fsx developers blog: September 2007

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The final step.

Now, after 4 working months, we are finishing "ZurichX" project and at this stage we are busy working on testing, in order to add details, avoid mistakes and obtain the best design of the airport. As you know, we started working with the FSX version and that has helped us a lot, in terms of best results and high frame rate, since we think frame rate is the most important aspect of an addon for Flight Simulator.

Now we are quite satisfied because we reached great FPS and the hub is easy to be used for both ground and air operations, especially in the fs9 version (at the moment in development) where the memory is used in a lighter way, and it's possible to be very speedy. Just to give you an idea, ZurichX has got 2 frames less than a small fsx airport, but this is Zurich, not a nice little airport on an Island, and we haven't finished the work yet.

You will note the differences between the two versions only during the flight, as regards Bump Mapping, specular and other typical FSX effects. We are now at a difficult stage of the production, because there are many details, vehicles, signs, and custom objects that will grant a full immesion effect and that we will add only at the end, so that they will be used with more than a LOD without spoiling the great frame rate.

As regards the publisher we haven't decided yet, but we are receiving lots of proposals. The product will be published next october approximately the 15th. We are sure that AES on fs9 version could be a good idea, but it's still early to put it, maybe we will introduce it later, because it takes some addictional work and we don't want the product to be published too late. Anyway, in the next future thinghs could change.

We will let you know about every decision we are taking,
thanks a lot for your help and enthusiasm.

the staff.