FSX Performance - Developing an objective perspective.....

Hi Flightsimmers,There is much to read about FSX performance these days. My matter of concern is trying to get an objective and constructive perspective on the multiple issues arising:In my opinion, anyone who starts discovering FSX will quickly find out that this product is a breathtaking improvement over FS9. Although some fields like ATC, flight model or weather didn't get as much attention as I (and others) have wished, FSX contains outstanding and valuable improvements in almost every field. FSX is no doubt a product which attempts to bring revolutionary improvements to the immersion factor in PC-based flight simulation. Im my opinion the developers clearly produced a masterpiece. There was much work put in it, and the result proves that it was worth it.On the other hand, it should be clear that those multple improvements can only be given at some expense:One thing is the price - I spent 85 Euros (106 US-$, including delivery cost) for my Deluxe Edition, but I think it is well worth the money.Another thing are the Hardware demands. Just for example: I run FSX on a 3GHz P4, bottleneck are an older graphics card (GeForce 4800 128MB) and 512MB RAM. In FS9, I'm able to land my PMDG 747 at a crowded airport with Ultimate Traffic installed, ActiveSky running, full autogen and most sliders cranked up.In FSX, I even get serious Frame Rate problems when I set up bad weather (snow/rain), use one of the default Airliners, and put almost all slider to absolute minimum (a few to very near minimum): no autogen, Airport looks like a desert (no buildings and no airplanes), no dynamic scenery elements, no effects etc. Furthermore I've got all performance tweaks I found so far installed (several fsx.cfg edits and reduced size textures)(!) - and I am still far below a flyable frame rate, although my system offers 2-4 times the specs required as minimum requirements!Bottomline is: FSX is developed with much effort as an outstanding PC simulation of flight reality an can therefore of course not provide a similar performance as FS9. The numerous improvements make this simply impossible.But: FSX DOES have a serious performance problem. There are people around here who say 'I got it working on my rig - so what are you guys complaining about?' - This is nice for them, but doesn't solve the problems many other people have with PCs which are maybe a bit less than 'state-of-the-art'. Other people discover e.g. that they do not need autogen suddenly or something like that - nice for them, but again no 'silver bullet' for the general problem.In my opinion, FSX definitely has the potential to set new standards in the Flight Simulation Scene and will fully take up its role as the long-expected and worthy successor of FS9. This product will be a great success, I don't have any doubt in that.But the most important thing to ensure that most of the people interested in Flightsims will be able to enjoy FSX is to do anything that can be done from the developers side in order to improve the performance situation!