the average Joe. After 18 - 24 months is about the time that technology becomes better, more available and the price goes down fairly drastically.

I bought FSX the day it came out along with a new computer just to use FSX. Long story short, the first two computers went back to the store. Computers 3 & 4 went over my 3rd floor balcony with smashing results. #5 was taken to the range and was shot with an M4, shotgun slugs, got shot twice using a 37mm grenade launcher loaded with flechette rounds to get the ever-spreading parts and pieces. Then, for good measure, I switched back to my shotgun and used a dragons breath round to burn the little bit that was left at that point.

Ahh, so, like I said, I think I'll wait awhile to get into Flight. My stock i7 920 (#6) runs the single engine aircraft that I "fly" in FSX just fine.

Oh, and, not being to much of a techie, my guess for the specs to use Flight (with good, smooth flyability - NOT screenshots, anyone can do that)

8 core processor @ 6+ GHz
clock speed of 1500+
24+ Gs memory
4Gs vid card (capable of 2560 x 1920 resolution)
10K+ rpm hard drive
monitor (native 2560 x 1920 resolution)

Semper Fi,

Dave

« Last Edit: May 5^th, 2011 at 9:17pm by New Light »

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