If you have a weak or older computer (more than two years old), you will love FS9. If you have a new i7 with a ton of RAM and a new and beefy nVidia card, you will love FSX and FS9. The only ones that hate FSX are the ones that can't run it.

Definately FSX.... :(

I don't own FSX, as FS9 with the latest upgrades meets my civilian flightsim needs brilliantly, but it can't hurt to give it a try, particularly if your preferences are on the GA/small airport side. Might be worthwhile to read the Avsim hardware forum to get a sense of the requirements for running FSX in busy places.

Love 'em both. FSX looks like a beautiful country paradise but FS9 satisfies that gritty heavy iron urge when you come in on approach in the TinMouse, RFP, TU-154, the great classics, and you see traffic stacked up all around the airport. It's great to have both.

Wow! Just looked at the Wikipedia listing for FSX which states - "The maximum altitude in the game has been increased to 100,000,000 ft."Thats truly amazing! (if a bit overkill IMHO for a GA pilot like me lol)Dave

You will find proponents for both - of course posting this in the FS2004 forum will give you answers biased towards FS9. If you post this on the FSX forum you will get a different answer. :)

True true true...

True true true...

LOL, I was just about to say the same thing.I agree with what a few of the others said. They are both so cheap now that you could install and try both and see which you prefer on your system. I ran FS9 from the time it came out until April '08. Then I built a new rig and have been using FSX ever since. I still have FS9 installed, but have only used it once or twice since '08 and personally don't care for the look of the ground and water textures any more so I stick to FSX. Surprisingly even on my older overclocked E8400 I get great performance which I am very happy for since I mostly fly the PMDG 747 which is one of the more demanding a/c as far as FPS and the LDS 767. Having tried FSX on a few different machines, I have found that whether your run a dual or quad core, it seems performs best if you can run it on a CPU that is running at 3.6 ghz or better, any less than that and you will probably have to trim your settings quite a bit and fly less FPS intensive aircraft.

I have FS9 as well as FSX installed and I while I have much more scenery and aircrafts for FS9, I've also accumulated quite a few for FSX. I also run a fairly quick computer, i7 920 @ 3,8 GHz, 6 GB RAM, ATI5870 graphics card and a 300 GB velociraptor disk with Windows 7 64 bit installed on that. I would actually LIKE to switch to FSX, mainly because of the PMDG737NG that is soon arriving. But I simply haven't been able to get good performance when I load an advanced airplane (eg PMDGMD11, Maddog MD80, LevelD, PMDG747) on an advanced airport (eg any of the FSDT sceneries) and with a decent amount of AI. The way FS9 is set up it runs beautifully and it looks so nice that most of the time it literally sends shivers down by spine!The "problem" for me is that as long as FS9 works as well as it does, I have a hard time finding the incentive to dug into the settings of FSX to get it working. I am fully aware that my FSX problems are down to the way I have it set up, but getting 10-15 fps in the PMDGJ41 with no weather loaded, no AI and at a default scenery, really is a bit depressing... Instead I can fly say the Maddog into KORD (from FSDT) with clouds all around me (courtesy of ASE and REX) and still have 50-60 fps.I guess that when PMDG737 is released, I am FORCED to get down and dirty with FSX, but until then, well... FS9 with ASE, REX and a few high end aircrafts and airport sceneries is enough for me!

LOL, I was just about to say the same thing.

Great minds think alike :(. Hehe.

Not really - I dare anyone to find anything more realistic that the Project Tupolev Tu-154M, which is FS9 only. There's a vast selection of other extremely realistic aircraft, which are FS9 only too.As for the sound being better - that's news to me. Is it really?

Leonardo Maddog. That's absolutely as realistic as the PT Tu-154M. There is one important difference, though: The PT Tu-154M is free!Anyway, back to the topic: Which one is better depends on who you ask. I personally use both, depending on what I want to do and which aircraft I want to fly. I have found good use for FSX to fly short flights in South America and the Carribbean, but all my long and medium haul flights are in FS2004. It's all a performance issue for me. I get good performance in more sparsely populated areas, such as the Carribbean, in FSX so why not use it? In those parts I can nearly max out FSX's settings, so I might as well make use of it. Lately, however, I have been much more interested in flying the heavies, which I can do in FS2004 better, because its performance in big, busy airports is much better.

Leonardo Maddog

This one is also for FSX.

This one is also for FSX.

Aaah, FS9 only... Okay, misread the post. Sorry

Thanks for the suggestions. Its always fun to open the floodgates on opinions and see what people think! Thanks!

It all depends on what you like to fly, where you like to fly it and what you have for a computer system.I like to fly in the Pacific Northwest. When Orbx PNW came out it absolutely blew away any previous combination of scenery enhancements for either FS9 or FSX. The day I first flew with Orbx PNW was the day I got rid of FS9 on my computer permanently.I like to fly helicopters and bush planes (both float and tundra wheels). If you go to the homepage for Hovercontrol they have an article on "Which Flight Simulator is the best?" and the answer was FSX. For bush planes on floats FSX offers the best looking water with REX 2 and I always hated how float planes performed in the water in FS9.My computer is powered by an Athlon 64 5000+ with 2GB ram and for video uses a NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT. Oddly enough it performs better with FSX than it did when I had FS9 installed, with way less stutters.What you fly, where you fly it and your computer system are probably different then what I listed so your conclusions are likely to be different from mine as well. Go with what works for you or go with both if that is what you find works best.Regards, Mike Mann

FS2004 !