Acceleration, DX10, SP2 Info up

Phil Taylor has updated his blog
with information about what is in and what is out for the DX10 preview. A few items of note:

• The dx10 codepath is being referred to as a preview. Phil goes into some detail about this, but most importantly, we see a definite shift in protocol towards back-compat with this update. ACES wants to get in all the new features and performance possible, but I'm sure that's hard when they have to spend all their time figuring out why a three year old plane is all messed up in their new, more efficient pipeline. I, for one, agree with this completely.
• The water is gorgeous. I'm just putting this out there so you guys with Vista and DX10 can be ready for it. I don't have the horsepower to run anything above 2.x low on my system without taking a hit, but after SP2 comes out, running under DX10 will allow me to hit 2.x Max.
• HDR Bloom - bloom always was a massive fps hit on pretty much everyone's systems. Now it's an accessible feature, and it looks better. You guys notice how they fixed the things that were already in the system instead of pumping out new things to potentially cause more problems? In other words, instead of cloud shadows, we get a better sim. I'm ok with that as well.
• VC Shadows - you guys are going to love this, if you fly in the vc at all. It adds a great level of immersion. We saw an example of this in the train sim preview vids.

I suppose, given that all we ever got to improve FS9 was a single incremental patch, that ACES has shown a greater attention to community needs by at least 3 times this go around. I think that's important here. This is a sim that keeps getting better, and not just because of the 3rd party guys this time around.

Time to get ready for work, but I have some news coming up soon.

Status and Questions

It's been quiet since the last time I said it wouldn't be quiet anymore :p

Warren Spector , one of my favorite game developers, muses at how easily his blog became a meta-blog, blogging more often on how hard it is to keep a regular blogging schedule. I'd try for sympathy, but Owen does more than I do (and better, I should add) and still blogs like a madman.

But routine is something I haven't had enough of in my life recently, and in regards to this blog, it's one of the things I'm going to be changing.

To begin, a list of what I'm doing. I had considered separating my "project" and personal blogging off somewhere else, but I think it's probably better to have it all in one place. I believe it will prompt me to write here more often. These are the projects I'm currently undertaking...not really all at once, more like the list of things that I want to accomplish.

• Zero-Altitude - this is my big one. The name which I will be publishing any zany works I develop. My friend and creative partner Will and I came up with the name to indicate the ground floor, the base level. I've talked about it before, but the website should roll out this week
• Continuing the tutorials, of course
• I'm working on a quick and dirty HL2 with a friend who is a very talented level designer. His concept is a battle in a contemporary setting, such as an office building, where weapons are one-off and one-use. The horror-shooter Condemned used a similar concept, with the main character pulling pieces of rebar up as weapons or things of that nature. In this concept, every day items would be the only weapons, and they would have a one hit durability. That is to say, once a hit is scored, the weapon is destroyed. At the same time, weapons would have realistic effects on enemies, meaning it wouldn't take much to knock someone down. The big draw is exploring the amazingly modular structure of the Source Engine.
• Of course, FSX and XNA experiments. Zero-Altitude is supposed to exist as a test bed for all sorts of experiments in game play, and XNA provides a good place to start.
• Learning Silverlight - I have to say, from the demos, I'm impressed, and I'd love to poke around and see what makes it all tick.

So that's it for now. I need more coffee, and I want to read more about this massive 737NG inspection happening, but work is work so back to coding I go.