Let's consider the facts, by this time next year we'll most likely have for FS9 the following Boeing products:-Captain Sim's excellent smoky old 707.-F1's superb 727, which eclipses the CS 727 if only because it has a more stable, well sorted flight model which doesn't feel like flying a wet sock!-F1's upcoming 737-200.-PMDG's iconic 737 NG, which is still the benchmark by which all others are judged.-RFP 747-200, which is a little too much for me, the manual sets me yawning and I don't like the lazy MS default gauges which are in evidence around the panel.-PMDG's 747-400, which looks like it's going to raise the FS bar once again in 2005.-PSS's upcoming 757.-LD 767, which looks amazing, but is taking longer to model than Boeing spent building the real thing...-PSS's reworked 777, which was a benchmark FS2000 add-on.And in the Airbus corner....-Sim Soft's A310, which is a work of flawed brilliance, or brilliantly flawed depending on how you look at it. Plus it takes longer to get started up than a 1975 Lada and the customer service in a Moscow bus station is probably better...-A320 PIC, which makes my head hurt. No 2D panel? That's a great idea. Not.-PSS's A320 Pro, a superb add-on for FS2002, now sadly outclassed.-PSS's A330/40, which is so frame rate unfriendly it could bring a CRAY computer to its knees, and climbs faster than the space shuttle.-Perfect Flight's laughably bad A380, which looks like I made it with Paint. After a bottle of whisky. It's about as much fun as a burglar on christmaseve...So why can't we have some 'Buses with the attention to detail of the Boeings? Developers pay attention!!!

The PSS A330/340 give me excellent FR's. A lot better than PMDG's resource hog 737.

PMDG 737NG - great frame ratesPSS A340 - Frame rates so bad that I deleted it off my systemAMD Athlon XP2700+1024 mb PC2700 RAMATi Radeon 9800 Pro

The PMDG lately has been killing my computer. I have no idea why this is. I love it but even my P4 3.0 with a radeon 9800 pro struggles. My My P4 3.2 laptop is brought to it's knees. The PSS have always been easy on my frames. It blows my mind how the same product can act so differently on everyones computer.Andrew

The PMDG is great on framerates, what is hurting people is the amount of memory it consumes. The PSS and Dreamfleet planes consume about 200MB less than the PMDG one does. That is the difference. I have about the same computer as you. A P4 3.2 with 1024MB RAM on a 9800Pro and my computer uses all of its memory to run the PMDG plane. I hope their 744 is better with memory useage. I also did a complete re-install of the PMDG product after installing the 9.1 update and it's still the same.

SSW is building the A320 and from the look of the screenshots it looks promising.Dave Fisher

I agree with everything but the A320 PIC- that is a perfect example of flawed brilliance. WAY ahead of it's time. The VC is so functional that many 2D panels don't compare. It does however have bugs that were never fixed, and a rather strong lack of support from Wilco/Anticyclone. If they had done a few more patches to fix problems and add systems that were neglected it could've been the best plane ever for FS. Unfortunately that was not the case. It would have been like PMDG's final product being the 600/700- good but not great. It was the PMDG 800/900 and 600/700 patch that made it what it is. In fact, I think the problem with most of the 'busses is that were never really completed- or I should say, were never made into the products they could've been.

Pssst....Yeah You.....Over here....Welcome to Avsim...... :-)By the way... What about Cessna...? ;-)Regards,me,... ....

Eric, do you think the memory problem is fixable? I have about 1.5gb of ram and I really have no idea how much the 737NG uses but I am wondering if it is alot. I hope something could be done about it maybe when they are done with the 747. Like I said I can fly it on the desktop but it kills the laptop which of course is where I do most of the flying while I am at work. Andrew

Christian I agree with you about A320 PIC, it was a brave, ground-breaking aircraft, and ahead of it's time as you rightly say. That was precisely the problem with it, they never finished it, and the visual model was a bit FS2000 to me, all squares and polygons.My point is consider that with so many carriers using 'Buses in such large numbers, in the FS world we're awash with quality Boeings but a bit thin on the ground with Airbus. It seems that PSS cornered the Airbus market with A320 Pro, but I feel dropped the ball with their frustrating A330/40, and all the other developers have left them to it. Don't get me wrong, I love having a great dirty old 707 to zip around in, as I do both 727's and I also can't wait to get my hands on the more modern FD of the LD767, but wouldn't it be nice to step into an A320 that was up to the standard of the best available today?

The only way it is fixable is from PMDG's side and that is not going to happen. For whatever reason, I think FS9 in general runs like crap since I installed SP2 and DirectX 9.0c.

Seems to me that for both developers pretty much every model is covered.For Airbus the A300 is missing, for Boeing the 717 (if you don't count ImPerfect Flight's 717 that is).If Airbuddy has a shorter history and a narrower product line you should expect less addon products covering it.As to the PSS 330/340 having poor performance, not on my machine which is hardly state of the art (most of it is 2 years old or more).The PSS 320 is still among the best addon airliners on the market. The only thing that shows its age is the non-clickable VC, something I don't miss (especially in airliners where I use the VC only for taxiing and sometimes for lining up an approach at which point you should have all switches in the correct position anyway).

>The PMDG is great on framerates, what is hurting people is>the amount of memory it consumes. The PSS and Dreamfleet>planes consume about 200MB less than the PMDG one does. That>is the difference. I have about the same computer as you. A P4>3.2 with 1024MB RAM on a 9800Pro and my computer uses all of>its memory to run the PMDG plane. I hope their 744 is better>with memory useage. I also did a complete re-install of the>PMDG product after installing the 9.1 update and it's still>the same. Well it is true it is harder to run than most and this has a lot to do with what it has going on. If you have another sim with these types of displays displaying all that information then it's quite easy to see why this is so. The key for the NG is to lesson the total amount of system resources while flying it. I have 1 gig now,with 512 it was a bit difficult to not use up all my ram. So guys have so many things running at once that their resources are ate up which in turn kills their frame rates. As for the 744, we will have to wait and see. I certainly will keep a personal eye on performance...Best Wishes,[h4]Randy J. Smith[/h4]http://www.rawbw.com/~bdoolin/shinault/southparkcartmad.gif[h3]PMDG 747![/h3]Caution! Not a real pilot, but do play one on TV ;-)ASUS KV8 DLX | AMD 3200 64 | 1 GIG PC 3200 DDR | GIGABYTE 5700 ULTRA | ViewSonic VP192b 19" |

Would anyone even consider buying anything from SSW again after the A310 debacle?, I sure a heck wouldn't.Other than that, I like the PSS A320 and A340 as much as I like my PMDG 737, all 3 are very good planes, the A320 stands up particularly well considering its age, and that coupled with the great models from iDFG makes a top notch A320 package.Dan.

Double post :-lol