The following text is one enthusiast's PERSONAL OPINION. Other's will have, no doubt, theirs. All personal opinions by their nature, are valid...---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I have been flying non-stop FS9.(75 smile!) throughout all hours of the day and night the last two actual days.With G.E. Pro II dishing up the ground graphics, at night, I have to say...I really have to say..er..type, that FS9.75 graphically looks MUCH MORE REALISTIC than does FSX, even with the UTX packages. Quite fantastic from the FL300's! I can NOT believe that I am typing this, since FS9 is supposedly 'so dated'. The major city centres are simply fabulous! The road networks, then out to the rurals...are well...REAL-WORLD looking. I mean REAL LOOKING! Peter, you did magic. FSX (of which I like immensely) does not look this good. I had forgotten how 'polished' FS9 could appear, in light of what I always had called the 'cartoonish' pallet of the textures and their color in FSX. I have said that from years ago. FSX's rendering of the world is much more lifelike in features...mountains, coastlines, bodies of water and animation of wave actions etc...but it has always been FS9 that gave great natural color to the ground-scape. It still does, folks. G.E. Pro II does one outstanding job of making it look believable 'down there'. REX2004's cloudscapes (about 5 layers at present!!!!) are just about to be splashed by the top corona of the sun breaking over the horizon. Just drop-dead beautiful! What a great job, the developer did! Totally satisfied. I am looking forward to the first SP1 release to tune up anything that has been shown to need be. Until then, most pleased in how between AS6.5 and REX2004 the up-and-beyond is looking. The nVidia GTX285 is kicking graphic butt all over the place! I sit at 60 FPS, and stay there. A.I up the ying-yang crisscrossing the sky, 5 layers of clouds, the corona of the sun just starting to do its 'thang, a nice POSKY 737-900 at my fingertips...and the Dominican Republic hours away..well Punta Cana :) FS9.75 is back in Mitch's flight stable, BIG TIME! :)))))))))))Ok, back to the dawn just breaking today over Tennessee and southeast bound....Go figure, two new programs...and I can't get enough of my ah...er...'new' sim, FSv9.75...lol.Back to the flight...Mitch

The following text is one enthusiast's PERSONAL OPINION. Other's will have, no doubt, theirs. All personal opinions by their nature, are valid...---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I have been flying non-stop FS9.(75 smile!) throughout all hours of the day and night the last two actual days.With G.E. Pro II dishing up the ground graphics, at night, I have to say...I really have to say..er..type, that FS9.75 graphically looks MUCH MORE REALISTIC than does FSX, even with the UTX packages. Quite fantastic from the FL300's! I can NOT believe that I am typing this, since FS9 is supposedly 'so dated'. The major city centres are simply fabulous! The road networks, then out to the rurals...are well...REAL-WORLD looking. I mean REAL LOOKING! Peter, you did magic. FSX (of which I like immensely) does not look this good. I had forgotten how 'polished' FS9 could appear, in light of what I always had called the 'cartoonish' pallet of the textures and their color in FSX. I have said that from years ago. FSX's rendering of the world is much more lifelike in features...mountains, coastlines, bodies of water and animation of wave actions etc...but it has always been FS9 that gave great natural color to the ground-scape. It still does, folks. G.E. Pro II does one outstanding job of making it look believable 'down there'. REX2004's cloudscapes (about 5 layers at present!!!!) are just about to be splashed by the top corona of the sun breaking over the horizon. Just drop-dead beautiful! What a great job, the developer did! Totally satisfied. I am looking forward to the first SP1 release to tune up anything that has been shown to need be. Until then, most pleased in how between AS6.5 and REX2004 the up-and-beyond is looking. The nVidia GTX285 is kicking graphic butt all over the place! I sit at 60 FPS, and stay there. A.I up the ying-yang crisscrossing the sky, 5 layers of clouds, the corona of the sun just starting to do its 'thang, a nice POSKY 737-900 at my fingertips...and the Dominican Republic hours away..well Punta Cana :) FS9.75 is back in Mitch's flight stable, BIG TIME! :)))))))))))Ok, back to the dawn just breaking today over Tennessee and southeast bound....Go figure, two new programs...and I can't get enough of my ah...er...'new' sim, FSv9.75...lol.Back to the flight...Mitch

Hello MitchI found out exactly what you are experiencing just a couple of weeks agoAfter failing to lure Dillon over to the dark side, i had to reload FS9 and all my addons to see what it was that was keeping him firmly in FS9Same as you , my hardware has moved on and now FS9 is just pure pleasure with the Framerates I am seeing.So here I am buying new addons for FS9 and rediscovering stuff that I bought a long time ago.From this point on if I do buy anything for FSX it will have to have a dual installer or at least discount against the FS9 Version.

Mitch I love reading your posts , I can almost see the smile on your face as you type .I don't own FSX , but from what I have seen and read , if your flying is VFR, or you seldom get above 10000 in general then there is only one choice of sim.BUT now the REX is out and you are an IFR heavy iron flyer, then FS9 can now be considered as an easier alternative.To quote Mathijs Kok from Aerosoft

Changing to the PMDG MD11, a rather demanding but seriously great aircraft, I lose a bit of fps but if that would worry me I would gladly move to simple clouds. That would move fps directly in the +30 range for sure. Right now I see 25.3 fps average. Personally that

Mitch I love reading your posts , I can almost see the smile on your face as you type .I don't own FSX , but from what I have seen and read , if your flying is VFR, or you seldom get above 10000 in general then there is only one choice of sim.BUT now the REX is out and you are an IFR heavy iron flyer, then FS9 can now be considered as an easier alternative.To quote Mathijs Kok from Aerosoft Well I would rather not move to simple clouds to fly .Again I must state I am not bashing FSX , or an FS9 a really excited user , in fact my next PC build will be based on running FSX ,it is just that I like to fly with no compromises, and at the moment FS9 lets me do that.Is there room for two in that flame suit Mitch? :( Mark

