The scoop - FS9 on a low-med PC & (old) OS....

[Guest Boone]

Hi All,Just thought I'd share my results of A Century of Flight on my Dell Dimension 8100, P4, 1.4, Windows ME, 256MB PC 800 RAM with you. (Hard to believe my PC is not even two years old and it's practically outdated!)After a clean up of my PC and an overnight defrag I installed the 4 x CD's flawlessly. Took about 45 minutes in total.I booted her up and altered a few settings to just over the middle mark. (Turned shadows off)I chose the default Cessna parked at Talkeetna in Alaska using a winter wonderland weather theme. Load time was quicker than FS2002.In full screen mode everything looked fantastic. The sky colors were remarkable. The dreaded frame rate hit just didn't happen. Spot plane view was bang on 20 frames per second. I took off and flew into the clouds with out much of a noticeable hit on the frames. They did drop occasionally but nothing too serious. I followed the rivers and roads to Anchorage where the weather cleared and the city looks even better than in FS2002 (auto gen set at medium!). There are even boats out at sea.I installed a storm weather theme. This brought the frames down considerably. Once above the clouds though it returned to an acceptable level.Out of fear, from many threads on this forum, I was afraid to fly around a large city but after my succesful debut flight I tried a trip around Seattle on a clear day. I can honestly say performance was better than on FS2002. Various weather themes brought things down to a crawl and I now know what to avoid until I get my new RAM this week.I locked the frames at 15, increased the screen size, left every other slider at and slightly above medium, and am now experiencing the best flight simulating yet. It just feels so much more reel. This sim is absolutley gorgeous. The clouds are heavy hitters but they can be toned down and once above them, they're not so bad.I hope this helps some of you in the mid range PC boat such as myself. Bottom line: Go get it! but be prepared to spend a lot of time tweaking sliders and resolutions. A Century of Flight is a gem.Best Regards,Boone