> Don't underestimate Johnnys problem solving abilities.Little Johnny is still in grade 3 and is crazy about planes!! He's got no chance of tweaking FS!

You hit the nail on the head--MS is moving towards this franchise being a 360 'game'. Look at the code, look at the file structure. And another thing---stop making excuses for MS by saying this game is designed for computers that are going to be built 3 years from now.I have the best machine Velocity Micro can make, and FS9 (3 years old now) still can run like a beast sometimes. Now, from extremely good authority, I have been told that if you get 44 FPS in FS9, expect 22-25 in FSX. Getting 30 in FS9? Expect 15-18 in FSX. And that's without all the addons we have all some to consider essential. What do you think will happen when someone figures out how to add a traffic program? ####, PMDG has even thrown in the towel by saying that it isn't possible for their products to run on FSX. They won't be alone. FSX appears to be the victim of sloppy coding, not designs for the future. Explain to me why after all this time, FSX WILL NOT support dual core processors? Even on a Vista machine? So this expensive FX-60 processor I have is basically going to be treated like a 3 year old 2.6 single core machine? What about support for SLI? Nope. Even with claims that MS has engineered this version to take adavantage of video card power, it still won't reap the benefits of my machine's twin 7900GTX cards. Mind you, I bought all this expensive stuff ($4000 for this machine. $4000!!!!!)expressely for the purpose of showing FSX who's boss. My mistake. So no more of this designed for 2 years from now CRAP. 2 years from now, as other have said, we'll have another sim. And the same line. Are we expected to buy $4000 computers every 2 years to keep up? Someone explain to me how thats right!? Smart money is to design a sim that runs reasonably well on todays technology, and runs flat out on tech that is NO more than 6 months down the line, or about to come out. Saying anything else is a cop out.Word is, this will be a nightmare for 3rd party vendors--FlyTampa confirmed this for me right here. Folks at FS-GS.com feel the same too. Others have had their work straight up stolen from them (see FSUIPC). And the whole thing is looking like a big slide show disaster. Sorry to be negative, but who can blame me considering the investment/commitment I made to this product?

"If EA F1 runs better, then this must be crap..."I guess that was a reaction to a post of mine so I'll bite.I was talking about the 'out of the box' experience. Just try it if you have the chance. Install an EA sports title and only use the by the program selected defaults. After that do the same with FS-X.Now you and I know you can get a good looking FS-X by carefully setting Global Texture size to High or Max. Solve the stutters by setting Autogen to None and there are some amazing fixes in this forum to further improve the perfomance.Now imagine Joe Average trying both titles never changing the default settings. Which game will stay and which one goes back to the store?Don't underestimate the Joe Average customers. Last family visit I was watching my nephew play EA FIFA 2004 on the family PC (looked good, played good on average 3 year old hardware). After some playtime I looked into the graphic settings (all on default) and bumped up some settings based on the available hardware. My nephew was amazed by the beter looks. They realy did not know that those settings where there. They also never heard about downloading patches from the internet. That is the mainstream audience. We're still not reaching them with this new version of Flight Sim.

..............and this............ http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/re...xsce/fsxsce.htm says it all.The laugh is on us, the people that bought dual-core processors and SLI motherboards, and SLI graphics cards in the hope that we would have no trouble running FSX, how do you feel about that?It's cost me

Hi Guys,Only can speak from the Demo (v2), but FSX looks fantastic. Sure it has a few large problems and hopefully ACES will be working on SP1 in the near future.The issues as I see them are:Performance - I get a solid 20fps (locked)with occasional drops to 18fps in the demo with sparse autogen and fairly middle of the road settings. Concern here is no room for addons be it AI or complex aircraft. Efficient use of dual(and quad) core needs to be addressed as this is the direction of CPU development, not high speed single cores.Terrain Data - I have to say, the screenshots I have seen of Croatia, Canada and Greece are just downright terrible. The coastlines are just straight lines and bare no resemblance to the real costline whatsoever. I think the least we can expect is data carried over from FS9. Navteq may be great if all you do is fly over USA. I know UT will probably fix this, but a payware addon shouldn't be required to correct things that were partially correct in FS9 default.All in all, a lot of potential (with some Service Packs) for FSX to really shine. I just may stick to FS9 for the next few months for serious flying and have FSX (when it finally arrives from Amazon!) to play around with and 'tweak' a little. Should be fun!!!

