I didn't cancel my FSX order as I considered and today I got it. This is my first impressions. Installation and activation no problem.An intial default setup was a joke. With that setup I don't come close to what I already have in FS2004. So I'm trying to increase the sliders a part at a time. A thing that clearly seems possible.I made a test flight from KMDW towards the skyscrapers in both FS2004 and in FSX. Framerates are definately lower in FSX compared to FS2004. In FSX at current around 10 in FS2004 around 25. Another striking thing was much more HD access. Loading times seems more of a problem than fps. But still I find FSX acceptable. In no way do I feel the same as the most negative FSX posters. But I still run FSX default and I prefer the F1 C172 over the FSX default C172. Which sliders should I not raise that decrease performence very much?At the moment the Chicago area is similar in quality and density as what I have in FS2004 with FSGenesis mesh and UT USA and GE FE.One irritating thing in FS2004 was gone in FSX and that was the big darker color squares in the water.My systemAMD 64 3200+Nvid

Regarding your initial experience, there's a known issue with AMD processors not being about to report accurate clock speed so our installer drops those machines to a lower detail bucket. That's why things look so crappy after initial install.

Then are you saying that for AMD users, the initial default settings are actually not the "prefered" settings FSX detects based on AMD processor speed? Sadly, I still need to wait until the 17th to find all this out.Jim

>Then are you saying that for AMD users, the initial default>settings are actually not the "prefered" settings FSX detects>based on AMD processor speed? Sadly, I still need to wait>until the 17th to find all this out.>>JimHey Jim, look at this:http://www.fsinsider.com/Community/News-Ar...atured-Article/

> Which sliders should I not raise that decrease performence very much?Generally spoken, Autogen, high AI traffic, high road traffic and the bloom effect are the biggest performance killers. Try the tweaks posted by Matt Fox and others in the hints section here, you will most likely see a very noticable performance gain - especially with the reduced-size textures for trees and clouds.Yours,Martin Georg/EDDFDirector, VATSIM Europe Division (VATEUD1) *** mailto:[email protected]

The biggest fps killer are also,Scenery density; ground cast shadows; reflection effects on aircraft and ground; high water options; (try setting to low 2.x) ; weather settings - site draw distance and density. Plus all the effects mentioned above by Martin...most the other settings won't have major effects on performance.

>The biggest fps killer are also,>>Scenery density; ground cast shadows; reflection effects on>aircraft and ground; high water options; (try setting to low>2.x) ; weather settings - site draw distance and density.>Plus all the effects mentioned above by Martin...>>most the other settings won't have major effects on>performance.Peter can't you see what u are saying? You're listing many of the new features in FSX and then saying that they are frame rate killers. It begs the question, what's the point of trying the very features that go a long way to constituting what FSX is?

>Regarding your initial experience, there's a known issue with>AMD processors not being about to report accurate clock speed>so our installer drops those machines to a lower detail>bucket. That's why things look so crappy after initial>install.Yes it soon was clear for me that thesesettings was a big underestimate of what my system is able to perform.

Thanks for the link.Jim

After reading all the negative posts about the performance here at the forum lately, I wasn't too excited about installing my FSX copy that I recived yesterday.I cleaned up a 74Gb partition on a secondary hard drive, and the installation went very well through a networked DVD player, as I don't have a DVD player on my FS computer. Defragmented the partition before I started up FSX, and went through a issue free registration. Adjusted the default settings a little bit with some sliders more to the left, and others more to the right as I felt suitable for my 3 year old rig. Fired up the sim and tested different aircrafts in various environments and I have to say I'm overly impressed! And that before I've tried any tweeks. I really don't bother pressing SHIFT-Z that often, as I think what I see and feel smooth FPS wise is ok with me. Ok it was locked at 19 and mostly stayed there. I think FSX have some great potencial and I'm looking foreward to the release of Vista and Dx10. I'm keeping FS9 for a while until at least 50% of my prefered FS9 addons are compatible with FSX. That will also give me time to save some money for a serious hardware upgrade.Current rig:3.2GhZ' Intel256Mb's Geforce 6800 GS2Gb's of Corsair ram

I too have the F1 C172. I would be interested to know if it is possble to import it into FSX.Martin