I have a 3.6 Ghz CPU and Radeon X850 XT Platinum video card and the performance of the demo is dismal. I certainly will not buy a product with that performance. Given the recent info on no upgrade to ATC and the current good performance of FS 9, a great collection of add on aircraft and good scenery add ons like GE Ground Enviromnent Pro, I really do not see any compelling reason to upgrade to FS X.Greg

I have the same video card and close to same CPU as you, and while it was slow and 'chuggy' at times I also know it was a PRE-RELEASE demo. ie there will be a final demo at a later time(my assumption ONLY), that will give you a truer performance picture on our (and everyone's) hardware.

Get the spyware off your system, defrag and see me in the morning.

>I really do not see any>compelling reason to upgrade to FS X.Didn't we hear identical "proclamations" thousands of times just before the FS9 release? :-lolMichael J.

different people have different standards and expectations but I have to say there is no need for Geg to see you in the morning as I have about the same system specs and have the same experience regarding the performance of the demo.

>I have a 3.6 Ghz CPU and Radeon X850 XT Platinum video card>and the performance of the demo is dismal. I certainly will>not buy a product with that performance. Given the recent info>on no upgrade to ATC and the current good performance of FS 9,>a great collection of add on aircraft and good scenery add ons>like GE Ground Enviromnent Pro, I really do not see any>compelling reason to upgrade to FS X.Uh-huh. So?Regards,http://www.bremmekamp.com/img/misc/avsim.jpg

You have better system specs than I do but I'll buy it. I can run the demo fine with some compromising on the settings. I will continue to run FS04 also until the day comes that FSX will run good enough on my system to make it surplus bits. Also I fully expect the final product to run better than the demo does.

>I have a 3.6 Ghz CPU and Radeon X850 XT Platinum video card>and the performance of the demo is dismal. I certainly will>not buy a product with that performance. Given the recent info>on no upgrade to ATC and the current good performance of FS 9,>a great collection of add on aircraft and good scenery add ons>like GE Ground Enviromnent Pro, I really do not see any>compelling reason to upgrade to FS X.>>GregFine, stay as you are.SteveP.S See you in the FSX forum sometime next year.

I have a 2.8 Ghz Dell with an NVidia 7800 card. I have EXTREMELY pleased with the performance of the Demo. 25fps to 28fps most of the time with sliders close to max and some at max.I do however, utilize Spyware Doctor, Norton's Systemworks, defrag regularly, and keep strong maintenance schedules. I will still get a new PC when Vista and DX10 become available. I feel confident, though, that I will be able to run the full FSX versions satisfactorily when it arrives on my current rig.

I'm inclined to agree with the original poster not because of concerns about performance - the FSX demo runs as well as FS9 on my AMD 3700+ system - but simply because I struggle to see any significant value added if you have already invested heavily in the many high quality addons available for FS9 (FE, GEPro, ASV6, UT, PMDG 737/747, LDS 767, Carenado C206, Dreamfleet Bonanza/Baron, VOZ, RC4 - the list goes on and on). Unlike most previous product cycles, it has been three years since the release of FS9 and the number and quality of 3rd party addons has been much greater this time round. In fact unless all these addons can be quickly ported to FSX at little or no cost FSX would be a costly downgrade for me. I'm a bit puzzled as to why MS released the demo as it came out much too late in the development cycle for any feedback to lead to new/changed features and as a marketing tool it falls short. Maybe there is some killer feature lurking in FSX that has escaped me or isn't included in the demo that will change my mind so I will await with interest to see how the punters react to the full FSX release for a final judgement.Bruceb

Bruceb,I think you have stated very eloquently what my feelings towards FS X are. Thanks.Greg

Another thing I have a problem with is that my FS9 install is tuned to perfection. I have the FPS and features I need and can directly enjoy the program.In the FS-X demo I'm tweaking, adjusting settings trying to get a good framrate. Thats not enjoyment its hard work. While as you say the payoff seems a bit low for someone spoiled by all the 3rd party add-ons.

Well yes exactly. I remember just before I installed the demo I was thinking how good FS9 was looking and by comparison FSX was a bit of a let down for me in the very area everyone was on about - eye candy. While the new autogen trees look great, the new high detailed water textures seem to only have a quite limited radius before there is an ugly transition to low detailed textures. The new default aircraft seemed not much better than the FS9 offerings. And then I couldn't get my CH pro pedals to work properly with FSX - a problem raised by others in the long "issues" thread. Hopefully this at least will be fixed in the release version.Bruceb

>a quite limited radius before there is an ugly transition to>low detailed textures. We must be looking at different demos because I don't see this ugly transition anywhere or this limited radius. But in FS9 I could see those ugly squares (there were reallyugly) even from low altitudes. So no matter how you slice there is no comparison as water is concerned. Michael J.

>Well yes exactly. I remember just before I installed the>demo I was thinking how good FS9 was looking and by comparison>FSX was a bit of a let down for me in the very area everyone>was on about - eye candy.I tried the demo out on my PC which is ancient by todays standards (Athlon XP2000+, 512MB RAM and GF4 Ti4200) and I was really dissapointed.I turned just about everything off (except the ground detail settings) and still couldn't get the ground textures to look less blurry than FS9 while performance would drop to less than 10 fps. (zero water features/animation, zero ground and ship traffic, sparse autogen, etc)Just rotating the view or looking sideways out of the cockpit results in a lot of texture swapping (see blurry textures before the less blurry ones are loaded).My point is : shouldn't FSX look as good as FS9 on older hardware with all the new features turned off?Now I wouldn't be so dissapointed if there was at least something to make me go "oooo!" and "aaaah!" feature wise but quite frankly I didn't find anything like it. It just seems to have a few tweaks and some new art work.I definately won't be downgrading to FSX.Paul