I jumped in feet first to flight simming a few years ago with FSX thinking with my lightning fast PC the latest release from MS would be the way to go. Well two years later and several upgrades to my system I wasn't satisfied with the performance. Droping down to a busy airport such as JFK and watching my frame rates hit 5-6FPS and the wonderful jearky feeling I thought, "This isn't going to work".So I got FS2004 and a few enhancments and all I can say is wow. My FPS even with all sliders maxed out and tons of AI is rock solid above 30fps all the time. Nice smooth flying into the busiest of airports.I've discovered that the latest isn't always the greatest and with the right add-ons you can get FS2004 pretty darn close to the same level of FSX. I don't do low and slow flying so some of the advancements available in FSX aren't really a big deal to me.Needless to say I'm glad and can now understand why the FS2004 community is still going as strong as it is today, even though it is not the latest release.J

I agree. My latest system is 18 months old and the next newest is six months old. FS9 smokes on both with multiple monitors, add-on third party software, and complex aircraft.I had been runnning an Athlon 1.3Ghz Thunderbird core before these two and it limped along at 15fps +/- away from hi density areas. Drop in to Fly Tampa LOWW and it became a slide show and unflyable.I'm pretty damn happy with FS9 now running Wideview and three monitors on one system and two on another. Soon to add a third computer to the network.It really makes the 727 come to life.