Oh, Great FS2002 how strange thou art!

[Guest]

I beggeth the, oh Microsoft-On-High to divulge the method to your madness so that I, a mere humble servent in your vast and magnificant kingdom, may be worthy enough to touch the hem of your garment!!!!Okay, what the heck am I talking about? Today, my pieces to my new system started coming in, of which the Radeon 9700 was the first to arrive! I excitedly plugged it into my old 2.0Ghz P4 with 512MB of PC 800 RDRAM and off I went to 3DMark 2001 SE. *BOOOOOOOOM* my score went up between 2000 - 3000 points over my Geforce4 Ti4600!!! (depending on which setting I used). My GOD, I mused, let me run FS2002 and I shall experience a wonder as never before, for I will master the densest sceneries as if they were mere ants to be trampled under my mighty feet!So, with verve and panash I loaded up FS2002 and went to Simflyer's KEWR where with the lowly GeForce4 Ti4600 I get between 8 and 20fps depending on how much AI traffic is in my line of sight. With all AI traffic off I get upwards of 30fps without fail in the densest scenery, with clouds rain. And... the time came and I pressed the designated buttons to bring up the mystical FPS counter by which all are judged...And my jaw hit the flaw. I rubbed my eyes, I stood up, I sat down, I rolled around on the floor and when I was done, the FPS counter still said 2.0 (two, deuce,) FPS. Obviously the problem is with ME so I tweeked and I crashed and I overclocked and then I loaded up FS2002 once more and.... 3.5 FPS!!!!After 5 hours of playing with the Radeon Card it all became clear to me as never before. FS2002 does not CARE about conflagurating texel blasters, multi-pumped aerodynamic pixel shading, or even supercooled isometric three-dimensional whirlygigs, which the Radeon 9700 has plenty of and more! FS2002 is about CPU power pure and simple. FS2002 isn't programmed like a game which is made to offload everything off of the CPU so that one can attain mythical frame rates of 250fps! NO NO NO! FS2002 just wants an efficient pipeline from the CPU to the screen and be damned with all the fancy stuff in between. FS2002 is simply an application, like MS Word, with wings!The moral of this diatribe? If you want stunning 3D Mark 2001 SE scores to brag to your neighbors about, if you want to play Quake III or RTCW at 10,000 FPS, or just want a card with HYPER-Z III (whever the hell that does) then the Radeon 9700 is for you. On the other hand, if you want FS2002 to run smoothly then get a Geforce4 MX and the fastest CPU and most memory you can afford!!!*sigh*Mike T.

[Guest]

I didn't think the 9700 worked with Win9x period. My understanding was it was for XP and 32bit color. I know for a fact that 16bit AA is not supported yet and may or may not be in the future. I'm surprised you even got it to run on Win9x?

[Guest RiddlePilot]

>>FS2002 is simply an application, like MS Word, with wings!Funny, cause wasn't there a simple flight sim hidden in MS Excel 97?

[cat 2]

Great post, Mike!Peter Sydney Australia

[Guest Simpit]

You shouldn't have used the "panash ".... the verve is suspect also....;) Derek

[Guest]

No, when I said ME, I meant "I", Mike T. I am running WinXP Home SP1. :-)