>>>The stock FS2004 172 was 10 seconds less than 2 minutes, and>>my RealAir SF260 (for FS2004) nailed the 2 minute turn>>Be sure not to base your observation on the instrument tips!!!>They show a 3 deg./sec turn rate, but if you monitor the turn>with the stopwatch you'll see it's NOT 2'...>Need to mow the lawn, and go see "World Trade Center", but quickly...No, I don't use instrument tips at all. I sat here for a good twenty minutes this morning making two minute turns with the clock on the wall, which has a second hand. After 10 minutes I started using the A/P's for altitude, since it's monotonous trying the watch the little screen horizon, and no external senses.As to P-factor, I'm not sure when your comments are regarding the sim or real life. P-factor has to do with the angle of the prop. Slip stream has much to do with the takeoff roll and climb, and is nil above a certain IAS if the airplane is trimmed for it. edit: I also want to add, that P-factor is a lot less noticeable (or not even noticeable) in a nosewheel airplane during the takeoff roll, than a taildragger with a higher angle of attack, when the tail is still down. The overall effects of slip stream wanting to make the airplane drift to the left is much more than the effects of P-factor.Most aircraft engines with clockwise rotating props (from the cockpit view) have engines mounted off center with the prop towards the right, to counter the slip stream effect. The vertical stab may also have a built in offset. The idea is to have the forces balance out at cruise speeds. L.Adamson

Not a good start to either one of you on the AVSIM forums. Keep it up and you won't be here very long. Please cease and desist the personal attacks, or say adios.

My experience with the demo was almost exactly like costone's, except that I don't have a dual core but rather SLI. In multi-monitor mode I had three monitors with 3d virtual cockpit outside views and 1 with 2d instruments; in SLI mode I went for Very High settings for scenery, terrain, etc. In both cases 20+ FPS and smooth.- Athlon 64 FX-55- 2x 256MB nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (SLI)- 2GB RAM- 10,000 rpm hard drivesAlthough I'll buy FSX right away, the Vista slip means my next hardware upgrade (to multicore CPU and DX10 GPU) won't be concurrent with the new sim's release. I'm really relieved to find my current hardware can handle FSX reasonably well, otherwise it would have been a painful wait. As a hardcore simmer, how I will ultimately evaluate FSX has little to do with how the product is marketed to the masses. All the small but meaningful usability improvements + what I hope will be unprecedented cooperation with the 3rd party add-on community will determine success/failure.

i have flown fs-x for about 2 hrs now and have not had any glitches. installation was no problem either.i am getting about the same fps running fs-x as i do with fs-9. it is running smooth as silk.i really love the inprovement of the water and land texturesi will not hesitate to buy fs-x as soon as it is released. i also have no need to upgrade my puter. i love what i am seeing with settings as is.otterp4 2.81 gig ramnvidia 5900 256 mg

>No, I don't use instrument tips at all. I sat here for a good>twenty minutes this morning making two minute turns with the>clock on the wall, which has a second hand. After 10 minutes I>started using the A/P's for altitude, since it's monotonous>trying the watch the little screen horizon, and no external>senses.Whow! I didn't know my opinions had such an impact... :) >As to P-factor, I'm not sure when your comments are regarding>the sim or real life. P-factor has to do with the angle of the>prop. Slip stream has much to do with the takeoff roll and>climb, and is nil above a certain IAS if the airplane is>trimmed for it. Yep, I think I do know what p-factor is, and indeed it is more pronnounced on a taildragger because of the higher AoA of the descending blade during takeoff run or high power step climbs. And just as you point out, slipstream can be easily "trimmed out" for cruise, but the problem is slipstream has been absent since fs2k, and p-factor is active, but it's effect is only noticeable when it should, and that is ok.On a Sptifire, like RealAir's spit, level at cruise speed and throttle back and forth. The real thing would require rudder (and aileon) input to overcome the slipstream + torque effects. The aircraft in MSFS will only show such effects at very low speeds and high AoAs, exactly when p-factor comes into play.A RL Tobago tb-10/20 will gladly make the ball drift when you change power in cruise because of the pronnounced slipstream. Take the RealAir's SF for a ride and, at cruise, play with the throttle (no need for abrupt changes, which would be unrealistic on a real flight unless you do not own the airplane and have a parachute...). The effects of such power variations will be... none!What about that pitch/power relation in MSFS aircraft? Do you agree it is way sluggish in MSFS? The FM can be adapted to overcome this problem, but then other instability problems will come into play...

