FSX is Good - Really it is

[Guest Peter Wilding]

Hi to all,Is FSX worth buying? You bet it is!Can I get 5-6 fps YES, SURE I CAN.Can I get a steady 20 fps. YES, SURE I CAN.Am I still learning how to get the best out of FSX, YES, SURE I AM.Do I discover how to get better fps by tweaking settings?, yes sure I do.As a developer can I make it better, YOU BET I CAN.As a user, is it fun to use and do I prefer it to FS9? YOU BET I DO.Are some things better in FS9 default than FSX, performace maybe, looks, noway.There is no good slambing FSX and saying I get 6 fps.I can set up FS9 to give me 6 fps. I can set up FSX to give me 20 fps.Does FSX look good with my settings that give 20 fps and does it look better than FS9 defaults with 20fps? Yes and no? More yes than no.----------------------------No disrespect guys but most people that come to these forums get off on slaming and moaning and pointing out the negative aspects.We are much better than that....Every one of you that moan about FSX will buy it. If you don't you won't know for sure what it can do.It's like 2 guys standing at a bar moaning about the beer they are drinking, complaining about the it's price and than it used to taste better. They'll drink until they are drunk and then come back the next day and moan again.----------------------------So what are we going to do.????????Are we going to come here eveyday and moan about FSX?Or are we going to pull together and help each other find ways of making it work better and faster?I'll do the latter.......Meanwhile guys, fSX is brilliant and get over your ego and don't try and force the sliders all the way to the right.Start with eveything minimum and in small steps increase and you'll get good performace.Even my business partner, was getting bad fps until I made him slow things down and back off settings. He kicked and screamed saying no way do I want those settings. In the end he agreed I was right and even with settings and sliders backed way down fSX still looks good.Don't try and run FSX flat out. It's been made to work in 3 years from now on computers more than twice as fast.For now we have to remember start from basics and back off those settings and then you'll find it works like a dream and gives you a really enjoyable experience.It looks good and feels more realistic than ever.Peter

[Guest Jimbofly]

Absolutely spot on agree with your post!I have it scaled way back but still get more enjoyment out of it than FS9. I swear the feel of flight is better (using an aircraft imported from FS9!).I know that hardware will catch up, despite what others are saying, and I know that in about a year from now I'll be running it with most of the sliders at least half way up, including autogen.FSX here I come!James

[Sartanius 399]

I agree as well Peter. I started out with the default settings and then began tweaking. At this stage I have all sliders maxed, autogen/shadows off and water at 1.x high and I think the sim is amazing. I've tried a couple of the early autogen tweaks but the performance improvement wasn't significant enough for me to sacrifice some of the other sliders. The tweaks do work, just not enough for my situation. I'll keep tweaking to find that elusive sweet spot... actually for me that's one of the joys of this hobby. If FSX ran like a dream out of the box there'd be some here whining that ACES didn't improve the sim enough to take advantage of the latest computer technology. They've given us something to grow into, and I look forward to the journey!We'll get there in due time, especially with talented folks like you to help turn what some would term a sows ear in to a silk purse. Thanks for the upbeat, encouraging post! This forum could use some positive comments these days!DougDell XPS Gen3 (3.6GHz/800FSB) | 2GB DDR SDRAM | 74GB SATA, 10k RPM (C: ) | 120GB SATA (D: ) | 512MB ATI Radeon X1900XTX (Catalyst 6.8) | Audigy 2 ZS Sound | MS Force Feedback 2 | WindowsXP Pro (SP2) | DirectX 9.0c

[boshar 6]

Sure my new square wheeled cart can be coupled with a new highpower engine + turbo and with some future engine development it too can reach speeds of 60 Mph.But I rather prefer that the manufacturer of my rather expensive cart took another look and maybe upgrade the thing to have some round wheels. You see the same cart with round wheels should be able to do a nice 25 Mph with the current engine and there's no telling what that highpower engine will do with those round wheels.Lets be fair Peter. If your add-ons would result in these kinds of FPS in FS9 you would be slaughtered in this forum. I can understand the buissnes oppertunity the current release gives to the optimised texture makers but remember that we are talking about a retail product. We should expect this product to at least give acceptable performance after a vanilla install right out of the box.Today I've seen FS-X installed on an AMD X2 4200+ with ATI X850 card only running the suggested defaults. If thats your first intro to the wonderfull world of flightsimming then that box will be returned next day and swaped for EA Sports Nascar or EA F1 (small tip: install these titles out of the box and see if you see a difference with the default FS-X).

[Datalink 26]

> It's like 2 guys standing at a bar moaning about the beer they are drinking, complaining about the it's price and than it used to taste better. They'll drink until they are drunk and then come back the next day and moan again.Ain't that the truth :-lolIm looking forward to getting FSX and running it to the best of my systems capabilities, I'm not going to ask it to do more than it can, as said before, its designed for systems 2-3 years down the line.There are a number of behind the scenes features and improvements which make FSX stand out for me, such as the blurries fix, higher fidelity mesh and texture options, new camera/view options. All these things are the building blocks for the developers to make some great add-ons in the future.