Hah! My 2 year old can turn on an X-box-360 and open up mail and the internet on the computer. What will she be able to do in 20 years?Ian.

One thing for sure, performance was a real low priority. With just a few weeks left to run on the project they switch to perf tuning mode to try and make it run faster. Clearly thats not going to yield much results. The only way to do it is to make major architectural changes and rewrite alot of code especially in the core of the engine. Now, according to Bill Leaming who visited ACES first hand, the core FS engine is still running on Bruce Artwick's Assembler code! While skeptical about it actually being Bruces' code - it would't surprise me if there was assembler still running in the engine. So why?? Could they are waiting for 64bit to mature and become mainstream first? Or could be they want to develop for Xbox and are waiting for the XNA graphics library? Whatever the reason its time they rewrite the core engine.

>> Hey, Tom, you just need to take the long term view. This>happens with each release>>>>- tdraggger>>From all the comments in this thread, that one stands out the>most. This happens every single time, yet you are not inclined>to change the way you're developing the sim?..........>Even though the moaning will die down eventually, it doesn't>mean you're going about it the right way. Because you're not,>in my humble opinion.Mike,The professional whiners who incenssently whine on this and other forums(fori?), are just that.... whinners who found a new calling in life!They would whine about a newly released FS, no matter what. MS could include a $20 bill in every box, and they would whine as to why couldn't they make it four $5 bills or two $10 bills! Or how the exchange rates affect their $20 and why couldn't they just include francs, pesos, rubles or whatever!Pete S.

>Now, now, Peter. you must be careful. It's not fashionable to>like us right now so if I were you I'd head underground for>awhile. ;)Anyway, don't underestimate the presence/silence of people who are not pissing and moaning. As you probably know; The people screaming the highest are probably usually not representing the majority. I for one usually go speechless over the immaturity coming from the whiners these days. Contributing something to these forums when the forum-trolls have hijacked every chance of something constructive feels pretty futile right now.Thanks for providing me with a enjoyable hobby, and to continue to further extend it, I genuinely appreciate the work you guys are have put into the series. And I have to say, the other night when the newest TrackIR beta drivers arrived I was smiling from ear to ear while flying around at low level with a chopper in FSX. Good stuff.

Wow Pete, that's some really insightful commentary.You know what else always appears right behind the 'whiners'? Jacka$$es like yourself who for no apparent reason decide to jump on folks who have a legit problem and decide to air it out on a flight sim forum. Last I checked, thats a big reason why these forums exist in the first place (certainly not the only reason mind you).As for including money in the case---if they stuff $4000 in there, I for one would be a happy camper. Perhaps if put into my shoes, you would feel differently. Perhaps when you make a $219 loan payment on the 15th of every month for a machine that was supposedly going to give me a next gen experience with FSX, then you can talk about 'whining'? Come on here and blast 'whiners' when you've ponied up that kind of commitment to a product. Or when you have made your living making addons and just found out that FSX will likely destroy your business. Or stolen your work outright. After all that, come on back and get at us 'whiners'. We'll be here with a whole basket of tomatoes for ya.

>Wow Pete, that's some really insightful commentary.>>You know what else always appears right behind the 'whiners'? >Jacka$$es like yourself who for no apparent reason decide to>jump on folks who have a legit problem and decide to air it>out on a flight sim forum. Last I checked, thats a big reason>why these forums exist in the first place (certainly not the>only reason mind you).>>As for including money in the case---if they stuff $4000 in>there, I for one would be a happy camper. Perhaps if put into>my shoes, you would feel differently. Perhaps when you make a>$219 loan payment on the 15th of every month for a machine>that was supposedly going to give me a next gen experience>with FSX, then you can talk about 'whining'? >>Come on here and blast 'whiners' when you've ponied up that>kind of commitment to a product. Or when you have made your>living making addons and just found out that FSX will likely>destroy your business. Or stolen your work outright. After>all that, come on back and get at us 'whiners'. We'll be here>with a whole basket of tomatoes for ya.>So MS needs to pay you back for the add ons you bought for FS9 because they created a new version? And why did you build a machine to run FSX when you had no idea what it may or may not take to run it why not wait until you had it in your hands to build a new system?As for being thrown out of business due to FSX are you saying you and others cant adapt to the new version? Is FS supposed to freeze at FS9? I dont get great performance out of FSX, its not horrid but its not wonderful either but I didnt expect it to be. I imagine Ill be on FS9 until DX10 hardware is well into its second or third generation. Of course you and others have every right to complain if something doesnt live up to your expectations and dont take this as a personal attack but the approach you took concerning addons, developing etc really arent the best excuse to use to rail against FSX. Personally I think in time it will be so awe inspiring well wonder how they fit such an experience onto our desktop computers.

