All,I recently purchased FSX. I have been flying since the Sublogic Sim days, and I figured I would try to stay with the times. I downloaded the demo and it looked great. HOWEVER, when I installed the Deluxed Version of FXS, it barely ran. Frame rates were barely at ten, and the screen would go black every time I changed views, cycled windows or even applied the brake. Hardware problem, I thought. I did a little research by contacting Microsoft. This was taken from an email from MS support, dated 3/18/2007:Item Minimum Recommended Best CPU 1.0 GHz 2.8 GHz 3.6 GHz Memory 256 MB 1 GB 2 GB Video 32 MB 64 MB 512 MB I'm running 2.2GHz, 1GB memory and 64 MB video. BTW, processor is an AMD Athlon 64 MMX, video is ATI Radeon 9600. Computer is a Gateway 7400 series laptop. Anyway, I'm think that I must be doing something wrong because I am in the 'recommended' column and I can - pardon the pun - I cannot get the darn thing off the ground. I flew around NYC area and did not see Manhatten. Without landmarks, I landed at LGA instead of ERW....oooops. No matter, there were no terminals at the airport anyway. Following MS support, I defragged, downloaded the latest drivers, knocked out unused services, did not load startup items - well, I didn't need MS to tell me that, but they did. Here is where they left it with me:James, as I said in my earlier email that the performance of the game depends on video card it

Jim,There are lots of tweaks available to improve things, you will find them in other threads.Some big performance hits are autogen, water effects, and 'bloom'. AI traffic and weather. (Yes just about everything I know). Start by turning the sliders for these down to the left, then see where you are. If you can run reasonable FPS you can then start to turn some setting back up until you find a reasonable balance between performance and looks. The performance of FSX on middle range hardware though is a constant cause for debate on here. Some of us have had a reasonable experience with mid range hardware some not. I've now upgraded to high end hardware and love the FSX experience, others will tell you otherwise though! To be honest I think most us currently enjoying FSX are probably using photo scenery where the autogen is switched off in any case, it gives me about 50 FPS (though this is not yet quite perfect it is very 'flyable'). MS are also giving us a patch (SP1) which promises to address performance issues, what exactly this will do we will have to wait and see.Hope that is some help, as you wade through the settings I'm sure people will help you out with the specifics,Best of luck,Gemma

My advice..take the money and buy FS2004.Before a flame war erupts..I have FSX and love it..but unless your PC is really high-end you're gonna knock back your setting so much that it will actually look worse than FS2004.Also FS2004 has millions on FREEWARE addons avialable..you'll have years of fun with it.regardsJim

Thanks guys....I will most likely roll back to FS2004....I've got every release since the beginning of time! I have indeed found that when I can make FSX work, the graphics are not only worse than FS2004, but in many cases they are missing all together. Obvious things like terminals should not be missing. I will keep the software though, because hopefully there is a bigger, better, faster computer in my future....but not any time soon.2 things strike me about this debacle. First, the demo should (I would think) mimic the full-blown version, but include only limited airspace. While the latter is true, the former is certainly not. Because I was impressed with the demo, and it ran on my current machine, my expectation was that the full-blown version would run equally as well. I know that MS in trying to make money, but can you imagine what would happen if a shareware program - or any other vendor for that matter - behaved this way. Try before you buy? I guess MS meant you have to *buy* a cutting-edge computer after you *try* their software.The other interesting thing is that while I am experiencing these problems, my hardware setup is *best* by MS standards. It doubles the hardware requirements printed on the box. That is a little more difficult to explain. It is reasonable for me to assume that the software will at least perform to spec as long as my machine meets the software 'requirements', as stated by MS. My machine doubles the requirments and does not even come close to being usable. That would win a civil case every day of the week, but who is going to sue MS for $70? Perhaps that is why it is so easy to get a refund.Overall, I am very disappointed with MS, but not at all suprised. Today, more and more people are buying Macs. Now that Vista has hit the market, MAC sales are going to rocket....I've already seen it happening where I work.....and I'm a software designer. Games will always work best on PCs....at least for the forseeable future. Anything else can arguably be done as well or better on a MAC. Gaming may move toward XBox or other non-PC platforms soon. The future is uncertain for MS....but not too uncertain. The business world is very slow to change, and corporate America has a lot of money tied up in Windows servers and PCs. Apple has not even tried to compete in that marketplace. UNIX has a strong hold, but UNIX on a home computer...come on! Remember IBM? How many of your friends are running IBM computers at home anymore?? In the beginning, that was the 'only game in town'....again, pardon the pun. BTW, I work for IBM. We get a better employee discount on Apple computers than on IBM PCs.This may be a sign of things to come. Thanks for letting me vent, and thanks for your input on this subject. Highest regards,Jim

I'd say wait out for SP1 (assuming that your 45 day refund windows stretches that far). You, and hopefully the rest of us, may be pleasantly surprised.Gary

Gary,That thought crossed my mind, and I will probably wait for SP1.....I think it is scheduled for an April release. Here's my take on that. MS started working on FSX soon after the release of FS2004. They had to forecast what the average computer would look like in 2007, which is very difficult to do. They were a little off. SP1 is probably going to make the FS code more efficient and usable on lesser hardware - something MS rarely cares about....two words.....Microsoft Office. I digress. The reasons why you do not hear the details of SP1 may be simple and understandable. First, making code efficient isn't fixing a bug, it's changing how the program processes data. Unless we were all intimately familiar with FSX code, it would neither make sense to us nor would we care to read the description. Second, by saying that they are making the code more efficient, MS would be admitting that it wasn't written correctly in the first place. Last, and most important, at this stage of development it is unclear exactly how much improvement is possible by dumbing-down the code.Of course this is all speculation. I have no direct info, I just know the politics of the software market. By the way, has anyone priced the 'recommended' 3.6 GHz dual core processor? I can't seem to find one! Happy landings,Jim

The first thing I would do is upgrade your memory to 2GB. It won't make it run much if at all faster, but it will make using the computer a whole lot more comfortable.I run FSX on my Dell D810 Lattitde 1.86 GHz Pentium M with 2GB of memory and 64 MB ATI X300 Mobility graphics. At 1 GB, the FSX was a bear to run on this computer. I can get between 10 and 15 fps with some scenery turned on. Basically, make sure that you are on water 1.x, lens flare, bloom and shadows are turned off. It's best if you turn the road traffic off, and leave air traffic around 30 to 50%. Autogen I can set at normal or sparse, scenery complexity set to dense, texture resolution 5 m (same as FS9) and mesh resolution to 38 m , mesh complexity 100 and level of detail medium. Filtering is Bilinear.sThomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180