>I think it was very clever. This demo will give a lot of>feedback to the FS team, and they will hopefully iron out some>bugs as a result. Yes, I know it's a "demo", but I regard>it as a "limited beta" ;)>>I am thankful to the MSFS Team for this opportunity to test my>FS planes, two months before I will get my hands on the full>version. This enables me to be proactive in setting up my FS>hangar for FSX :)FINALLY! Someone else who "gets it..."Whether is was intentional or not, one of the largest benefits I can see for this "Pre-Release Demo" based on BetaX code is that - for the first time ever - ACES will have had their BetaX code tested on far more possible hardware configurations than ever before!Considering the high probablity that most users of the "Pre-Release Demo" will actually press the "Send Report to Microsoft" button at least once, the resulting flood of diagnostic reports coming in should provide "Watson" a richer, more robust universe of error data from which to report... ;)I am personally more impressed than ever at the fortitude and determination shown by the ACES team, by being willing to endure the inevitable "criticism" that has transpired in a sincere effort to deliver a more robust and stable release product... Also to be considered is the fact that this "Pre-Release Demo" allows all interested third parties an opportunity to preview their design work in FSX, instead of restricting it to a lucky select few... :-beerchug

Very nice additions and reservations:- water is fantastic- Reflections and shading lends a greater depth of reality- Nicer textures, mesh and landclass although we still have the blob and spotted ground textures we see less of it.- Nice animations and vehicle movement although the speed of it is unrealistic (civilian vehicles on the road)- Nice wet tarmac although no wind effects - i.e., blowing snow and blowing rain across the tarmac and runwayIf you have wind then there should be wind effects at least a thousand or so feet and below to ground level - i.e., blowing trees and again as noted above blowing rain, blowing snow across the tarmac and runway (I note that even X-Plane has had the latter effect for some time).- Optimization, optimization....Yeah, it's a new program but every game and demo of every game out there now I can run at full-tilt on my system (i.e., 1600x1200, with all sliders maximized). While I don't expect comparable performance it's ridiculous to be at 5-7 fps on the tarmac (at 1600x1200 or 1280x1024) with several sliders turned to the left such as AI - 20%, autogen - 40%, cloud draw distance 40 miles or even a cloudless sky, etc.) with a default plane.- I like the DEMO to be sure but does it have to kick me out of the program completely when it runs out of time? Why can't it just restart me back at the originating airport or a default airport. It's irritating to have to restart the thing over and over.P4, 3.6 ghz HT, 1 gig ram, ATI X800XT PCIe 256 mb.

>On a Sptifire, like RealAir's spit, level at cruise speed and>throttle back and forth. The real thing would require rudder>(and aileon) input to overcome the slipstream + torque>effects. The aircraft in MSFS will only show such effects at>very low speeds and high AoAs, exactly when p-factor comes>into play.>Lawn has been mowed and must leave....But, torque effects of throttle is most noticeable at low speeds, not cruise. Same with slipstream effects. We had a Reno Racer (Yak) at our local airport actually roll over, when it's engine failed, and suddenly came alive at a high power setting during an attempted dead stick landing. In the end, the pilot rolled the aircraft upright, but had to crash land in a field, because too many people were close to the runway during an airshow.I use to race high powered/high torque and heavily wing loaded R/C airplanes. At low airspeeds, such as landing, sudden throttle up would roll the airplane upside down quickly. At high airspeeds, throttle application has much less effect.L.Adamson

