Maybe I'm just blind to all of the negatives, but I don't understand why so many people are bashing the greatest FS chapter ever. Microsoft has really done a fantastic job with FSX. I mean sure, I can't stand the 1 or 2 frames per second if everything is maxed, but when I compromise some of the high end features, it's still beautiful, AND it flies better than FS9 ever could. It's already been talked about alot, but folks, FSX is not DOOM 3 or FarCry or any of that. Why are you expecting it to outfly and outperform everything currently on the market, while looking better and having full AI and all of that? It's apples and oranges. If it were even remotely possible to make the whole world with the D3 engine on one map, it would be impossible to play it.I have not had a single bad experience with it. Not one. Even when I turned up everything to max and watched it run like molasses in wintertime. Heck even molasses has an edge, at least it's smooth.And my system may not be bleeding edge, but it's nothing to scoff at either.But I didn't get peaved-off because it ran like crap at full max. For pity sake, stop and think about all of the things it's doing. Turn AI down to low, road traffic max, scenery max, autogen low (no tweak either), bloom on, details on, 7cm terrain, special effects max, and I can fly this sim on my computer, simple as that. Keep your fingers off of SHIFT+Z for once! Framerate is NOT king in FS if it's playable. If I were going to report my frames, I would be laughed at, but guys I'm telling you I never checked. At best guess, over Springfield, MO at 5000 feet in the Extra 300, I would say between 12 and 17 fps, with occasional high-single-digit drops. That's a guess. I will NOT post actual frames because that doesn't matter. What matters is it's flyable, it's not aggravating, and the dips are infrequent and not severe. My point is that this sim is bar none the best I've ever flown, which is EXACTLY what I wanted from the FS team. Which means they delivered big time. I am more than pleased with it and will continue to be so.*All of the above is my opinion, so you may not like it, but you WILL NOT be able to change it :)-Jeremy Burchhttp://home.earthlink.net/~dawgfighter/sit...es/swvasig1.gifSWVA4806 http://www.virtualswa.com/home.phpThe Ozark Dogfighter http://forums.avsim.net/images/wedge.gifCurrent system:Pentium 4 Cedar Mill 641 (3.40GHz), Abit AW8D, Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX (512MB DDR3 PCI-Express x16),Corsair XMS2 Pro 2GB PC2 6400 (DDR2 800), 2 SeaGate Barracuda 250GB hard drives, Sound Blaster X-Fi PlatinumKlipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 speakers, NEC 20" CRT, Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback 2Please note: System specs are for reference in tech forums only and are not to be taken as meaning anything else.Doing so will result in eye-rolling, possible teeth grinding and perhaps mild internal chuckling.Happy Flying!

Great post, and I agree! This journey will be a blast.DougDell XPS Gen3 (3.6GHz/540FSB) | 2GB DDR SDRAM | 74GB SATA, 10k RPM (C: ) | 120GB SATA (D: ) | 512MB ATI Radeon X1900XTX (Catalyst 6.9) | Audigy 2 ZS Sound | MS Force Feedback 2 | WindowsXP Pro (SP2) | DirectX 9.0c

I have learned one thing and this is it when we are talking about performance and FSX - get rid of those fancy vehicles and autogen, water textures and presto great fps even with max weather. FSX looks light years beyond FS9 ever could minus these things. Best,Randy J. Smith

I'm liking FSX greatly. Maybe some people fly heavies out of busy cities and are affected more. The only problem I can see is during landing or taking off when frame-rates are lower than 12. It can really affect the flyability. Above several 1000 feet, even 15 FPS seems smoother than FS9 with the stutters it had after release.

Absolutely. Also, remember that feeling with FS9, when we had compromised some settings in favor of others, then upgraded a few months later and decided to try max settings? WHOA! FSX is going to blow us all away when we get the hardware to run, IF we all learn to live with just a little less than max for awhile.-Jeremy Burchhttp://home.earthlink.net/~dawgfighter/sit...es/swvasig1.gifSWVA4806 http://www.virtualswa.com/home.phpThe Ozark Dogfighter http://forums.avsim.net/images/wedge.gifCurrent system:Pentium 4 Cedar Mill 641 (3.40GHz), Abit AW8D, Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX (512MB DDR3 PCI-Express x16),Corsair XMS2 Pro 2GB PC2 6400 (DDR2 800), 2 SeaGate Barracuda 250GB hard drives, Sound Blaster X-Fi PlatinumKlipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 speakers, NEC 20" CRT, Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback 2Please note: System specs are for reference in tech forums only and are not to be taken as meaning anything else.Doing so will result in eye-rolling, possible teeth grinding and perhaps mild internal chuckling.Happy Flying!

You hit the jackpot.Of course the naysayers will say how can you live without autogen and fancy vehicles-there is life without them-and a better one....http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

It's nice to read some positive things about FSX and now the other features are being discussed such as flight models, missions and weather. As I posted in another thread, I do hope the performance and other issues get resolve to alleviate the split in the community. Oddly enough it's become stressful to read the forums lately, but like a car wreck you just can't help but look.Nice post. All that really matters is whether or not you enjoy it.Ian.

