Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!agate!shelby!portia.stanford.edu!jessica.stanford.edu!aaron
From: aaron@jessica.stanford.edu (Aaron Wallace)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Flight simulator and WINDOWS
Message-ID: <1990Oct29.213113.20672@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 29 Oct 90 21:31:13 GMT
References: <85057@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Sender: Aaron Wallace
Organization: Academic Information Resources
Lines: 18

In article <85057@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> rhodes@rogue.llnl.gov writes:
>Flight simulators are very processor intensive and so is WINDOWS. The two
>together are a bad mix. Just for fun I tried running FALCON AT under 
>WIN3 with some very amusing (and unusable results). So far, I think
>windows is great for things like DTP and drawing programs like DESIGNER and
>little else.
>
>I'd be very surprised to see a decent flight game run under windows (
>maybe a 486 with ultra fast video).

It could probably be done *if* a Windows-specific implementation were written.
When running a DOS graphics app under Windows, the double-buffering kills
graphical performance (i.e the app writes the info to what it thinks is the
screen, then Windows copies it to the Window.)  A Windows-based flight
simulator wouldn't have this problem.  Whether Windows' graphics routines are
as fast as specialized ones for flight simulators is a different story...

Aaron