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hi Mark, Trust me when I say that I shall be using both systems, and maximising my intent with the each of them. This morning, it was FS9.75 all the way. I had a most intense scenario this A.M. I flew a heavy from Detroit to La Romana, Dominican Republic. I had A.I., both commercial and general aviation at 100 percent. You should have seen the airports, loaded with inbound and outbound. Wonderful to behold. I jumped out of the 737-900, and rented a float plane so I could check out all my new custom shallow water/reef textures. Superb! Had a major BLAST VFR'ing the entire island, until threat of thunderstorms made me head back to the airport. REX2004 does one h*ll of a job combined with AS6.5 driving it. The wind, icing, and T-Storm simulation was superb! I have rediscovered FS9.75 and with everything going crazy around me, layer's upon layers of H.D. clouds...moving across the windswept vista....and all at 60 (locked down..as I could run this whole shebang near about 100 FPS with the i7-975/GTX285 beastie, but have it locked to my refresh rate) FPS. Buying both GE Pro II and REX2004, did it for me. I shall always keep FS9.75 ready for departure. It is a brand-new sim. Brand.....new! :)Cheers,Mitch, ....and oh yes, I have an extra flame retardant outfit for anybody that feels they need to slip into one...LOLOLOLOL!

Mitch I love reading your posts , I can almost see the smile on your face as you type .I don't own FSX , but from what I have seen and read , if your flying is VFR, or you seldom get above 10000 in general then there is only one choice of sim.BUT now the REX is out and you are an IFR heavy iron flyer, then FS9 can now be considered as an easier alternative.To quote Mathijs Kok from Aerosoft Well I would rather not move to simple clouds to fly .Again I must state I am not bashing FSX , or an FS9 a really excited user , in fact my next PC build will be based on running FSX ,it is just that I like to fly with no compromises, and at the moment FS9 lets me do that.Is there room for two in that flame suit Mitch? :( Mark

No offense to Mathijs but for years I have disagreed with his comments about FSX and performance and the ideal hardware for FSX and when he recently published his entire doc on how his performance is so great it came to light he does not even touch AA/AF in his graphics driver. Not to mention other sacrifices such as you highlighted above. To say that it all makes sense now is a bit of an understatement...As for Mitch, welcome back to the "dark side" some of us have been saying what you are now finding out all along so add me to the flame suit, it is getting a bit crowded in here LOL. To just dismiss FS9 altogether because there is something newer is foolish IMHO. There is so much life left in FS9 I do not see the need to let it go anywhere in my near term future (or long term future right now for that matter)BTW, I also really enjoy reading your posts Mitch, even when they were in the "other" forum LOL...-P

Hello MitchI found out exactly what you are experiencing just a couple of weeks agoAfter failing to lure Dillon over to the dark side, i had to reload FS9 and all my addons to see what it was that was keeping him firmly in FS9Same as you , my hardware has moved on and now FS9 is just pure pleasure with the Framerates I am seeing.So here I am buying new addons for FS9 and rediscovering stuff that I bought a long time ago.From this point on if I do buy anything for FSX it will have to have a dual installer or at least discount against the FS9 Version.

--------------------------------------------------------------Hi Mad Dog,Yeah...yeppers....having a -way-too-sinful blast these past two days. I did spend the time reading both manuals, so I could maximise my use of the feature sets. I spent an hour creating Mitch's Theme with REX2004, and believe me...it was worth the time and effort. That was the theme I used to load into FS9.75 and then went for my Dominican Republic Getaway. Just wanted to say, that the screenshots on their forum and purchase screen, don't even come CLOSE to the look of them right there in front of you in real time. That's why I don't do screenies to try to show/convince someone of what they might be missing, or want to have. Static screens just don't cut it.... The software working for you on your rig...DOES! :)Have fun...with both sims. They each do something the other can't make claim to. If you do have REX2004...take the time to customize your own 'world' and then take off from Punta Cana, or La Romana...climb to 3,500 ASL, swing over to the coast..and check out your REEF TEXTURE handiwork. Fly over the transition from shallow to deep water...and then coming in from the deep...land upon the shallow reefs. Just don't rip out the bottoms of your pontoons....or you might get that sinking feeling...lol.Cheers!Mitch'er

YES INDEED!! (T.Dorsey)After a day tuning, I can say I am proud to have a FS9.75 also. Maybe I have a FS9.76 now, since I managed to get the mip slider to 8 and have no shimmers anymore!. Amazing details now.Also added the slight bloom effect.. what is FSX btw?Copied everything to my backdated FS9, flying the Connie in Tom's calclassic setting, with Tommey Dorsey as background music, I am in heaven now. It took a while, but arrived!FSX vs FS9 ?As we say in the Netherlands, 'Not every change is an improvement'

Framerate + Fluidity >> High resolution textures + Stutters.What I like about FS9 is that I get high framerates where I need it...the airport environment; takoff and landings, and they drop when it's not critical (high altitude straight and level flight). FSX is just the opposite for me.I am also using a beefy system Overclocked Core I7 965 + overclocked GTX 285 2GB, but I also use triplehead 2 go at max resolution which will bring any system to it's knees. So it's refreshing to not have to worry for a change about whether I can handle a complex aircraft + scenery + traffic + weather. In fact my FS9 config has given me the confidence to tiptoe onto VatSim and fly with others in realtime.