In regards to the monster review. Theres been much mention of the new weather engine so hopefully during this monster review your good folks might talk about all the other new features and goodies like the improved AI and ATC.examples would be:Do just AI jets receive pushback like how it should be or do all AI now get pushback?Does AI give off wake turbulance?Hows the new ATC on providing seperation on inbound planes?When creating a flight plan can we now select a terminal to park at as well?Anything new with the kneeboard?How well does the new weight and balance work and what are all the options for loads and can you load the plane out of CG?Things that we havent heard we be great in this review. Not things that have been mentioned time over.Many thanks,Kilstorm

Greetings,On a GeForce2 I'm not surprised - a GF4 or ATI 9xxx series card should help, but I thought this is where MS said they were using the multithreading capabilities of the multithreaded P4's?Does Avsim have a test system with everything the same except one has multithreading and one not? It would be interesting to see the difference between them.P

"My system; AMD 1.333, GF2 Ultra 64 Meg, 512 Meg Ram..."---Tom A.As weird as this sounds, I'm actually glad to hear that the clouds are making this rig stumble a little. By todays gaming standards, this would be considered a low end machine, and I wouldn't expect full detail out of the flight sim that we will have for the next two years. I remember when Tom talked about getting this system, and at the time is was right up there as far as gaming goes, but technology marches forward. At the time, I was drooling over his rig, but just two months ago, I gave away a comparable rig to my young nephew.I would much rather have FS9 be slightly ahead of the top computers of the day (3gig P4 right now with a 3.2gig ready to be released)to allow us to "catch up" to the game. This allows for people with high end machines to have a great experience with the game, as well as allowing people with a lower end machine to scale things back and still enjoy many of the new features.I have a P4 2.53gig + ATI 9500 Pro + 512mb ram. I would consider this a slightly better than average gaming machine, so I do not expect to run FS9 with everything maxed. I know going in that there will be compromises to be made between eye candy, features, and performance. (That is until the P4 3.2gig is on the shelves and the P4 3.06gig drops in price so that I can justify a gaming processor swap with my personal "Minister of Finances"...LOL)Anyhow, my point is that most new games lead technology by about a year, and not too many people can run them in all of their glory on the release day. This in my eyes is good, because by the nature of computer gaming, we are in a continual state of upgrade with our systems, and it keeps the game from becoming stale.If you expect compromises with a new release, you won't be disappointed.JMHO.Oh yeah, I too am looking forward to the "monster review".Tim13

yeah but with a P$ 2.53 dont you think you would just need to buy the next best video card? I mean FS doesnt eat up all your CPU. I have a P4 2 gig + gForce3 64 ram + 512ram and plan on buying the Nvidia FX 5900 ultra when its released which has far better video card parts then what I'm using plus it has 256 ram. I get good to very performance out of my set up now so I figured that I could expect Very good to great out of this new card and it would save me about 1500 over buying a new computer to to have more CPU power idling. I plan on getting a 3.06 hyper thread once it becomes mid range but other than that it seems the video card will be the better upgrade performer.My thoughts.Kilstorm

Nice to here your enjoying yourself!!!One quick question:Have you had a look at the new R22 yet, what's it like (inside and out, flight dynamics, sounds etc).Well two questions actually!!!Could you please post some screenshots of the R22 and Jetranger in the screenshot forum as I'm sure this would be really appreciated by the helicopter community as screenshots of helicopters are often thin in the ground.Many thanks.

That is why I am getting Dell's gamer machine, the XPS. Gonna plop the 3.06 chip in there (or 3.2)and for the heck of it, 2 gigs of RAM with a ATI 9800 PRO. Comes with extra cooling fans already installed. Hook it all up to a 21" Ultra-Sharp flat panel display and away I go. Like someone up above said, you want everything maxed with 3rd party complex addon aircraft/panels/scenery, your gonna have to pony up the money and stop sitting on the wallet. Do that and you can spend more time flying and less time whining.

