The one I remember the most was the first day I got Flight Unlimited II and did a very steep full flap approach and landing at Half Moon Bay. It was the first time I remember that a flight sim made me feel like I was back in the left seat of a real plane. I was sold on FU 2 from that moment on. Jon

I think I had a little "wow" moment last night, watching AI traffic arriving and departing on Rwy34 at Dublin. My last sim was FS2K, so was surprised and pleased at how much better the AI aircraft are now, both in appearance, and in following track. I positioned myself somewhere around the terminal building(actually I cheated, by using Slew mode to move my PMDG 737NG a couple hundred feet off the ground, then used the virtual cockpit view, but without the VC(if you know what I mean)). Then I zoomed in on the landing and departing aircraft, giving a telephoto lens effect! :-). The zoom effect seems to have been changed in FS9, so that you can go as high as you desire. It's fun trying to keep the a/c centered in your 'lens' as it descends towards the runway!Another 'wow' moment for me(along with Svein)is seeing the perfectly smooth appearance of the PMDG PFD and ND at 1600 x 1200 res. I have a pic of those as screensaver, and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.There are many more, but these happened just yesterday.Nice thread,BR,Frank

<>Be careful! People might start calling you reasonable!

Maybe I am a simple man, but not a day goes by when I fly in FS9 that I don't go WOW! Maybe it is the textures, maybe the addon aircraft... No matter what it is,it says WOW to me! :DMy first WOW was with FS5!:D The ability to fly around Chicago, New York, LA or San Francisco. There where no other airports. The next WOW was when you had unlimited airports to fly to in FS. :D

There's been so many but the latest is taking off from KPHX at evening time (with shadows)with the mesh scenery and a few clouds in the PMDG Boeing, climbing and turning onto SE to set course for Tucson and then freezing the sim, going for instant replay and using Active Camera to get a window seat (left side) behind the wing and then replaying and viewing the take off and climbing turn! Done it loads of times for real when travelling on business from UK to Tucson - its uncannily realistic!KFD

Plenty of WOWs, but just recently had a very nice one after opening the throttles for the first time on Rick Piper's Chipmunk and gradually ascending. Gave me a real feeling of being in a nice, stable primary trainer. Great sounds as well. Wonderful !Alastair

I also got my first WOWs from ATP and PP99, but most recently, I got my biggest WOWs from FS9:First, just after installing FS9, flying in bad weather, and turning the Baron 180 degrees onto final over KSFO for a visual approach in conditions that probably should have been IFR only... really scary!Secondly, starting up the Flight1 Meridian and getting to use the Garmin 530 which gave me my first real-life moving map experience... "as real as it gets".Thirdly, flying over the great new freeware Toronto scenery and recognizing the trails that I hiked on the day before... :-)

I completely agree on the frame rates stutter issue. I've got a FX5600 Geforce graphics card and also plenty of stutters. Unfortunatly I can't get rid of em' completely. Even when I pull the sliders all the way to the left. There is still a stutter occuring now and than. It is very annoying, because as you stated above, the feeling of emmersion gets interupted on every single stutter. Just imagine a sim that couldn't stutter at all! I wished M$ could achieve that!As for the Geforce FX57/600/200 series, they have all only 4 pixel-pipelines. I'm not into hardware that much, but I think that's a major bottle neck and causes alot of those stutters. Before I had a Geforce4 Ti4200 with 8 pixel-pipes and much less stutters. Although the framerates with the new card in average are a little higher.Claudio

I frequently have to pinch myself flying in my homecockpit, scanning the FS9 world effortlessly with TrackIR, and manipulating the controls sans keyboard thanks to GoFlight. 1)That said, my most lasting "wow" experience was the first time I loaded Fly!. It was night with a steady rain pounding on the roof of my Hawker 800 and looking in awe at a full array of switches and dials. I didn't get into Fly! too much because it was rapidly eclipsed by MSFS but that was a dramatic moment for me.2) Flying my first RW crosscountry solo and recognizing every landmark as I had flown it in FS a hundred times! It looked just like it (but was more turbulent in real life!)3) I can't remember the addon for an early version of MSFS but it added voice to adventures for the first time - and I wasn't even expecting that when I bought it!4) Lastly, anytime my wife looks over my shoulder for more than a few minutes and says "wow, that looks really real!"David