played for a few hours last night, and i'm impressed. just a few things that stood out to me:textures and autogen are amazing when turned on full tilt; give me the same feeling that flightzone's rhode island scenery does.water is incredible, wet runways look cool (even if overshiny).wowed by the thunderstorm effects, the sense of denseness in the overcast clouds, the lightning highlighting the plane and the surrounding clouds, the towering anvil on top of the uppermost cloud layer.vc's are spectacular; can't wait for TrackIR availabilty in the final version, or maybe the beta when fileplanet releases it. heck, even the prop effects look sweet from the virtual cockpit.so many other little details that add up to a much more convincing sense of immersion, slicker interface, etc.i'm getting better performance than expected with all sliders full right except for the autogen down to "very dense" and keeping the ai traffic off. locked at 13 frames per second no problem (which is about what i get wtih fs9 and every addon i can afford). less stuttering except when a whole bunch of autogen is loading. and this is at 3840 x 768 (triple head2go widescreen resolution).my pc specs: p4 3.2 ghz hyperthreading, 1 GB RAM, 6800 GT the primary complaint i have / bug i've experienced: graphics going all psychidelic or going black in vc sometimes...usually cycling views restores them. sometimes it's bad enough that going to the menus and returning results in so much graphical corruption that i have to shut down fsx and restart it. also, switching to mouse look and back one time somehow reset my joystick controls, and although my ch flight yoke would move the yoke in the vc, it wasn't affecting the control surfaces. strange, but i'm sure it'll be fixed by final.all in all, i'm excited for the final release.

I'm too very impressed by the enhancements FSX offers. It's going to be a great platform! And as soon as Flight1s FE / GE and PMDGs 737 are FSX-ready, I'll say goodbye to FS9.What makes me wonder is, will there be an enhanced autoadjustment feature in FSX which helps to keep the target-framerate? I think I've read about something similar in one of the dev-blogs but I'm not sure.I saw this feature in X-Plane where several adjustments (e.g. visibility radius) are automatically reduced to keep the desired framerate. That would be like flying at cruisealtitude with fully eyecandy, fully ai, fully everything and as soon as you turn into final of an big airport with dozens of ai-planes and very dense scenery (and probably an FPS drop) the systems autoreduces certain things like amout of on-ground ai, overall visibility (you don't need to see 150 miles around the airport while in final) and so on. This would be so cool! But nevertheless - I'm happy the grap my FSX-copy as soon as it arrives in Germany ;-)Cheers Volker

I installed the Demo last night. I really like the new GUI and menu selections. I haven't had much time to fly around in FSX (only 1 hour flight time total). I love the details of the new planes. The VC instruments look sharp and very readable. At night, the internal cockpit lights for the instruments add to the realism and professionalism of simulation. I haven't spent the time to look at AI environment or the missions yet.I haven't quite figured out how to toggle through the views - but I like what I saw yesterday so far.I am quite excited about FSX. However, I might have to postpone my purchase of FSX due to $$$ constraints. I'm sure I can run FSX on my current PC; but I don't think I can turn on many new features that are part of the FS Xperience.Last night, I was getting 10-15 FPS with clear weather and with Fair weather theme. It was playable but stuttery. Will I upgrade? I hope I can this season. Here is my FSX config:[GRAPHICS]TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=512NUM_LIGHTS=8AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=0AIRCRAFT_REFLECTIONS=1COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1LANDING_LIGHTS=0AC_SELF_SHADOW=0EFFECTS_QUALITY=2GROUND_SHADOWS=0[sCENERY]LENSFLARE=0DAWN_DUSK_SMOOTHING=1IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=4[DISPLAY]BLOOM_EFFECTS=0SKINNED_ANIMATIONS=1TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=300UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=26[PANELS]QUICKTIPS=1PANEL_OPACITY=100[TERRAIN]LOD_RADIUS=3.500000MESH_COMPLEXITY=84MESH_RESOLUTION=20TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=23AUTOGEN_DENSITY=2DETAIL_TEXTURE=1WATER_EFFECTS=4[WEATHER]CLOUD_DRAW_DISTANCE=3DETAILED_CLOUDS=1CLOUD_COVERAGE_DENSITY=7THERMAL_VISUALS=0DownloadWindsAloft=1DisableTurbulence=0[TrafficManager]AirlineDensity=21GADensity=46FreewayDensity=15ShipsAndFerriesDensity=26LeisureBoatsDensity=30IFROnly=0AIRPORT_SCENERY_DENSITY=2David