Oh, for sure, there are professional whiners. Even very near. ;-D But you can't deny that there are real issues with the sim. And with the previous one. And with the one before that. I just don't want to see the same thing happen again. So I'd very much like to see a totally different approach with FSXI.

>You hit the nail on the head--MS is moving towards this>franchise being a 360 'game'. Look at the code, look at the>file structure. >>And another thing---stop making excuses for MS by saying this>game is designed for computers that are going to be built 3>years from now.>I have the best machine Velocity Micro can make, and FS9 (3>years old now) still can run like a beast sometimes. Now,>from extremely good authority, I have been told that if you>get 44 FPS in FS9, expect 22-25 in FSX. Getting 30 in FS9? >Expect 15-18 in FSX. And that's without all the addons we>have all some to consider essential. What do you think will>happen when someone figures out how to add a traffic program? >####, PMDG has even thrown in the towel by saying that it>isn't possible for their products to run on FSX. They won't>be alone. >>FSX appears to be the victim of sloppy coding, not designs for>the future. Explain to me why after all this time, FSX WILL>NOT support dual core processors? Even on a Vista machine? >So this expensive FX-60 processor I have is basically going to>be treated like a 3 year old 2.6 single core machine? What>about support for SLI? Nope. Even with claims that MS has>engineered this version to take adavantage of video card>power, it still won't reap the benefits of my machine's twin>7900GTX cards. Mind you, I bought all this expensive stuff>($4000 for this machine. $4000!!!!!)expressely for the>purpose of showing FSX who's boss. My mistake. So no more of>this designed for 2 years from now CRAP. 2 years from now, as>other have said, we'll have another sim. And the same line. >Are we expected to buy $4000 computers every 2 years to keep>up? Someone explain to me how thats right!? Smart money is>to design a sim that runs reasonably well on todays>technology, and runs flat out on tech that is NO more than 6>months down the line, or about to come out. Saying anything>else is a cop out.>>Word is, this will be a nightmare for 3rd party>vendors--FlyTampa confirmed this for me right here. Folks at>FS-GS.com feel the same too. Others have had their work>straight up stolen from them (see FSUIPC). And the whole thing>is looking like a big slide show disaster. Sorry to be>negative, but who can blame me considering the>investment/commitment I made to this product?>>You paid $4000 for a computer to be able to run a game that hasn't been released yet?*:-* What happened to waiting for a product to be released, reading some comments about it, and then making an informed purchasing decision?

And another thing:I really need to drive home this one point--3 years ago folks were saying to not get frustrated with FS9. They said it was built for machines 2-3 years in the future. Skip ahead 3 years. Yep, we have machines now that for the most part can run FS9 pretty well, mine being one such machine. I bought it 3 months ago. Best of everything. But, did I buy it to run the crap out of FS9? Nope. And I seriously doubt anyone else who spoke with their wallets and not just their mouths ponied up for FS9 either. We all committed to FSX with the best hardware currently available. If you didn't/haven't made that kind of committment, you have no business whatsoever being critical of folks that are mad at what they've seen so far. None. So now, once again folks are saying over and over that FSX is designed for these computers 3 years away. How is that fair? Better yet, how is that logical? In 3 years won't we be again gearing up for another version of FS? Should we just wait to buy FSX in 3 years? Or should we expect that the leading software developer worldwide should be producing a title that takes full advantage of what's here now? Better yet, (and this has been stated above) if the future of computers is multi-core processors---how does an application that does not utilize multi core processors bank on being built for 'future hardware'? How can anyone ignore that fact?

I honestly don't know why so many people are complaining about performance. I turn off "Autogen" and turn some of the traffic options way down and I get great FPS. ALL of my other options are maxed and I run at 1600x1200x32 with 4xFSAA and 8xAF.With some of the people here, you'd think that they get 5 FPS no matter what settings they run at (and if they do, it's their system...not the game).