While I liked the demo on the whole, I just pray that the autogen is optimised for the release and the blurries with the 2.0 water. Because it has to be said, at the moment the performance with the autogen on the denser settings, along with the blurries with the higher water settings, are horrendous... With a 3.2GHz P4, X800 Pro card and 1GB of decent Corsair RAM I'm getting 0.5 FPS in some situations when autogen is extrememly dense...literally a slide show where I have to wait for the screen to refresh before I can even steer the plane. That is pretty bad, and even with a top-end system of today would not be much better I guess. Those two issues should take absolute top priority for MS over the next two months. (not that I want to put tdragger and the MS devs under any pressure or anything....lol)

I love the demo.I get smooth/no stutter 30fps (locked) with everything maxed except Autogen/AI (which is turned off).Can't wait for the full product.People having fps issues should try it without autogen/ai.Also, I find the more time I spend with the demo the more I discover and the more I appreciate the many improvements.

the demo was amazing, however my computer is no match to display FSX as i would like to. In FS9 I can run full settings all day long. with great FPS. IN FSX i put the sliders at full settings and it murdered my fps :( I'd need to take my credit card for walkies to enjoy FSX, so i'd say i'm dissapointed, not with FSX but with my hardware.

>I love the demo.>>I get smooth/no stutter 30fps (locked) with everything maxed>except Autogen/AI (which is turned off).>>Can't wait for the full product.>>People having fps issues should try it without autogen/ai.>>Also, I find the more time I spend with the demo the more I>discover and the more I appreciate the many improvements.>I must add, I did try it without autogen before, and I was on the whole pretty pleased with the FPS (hitting 30 in some situations and seems smoother than FS9...then again I havent got a shed load of addons installed in FSX...). But....I have tried it WITH all the autogen and it really does look fantastic...out of this world in fact. IMO the dense autogen, coupled with the photorealistic ground textures make the landscape look very realistic indeed, and has so far surpassed my expectations ten times over. BUT...the frame rates are currently hideous. IF ONLY the autogen could be optimised in time for the release... even on the sparse setting it brings my system to its knees...

With Med-High settings it ran as good as FS9 on my 2 year old machine.Dell Dimention 8400 640 3.20, 1 gig pc3200, GeForce 6800-256.

Obviously I'll be buying it, but I'm kinda disapointed to see that my 7800GTX video card performs so poorly - this card is still $500+ retail and second only to the marginally quicker 7900 and X1900XT as far as the best video cards on the planet at the moment go. I'd hoped the advent of shaders and real DX9 stuff in FSX would mean that framerates would go up to the sort of levels I see on other graphically intense game engines with this card as more of that was offloaded to the GPU. This doesn't appear to be the case with the demo. I hope that can be chalked up to lack of optimizations and debuging code hanging around, but something tells me I'm not gonna see double the framerate when I bring home the final optimized version.I am however very happy to see some of the changes that were made:* Smooth VC gauges!* Fixed visibility and wind shifts - this was one of my top complaints.* "Mouselook" built in* The new view system* The missions are going to allow for some unprecedented stuff from the community* Traffic on the roads and water is really cool - again addons will go nuts with this I'm sure* Ultimate Terrain type scenery built-in.* The default aircraft look much much better than FS9's.* The new GUI frontend is way better than FS9's.I'm still playing around with it - having lots of fun chasing cars with the ultralight!

Jeez, I would not give 2 cents to be a MSFS developer, dammned if you do, dammned if you don't. Anyhow, for what it's worth, I reckon the demo's great and the devs should be encouraged to continue down this path...I think the demo is great not for what I can do with it now, but for what the title promises to deliver in the future, with the appropriate hardware etc. Having a two year old machine (admittedly it was really quick when new) I can run FSX now at about 70% with a reasonable level of control and fidelity. I do however have a bit of trepidation about the level of blurries that I am experiencing and hope it can be resolved prior to launch. Given my settings, I would have expected a much higher level of ground texture clarity.This version very much reminds me of the transition from the last of the DOS versions of MSFS to the first of the Win 95 versions. I do remember that the DOS version worked well for me but when I installed the Win 95 version over essentially the same PC (with new OS), man it was slide show city.I did go out and buy a new PC a few months later and what a huge difference it made. I intend to do the same this time, only waiting for Vista to appear and will then go the whole hog.Anyhow, kudos to the ACES team for having the courage to go down this new inclusive path and please don't let the naysayers discourage you in the future.Cheers,Chris Porter:-outtaPerthWestern AustraliaEdit: PS, I think a huge thanks should be give by the community to Tdragger (Mike) for his ongoing participation in these forums and his patient answering of questions and even demands often in the face of some fairly hostile commentary. I don't even think that he is officailly part of the FS Dev group anymore. Thanks Mike... :-beerchug

I'll wait for Vista and a new Dual Core Extreme PC (Alienware) before getting FSX... There's no way this sim is going to perform satisfactory on my current setup plus I'm not convinced with add-ons installed FSX/XP/DX9 will perform and look good as FS9...The bright side for me is by the time I upgrade, most of my current add-ons will have been upgraded for FSX

Eye candy, most of it won't even display right on my 3.4Ghz P4 HT 1 GB Ram 256 Geforce 5900 system. if I crank everything all the way down, I can pull about 9FPS. But am I gonna go spend about 1500 for upgrades just for this? Probably not, I can still pull 25 FPS in FS9 with a lot of traffic and very high graphics settings and it still looks stunning. I'm going to wait for 64 bit systems to be mainstream, and then I'll start upgrading possibly. But from what I hear about Vista, it's going to take a supercomputer to run the UI of that alone! What are these guys thinking?

So far.. with the voting results with around 200 responses... it reflects the Bell curve... with "I have a few problems with it, but am anxious to get the full release." at the center of the bell curve.I think.. Mike was kind of exoecting to be in that ball park I believe (atleast from reading his blog, thats how I interpreted it).MannyI should add...IMO, this is a radically different upgrade.. not one of those marginal upgrades... so.

I have had nothing but success with the demo. I absolutely love it. I can turn off AI/autogen/ground traffic and get solid high FPS, and it still looks better than FS9.The new planes are gorgeous, the texturing is superb, the missions seem like they will be a lot of fun, and I can't wait to get in on the rest of the game.This confirmed what I was hoping for. Although I will be upgrading my computer shortly, however, it's hardly a "flight sim" upgrade. I'm sure my other games will all be happy. That being said, I was blown away that I got anywhere close to the level of detail that I did on my three year old mid-range computer.

Autogen (sparse) kills my 2.2ghz AMD/512mb/Radeon 9800SE 128mb/1024/768.Also missing distant mipmaps (or something). Distant blurred. Tried many settings. Sometimes jumps to totally blurred textures when "stressing" the settings. The trees, and the higher density, are great but really kill the system.Blacked-out windows on Beaver switching planes while in flight.Imported Real Air C172. Works well. In fact smoother than FS9.Dick Boley

Yes, I agree with most of your comments. I still feel we can't rush to judgement as this is a demo of a beta product. I'm hoping the final FSX will be good........

Dillon,How about one image per signature per our rules? Thanks.

At long last I have tried the demo and I love it. I am perhaps a small majority that was actually surprised with how well it performed. Once I maxed everything out I was still getting 20fps.I still don't really understand why you get the abrupt clear to low vis,rain in a second... I thought this was suppose to be fixed? I'm not too bothered though as I know active sky will make a meal and a half out of this release.I love the new 'alive' world, it's a living, breathing virtual world full of activity and it makes all the difference. The problem is now I will be mostly using the demo, finding it hard to go back to fs9 already!Thanks Aces studio and tdragger for there unprecedented support... I can't wait for the release, and I think there is every need to go on a world tour to really explore our new simulator!Steve