So, it looks like we'll be using FSX for a while. In the past, I wished that MS would slow down on release cycles to give hardware a chance to catch up. Be careful what you wish for.I'm going to start saving to buy a new system in a year or so. I'm not in a big hurry, as I've got Orbx Australia running acceptably on my current system (built in early 2008). There's plenty of room for improvement, however.FSX is over 3 years old. It may not make as much use of multiple cores as we'd like, but the upgraded terrain resolution is great. As long as we've still got third party developers in the mix, I think there's lots of potential. Something like Orbx's PNW + REX Cloud Shadows (if it comes to fruition) would be awesome. We are seeing some leap-and-bounds level development with products like Orbx and the L-39.Which makes me wonder, for those of you with the latest and greatest systems, how is FSX scaling for you? We're a long way from those heady days where processor speeds doubled every 18 months, and I'm not sure if a OC'd 4.0ghz processor is going to wipe the floor with my 3.0ghz processor from nearly two years ago. Also, is there anything on Intel's roadmap that gives us much hope for any sort of substantive performance upgrade in 2010? It looks pretty ho-hum to me.

I'll be on the upgrade path within the next two years. My system is showing its age for sure. But I can still enjoy FSX with med-high sliders in rural areas (where I generally fly anyway), with payware GA aircraft.Hopefully by the time I'm ready I'll be able to use Flight1 Mustang in NYC, with FEX 4096 clouds, full autogen with GEXn, UTX, and UT2 ai traffic at least set to 50%, all with a steady 30FPS.

I think there's a considerable amount of scalability in FSX. In my oc'd 920 below I get superb smooth performance (high 20's minimum) in just about the busiest environments eg Kennedy, Heathrow v/c approaches with REX2 running and A/gen and S/Complexity sliders about 50-75%I am looking forward to seeing what happens beyond 4.0GHz and approaching 5.0. I think 3.8 on the i7 is where FSX really starts to stretch its legs. I dabbled with it for so long, even the stock 920 was no good. But the overclock allowed me to dump fs9 forever.

I'm fairly happy with my system and I have no reason to revert back to FS9. The performance on this system is better than what I experienced in FS9 with my old system. This system destroyed the virgin install of FSX. As I have added stuff, FPS have slowed a bit. AI traffic was a big contributor to the slowdown but it is a big part of the experience for me so I can cope. I am even happier if I keep the FPS counter off. I can't think of how many times I have thought, "this looks pretty good" only to open up the FPS counter to find I'm getting 13 FPS. I just noticed these frame rates at Flt Tampa's Grenadines but the actual sim performance was fine. Of course, FT's recommended settings are basically every slider to the right so the decreased performance is understandable. Most of my sliders are close to the right but not all. I still have to play with them a little to find the sweet spot. The only place I have noticed really bad performance is the Default LFPG with a 3rd party AFCAD during morning rush. Almost all parking spots filled and performance was pretty slow. If I installed FS9, I doubt it would be much better in this situation.

The bad thing about keeping fps counter off is , if not monitored, you wount know when addons or changes start to lower the performance you get.With fps counter on, i could tell that ut2 dynamic traffic loading was making my fps fluctuate more than any traffic addon ever has, so i dumped ut2.Ill keep the fps counter on, and i dont find it too hard to pull back the sliders you dump the odd addon if am not happy with the fps i see.The fps counter is not the problem, its where you put your sliders relative to the power of your pc, and addons.

The bad thing about keeping fps counter off is , if not monitored, you wount know when addons or changes start to lower the performance you get.With fps counter on, i could tell that ut2 dynamic traffic loading was making my fps fluctuate more than any traffic addon ever has, so i dumped ut2.Ill keep the fps counter on, and i dont find it too hard to pull back the sliders you dump the odd addon if am not happy with the fps i see.The fps counter is not the problem, its where you put your sliders relative to the power of your pc, and addons.

You may want to give UT2 another try since the SP1 is comming soon. I just posted a feature list on the main FSX board. They claim that they have been able to get 35-40% increase in FPS at the major airports and up to 150% at some other airports. Plus they claim to have been able to fix the injection pauses somewhat.

I dont mind to give ut2 another try, after all the developers of ut2 have many other solid addons.i dumped ut2 cause of traffic injection pauses, but i am not kin to reinstall cause ut2 also seems to curropt my dll.xml file. Which means the addon menu in FSX gets does not show.Rex2 had a very similar problem, where it overwrites your exe.xml file, but they eventually made the good move of adding the patch that fixes this issue to the current full version of rex2. Meaning you wount have the issue of forgeting to install patch before running rex2, cuase this flase move will delete your exe.xml.I think they should just trash the current full version of ut2, and give us customers a new full version that inludes the patch. This way installing ut2 wount be rocket science. Ut2 does not need a patch, it needs a new full version. they say 50% of the code is changed by ut2 patch, that is a new product.So far i have not heard about a fix for ut2 that solves the problem of dll.xml being curropted when you install ut2. I managed to fix the problem once by merging a backup copy of dll.xml, but its a file i dont like messing with.

The bad thing about keeping fps counter off is , if not monitored, you wount know when addons or changes start to lower the performance you get.

Well, if you don't know or don't notice that it's happening... why take action! :)-Greg