The real weather server is down. You can check it's status by going to:http://fs2k.zone.com"Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

The fact that Microsoft released a demo of FSX at all was totally amazing to me. I understand that it's a pre-release demo, but compared to the last game I played (comparing the Beta game to it's released version) this demo seems more complete as far as UI goes. Though there are some interesting, if unfinished, elements. (Anyone else notice the GameSpy contacts list area?)With all sliders maxed, (as far as I can tell with that annoying UI bug) in the default flight (Ultralight at TNCM, clear weather, runway 09, during the day) I'm getting 12-15FPS in the VC sitting on the runway. I get a larger range from 10FPS (and maybe less) up to 25FPS in the air. (the current framelock)And keep in mind that the demo has a known bug in autogen that they've found and fixed for the full version which should improve preformance. Not bad for a pre-release demo I think.System specs:Intel 915GEVL motherboardIntel P4 3.4Ghz LGA775 socket1GB DDR2-533 RAM (1x1GB)Gigabyte GeForce 7600GT PCIe (not the silentpipe II one)Onboard audio (which do I think causes me preformance problems)Antec 550Watt True Power 2.0 PSURaidmax Scorpio gaming case with 5 case fans, top mounted USB ports, and other goodiesPCI IDE/PATA cardViewSonic VA520v3 15" flat panel monitor (max resolution 1024x768)Nothing overclocked. Yet. :)And for those worried about price, I spent less then $1000 to upgrade to this system from this:Compaq P3 933Mhz384Mb RAMPNY GeForce FX 5200 PCII bought the parts for my new system online, put the system together myself, (mounting the CPU was a little nerve wracking, but I did it myself and got it right, though in retrospect I should have gotten some Arctic Silver thermal compound) moved my existing harddrives/optical drives/floppy drive over, and am using the same peripherals. (monitor, keyboard, speakers, etc.) I did have to buy a PCI IDE card (The Intel motherboard has 1 IDE/PATA slot where older boards came with 2 standard, but it also includes SATA ports.) but I still spent less then $1000. I also didn't buy the videocard and PSU at the same time as the rest of the stuff. (The case came with a 420Watt PSU and for a while I used that old FX 5200.) The 7600GT is only the 3rd videocard I've bought period. (The first being a 3DFX Voodoo 3 2000.)And last but not least, the chance to test out 3rd party aircraft before FSX hits the store shelves is, in my opinion, enough of a reason to download and try this thing out. The only thing I'm really worried about is the UI slider bug that (apparently) is only affecting me."Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

From TDragger's blog:Strange shading on aircraft that blinks with the lights: this is a bug with the aircraft self-shadowing code. It will be fixed in the final but in the meantime you can either turn off your lights or disable self-shadowing (in Settings | Display | Aircraft). Autogen perfomance (stutters): we recently found and fixed a bug in the way vertex buffers were being handled for autogen that helped stutters significantly. Nav light strobe rate: yeah, it's wrong. Will fix.http://blogs.msdn.com/tdragger/"Let me help you out. You're cleared to taxi any way you can to any runway you see."

I would never want a software development team to develop a game which can be used with sliders set to max right at the getgo. The life expectancy of this game is I believe about 3 years. The quantum leaps computer performance will take in that time should have us raising the sliders quite a bit over the next couple of years. In my mind, I'd always want some room for more. Why limit the game to the low end?Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)