I've read lots of posts about FS2004, both good and bad. Most of us who frequent forums such as this one will be used to all the tweaks and contortions that have to be gone through to get each new version of MSFS to work as we would like it to. But spare a thought for this.MSFS is sold as a game and most people who buy it will not be hardcore simmers or flight simmers of any description. Many buyers will be parents buying MSFS for the first time for their children. Imagine the parents' frustration and their children's disappointment when they find that they have wierd problems with their graphics cards, don't understand that the sliders are meant to try and make the product useable on their particular spec of PC, see clouds coming out of the sides of buildings, jump half a mile between frames as they try to land, etc, etc. And when they go back to the store they bought the product from will they get any real help and, if so, how will they react to being told that they have to tweak fs9.cfg, download new graphics drivers or that FS2004 is ahead of the current hardware stakes - you name it?If such people are lucky they will get a refund of their money. Those who are not so lucky will probably toss the CDs to one side as a bad job and never know the real joys of flight simulation.IMO some things such as problems with the latest and best graphics cards, clouds coming out of the ground, etc should have been sorted before the product was shipped. There surely cannot be any excuse for that sort of thing.And perhaps we should not be expecting FS to be at the cutting edge of everything all of the time but rather take just one step back so that we have something that works right out of the box first time for 99.9 per cent of all users, including little Johnny. If we don't they we can hardly expect newcomers to persevere and become part of the flight simulation community.David

Just to comment on driver and performance issues, these types of problems are not limited to fs2004. Many modern games have the exact same kind of performance and driver compatibility issues. I play quite a few other games other than flightsim and I can tell you if you browse other gaming forums for first-person shooters and such, you will find hundreds of posts saying "tweak the config file" and "update your drivers to version xxx.yy". Also if you look in the manual of any PC game, you will find a large section on where to download the latest drivers for sound and video cards. Whether or not this is right or wrong is another issue altogether, but the reality is that many games do not perform well out of the box for those users who don't keep up with driver versions. I remember way back in the MS-DOS days having to spend hours making custom boot disks for each game to get the memory configuration just right. :)

Keep in mind that fs2004 has not been officially released yet!When you start the program-the first thing you will see is "news".When you click on that-it will tell you that fs2004 takes advantages of new effects in direct x and than you will need to use the nvidia 44.67 drivers to make use of them. There is a link to click to directly download them-all from within fs. I should note I was using earlier drivers without any troubles.I would say that is pretty slick-more support than I have seen for most games. Obviously-the new drivers will be needed (I have them and they make a difference!)-and will probably solve many of the problems users have reported. I don't know how much more blatant or helpful Microsoft could be than this!?http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

Point taken, but I don't have any other computer games. I'm just a serious flight simulation enthusiast, that's all :-)David

Well, I don't think that the plusses and minuses will be any different when official release day comes :-)But what concerns me is that there are an awful lot of people who are scared out of their wits just installing a product never mind going for new drivers. I should know as quite a few friends ask me to do their installations for them as I was once a computer support engineer.I don't have FS2004 and don't intend to get it either as it will not enhance my particular area of flight simulation but I note what you say about the news section and upgrading to the latest Nvidia drivers. I agree that MS are being very helpful here - but what if you don't have an NVidia card and are experiencing problems, which is where I came in.I still think that the first time inexperienced user is going to get very frustrated and disappointed - quite a few old hands seem to be feeling the same way right now :-lolDavid

I am sure when the non nvdia cards update their drivers there will also be a notice-but I don't think we should blame ms for video card manufactures drivers...As for the release date-the reason I mention that is because lets see what the results are when everone has a gold copy and perhaps even ati has a driver waiting.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

Geof -I hope those 44.67 drivers to be released on 7/31/03 are differentthan those at guru3d.com. If not, I'll have the same missing 2Dpanel and AA issues as I do now (since I installed the 44.67drivers already). Also, my 44.03 drivers have the same problems ...See my post (and posts listed in this post too) at -http://forums.avsim.com/dcboard.php?az=sho...27453&mode=fullJerryG

Hmmm-I am using the certified 44.67 from 3dguru with no troubles ?!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

Hmmm-I am using the certified 44.67 from 3dguru with no troubles ?!Strange!I have always had wierd stuff with AA though-even in fs2002 (highlighted text etc. -could that be the source the troubles-have you tried running with it off?)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg