FS9 Bashers, don't give up hope.

[Guest wathomas777]

There has been a lot of FS9 bashing going on lately, and while people are quick to jump on the band wagon and blame the application, the truth is, it does not take a 4 Gig overclocked to 6 Gig computer with 512 Meg video card, and the initials H.A.L.It does however require a reasonable system to make it happy.I WAS using a Celeron 600Mhz machine with an MX420 Nividia PCI card when I first cracked open the Tin. Needless to say, I was dissapointed. With that rig, I could maintain 15FPS smooth flight in most FS2002 scenarios, but had a hard time getting above 10. I was due for an upgrade anyway, so I pulled the trigger.I purchased a modest Compaq Presario XP2400+ Athlon based system with a 40 gig hard drive and 128 Meg of RAM. $498.00 bucks. Which included also a 17 inch monitor, speakers, CD-RW and Keyboard and mouse.Knowing that to be unacceptable, I pulled an extra 80 bucks to buy a 512Meg stick to bring the rig to 640Meg. Gave the kids the Celeron.Total outlay so far. $578.00. For two weeks I utilized this system and could get pretty good flight by using the MX420 into the 2400, but realized the video card was the bottleneck. Just yesterday, purchased an FX5200 basic 128Meg AGP video card. Total cost, 90 Bucks. Total Rig: $668.00.Had to add a nice Afterburner II Flight stick and throttle for 59.00: Total. $727.00This card is not the hottest card on the block, but works really well with the sim, and brought my average FPS up by a good 10 frames.I also used some of the tricks (Geoff A.'s FS9.cfg edit, FSW cloud textures, and Autogen replacement textures.) to bring me some extra performance.The point is, a 2.4 Ghz machine is not by any means a "hot machine" in todays age, and I bought each of my items as inexpensively as possible and have a nice machine.And keeping in mind this was buying a complete computer, that included Windows XP home. I have also purchased to round off the rig.Ultimate Traffic: - Add's realistic AI and is incredibleFSGenesis 78m Mesh for the US - A nice mesh, but can cause some anomolies in some areas. The jury is still out on this with me.FSGenesis Landclass USA - Invaluable. Well worth the $14.00 or so. Eliminates some of repetitive textures and gives the whole world a better "feel".If you are a newbie, and are being discouraged by all the negative press, then hang in there. FS9 is an enjoyable product and can be made more so with some smart upgrades.Contrary to popular belief, FS9 is not as bad as FS2000, which still has some serious issues. While the release of FS2004 is a bit more "rough" than FS2002, I believe this has more to do with unrealistic expectations, and significantly higher hardware requirements than was first expected. However, it is very possible to buy a "budget" priced computer with a "budget" priced video card and have very passable performance. Which is what I think some folks lose sight of.

[Guest Air1]

I have to agree. I am still doing just fine with my PIII,1000,384 megs of Ram and g-force 3 ti200 card. It is working so great with MSCOF/2004 that I am afraid to get a new system at this point from what I have been reading here lately. It worked just as good with 2002.Steve

[N562Z 4]

Nice post. Nice to hear someone with an optimistic and positive tone for a change. I just bought that same card, and will probably make the move to Windows XP very soon. http://southwest.corpmerchandise.com/image...l/200015138.gifAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD

[Guest wathomas777]

You will be fine if you don't expect miracles. I wasn't expecting a whole lot, but I knew the jump from PCI to AGP and the added 64Megs had to help, and It did beyond my expectations.I run fairly loaded down, with lots of clouds and traffic and find myself in the high teens low 20's most of the time. If I pass REAL close to a cloud and watch it pass, it can sometimes slog a bit towards 10.I know that denser urban areas and higher traffic densities are going to tax the system, but my sliders are well to the right of my "comfort zone" so that when I enter these areas, I will be able to satisfactorily drop some detail to get smoother renders.

[Guest freequest]

Yep I agree with you on that my system is a P4 1.6GHZ GF2 MX-400 512mb 133MHz SDRAM and I am quite happy with the performance.I just gonna upgrade my vid card but not because of FS9 but because I need something with some more grunt for Poser.

[Guest panda234]

Watthomas, do you have links to Geoff A.'s FS9.cfg edit, FSW cloud textures, and Autogen replacement textures? Thx!billgedit: btw, took some configuring, but I have to say I'm pretty happy with FS9 now too. :-)

[Guest wathomas777]

Geoff's message thread is below. I tried it with my MX card and it did not make a difference. It was already in there when I installed my FX card. Enough people have said it makes a big difference that I never changed it. Your millage may vary.http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...d=136178&page=5As for the files, they are all available in the AVSIM library.Do a search of FS2004 Scenery files, and you will find one called FSW cloud Fix V2, which is the cloud fix, and you will also find, near the end, the Autogen replacement textures.There's also a replacement textures for runways and taxiways, but have not seen the need to use it, and people haven't widely said it makes much of a difference.