>Captains- >>(Now if that isn't the longest, most boring introduction of my>own opinion.... I think I just put MYSELF to sleep!)>>>The most intresting introduction I've ever seen. I loved it so much I read it twice.And your not alone with 27 years of Siming :)Thanks for the info.Mohammed

Do you know when Ryan will be posting his tweaks guide? And, will it be in the PMDG forum, or the FSX forum?Thanks.

I'm going to take a guess here and say even Ryan doesn't know the answer to that.

Randy / Michael J!My perception on this issue is that there is some legacy stuff inside FS that is so old now that they don't really have all of the intellectual capital needed to unwind the stuff...ie: undocumented features and aspects of the sim that they COULD tinker with- but they prefer not to tinker with because of possible side effects.In the case of rolling friction- the reason why we've always advised against people using that hack fix is because FS9 didn't model lateral friction well- so the airplane would have a tendency to lose grip with the nose wheel- and/or pivot around itself if you started only 1 engine on one side of the airplane.I'll have to experiment and see if the additional of lateral frction in FSX (which they DID do!) changes this and makes the "hack" work. Wouldn't that be exciting?BTW Randy: "I just cook for a living." Now see- that's something I admire of you and Michael J- you both can cook... I've never had the time to become good at it- but one day I'm going to learn....

Richard-Thanks- you comment on honest and forthright talk matters a great deal to me- as it's central to how we want PMDG operated. I'm glad you feel that way about how we conduct ourselves.Sleep Deprivation hasn't been too bad, actually. I'm a bit of a night-owl anyway- so Marisa and I help each other out to ensure that nobody goes for too many nights without a good night-sleep. The little munchkin is sleeping through almost all of the night herself as it is- and I dare say I've finally found a girl who can steal my heart faster than her mother did.... She's turned me into a complete soft-hearted sucker. :-)I'm loving it.

Dave-We are working on a few things to reduce the impact of the 747 on FPS. Obviously- the biggest "hit" for FPS is glass display technology- and since the 400 is a glass airplane there will still be quite a bit of overhead to contend with.We don't yet have an benchmarking numbers to give you- but we'll publish some information on the test rigs and compare them between default/PMDG 747 in specific settings so that you guys can have a clear idea what the impact will be on your own machine.That being said- the overall impact of the 400 is expected to be lower in FSX than it is in FS9. I'm going to refrain from offering details since we aren't finished yet.As for shared cockpit- this feature is entirely undocumented at the moment- so until good solid documentation appears- we aren't going to be spending much time with it. I do not anticipate in any case that we'll include this feature in the 400/400F for now- as it will likely require some new coding- and it's not always a simple thing to add such a pervasive new function to an existing airplane that was never designed to carry it.Likewise is also probably true with the MD11- but we'll see...If the documentation makes an appearance- i'd expect you to see it in the NGX/A320, however. :-)It's really all about timing for us.

> I've never had the time to become good at it- but one day>I'm going to learn....Rob, we can start with lesson #1 - a BBQ in my place provided you get here, I know with the bay it may be tough though. :-)Michael J.

Thanks for the reply Robert, I look forward to your assesment of FPS impact; at least FSX seems more fluid at lower PFS than FS9 so that the hardware update can be postponed a little longer ;-)I am disappointed to hear about shared cockpits but understand the reason. When I read that the SDK would be available from the word go, unlike previous versions, I had high hopes that 3rd party devs would be able to incorporate the new features quickly and easily, shame that the SDKs appear incomplete :-(Still I know the PMDG team will supply top quality aircraft and look forward to the releases.Keep up the good work and excellent customer support.RegardsDave

Hi Robert -Great read, thanks for sharing! On a similar note, would you mind sharing your system specs with us? I am planning on upgrading soon and just wanted to get an idea of a "well-working" setup that I can use as a benchmark. Thanks again!-Kevin

I think that monster review deserves enourmous credit, nice one!I am looking forward to enjoying FSX to its full potential but unfortunately i am like most struggling with even respectable FPS. I think back to when i first got FS9 and frankly how dire it was on my machine at the time and yet only the other day i found a new level of detail called "extreme" and my machine can handle that Verry easily. I am sure though the tweaking guides will come out, (some are already) also the cost of hardware will drop and once again over time i can gently push those sliders accross...the futures bright!

Kevin-I built this machine to handle high end development- so it's a bit above market spec even though it's now almost a year old...I'm running a FATAL1TY gaming specific MOBO with 2 300GB drives (subdivided into two 150GB partitions) a PIV 3.8Ghz dual core with 4GB of ram and an nVidia GTX 7800 card with 256MB Ram on the card....From this setup, i'm pushing pixels out across two 30" Apple Cinema displays placed side by side and running at 2560 x 1600....FWIW: The screen directly in front of me is where i do my coding/debugging and simming- and the screen to the left is where I arrange all my instant message windows (at times up to 18 to accomodate the team and beta testers, etc) along with any reference material that i need up while I'm coding....In FSX i'm routinely running 30-40fps in flight and 20-30 during approach/landing/ground ops/takeoff...When i run FSX- I'm running it only on a single screen....My FPS in FSX are generally about 1/2 of what i'd get in FS9.1 with the 400 running... But they are still exceedingly usable...

Dang that's a nice machine. Thanks for sharing!-Kevin

Well gentleman i to have FSX and i truly want to run the sim, but with all of the add-ons that i must rebuy is to expensive right now, i will have to save and build as i go along.But i would like to know what type of set up will work to run FSX to its full potential.i run a lot of software and i do not use the default planes, i have numerous add-ons that i must use to fly, radar contac, active sky, ultimate traffic, fstime keeper, ground enviroment, etc.All i want guys is to enjoy flying right now ,and too get where i was with FS9 will be expensive.my set up is a 3800+ 64, 1 gig ram, 7800 os agp vid card, 80 gig 10.000 rpm hard drive.all of the latest drivers , so what do i do to get a good frame rate.Thanks..............Robert