I want to begin by saying that I take my hat off to you guys who don't mind you settings midway and who are satisfied with you MSFS performance and who look at guys like me with perplexity. Now that I have gotten that off my chest, will we ever see a day when we will have the hardware to fly the software to its potential?I've been a Microsoft flight simmer since the summer of 1995. At that time, I purchased a brand new Pentium 75Mhz with a whopping 8Mb of RAM, and along with it, I purchased FS5.1 and have been addicted to FS since. Along with all of the obvious joys of flight simming, there has been one factor that I, like many of you, have been unable to overcome. That factor has been the hardware limitations of getting the most out of FSXXXX as it is boxed and shipped. I have spent hours and hours on Anandtech.com and Tomshardware.com (and other sites) and thousands of dollars trying to stay up but have vowed not to get burned again, but we will see ;).To run FS5.1 successfully with sliders maxed and decent framerates, it required at least a Pentium 120. Just after I got around to upgrading my computer (new motherboard and all to support the P120), they released FS95, and the new P120 performed in FS95 like the P75 did with FS5.1. I finally got FS95 to work when I upgraded my motherboard and memory to support the new P200MMX, and about that time, they released FS98, so again, I spent close to a couple of years hounding the hardware websites and buying memory and videocard upgrades it squeeze out all of the juice I could out of me setup but still stayed in slideshow territory when flying in around the cool but complex scenery. I finally got FS98 to work wonderfully well when AMD released the slot A Athlon. I remember reading about how the Athlon was superior to the Pentium IIIs (that were available at the time) in almost every way, so I thought "wow", moving from a Pentium 200MMX to an Athlon 550 should be far and enough to use for FS2000 when it is released. However, to my chagrin, I was once again in slideshow central again with FS2000. My motherboard at the time only accepted up to a Slot A 700Mhz Athlon, which I bought in the spring of 2000 along with a new Voodoo2 3000 videocard, which helped some but not a lot. When I upgraded to a new motherboard and an Athlon 1200 (Thunderbird) and 384Mb of RAM, FS2000 finally ran ok, but a little over a month later, they released FS2002, and I was in the same boat again. I have since upgraded to a KT-400, Athlon 3000+, ATI 9800Pro, 1Gb of SDRAM... which seemed fine for FS2002 but not for FS2004, which was released just after the upgrade... At this point, I want to upgrade to a 939 Athlon64 4000+, which will probably be okay for FS2004 in most settings (super-complex add-on scenery and traffic in all kinds of weather with sliders maxed) but want to wait until the price comes down, at which time...In summary then FS5.1 required a P120, FS95 required a P200, FS98 required about 500Mhz, FS2000 about 1200Mhz, FS2002 about 2250 (3000+ 333bus), FS2004 (probably about an Athlon64 4000), and all of this means that each new version of FS will require a doubling of power -- and FS2006 will probably require between 7Ghz to 9Ghz to run correctly... and when affordable, FS2008 will be released...Is there a conspiracy or am I just paranoid? Why won't guys like me ever be satisfied?RH

Becuase your expectations are unrealistic. :)There are systems available today that can pretty much run FS9 (as it is out of the box which is of course the only thing MS can be held accountable for) maxed. Now, if you load it up with add-on scenery and complex planes and all sorts of helper apps, it's going to be that much more demanding. Even so, the most powerful of todays hardware can handle it pretty well. Part of the problem to me seems to be the notion many have that by turning a few sliders down, you aren't using the sim to its "full potential." The way I see it, MS has done a good job of setting things up so that you get a good percentage of the bells and whistles at medium slider settings. Then, if you have the horsepower you can turn things up and enjoy some extra special treats. In other words, the sim is set up so that at medium settings, you're really 90% of the way there and anything above that is icing on the cake.

>Is there a conspiracy or am I just paranoid? Bill Gates invests all his money, in Computer Systems. He even bought half of Apple... Probably owns lots of Intell, AMD, and Kingston stock. So he updates the FS every couple of years to drive the price of Chips back up. ;-):-xxrotflmao >Why won't guys like me ever be satisfied? It will take about 7 years of therapy to change that... ;-)

This reminds me a lot of a post I made a year ago. I don't think there is a "conspiracy" per se, just poor design logic. I agree completely that the hardware available is always out of sync with Flight Simulator's requirements.The problem is that the MSFS team said that they intentionally design the game to take advantage of future hardware so that the game will have the longest lifespan possible. This is all fine and good, and lots of game companies do that, but with MSFS the situation is different--they release a new version every 2 years! Why do they need to program "for the future" when they are going to be outdoing themselves in a couple years?As a result, we are left with two options: every two years me must invest thousands of dollars in state-of-the-art hardware, or accept the fact that we must set the sliders halfway with our current harware. We are always 1 generation behind in hardware.What I would propose is getting FS back in sync. This could possibly mean delaying the next version of FS for 2 more years (highly unpopular idea I'm sure) or perhaps hold back some of the flashy new features they were going to incorporate, for the next version only. In other words the MSFS team needs to apply the brakes. The fact that customers would be able to fly FS at max sliders with their current hardware would undoubtedly negate any disappointments in the short term from a reduced update in graphics.Derek D.

