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[The seminal Flight Simulator franchise is embracing multithreading with the latest version, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and in this sponsored feature for Intel's Visual Computing microsite, engineers explain the threading techniques that help enhance the sim's visuals.]
For
many pilots, no sensation evokes greater pleasure than that
fleeting
moment when gravity is undone, the accelerating rush
of air over
the curved wing surfaces gracefully lifts the
wheels from
the runway, and in an instant of exquisite
weightlessness
pulls the aircraft skyward. For many gamers and
flying buffs,
the closest way to capture the sensations of flying
without
leaving the ground has been Microsoft Flight Simulator*, a
long-lived
and respected presence in the oft fickle world of gaming.
Now into its
second decade of existence, the tenth version,
Microsoft
Flight Simulator X, successfully takes advantage of multithreading
and Intel®
CoreTM microarchitecture, thanks to ongoing
collaboration
between Microsoft development teams and Intel
engineering
staff members.
As you might
expect from a computer simulation that models the
intricacies
of aircraft control systems, expansive scenery across the
entire
surface of the planet, and the complexities of flight, effective
playback
requires powerful processing capabilities. The engagement
between
Microsoft and Intel and the collaborative engineering
efforts
resulted in some of the most richly rendered visuals ever
seen in a
desktop flight simulator. The multi-threading techniques
employed in
Microsoft's latest release preview the possibilities in
future
business and entertainment software where processor-intensive
tasks
performed in parallel will give developers abundant
opportunities
to model and depict natural-world phenomena.
Multiple
Cores Unlock the Capabilities
of 3-D
Flight Simulation
Any way you
look at it, the processor demands of launching a
computer-generated
aircraft skyward, tracking and displaying its
movement
above diverse landscapes, and responding to the physics
involved in
flight maneuvers are considerable. For many years (since
1982 when the
IBM* PC version was released), Microsoft Flight
Simulator has
pushed the boundaries of processing power and
graphics
display capabilities. Not everyone realizes that the first
version of
Flight Simulator, created by Bruce Artwick, flew on an
Apple* II
computer in 1980, where budding pilots had to use a lot of
imagination
with only a four-color or monochrome screen to display
the surroundings
and a rudimentary two-gauge panel that delivered
airspeed and
altitude data.1
The second
generation Microsoft release, FS 1.0, modeled the
behavior of a
Cessna 182, improving on the prior Apple version by
offering
eight gauges, an improved coordinate system, four unique
scenery areas
with 20 airports to choose from, a pair of COM radios,
and distance
measurement equipment (DME). The simulator factored
weather into
the flight performance, giving the user nine different
view
directions, but the display characteristics were closer to
abstract art
than photorealism, with only four colors plus dithering to
replicate the
cockpit and scenery.

Figure 1. This
screen from FS 1.05 tests the user's usual acuity to identify the Statue of Liberty.
Anyone with a
sense of nostalgia about the good old days of
computing can
experience the early flight simulators-
downloadable
from The Old Flight Simulator Vault
(http://fshistory.simflight.com/fsvault/).
Emulators, available for
downloading,
allow early Apple, Commodore*, and TRS-80*
versions to
run on modern equipment, offering a revealing picture
of how far
the simulator has advanced.
---
1
Flight Simulator History, http://fshistory.simflight.com/fsh/timeline.htm.
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Without the numbers to backup the claims, I consider this artictle to be more of the marketing fluff than of any real value.
(And do not understand me wrong - I love FSX and I spend a lot of time in it, I just do not think speaking about it as a multicore scalable application is true).
..a technical article would have been nice. This is marketing 8(