Seriously, who are the BIG boys?

The "Big Boys" are the pros... i.e. The multi-million dollar simulators, motion and all... :(

The "Big Boys" are the pros... i.e. The multi-million dollar simulators, motion and all... :(

Oh, right! Those one's who don't really have high-quality scenery, much less a populated and animated world to render.Those "big boys..." :(

Actually it really has more to do with the physics and animation than the quality of any given frame. If you are being shown a frame, the next frame is already being computed. You make a split second reaction on the controls and by chance it shows up on the next frame. At 10 FPS that just took 200 ms and 60 FPS that would take only 33ms. Now imagine the consequences were real in the sense you were in a full motion sim, I think you'd make yourself quite sick if the FPS wasn't stable.In reality you are cheating yourself out of gameplay physics if you aren't playing FSX at 60FPS. Sliders are useful if you already have lowered expectations on visuals.

The "Big Boys" are the pros... i.e. The multi-million dollar simulators, motion and all... :(

The "big Boys" pay up to $15M for their simulators. I suggest you join the real world of $50 games.

anything less than 45fps to me is useless.

25fps is perfectly fine for a civilian flight simulator.

Inevitably, all threads eventually end up in a debate about FPS. LOL

The "big Boys" pay up to $15M for their simulators. I suggest you join the real world of $50 games.

The "big boys" pay the $15M primarily for the platform and motion components, NOT for the visual. There is no reason MS cannot provide us with above average framerates (50-60+) these days on "top of the line" machines...There are a plethora of titles with stellar graphics getting 90+ framesbut I digress...

The "big boys" would also be basically any other PC game out there - 60FPS is the standard in just about anything except for simming. I think it's just become some sort of article of faith that flight sims must always run poorly. It's not true - look at something like DCS A-10, looks amazing and runs at 60+ FPS on my machine.Take a look at any of the gameplay trailers for Battlefield 3 or Crysis 2 - that's a hell of a lot more detail on screen than you see in any flight sim and they're running at 60+ too. This is all about the engine being designed to use the GPU instead of the old CPU-limited methods that FS has always used.

I agree that MS Flight needs to utilise the GPU far more than FSX has done, but we really don't need 60fps in a civilian flight simulator. Of course, it would always be nice to have super high framerates in dense scenery areas, but 25-30 fps is perfectly fine for controlling a virtual plane.

I agree that MS Flight needs to utilise the GPU far more than FSX has done, but we really don't need 60fps in a civilian flight simulator. Of course, it would always be nice to have super high framerates in dense scenery areas, but 25-30 fps is perfectly fine for controlling a virtual plane.

I would agree to an extent. 25 FPS for me is perfectly flyable. Even 20. What higher FPS allows for is overhead for addons. So, let's say you've got 25 FPS going for vanilla Flight. Add in a large AI package, and BAM! 10 FPS gone. Say you want to use PMDG's latest and greatest. As efficient as they're wanting to make it, the complexity is still going to chip away some frames. Let's say 5 as a very conservative number. Now you're down to 10 FPS which is only good, at best, for cruise. 50-60 FPS allows room for addons to chip it away while still leaving enough frames for smooth performance.