Like other's have said, there are a lot of visual "WOWS" in FS9. Every now and then you'll see a sky or scenery that just blows you away.Many fine add-ons have added to the WOW factor like Ultimate Traffic, USA Roads, and the Aeroworx KingAir 200 to name just a few.But the topper is the little things that take you by surprise when they first happen. I was flying VFR to Utica, NY with real weather. As I headed west the weather deteriorated. I called the tower for landing clearance and was denied clearance because the airport was under IFR conditions. I had never had that happen before in Flight Simulator. WOW! I was able to file an IFR flight plan on the run, get clearance and land.Jim

Stutters are typically caused when the CPU can't give the GPU what it needs when it needs it. While this can happen simply because the CPU is temporarily overwhelmed it's often caused when the GPU makes specific demands. A good example is texture requests. There is limit to what can be cached on the card based on the card's memory. When you can accomodate all the textures you need to render the scene on the card life is good. When you need textures that aren't on the card the CPU must go get them and the GPU must load them (normally unloading something else that it decides it can do without). The app (FS) can try and help reduce the need for new textures by doing things like reducing the level of detail required for certain textures or by distributing requests over several frames but it can only do so much.One common complaint are stutters and/or slow texture loading when switching views in add-on aircraft. If you dig into this you notice that many high-end aircraft models use numnerous high-res textures. One I looked at recently used 5 1024x1024 textures for the exterior and VC models. Compare that with the default a/c that ony use 1 1024x1024 (and maybe an additional 512x512). When you load the aircraft FS might have to load 2 of the textures to display the VC. Now you switch to external view. The GPU must first decide if it has to unload something to make room in memory. If it does that takes a small bit of time. Then it has to request the new textures. That also takes time, expecially if their not in the CPU cache. And if you're moving you might be loading/unloading geometry, airport/AI data, and on and on. With all this activity you might just get a stutter.It's unfortunate that you report stutters even with all the sliders to the left. To me that sounds like a driver issue (and remember latest doesn't always mean best) or other processes on your PC that periodically request the entire CPU (anti-virus, etc.). As many on this forum have said FS likes the CPU all to itself. So you might try looking at those factors as well. As for Microsodt, I'm sure they'll continue to look at the cause of stutters in FS, probably ever more encouraged by your refering to them as 'M$'.Good luck!

Another WOW for me with FS9 would be how you tend to forget that you're not really flying.A lot of times I find myself landing in an airport in another state (or city) where it was raining and when I park and get up from the computer and fully expect to see the same weather, but of course it's not the same.

It was just my second flight in FS2002, the first version I'd bought. I decided to see if the Rock of Gibraltar was included. I flew from Morocco in a C182, droning onwards and getting doubtful when all of a sudden, there it was. I lined up, landed and taxied up to the terminal just as the sun was rising over the Mediterranean.I was blown away. It was the middle of a winter night in Ottawa and I felt as if I'd just arrived on a Mediterranean holiday.A few days later I was flying from Edwards AFB in my first third party download -- a Dash 8. I flew over the mountains toward LA, got jostled around in some turbulence as I descended through the overcast, then broke out to see Los Angeles spread before me and the lights of LAX beckoning me in. That's when I was hooked for good.Even now, there are plenty of 'I can't believe I'm sitting at a computer moments' -- often when I see the amazing aircraft that some talented and generous people share for free -- but those two flights will always stick with me.BlairCYOW

Off this topic, but I am thinking of purchasing Ultimate Traffic and would like your opinion of it, please? Does it tend to 'cripple' your system? Mine is a Dell 3.0 GHz, 1Gb RAM, 128 ATI Radeon Pro.I would also like to know if it is possible to edit the airline schedules so as to reflect current operations at various airports(maybe UT has this already, but it would it nice to be able to tweak it as desired)? My understanding is you can, as the program seems to have many user options?By the way, is it possible to turn on crash detection of AI aircraft in relation to my aircraft?Thanks and best regards,Frank

Thanks for the the comments! I've got a fairly old system (AXP1800+,512Mb DDR266,GeFX5600), it might be time for a new one. I've tried a lot of different driver configurations. It turned out that the new 6x.xx series detonator drivers perform worse. I'm currently using the starforce 56.72x driver. It performs a little better, but still not satisfying in fs2004. I don't use much addon scenery or payware high quality aircraft because they would cause too many stutters.regards,Claudio