There is hardly a computer that can max FS 2004 out today. That would mean you would have to run ALL stock and then you definiatly don

> accept the fact that we must set the sliders> halfway with our current harware. If you have a bit of time, before you fly play with the sliders.Many times you can get added performance, with slight changes. Like setting top one at 86, instead of 100%... Then go back and fly, to see what effect it had. Found it ran as well there, as at 50%, but details were better. (Flying at 2500' AGL) BUT, if you are not using XP, with SP2, then that can be the best upgrade you can make to your system. XP is much better than W98, and XP with SP2 upgrade,is a much better change than going from W98 to XP. Id been holding off on the upgrade to SP2, as I heard it took so much time to put impliment. Every day, had too many things to do, to take the time to do it. Finally this week, decided to just leave my computer on when finished, and have it do it. Next morning had to reboot, and it again took lots of time. But, then I was going out for the day.... When I came back rebooted again. Loaded FS9, first without using FSAutoStart to see how it worked. With all the junk I have in including Norton, Webshots, Mailwasher, etc.. loaded my framerates for FS9 JUMPED from an average of 8-10fps to 18.2-19.8fps... (Locked at 20) Will try it today, running FSAutoStart first, as Ive noticed installing SP2, not only updated the software - It Turned on every process that I'd had turned off. Counted over 46 processes and programs in memory.... I Should have Upgraded to SP2, ASAP...

the obvious and simplist answer to this dilemna is a painful one for most of us yet guarantees we would always be able to run MSFS at its full potential:DO NOT BUY THE NEWEST RELEASED VERSION UNTIL THE NEXT GENERATION HAS BEEN RELEASED....in other words dont buy fs2006 until fs2008 has been released...simplest AND cheapest answer i can come up with for now :-)....a bit tough to chew?, perhaps but if we can train ourselves to get used to this theory in practice then maybe we'd have alot less to complain about on these forums in the first place?Afterall, there ARE still lots of folks out there that are still runnning fs2002 these days, however i lok back at some of my fs2002 screenshots ive saved and am very glad i didnt wait to buy fs2004 :-) hahahaha...never said i was good at following my own advice :-)Dave

RH,Conspiracy, no, I think constant progression causes what we have to become incompatible with the new platforms and programs.How to cope ??I went through all the tweaking, driver upgrades ad nauseum and all the frustrations that go with them. I started simming with FS98. When FS2000 came out, I read notes from users in the forums and decided not to buy it. I had a 300mhz computer and was tweaking FS98 all the time to get the most out of it. Then in 2001, I built my own computer with a 1.3ghz Athlon and Nvidia graphics card. FS98 ran great then. Next up was FS2002. User comments were mostly favorable, so I bought it. It looked great and ran fairly well, but not like I had hoped, lots of stutters and pauses. I was really getting ticked.Early in 2004, I bought a Dell 3.0ghz, with ATI graphics. FS2002 really screamed then. At last !!!I decided to keep FS2002. I bought FS2004 cheap but never installed it, as user comments liked the looks of it better, but led me to believe I would have to go back to the constant tweaking. No thanks.Benefits of using the older sim ?1. The fast processor runs it the way it should, smooth as silk.2. I can still use a lot of old files all the way back to FS98.3. I can use some of the new stuff for FS2004.This is the way I fight the FS blues.FS2006 ?? We'll see. (One of these days, I may install FS2004 just to see, but still not in the mood for it..)Cheers,Bob

"DO NOT BUY THE NEWEST RELEASED VERSION UNTIL THE NEXT GENERATION HAS BEEN RELEASED."Yes, that was the third option I failed to mention, simply because it was too painful to bear :-boom. Obviously no one likes feeling left behind, so the limiting factor on that option is simply human psychology.Derek D.

