I got FSX Friday night from Best Buy. I spent all night tweaking setting after setting getting hypnotized by the progress bar each time all the scenery had to reload. Same thing for a good portion of Saturday.A bit of history. I've been using Flight Sim since FS2 (on my 8088). I basically grew up with it. For what it's worth, I'm now a real life student pilot and I'm about to schedule my checkride for my PPL (just finished up my long solo cross country). I'll save my game vs sim opinion for another time, but basically all I have to say is game or not, my years worth of flying the various versions of Flight Simulator GREATLY enhanced my real life flight training.I've also been an Avsim forum lurker since about 1997, checking messages almost daily in silence, so hello to everyone.Anyway, to the point of this post. Around Saturday afternoon (about a day worth of testing FSX), I was fed up. I almost came to the forum to post my own complaint about poor performance. With all past versions of FS, I knew my system would have to be upgraded to really see all the new features in their full glory, but in the past I could at least find a balance where I could test out a couple of new enhancments without completely bringing my system to a halt. I just couldn't find this balance with FSX... it seemed as if no matter what I did to the sliders, I couldn't even get it to at least look like FS9, which was very disappointing.However, before running over here to add to the complaints, I waited and gave myself another day. Finally this afternoon, I gave in to the suggestion to disable autogen. I also disabled ALL AI traffic (boats, planes, cars, etc). My FPS finally jumped up to the 30s+. Just for testing, I then maxed out the other scenery sliders (mesh resolution, texture resolution, water to 2.x max, etc). To my surprise, I still got decent FPS in the 16-20 range with a bunch of settings maxed out. I was very happy, because now I could test out FSX while enjoying some of the new features.I then started exploring. I loaded up the 747-400 and began looking at the various new camera views. I was amazed with the detail. On the ground, the 747's wings flexed down a bit. I wondered if they'd flex up as I became airborne and they seemed to. I pulled back on the yoke and pushed forward from the chase cam view and sure enough, the wings flexed and vapor trails accurately started and stopped from the wingtips, one wing at a time as appropriate. The passenger-like wing view of the heavy planes is amazing as well... the sounds, the way the wing flexes... For the first time in my Flight Sim history, I really felt like I was in an airliner (out of the box).I switched to the Bell 206 helicopter. I fly remote control helicopters, so I have a general sense of how they should fly. For the first time in FS, I could auto-rotate the helicopter. The hover was stable and smooth. It seems as if rotorcraft fans finally have a more accurate depiction in this version of FS. I'm VERY happy about this as I love helicopters as well.Am I disappointed that I have to disable autogen and the traffic? Yes, I really am as this is a feature that I could use in FS9 and have now lost. The road/car traffic I don't mind losing so much, since its new (as a side note, I found I could actually re-enable air traffic without a serious performance hit. The road traffic is the real killer, leave that off for now). However (this is a really important point), I could see into the future of FS today and suddenly it clicked what we are in for. Just forgetting about performance for a minute, I maxed everything out to see what it would look like. At 2-3 FPS, I saw highways packed with traffic, the sun setting and reflecting off powerline towers, buildings... it just looked extremely real and alive.In conclusion, this sim is definitely an investment for the future. I think that this version of FS is going to last longer than others, serving as a platform for years to come that we continue to grow into. I actually hope MS slows down the release cycle a bit so we can get more life out of FSX. My only request to MS at this point is to please put out a patch for autogen so that we can at least enable a baseline of features that we could all realistically run so we don't LOSE anything we had in FS9. I realize some well respected people in the forum are indicating that they prefer the clear textures without autogen anyway, and I agree that it does look great. However, I disagree with having to turn that feature off. The textures do look great with some altitude... but at an airport on the ground with auto-gen disabled, I feel like I'm in a barren world that reminds me of much older versions of FS. I'm just surprised the "Sparse" setting of autogen is so high. With "Sparse", I see full forests packed with trees, which is anything but sparse. I want more sliders, such as trees vs buildings, with options for even more sparse settings. All in all, I'm very happy with FSX. I suggest that everyone just disable the CPU hogging settings and go USE the sim. Explore the new camera system, sounds, aircraft, helicopter models, etc. The glass cockpits and other flight systems seem pretty detailed as well. I think you'll be as pleased as I was at the attention to detail some things received in this version.ACES, we just need a patch that gives us a better balance of settings so we can enjoy some of the new features on today's hardware, then we can continue to grow into FSX over the next few years.My system specs:Intel P4 2.8 (overclocked to 3.0)Radeon 9800 Pro1GB RAMWindows XP SP2

Go here now and try this, it works very well.http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=354861&page=Hornit

Great post, thanks for sharing!Regards, MichaelKDFW

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI-x16 / AMD

I agree Michael...very well written. Thank you for sharing with an adult point of view. This post gives me hopes that I might enjoy the sim but used differently than FS9 and could go back and forth between the two for different types of flying.Some have suggested night doesnt look bad without auto gen. The only thing about that is that I have UT in FS9 which gives those raised street lights that look so good.Maybe just do it for the missions or to use the multiplayer features and enjoy it with another online.My only fear about a patch is the fact that in FS9 we had the XML file that everyone felt caused poor preformance and the fix was to remove it. We all screamed about it but MS never patched it. I hope thats not the case with this new auto gen problem.

I agree, a good balanced and mature review. Nicely done.Ian.

Yes, I agree.I think the settings for the autogen are too high, and we need some more choices at the lower end. I think the suggestion to split the trees complexity and the building complexity up into different sliders is a good idea.I think Matt Fox is on the right track for a solution. All I can say is I can't wait to see the SDK.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Thanks for this positive and encouraging post!JerryG