Hmm for me it has been:FS98 ran slow on my P133. Great on AMD K6-2 400, 128MB RAM, Voodoo3 3000. I skipped FS2k and when I got to FS2002 it ran OK on my 1900+, Geforce3, 512MB RAM and even better on my 2400+ @ 2.2GHz, Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB etc. When FS2004 came out it *also* worked great with this setup. After working around the autogen bug, it actually ran *better* than FS2002 except when there were a lot of 3D clouds in view. This has resulted in me keeping my current setup for now even though I planned on getting an Athlon64 last summer. Granted, there are now several addons that bog my system down at some points but I don't feel the urge to upgrade quite yet.If you want to see a conspiracy, try Doom3. I have to run that game at 800x600 with no AA or AF for smooth performance :-lol I run FS2004 at 1280x1024, 4x/16x :)Oh and Moore himself is a conpiracy: His movies are actually created by the goverment so that the people will never take any conspiracy theories seriously, but only what they are being spoon-fed by the goverment. He is for the Bush administration what Goldstein was for Ingsoc. :)

I dunno about that either. With my rig listed below and a few minor tweaks here and there, my rig screams with ALL sliders maxed and 100% AI, and every major 3rd party airport add-on.Actually, I was musing the other day that I have FINALLY caught up to flight sim after trying since FS 4.0! Right now I honestly feel that I am on an equal plain with FS9.1. I've got NO complaints right now for the first time ever.Mike T.

"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?"Other than CPU power, they can't really design a version of FS to take advantage of future hardware. It seems to me that they have to create FS around hardware technology that currently exists. I have often thought about this problem. From my understanding, as soon as a new version of FS comes out, they begin work on the next version. So, back in the fall of 2001 when, FS2002 was released, did the use the current technology of the time to create FS2004? Can we, therefore, predict what FS2006 will be like based on the technological improvements in that were available during the summer of 2003 when FS2004 was released?RH

Do you ever have times when you framerates dip? What kind of tweaks do you make? That FX53 is a great processor I hear.RH

Of course they can optimize for yesterdays computers. ATI and nVidia is very good at informing game developers about how their future hardware will be. Microsoft had made plans for what next versions dx 9.0b and 9.0c would bring to the table as soon as dx 9 was released. And probably before that.And until now it has been pretty predictable what will happen in the CPU market. They just ramp the clock speed up but now lately they have got real problems with that. So it will be a bit trickier. I think it will not be long until MP systems will become mainstream because of the problem ramping clockspeeds with todays manufacturing methods.Same seem to be happen with video cards with nVidia reintroducing SLI and finally got some use for their buying of 3dfx.But anyway there is no problem at all optimizing games for future hardware as well. The FX 53 is good but very poor bang for the buck. If you want to buy the fastest available on the consumer market just buy 2 Opterons really.I would assume my 2,75 gig Clawhammer would perform pretty much the same and I do get dips. But it

Please no politics....please?

"The FX 53 is good but very poor bang for the buck. If you want to buy the fastest available on the consumer market just buy 2 Opterons really."Thanks for the info, but would 2 Opterons really help FS2004? I remember a few years back that the dual Pentium setups did not help much with FS.RH

>Thanks for the info, but would 2 Opterons really help FS2004? Nope. That would be *really* poor bang for the buck.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

Micheal-Would two CPUs offer any help? My guess is that it would do very little because two CPU computers are designed for purposes other than games and simulations... I hate it when people refer to FS2004 as a game...RH

Seriously, PC

I played with the sliders and found that disabling shadows made the most significant difference in terms of framerates. Are you saying that your framerates jumped simply by changing to SP2?RH

>I played with the sliders and found that disabling shadows>made the most significant difference in terms of framerates. >Are you saying that your framerates jumped simply by changing>to SP2?>>RH Yes . . . ..

Hey wait a minute, back to the black helicopter conspiracy thing. I don

So, it is a conspiracy. I knew it!RH

Another note of opinion (seems to be plenty running around here). Did anyone ever give any thought to the fact that the developers at MS are getting 99% of their hardware for free from the manufacturers to "test" on the next FS release. They have the stuff months before we can even drool over it at the stores. Then to boot, they have machines that are set up to run, hold on to your hats here, FLIGHT SIM and absolutely nothing else. They have no programs running in the background, they're not pausing FS to check e-mail, balance the checkbook, look through the the file library for an add-on for the area they are currently flying in and so on.I have a home-built system with a Soyo Dragon motherboard, Athlon XP 2100+ and 512mb of DDR266 ram and a 128mb FX440 video card that does nothing but run FS2002Pro. It will maintain the locked 30Fps anywhere in the world with the sliders maxed. No I haven't upgraded to 2004 because I have three years worth of add-ons and scenery that work just fine in 2002.One of the developers at MS on a recent video said that they have to design FS to run on everything from a 5 year old system to the ultimate state-of-the-art screaming system. I for one am amazed each and every single time I load FS at what an awesome experience we can get from a $600.00 desktop computer running a $40.00 program. Although I'm in no way an avid "gamer", I don't know of anything else that can completely imerse one as much as FS does.I have a FAA approved IFR training device that cost's well over $10,000.00 and althought it does give a little better sensation as far as the touchy-feely aspect, I find more often that not, everyone who uses it winds up loading FS2002 which cost me $40.00 as compared to the FAA approved software which was $699.00. The FAA says we have to use the approved software to legally log time in the sim but I can find at leat 10 RW pilots who will tell you that FS2002 is far and away the better and more realistic software.