Dumb question about DX9 vs. DX10

[flyinjoe]

I've tried FSX in both DX9 and DX10 mode and I can't really see any visual difference, other than some flashing ground textures in DX10 mode when I'm at an airport.  I'll admit though that graphics aren't my main concern so I do tend to miss subtle differences.  Just cause i'm the curious type, I was wondering if someone knew what I was looking for visually between the two different DX versions?  Or is the difference simply performance based?  

[Daube]

For FSX, the difference is mainly concerning the performance.
You have to know that the FSX conversion to DX10 consist only in using DX10 instead of DX9 for rendering everything. So now, with DX10, it's still the same stuff that is displayed, but using the DX10 architecture you get better performance (admitting you have real quality drivers, that nobody, NVidia or ATI, could provide yet).

ACES team admitted that they had no time enough to implement new DX10-specific visual features in the sim, and since they wont implement anything else for FSX in the future, you'll have to wait until FS11 to see some new visual effects.

[NickN]

Water

[flyinjoe]

I see.  So I guess I should stick with the DX10 version and just put up with the flashing ground textures.  I'll take flashing ground textures and better performance since I'm not on the ground all that often.

[Camel_Moe]

That's pretty much what I do.  
I have graphic setting profiles for both in case I want to use an add-on that doesn't like DX10, but I spend 95% of my time using DX10, and putting up with the flashing airport textures.
To be fair to Aces, I do get a performance gain from SP2/DX10 once I got the current beta graphics drivers, and am able to turn up some sliders and still get higher fps than DX9.