I'm interested to understand if anyone has experienced my problem with fsx.With a pc (p4 3.0, 1g ram, 256m video card - 3 years old))that worked quite well with fs9 when i installed fsx I had these problems:Very long time of loading the program (about 3 min)Very low and variable frame rate (from 30 to 0.5)Continuos lacking of textures during changing vews. Continuos blocking of screen images.After some experiments with settings trying to understand the probem I realize some smoke smell from pc case, temperature of case increasing and some flickering and locks on the video like an incipient problem on the monitor.After that the pc shutted down itself wihtout any further message.The smell was strong and opening the case I found out only a high temperature generally spread inside.Some minutes later I switched on the pc successfully but with message just at the biginning of the boot: "overclock fail" with instruction to reset overclock options in the bios. After that the machine is working properly but I never start fsx again so far. In the same machine is working also "Lock-On" without any problem.Is FSx able to cause an overtemperature of processor that (I suppose) switched off the system to autoprotect the PC?. It's sounds very strange for me also because other demanding softwares are causing, at least, a degraded performances in terms of low frame-rates and not a degrading of hardware potentially causing failures on processors or video cards!

I have the same problem. Please note: I'm not complaining what-so-ever. This game pushes the extreams that even the fastest most prowerful gaming systems can't handle! I almost find it funny, Hurry up NVIDIA and AMD, get with the program!!! Here are my specs. I built my computer myself and at one time it was THE top of the line gaming system.AMD 3200+ 2.4ghz. 1gig 3200 DDR400 RAM - AGP 8X NVIDIA 6800GT 256 - Creative Augigy 2 - Nothing overclocked, overclocking is for people who take the chance of burning up their computer because they're too cheap to upgrade.Symptoms: Long load times (1 more gig of ram might help?) Very choppy gameplay settings on high) Incremintial choppyness with settings at med. (ex. beaver will fly fine for about 10-15 sec. then chop.) I know the video card can handle it because it will fly for a while then chop.If any other infomation is need please let me know. Again, MS put a lot of time and effort into this game. The game is way before its time. I have never seen this with any new realease, not Doom, not Far Cry nothing! The semi top of the line systems always seem to run new games, not this game. Congrats MS tell Intel, AMD, ATI, and NVIDIA to get with the program!Thanks for any help guys and Gals,Brian

I can understand that this program needs a lot of power to run, more than we can aspect from a new realease but I want to stress a new evidence from the few test i've done: a mid level system, working fine until the first test on fsx, starts to have hardware problems, heavy overtemperature without any manipulation in processor overclocking till an auto shutdown happens to protect itself. I do bilieve this is a seroius consideration. A warning to everybody: if you smell something wrong coming from your pc switch off fsx on time... temperature sensor of your cpu could be wrong...I think that my next fsx session will be when Microsoft will answer about this matter...