Five years, and a few hundred dollars later

[Jimmy Angel 19]

Was just looking at the calendar today and realized it's been a bit more than 5 years since FS9's release. I purchased it on release day, and was happy to find that it was a significant improvement over FS2002.But, it was also a continual point of frustration for me. I could just never get performance where i wanted it to be. I had a hard time ignoring the stutters and wavering frame rates. I could fly (and enjoy) the RealAir SF260, but the whole experience was still quirky and I spent more time tweaking than flying. I spent hundreds of dollars on add-ons, but never really felt as though I got enough use out of them.I gave it for the most part last year. A week ago, on a bit of a lark, I reinstalled it on the new system I built in March. I spent way too many hours during the evenings getting everything reinstalled. I purchased a few new items, including Ground Environment Pro to replace my Summer/US only BEV.And, five years later, FS2004 has finally come into its own for me. The combo of ActiveSky and Ground Environment Pro is stunning. The water of Flight Environment rivals that of FSX. Airports from FlyTampa continue to be unrivaled.There's also an aircraft I've fallen in love with, the Suprunov Design Yak 40. It's old school flying in an aircraft that burns fuel unapologetically, and climbs to altitude with a complete lack of motivation. The virtual cockpit in this thing is simply amazing.When I bought this new system, I had planned to purchase FSX. But, I'm over that now. I'll see how it's aged in a few years. In the meanwhile, I've started up an FSPassengers career as an owner of an old Yak-40, flying tourists in and out of Princess Juliana and to other destinations in the Caribbean. I've had a few rough landings, and a heck of a lot of fun.With the help of all of the talented add-on developers, FS9 has aged really well, and I can finally just enjoy flying.

[JSkorna 137]

Thanks!Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[Gavin 99]

>>>There's also an aircraft I've fallen in love with, the>Suprunov Design Yak 40. It's old school flying in an aircraft>that burns fuel unapologetically, and climbs to altitude with>a complete lack of motivation. The virtual cockpit in this>thing is simply amazing.>I think that's a perfect description of one of my favourite addons :-)

[Ray Proudfoot 8,919]

Jimmy,I too have reverted to FS9 mainly because once I'm above a few thousand feet most of the eye candy disappears. For high and fast flights there's little difference between the two versions.At lower altitudes FSX looks a lot nicer but when I'm down at those levels I have a high work rate and don't really have time to admire the view.For low and slow VFR stuff FSX is much better but I don't do that much VFR.The killer for me was installing Aerosoft's Heathrow and with FSX the frame rates were around 10-12. With FS9 they're in the mid 30s.A bit of a no-brainer is how the expression goes I believe! ;) Cheers,

[Guest Zevious Zoquis]

I don't have FSX, but I recently got a new PC with one of them fancy schmancy dual core cpus and even more recently upgraded the gpu to an ATI 4850 and I'm now able to run FS9 at very high res (1680x1050x32) with 4x fsaa and 4x aniso and with the in-game visuals basically maxed out - real world weather, heavy 3d cloud cover over uber dense scenery and auto gen - and the fps stays nailed at 30 pretty much all the time. It's quite spectacular looking. Frankly, I've had FS9 installed since day one but I've barely even scratched the surface in terms of plumming the depths of what the sim has to offer. I likely wont bother with FSX till my next major PC upgrade (probably at least a year down the road if not longer...)

[PittsS2B 33]

Much the same story for me - I recently bought a new computer, and was grateful for the ability to finally fly into 9Dragons and KLAX with a full load of AI at greater than 20 fps, but when I got GE Pro a few weeks back, I was truly blown away by how good FS9 still looks VFR. I'm especially looking forward to the water and cloud improvements promised by REX, if the screenshots are any indication. John G.

[Guest vtx]

i havent even tried fsx..reading forums here and other places it seems to have alot of problems..i had a computer built exclusively for fs9...the 2400 dollars kinda hurt the wallet but.. 85 to 100 fps is awsum...even at kjfk and klax..if i load weather it might drop to 80 fps..frame rate is everything to me as well as the most real feel of the plane as i can get...nvida 8800 ultra card 8 gigs of ram duo core..and certain things shut off in the bios so its not using power for anything other than the sim helps with the frame rate ...its a great computer ...and built by a tec who knows his stuff

[3-2-1-Now 126]

>There's also an aircraft I've fallen in love with, the>Suprunov Design Yak 40. It's old school flying in an aircraft>that burns fuel unapologetically, and climbs to altitude with>a complete lack of motivation.Oh man!! :-lolI agree - it's great fun to fly!!Best regards,Robin.

[Guest william273]

it'll be another 5 years before FSX is REALLY ready. i recently got a new machine too and am able to run fs9 maxed out in 1200x1600 and with some good addon aircraft to boot which i could only dream of doing on my old machine. fs9 has a long life ahead as far as i'm concerned and i also don't think there's a computer out yet that can run FSX with all the addons like fs9 can. fsx and vista is a work in progress and i don't need the problems, have had plenty already. enjoy your new machine! william

[january 19]

Zevious- I'm envious: still stuck here with a 5 yr old 'puter! Your 1680x1050 res sounds great- but why stop there?Here's a screenie @ 3072x768 on my old AMD 1.8 & GeForceFX5200 cards.Hard to beat a wide horizon! (Yes I cheat a bit- FS9 settings are only mid range!)Alex ReidDreamFleet Bonanza nearing CYYJ & BC Gulf Islandshttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/191898.jpg

[1st fltsimguy 466]

I didn't realize its been that long. I bought a new computer, gees and thats now two years ago, copied over my FS9 (all 100gigs plus) on a dedicated 300 gig drive. I was blown away. My Flightsim experience went throught the roof. Massive framerate. Can fly supersonic at FL35 or FL1 and not a stutter, no blurries, I have a gas.Installed FSX, no joy, slow, blurries, great potential but by dual core, 3gigs of RAM, Radeon 1650PCI 512 MB card doesn't seem to cut it.I fly FS9 and am still enjoying it to this day, old or not its still fun and with the tons of software freeware and payware out there it rivals FSX.cheers Bryan

[Guest essoblue]

I really don't think FSX will ever be 'ready'. For me it has always been a flawed product and in many senses still is. It will go down in FS history as the one to forget. Many developers are not erm. . . developing for it and of those who are, most are still developing FSX and FS9 versions. Think of the extra work that entails and how it inevitably slows the whols process down. That translates into the user having to wait longer for new products. I reckon FS11 will fix a lot of the problems of FSX. In the meantime FS9 remains a classic.