>Though I agree to make FS 2004 look decent and not like a game>released for 3 years ago you will need a very powerful>computer indead.I don't know about that. I'm running FS9 on a P4 1.8 with a Geforce4Ti4200 and while I certainly don't have the sliders maxed, by no means does the sim look like a "game released for 3 years ago." In fact, it looks simply amazing to me. Do any of you guys play games other than FS9? I mean I've got a ton of different games on my PC and very few of them can I max out the graphics and still get playable performance. NR2003, Call Of Duty, IL2FB, even Falcon4 with all the updates strains pretty powerful hardware. Even Grand Prix Legends, which is 6 years old now, with all the upgrades available I still have to turn things down a bit if I want to run full AI fields. I doubt theres a PC in existance that can run LOMAC maxed out. If you buy a system now that can handle FS9 very well, you'll be able to handle FS2006 pretty well too.

It is a common ailment known as slider-itis. The patient just isn't satisfied until the graphics sliders are set to 100% maximum. The "cure" is realizing that fs2004 on medium settings still looks much better than fs2002 with max sliders. However the patient still feels like he/she is losing out. You can see this mentality in many posts. People ask how they can get better performance out of flightsim. There will be tons of posts on obscure config tweaks, video drivers, etc. However rarely will someone say, "hey, try turning down the sliders a bit". Unless as others said you don't upgrade to the latest version and always stay one version behind, you will probably never see the sim maxxed out.

XP Home - SP2Intel Pentium 4 - 1.8GHz256 MB RAMDirectX 9.0cGEForce 3 TI200GEForce Tweak UtilityI run the sim w/ all sliders maxed except mipmaps.Yes, weather sliders maxed too.Aircraft at airports 100%.Ani and AA set at workable levels.Addons - none except Chris's (Willis) clouds, Airport Env. MX, and AS2004.5. And with this awesome weather generator I have all the bells and whistles on, including unlimited cloud layers.In very dense scenery areas like LA or Seattle, and sometimes Chicago, when there is lots of weather happening, I do experience some slowdown (below 10 fps, but still "flyable" and "landable"). I think, and this is just personal opinion, most experience slowdown when they add scenery meshes, or awesome aircraft, which are very detailed in the VC, and exterior. Or very detailed scenery. What many fail to realize is that when you do this you are very likely moving away from FS9, and moving closer to FS10. Then some wonder, why won't my computer fly FS9 smoothly anymore? Answer, because you are no longer flying FS9, you are flying FS9plus.I find that with the sliders maxed, I can live w/o the scenery addons that are offered up in the library. Personally, I believe this is where many people experience problems w/ frame-rate slowdown.The only thing I am considering upgrading is my RAM.

Don't look at it as a conspiracy, just think of all the people around the world that we simmers feed and clothe! How many people would starve and national economies go belly up if we simmers stopped upgrading? Consider this, we have 17457 members in this forum and if we all spent just $500.00 in upgrades a year we produce $8,728,500.00 in revenue. I know that I spend more than $500.00 a year, how about you? Now more seriously, I do not see a conspiracy, what I see is a company that has a very difficult task, they are trying to produce the most realistic product they can within the limitations of today's hardware. Do you know why they do that, because we demand it! Yes that's right we are asking them to do this to us! They will continue to do this too, that is until the hardware can run an absolutely perfect representation of the real world, because we want it. I do not mind at all having to upgrade all of the time because I want the advances, I want my sim to be as realistic as possible as we all do. While it may be frustrating this is the reality of a product which strives for perfection and realism. Now go out and buy some more hardware, feed a family and enjoy your Microsoft Flight Simulator. Oh and to be honest, I am one who benefits from your psychotic need to upgrade, I own a computer company! :-) I have built a few rigs for other simmers and they are my best customers!Take care you all!Philip OlsonI'm the luckiest man in the world, my girl friend has a yoke and rudder pedals! Eat your hearts out!http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/supporter.jpg

Not a conspiracy... just evolution. I caught by accident a show last night on PBS called "The Video Game Evolution". It was a fantastic 2 hour docu on the history-development-consequnces-future of video games. Did you know the first vid game was developed in the 1950's?HIGHLY suggest you find this program on your local listings... it was that good. I thionk your right, each version of FS requires about a doubling of speed of the CPU. I started FS2002 with a 1.8GHz and upgraded to a 2.8GHz. Big noticable improvement. My next PC purchas will be a 4GHz when it comes out.Another suggestion to try is to have FS2002 loaded with all the maxed out goodies and add-ons and also have FS2004 loaded but just the default and mess around with both. I actually have every version of FS now loaded on my PC and switch around for fun.

Conspiracy? Hell no..But get Michael Moore here with his camera and he will find you another conspiracy if you desperately want one :-lolMichael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2