Here's a question that might be off track...IS FXS too advanced for it's own good? Why have settings that can't be set to max at any time soon. And what about when the 3rd party heavies come out. Granted we can always slid the sliders to the left, but most people don't want to "lose" out on features they see in the game. I think a lot of people would be happier to have less details, get great fps, and yet, "max" out the seetings.Why does MS release such heavy, CPU eyecandy when hardware is not yet up to the task of running all this eye candy? Why not release FS to run on the top notch hardware at the time of release?Then every year (between major releases) sell "upgrade" eye candy?I think a lot of people are upset that they have top-notch machines and can't get over 24 FPS in FSX over major cities, etc.For instance, the new tree file available here is helping with frames rates because it is a smaller file size. Why didn't MS put this size file in FSX, then a year from now (when hardware advances) sell the tree file that is in FSX now? Might have save a lot of angry and frustrated feelings for the people who are struggling to get high frame rates.Granted we can swap out these bigger files and use smaller (less detailed?) files that the "Tree" author made, but the question still remains - why didn't MS do this? Maybe even have MS contract with 3rd parties to provide the "upgrades" before the release of FSIX.

Good points. Yes, FSX is currently too advanced for today's hardware. Other than that it's an amazing flight simulator, which exceeds FS9 in terms of eye-candy and realism. However, in the terms of smooth framerates, FSX is abysmal, even on a "Medium" setting on mid-range hardware.I am not sure what hardware MS tested FSX on, but I couldn't be any Core2Duos, which seems to be the only CPU family that can more or less produce any reasonable framerates. The Conroe wasn't even available until Q3 2006. I was very surprised that their Q&A didn't seem to evaluate the "usability" of a game, no matter how advanced. FSX can only be successful, if it is supported by current (not future hardware.I am very surprised that MS/ACES somehow "missed" this important fact and failed to strike a balance between eye-candy and features and the "playability". It has disgruntled a lot of flightsim enthousiasts. They're currently working on a patch to address this issues to some extent. This is the first time in FS history that MS/ACES is actively pursuing a performance fix, so that points clearly in the direction that they are listening to 'our' negative feedback.Pat

FSX is more or less single threaded. Maybe that can be improved in future builds (patches, not FS11!) maybe not.FSX has been in development longer than multicore systems have been in the wild, and I do not fault ACES for this. It's really only with in the past 18 months that multi core CPU's have become the standard. FSX has been in development longer than that.FS11 will require much more robust threading. That's where CPU's are and it will get worse before it gets better. Video cards are already there, but they are highly specialized pipelines. DX10 hardware makes those pipelines programmable (They are not hard coded pipes as in DX9 and prior).FSX wants single core Ghz, the chipmakers have gone to multiple cores. CAll it a period of transition for the FS franchise.

No, it simply was NOT coded very well by Ace's dev team -- basically just enough effort to get something out in time for Xmas and generate some revenue. Ace's admitted a ground up re-write was not in the cards even though it is clearly needed. There are existing games/simulations that look as good or better and don't suffer the horrible performance problems that FSX does. In fact, I've posted many a screen shots of FSX compared to FS9 at the same frame rates and FS9 wins the eye Candy battle every time.Why was it not done well:1. Some of there top resources were pulled to work on Vista2. Efforts to retain compatibility handicapped optimization3. Lack of true multi-CPU support 4. Very poor use of existing GPU hardwarePhil Taylor's response was "it is not easy" -- to that I agree, it isn't. But other companies have done a lot more with considerably fewer resources.If Aces survive Microsoft's soon to be announced cut backs (yes you heard correctly, cut backs), then I would expect the real version of FS will be FS11 and it will run on Vienna OS, not Vista. Vienna is Microsoft's next true OS (from scratch re-write with NO backwards compatibility), Vista is just another WinME stop gap. Microsoft are in a serious situation now, even Bill Gates has chimed in to say that release cycles of their products are taking too long. 3 Years to go from FS9 to FSX and 5 years to go from WinXP to Vista -- this is a pretty significant problem. In the software industry where new product releases are usually done 12-18 months, for Microsoft to double and triple and quadruple the release time to next version is a disaster! And then looking at the results of the long delay and most folks are scratching their heads asking -- why?? The end results just don't justify the extended amount of time to release the next version.I think this will ultimately hurt the 3rd party developers as FSX can barely run now, adding more stress to FSX with 3rd party enhancements will make the performance experience even worse.Rob.

Agree with the above, it's not too advanced, it's just badly optimised.

Here's my question ... I am considering a system upgrade but am wondering if I should even bother, at least as far as FSX is concerned.Is anyone running FSX at medium-high settings on current (reasonable) hardware.For example, one of the high-end Nvidia video cards (i.e. 8800GTS) and a reasonable CPU (such as an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600)And I'm not talking just bush flying....

>Here's my question ... I am considering a system upgrade but>am wondering if I should even bother, at least as far as FSX>is concerned.>>Is anyone running FSX at medium-high settings on current>(reasonable) hardware.>>For example, one of the high-end Nvidia video cards (i.e.>8800GTS) and a reasonable CPU (such as an Intel Core 2 Duo>E6600)>>And I'm not talking just bush flying....Yes. Buck Bolduc is, with his rig. So is Manny. So is Gary (RESET_MCP) and even I am, with my spec that is less than a Core2.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

Whilst I don't have an 8800, my C2D thumps along very nicely, so my experience may be useful. At global medium-high settings, the lowest FPS I get is 18 at KSEA in the 737-800 VC and with UT AI traffic. In rural settings, I get around 50 FPS and in outback areas I get up to 70 FPS. At global high, my lowest FPS drops to about 11 and at global ultra-high it drops to single digit 9 FPS.Personally, I have a couple of saved settings that I switch between, depending on where I am. The setting I most regularly use is global ultra-high for everything, except water down to low 2.x, AA/AF on, ground shadows on, autogen to normal, and airline traffic to 100%. That gives me a low of about 15 FPS and as I move out into the wilderness I turn water and autogen up until my FPS low is around 25.Gary

What I don't understand is that the development cycle for FSX was three years and why a group of elite game / graphics developers could not re-engineer FSX from the ground up is unbelievable. Mr Gates are you reading this? Why C++? There has to be better optimized graphics development tools that other game companies are using.I see other game development that has far exceeded and advanced beyond this. True, FSX is probably more intense because of the view (ACES Project Manager wrote an article on the 10,000 ft view and how other games the viewable area is more concentrated).It is like taking a semi truck and putting a volkswaggon engine in it. That is why we are having performance problems.Are we in a similiar situation to FS 2000? Does anyone remember how doggy that was? As I recall, that team of developers was "excused" from developing FS2002. FS 2002 and FS 2004 contained substantial improvement re development and enhancements.I think everyone agrees, that if we had NO additional features with FSX and everything ran at 30 FPS on a midrange system, we would all be in a utopia. FPS since FS2000 has eaten up probably 10's of thousands of threads. It is probably the number one discussion on this forum. R&D needs to be the goal and speed utilizing dual and quad core architecture, etc.Great Discussion!