Sort of a funny story. Reading the posts here, I see it is being sold early. I work in downtown Mpls, so I thought I would try to find a copy. I call two Best Buys. They say Aug. 7. I call two EBs. They say 7-29. I call Gamestop at the Mall of America. The guy says "that has a STRICT release date of 7-29". Sigh. So I see in posts here that...Office Depot?? may have some copies. I call one in the burbs. I say "I am looking to see if you have a software title in stock". The guy says "Is is Flight Sim 2004?". I say "Why yes!". Nope we don't have it. I call the downtown Mpls. Office Depot. The guy says "Yes, we have two copies". I'll be right over. After a fast walk, I find no copies on the shelf (one guy on the floor says "We don't even have Flight Sim 2003". I laughed out loud) so I find the guy I talked to on the phone. He went "in the back" and dug a copy out for me. I stood there staring at the shiny tin, and thanked him profusely. I saw this same guy helping a woman shake the new toner cartridge she was buying. Very helpful guy. Anyway, too busy flying last night to post.I spent many years flying a Piper Cherokee out of KFCM in Eden Prairie, so that was my first flight. My favorite FS2K plane was the Mooney, but I never flew it in FS2K2 because no virtual cockpit. I fired up the Mooney, got the real weather and took her for a spin around town. I must say I'm very impressed. I have the clouds set at 80% 3d, and I am running at 1280 x 960. I tweaked a few more settings and finally settled on locking frames at 26. The sim runs darn smooth IMHO. By that I mean NO STUTTERS. Sure it slows down to 15 when I am in the midst of heavy clouds, but the frames don't fluctuate so high and low, so no stuttering. It is perfectly fine in the clouds if I don't swing my head around a lot. Speaking of the clouds... very nice. One of my favorite things to do in the Cherokee is go out on a day with scattered to broken at 5000 weave amongst the clouds. This sim is the first time I have experienced visuals comparable to the real thing weaving among puffy clouds. FB is good, but this seem a little more real. After doing some cloud flying and landing at my favorite Twin Cities fields, I set the mesh to 100% and went to Boulder Co. I took off and started flying up over the Rockies, and south along the mountain/plains line. Frames still hovering around 26 over the mountains. I am looking over at the plains, and notice the weather looked at little thick that way. Then I see the cloud to cloud lightning, followed by a thunder rumble in the subwoofer. It was a real "wow" sim moment. I just looked left for a while and enjoyed the show. Well no more time for posting... back to the sim! Hope all enjoy this sim as much as I am.

Hi Nine_Yards."It was a real "wow" sim moment."That is the best recommendation I read yet. That's what we are expecting from Microsoft. I haven't got FS2004 yet, but I'm really looking forward to it. Glad you're happy with it.:)Dick