Flight Simulator X Preview

The visuals are improved by the added detail of many objects but also from better texturing and lighting thanks to various new technologies. What we were shown was all in DirectX 9 and looked very good. They also took the time to show a mock-up of what they hope to be able to render in DirectX 10. The difference was staggering so it's hard to tell if they're over-excited or if DirectX 10 will make that big a difference. The mock-up shot included geometry shaders for clouds, high dynamic range lighting, light scatters, churned water with geometry shaders, particle sprays off the water, and stencil shadowing. It all came together to form a pretty nice visual standard. It'll be interesting to see if they can get the game to look like that in motion. If so, there are going to be a lot of happy flyers around the world when Microsoft puts out their free upgrade to DX10 when Vista is released.