Turn off your framerate counter, turn down a few sliders, stop reading the forums every hour, fly more, tweak less, and try to enjoy yourself, man, for chrissakes.http://www.2decker.com/media/solent1-2.JPGAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD

There's no conspiracy, just mental illness.Try moving back all your settings to the point you get the same visuals you'd get back in 1995 and stop complaining that it's all not looking good.You'll find you can run it on a lot les hardware then.

I wish I could do that and feel good about FS. I want my candy now, but, unfortunatly, by the time a computer is made that will run FS2004 well in all settings and situations comes out, FS2006 will be released. I was reading a post of a guy who just purchased an AMD Athlon 64 FX55 (4200+) and with the addons and weather he was using, he was only getting about 10 frames per second. That's a bummer if you ask me. The cycle goes on...RH

That's a sign of someone who has a really poorly configured PC is what it is......or a really crappy video-card.

> by the time a computer is made that will run FS2004 well in all> settings and situations comes out, FS2006 will be released. There have been computers that would do this for some time... Remember MS has the top of the line or fastest computers, that they create the FS on... With lots of memory, the latest, video cards, etc... Most people just do not update their computers, whenever a new program comes out. Neither do I, but, when I update my computer, it is after the NEXT faster computer... That way, the one I purchase is much cheaper. By staying behind the curve, even though retired, I can afford to buy one. I did not buy FS9, until I upgraded my computer, by just buying a new motherboard and CPU. It cost me $199 for a 3.0 at Fry's, and they do sell over the Internet. Bought a new Video board there also for $59, with 256meg onboard memory. Why buy a new computer every two years, if you can have virtualy a new one, for $250?Even if you cant install them, (my right hand is unusable, due to frostbite in Korea) they have a service dept, which will install it for you. If there is no Fry's near you, you can buy the boards, and have a local repair shop put them in. Go in first, talk with them, and find out their rates. It may cost $45 or even less....When you do purchase a new one, get a good one. Like a Dell or Toshiba, and Sony. Then, the other components will last through two or even three upgrades. Means I only purchase an entire computer every 9 or 10 years. Some have friends who are teckies, bet they would be glad to help, and install them for nothing.Bob

This is better than politics.RH

>>Turn off your framerate counter, turn down a few sliders, stop reading the forums every hour, fly more, tweak less, and try to enjoy yourself, man, for chrissakes. :)I like that! Sure gave me a wake-up call!*Note to self*: Stop downloading new planes and FLY

Let's face it...half of us, myself included, would be bored silly if we weren't on the quest for the tweaking "Holy Grail." Let's assume hypothetically that FS9 had come "dumbed down" just a bit so that it ran great on a middle of the road machine. No matter what FS looks out of the box, there will always be some guy who comes along with an add-on that changes the entire look or features of the sim for the better, and then, we just gotta have it! (Look at some of the traffic programs and a/c add-ons that can in themselves be frame rate killers.) Of course, some "tweaking" would be required to get decent frame rates. So, by the time we "upgraded" our hypothetical FS9 to where it is now, we'd all be doing what we're doing now...tweaking and upgrading like crazy. So...it's all a wash. I submit that no matter where FS started "out of the box", to get where we are now, we'd be tweaking and upgrading. And, in it's own perverse way, that's half the fun of this sim, isn't it?:(

> Sure gave me a wake-up call! Yep, I write a lot, but also fly no less than FIVE hours a day, its _great_ to be retired. Somedays I fly up to about 12 hours, getting up at 5AM, have already flown for two hours. Taking a break for breakfast, and catching up on the mail. When my wife leaves for work in 30 minutes, I'll be flying again! Even when we go camping in our RV, I have FS9 on my Laptop, and fly while we are in the Mountains or at the Beach. If you cant do anything else to get better framerates.... Depending on what you fly, if you always fly into commercial fields, go into traffic and uncheck the GA traffic box. If you fly into GA fields all the time like I do, uncheck Commercial. If you use both equally, just pull the slider down to 25-50% and enjoy flying. As I prefer GA and low IFR flights, in FSNAV choosing to set altitude manually, and choosing a max altitude of 9000 I like scenery at the Max settings. Landing at all GA fields, with GA-Traffic set to MAX, I seen lots of traffic... A big bonus, when using ATC, there are not so many calls, so you can get in to respond much easier. Yeah, there are Mountains that high, but that just makes it more interesting, getting around them through the passes. If you just follow the rivers, you can get through them many times at less than 5000 ft. Just dont click to call the next center, until past the Range, and they dont nag you to stay on a heading. When you do call in, they just direct you from there, to where you need to be. Years ago I bought Justin http://www.fsgenesis.com Lifetime Membership. It was a bargain, in the first year got $50 more MESH, than it would have cost to buy individually. Ever since then, I just log in and get it without paying. So far, its like getting four times my money, including a complete new upgrade of all MESH and Landclass for FS9. Having this, makes it fantastic flying through the Canyons. One user took a photo of a nearby Mountain in MT, and then slewed to the same location in FS9, and made a screenshot. Except for one thing, you couldnt tell them apart. The real mountain had more snow on it, but was the exact same shape. "Keep 'em Flying" Bob Bob

And be glad Microsoft decided to allow such an open structure.They could far more easily have locked it all down so tightly nothing can be added or changed without making the product impossible to use.Yet when people install all those addons they then blame Microsoft when their installation runs slowly or when one of those addons has a conflict with another one of those addons...Maybe Microsoft should indeed lock it down tight, would save their development and support groups a lot of headaches (though sales might be hurt a bit).

Microsoft have an excellent product. There's no disputing that. I am glad that they allow such an open structure as well. There's just got to be something they can do to further enhance the frames-per-second on their great sim! I think others agree.RH

I don't know a lot of folks who have used FF and like it with FS2002/4, but I could be wrong.RH