Found a video that shows some of that dynamic environment footage I was talking about for FSX.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...imulator&hl=en

From a standpoint of graphics these new implementations are light-years ahead of the previous versions. Advanced real time shaders and texture rendering allow for greater realism in lighting & weather effects. The term used in the video phong & bump mapping are graphic terms for getting specular highlights from a texture file to emulate depth of 3d without having to model it which takes up compute power. (getting a Masters in computer visualization currently) This all translates to more effecient game play without slow frame rates but while creating tons more options and quality at the same time. To get the most out of this new version you are going to have to have a pretty fast computer with a nice video graphics card. If possible, operating under Window's Vista will maximise your performance with 64 bit multi-threading processors.

ps... sorry for the double post above... was having technical issues.