[Cruachan 705]

Very well said Peter!There really isn't anything else to add.Best regards,Mike (eagerly looking forward to the 17th - it's a while since I felt like this :) )

[BoHappy 12]

I agree with you Peter 100%.FSX is simply amazing - we just need to tweak it for our individual systems.I also agree that all of us need to put our knowledge, resources and experimentation with FSX together and create a "how to adjust settings guide forum" so that everyone can enjoy the simulation with reasonable frame rates.By the way even with frame rates of 8-12 on my system with FSX I get a very fluid enviornment and experience.Bo

[JonRD463 146]

As I'm resigned to wait til the official release date, all I can do is read reports from those that have it. I think, good or bad, it's becoming apparant that FSX needs a patch. I'm just seeing some pretty considerable disconnects between some of the computer specs and subsequent performance. Understand, I'm not bashing at all. I will most definitely be getting FSX Deluxe on the 17th, but we have to be realistic and first agree that there are some problems. Next, we need some form of acknowledgement from ACES that a patch is being worked on. It took far too long for the FS9.1 patch to come out. Saying "We should wait for Vista" is a bit of a cop-out. There is no reason the OOBE for the game has to be all settings low on a newer spec Windows XP/2 machine to get framerates in the 20s. I would expect that on my own box at medium to medium high settings, but my experience with Demo 2 is showing otherwise. So, rather than resorting to the dramatic pessimism some of the more vociferous users are wont to do in declaring the game garbage, I'm going to express a positive outlook.I do ask that some of our ACES friends we've gotten to know over the last year chime in once they've gotten their post Gold Master vacations done and are back to work. Just something as simple as "We hear ya and we're looking into it" would calm some nerves.In the meantime, for those of you who are unhappy with the sim as it stands now, by all means, wait it out. Enjoy your loaded and tweaked FS9 until things get hashed out. That's what I'm doing as I await the 17th, and I do so with no bitterness towards ACES or my fellow simmers. Maybe a hint of good natured jealousy, perhaps. ;)

[Guest bigun]

Great post Peter and I agree 100%. Now all I'm waiting for is brilliant folks like yourself take FSX up to the next level. And by the way, I have no doubt that will happen.

[Guest Water Mango]

This is all warm and fuzzy but with the muti-million dollar budget Aces has at their disposal plus being privy to the goings on of the most successful software business in the world (or in history for that matter), it shouldn

[Guest dutton]

Go figure.... I started reading this thread and just knew good ol' Chris would be here with his continued negative outlook... and there he was.Great post Peter. I agree 100% and it is truly sad that people moan. We have all been here before. The platform we now have is going to provide some incredible developments over the coming years. This is what excites me.duttonhttp://dutton.fsblogger.com/

[brucewtb 250]

Well if someone could assue me that in say a year's time there will be hardware available that would at least double the performance I can get out of my current AMD3700+ PC then yes I would agree FSX does have a future. Perhaps some folk who are much better informed on hardware trends than I am could tell us just when the hardware nirvana needed to run FSX to its full potential will be available. However, based on the pace of hardware developments since I bought my current PC two years ago I am somewhat pessimistic. Whatever happened to More's Law?Bruceb

[Guest babua]

boshar: "Sure my new square wheeled cart can be coupled with a new highpower engine + turbo and with some future engine development it too can reach speeds of 60 Mph."Couldn't have said it better. Pathetic performance to say the least and what was thier greatest marketing hype for this version? Living immersive world. What did they do to achieve it? Borrow animals from zoo tycoon-a dated obsolete product!!! No dual core, no SLI and they talk of multi threading!! Everyone in MS should be made to read kernighan and ritchie all over again.

[Guest jwflowers]

>Well if someone could assue me that in say a year's time>there will be hardware available that would at least double>the performance I can get out of my current AMD3700+ PC then>yes I would agree FSX does have a future. Perhaps some folk>who are much better informed on hardware trends than I am>could tell us just when the hardware nirvana needed to run FSX>to its full potential will be available. DirectX 10 is much improved and reduces overhead on the CPU during the loading of objects and will also increase the texture rendering ability. Remember Vista was supposed to be out already. It won't be much longer. A release of Vista is soon for MSDN subscribers and around November there may be a DirectX 10 card out. Just be patient! It will make a huge difference. Check out this link!http://www.elite######s.com/cms/index.php...=1&limitstart=0

[slashed2 53]

Just to play devils advocate, FS9 did not run well out of the box on my system. Here's an overview of my pain:System 1.....2003: amd 2800 + Geforce 5200 256mb ram. Wal-mart special. stutters, autogen sparse to normal, add-ons galore 5-15fps(city/rural averages)...no add-ons 10-30). global textures at medium.System 1 given to step-daughter.System 2.....2005: amd 3000+ Geforce 5200 ultra 512mb ram.. Wal-mart special. smooth, autogen normal along with everything else. Customized textures, traffic etc.... all add-ons: 1-20 (city/rural averages) global textures at medium. No add-ons: 15-70 (city/rural averages).Current System 2 specs: updated to 1 gb ram, and a 6600 GT. All the usual add-ons: City: 8-15 fps. Rural/bush: 15-30fps. All sliders maxed except autogen on normal. 1024x640 32bit. aa 4x, as: 8x. FSX demo2 on current system: Carribean near Julian flying over the forest near the airport with:Sparse autogen, all other sliders maxed except terrain detail set at 2cm, water 2.x low, scenery complexity high, clouds 100%, real weather, traffic settings high. 12-15 fps locked at 15. Smooth flight though on the edge when near thick forests. Flying away from the forests it stays constant at 15, not a peep of a stutter, very fluid. Overall, better than I expected though Retail may differ I will stay away from the cities and fly only bush most likely. I'm used to low frames in FS, I've had them for many years, anything above 20 for me is a bonus. FSX locked at 15 feels like FS9 locked at 25 so I just can't complain. To those with 3000 dollar sytems that are getting poor performance I understand the pain so let's hope the talented people in the FS community can alleviate that problem.Ian.