>This is exacly why M$ needs to release an OPTIMIZED (ALL>Sliders Maxed) version for the XBOX 360!>>Then instead of $2000 we all spend $500 and spend time flying>and NOT tweaking, which with the PC versions is a TOTAL waste>of time! We can use our Big Screen TVS at 1080i AWESOME!>>If M$ has half a brain they will do this!>>BarryNo offense to you Barry but I pray to God Microsoft never everXsplat FS. It's not the box that I dislike, it's the way they dumb down games to play on the xbox. There are so many games that could have been good but the fact they were xsplat games they were just horrible on a pc. Hey if they make a fs for the xbox and leave the pc version absolutly alone I won't mind. If they dumb it down to play on a xboxeasier I will leave the fs world for good or move over to x-plane. Bythe time fsx comes out the pc hardware available will 2x times the xbox (k maybe not that much).Ok on another note (not trying to start a xbox v pc bash). Here's somenews on what's coming up in 2007 quad cores. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27739This will give you a idea on whats going on with the cpu's this year.http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28602

That's good to know. For a minute I thought I was going to have to replace those expensive parts also. But now that I know the only things I have to replace are the motherboard, harddrives, video card, RAM, and CPU I feel a whole lot better :-).Doug

Hey Bill,Yes,I agree that the hardware will be more advanced than XBox, but it will also be 5x the price of an XBOX.If Microsoft OPTIMIZED the FSX (Full) with the EXACT features as the PC version (not dumbed down), in terms of being able to upgrade A/C and other third party add-ons, and support USB Yokes and Pedals, then that would be the most economical way to go. But you are right, you can't upgrade that device. It will run on the last day, the way it runs on day 1.Currently, I have a 2.5 Pentium 4 GHZ CPU and 768 MB ram and I really can't justify upgrading to a 3.x processor. I have posted this question before, and the response on this forum has been, "you won't get a significant performace gain. Intel has been a real let down over the last three years. They used to double the CPU speed every year or two, now they are stuck in a rut. The only feasible upgrade would be the AMD FX-57. And multiple PCI Express cards costing about 300-400 bucks a pop. So you are looking at about $2500 - $3000 to do it right. Which is 6x the cost of a XBOX 360. Again if it were OPTIMIZED to run at 30 FPS with all sliders maxed and NO STUTTERS! This would be the way to go. Plus Microsoft would make more money so it might be a marketing driver to Xsplat FSX. Microsoft, if you are reading the forums, and need a new VP of Marketing, I am available :).Barry

I remember the first time I saw a HD in action, it was in my friends Apple //gs in about 1988. I thought it was amazingly fast. Well, it was, because I was used to loading stuff from 5.25" drives, including Flight Sim 2!

RFLMAO

I can't imagine the specs for FSX being too high, even for my 3.4GHz computer. It seems the rate of which computer processor speed advances has slowed down quite a bit in the last year or so, we should have +4GHz by now but the highest I've seen is 3.6GHz.

The news on Gameguru Mania.com is

You will need a DirectX10 compatible video card, as that will get you 8x improvement in performance in Windows Vista just from the optimizations from what I thought I heard. I am keeping my 3y/o PC now with 3.5GHz P4 and Geforce 6800GT/OC and if it runs FSX ok then I will hang on as long as possible, then invest in a 2-SLI or 4-SLI machine with 64bit processors, sure why not TWO of them!!!!!!!! and 4GB of ram, and get it over with! Cheers,Noel