Michal, Accurate "talk" on performance on clouds and flight simulator should be made when testing the details slider/option and quality option on each feature wich make a HUGE difference. Test made should be especially on near the MID System 2ghz and gforce4 128 meg at least for not judging and make the final conclusion for the product on low end system (for any games available in the market) even not the final build with the final code. Consider a 2ghz and gforce4 128 meg will be the low system market after a while when fs2004 will be released. Very important, since Msfs is for two full year, they consider the computer market according to the product release.2003 System Market Aprrox.-Low system 1.4ghz 3d card 64 meg, 256 ram-Mid system 2.4ghz 3d card 128 meg, 512, ram -High system 3.4ghz & +, 3dcard 256 mb, 512 or 1024 ram.(From these above, Video 3d Card are the last generation ) System Market before Fs2002 Released-Low system 500mhz, 3d card tnt 32 mb,-Mid system 900mhz, 3d card gforce 64 mb mx, 256 ram-High system 1.5ghz and more, 512 ram.. 3d card 64meg, (after a while 128 meg) I will only consider accurate quality review for those made at least from a little lower than a 2003 years mid system cpu 2ghz/gforce4 128 meg,512 ram, which any games run very very well with many detail enabled.I predict volumetric clouds will run great with no problem performance mid and high with many setting enabled, or great on lower but with some autogen, mesh and reduced or disabled.In fs2002 it was the same thing, performance problem occur on lower system if many details enabled, but can much more improved and flyable by disabling, such as autogen and AI traffic and mesh. And even reduce the clouds density.ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

Hey Tom..........What are you doing tomorrow ?I can travel - !! Want to play & test ???Sounds great !! IFR/VFR transition is "my" biggest complaint with FS2002. Step climbs are sweet music - picking up on the great aspects of ProFlight ! I hated losing my IFR for a "snack" break !I've always been impressed how you guys can run "tests" with less than 90% "state-of-the-art" hardware.... as - I've usually been in that catagory myself - and - never - able to reproduce the performance. This time - I hope I'm ready...... hardware ready.Great post - and Thanks ! Get's the "juices flowing" !!!Ron

A point here that might have been overlooked.....One of the biggest effects on FS performance, even on older (now considered 'low-end') rigs is what the computer's doing 'in the background'.Using utilities like 'End It All' to free off resources can make a huge difference to frame rates and should be a starting point before any system comparisons are made.Without it, there's no 'level playing field' and three identical rigs will render three vastly different results.Just a thought....Toni.

Time will tell, but I have a gut feeling that the GF2 Ultra isn't the problem with the clouds. I've used the Ultra enough to know that the FPS problem(s) with FS200x has very little to do with the age and capabilities of this particular video card. The problem is the MS refusal to let the GPU to the job it was designed to do. Nothing much has really changed as far as the base engine goes and I fully expect that the "more CPU is better" philosophy will continue with FS9.Trip

All of this talk about 2ghz machines being low-mid range is giving me the creeps.How can a computer that was top-of-the line when I built it last June be so outdated? The whole thing cost $2000 and if FS2004 doesn't jive with my rig I'm gonna be stuck in simming heck for at least another 2 years (except for possibly a graphics card upgrade).What I would like to know now is if the hundreds of dollars that I misspent on multiprocessor components will be put to good use for once. Does anyone have any idea if this sim will support multithreading?That may be my only salvation since my FPS in FS2K2 weren't even that high to begin with...

They say computer years equate to dog years. E.G. every year of a dogs life is the same as 7 years human-every computer year is the same.Unfortunately your computer is almost 7 years old-that is just the reality of the situation-obsolete the moment you bring it home.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

How about an AMD 2000XP+ Processor, Asus nForce Motherboard, 512Megs DDR333, GeForce2 Video, 5.1 Audio Card for less than $200 now!CRAZY but true. I just put together a 3.06HT, Dual Channel DDR, Gigabyte 7205 Motherboard upgrading from 6 months ago 2.53P4, DDR333, Gigabyte 845PE motherboard. But then again, entering the world many moons ago from the Commodore Vic-20,64,Amiga world I have become accustomed to this.

commodore vic 20/64 amiga addict here also!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

>video card. The problem is the MS refusal to let the GPU to>the job it was designed to do. Nothing much has really changed>as far as the base engine goes I am not the video card expert but I always suspected that MS is not taking the full advantage of what current generation of video cards are capable of.Michael J.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg