Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!fernwood!apple!uokmax!munnari.oz.au!samsung!think.com!mintaka!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!unido!gmdzi!strobl From: strobl@gmdzi.gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl) Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms Subject: Re: Flight simulator and WINDOWS Message-ID: <3512@gmdzi.gmd.de> Date: 30 Oct 90 08:44:56 GMT References: <85057@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, F. R. Germany Lines: 30 rhodes@rogue.llnl.gov (Rhodes, Mark) 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). You don't need a 486 or an ultra fast video card to do that. Windows clean separation of application programs, the graphics device interface and the video driver make it possible to take advantage of new hardware developements - like video cards with builtin processor and intelligence - without changing or even relinking the programs. Intelligent video cards like the Hercules graphics station card are a bit expensive today, but I don't see why they shouldn't go down in price like the SVGA adapter's did within one or two years. With these cards, the advantage of tuned assembler hacks using a memory mapped video interface over using a GDI will suddenly disappear. Ok, the Windows API/GDI was not written with the game programmer in mind, but it isn't that bad for this purpose, either. Perhaps I am a bit biased, because I don't like fast animation games (mostly "shoot'em up" type), anyway :-) Wolfgang Strobl #include