>Oddly enough it's become stressful to read the>forums lately, but like a car wreck you just can't help but>look.LOL Nicely put, Ian!-Jeremy Burchhttp://home.earthlink.net/~dawgfighter/sit...es/swvasig1.gifSWVA4806 http://www.virtualswa.com/home.phpThe Ozark Dogfighter http://forums.avsim.net/images/wedge.gifCurrent system:Pentium 4 Cedar Mill 641 (3.40GHz), Abit AW8D, Gigabyte GeForce 7900GTX (512MB DDR3 PCI-Express x16),Corsair XMS2 Pro 2GB PC2 6400 (DDR2 800), 2 SeaGate Barracuda 250GB hard drives, Sound Blaster X-Fi PlatinumKlipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 speakers, NEC 20" CRT, Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback 2Please note: System specs are for reference in tech forums only and are not to be taken as meaning anything else.Doing so will result in eye-rolling, possible teeth grinding and perhaps mild internal chuckling.Happy Flying!

The whole point we waited and for upgrades is to improve the enigine performance. It seems to be the opposite here. What good is it to add these vehicles and extra features if you ahve to turn them off to be happy. Time would have been spent more wisely upgrading FS9 to be more resource friendly then making a new version that our computers won't be able to run for a few years and don't you see the cycle? Why in order to play this sim to its max capacity to I have to purchase windows vista, a DX10 vid card and probaly some system that has Microsoft stuff in it anyways. We're one small part of the big corporate loop. Enjoy That Ride.

>FSX is going to blow us all away when we get the hardware to>run, IF we all learn to live with just a little less than max>for awhile.Thats what I was thinking earlier as I was taking the Alpha Bleu corsair around the Solomans. It looked and ran great with some compromises and I thought, man when I can crank this thing up, WHOA!I plan on getting Vista and I really hope MS delivers with DX10 from all that we have seen and the hype, we'll have to see.Regards, MichaelKDFW

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI-x16 / AMD

Not really-seems like all that is being discussed is the "eye candy" causing performance issues that was ridiculed before the realease. The new eye candy is great-but if you have to turn it down to see the new reality-that is a small penalty to pay.Explore the fact that you can now have a live flight instruction session with a flight instructor in "shared cockpits" or fly a "mission" where you can experience emergencies that snowball like in the real world.Then add smooth instrument response-now also in the 3d cockpits in addition to the 2d, better fm's, pitch stability that has been missing in the last few series of fs, dutch roll at altitude and thermals-activity over mountains, head latency, defined cockpit views, ability to save configurations for phases of flight, higher terrian mesh/photo real textures, I could go on and on but it is late where I live.You might have to turn down autogen (which for me is pretty cartoonish but I can understand the appeal) and the water which for me is really cartoonish and I never would want tp get good performance-but it can be had.But I can finally land a plane that feels like landing a real one (not like fs9 rails)-along with lots of the above improvements and more I can't think of now.Don't just judge by the fact that you might have to turn down some "eye candy" to get performance-I like eye candy as much as the next guy-but the pre complaints were that the next version of fs focussed only on eye candy is not the case....explore-and by tweaking you can have a combo of both!!!!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

The issues I have with FSX are not so much performance-related. I'm more concerned about stuff that can NOT be remedied by turning down a slider and accepting fewer visual goodies.To save me some typing, I'll just copy-paste what I sent to the FSX team a moment ago through FSInsider's feedback form:---I have several issues relating to the multiplayer experience of FSX to relate. In general FSX's multiplayer is great - save for the frustrating connection / disconnection problems and "it appears you've logged on from another computer" nonsense caused by GameSpy's lobby system - but there are a couple of other very basic things that could REALLY use some improving. I'm not sure if there's anything you can do to improve the horrible lobby (if it's because of GameSpy's code or servers, probably not), but the following items are so simple that they simply can't be ignored:1) It would be helpful if some of the features in FSX weren't blocked in multiplayer mode - for example, accessing the map is often crucial for weather, route or airport information. It'd help if the map would remain accessible regardless of the limitations set by the host. The settings screens (display, controls, sound) should also always remain accessible as sometimes multiplayer situations change in such a way that you need to "dial down" the settings (either to get better framerates or to better hear someone who's talking quietly) OR someone is teaching you about features you didn't know of and need to access the control settings to properly set up for using them. Having to quit the session just to change a few settings simply does not fly, especially since there's no guarantee the lobby will let you connect back to the host anytime soon without throwing a fit.2) Currently it is impossible to see who is sharing an aircraft with you at any given time without exiting to the briefing room. It would be great if there was some kind of indicator to tell who is sitting in the "other seat" once your in flight. For example, an icon in the chat user list, or their name highlighted in a different color, or a red box in the bottom right corner saying "You are sharing the plane with Player X" that is visible at all times except when the "Overspeed" and "Stall" warnings popped up. Or maybe all of these?3) At present there's absolutely no way to know who is talking, which has already caused endless confusion on some servers I've been to (it's especially annoying since you can't be sure if it was the person you're sharing a plane with who was talking or someone completely different). It would be absolutely great if whenever someone talked their name would appear in, for example, the grey box you use for mission captions (additionally, the information ticker above their plane could get a thick border around it or something). If more than one people talked at the same time, all of their names would show up in the list. The list could also use some color-coding to differentiate between different sources: one color for the "everyone" channel, one color for the "same frequency" channel and one for when the volume of the voice stream coming from the other person sitting in your cockpit goes above a certain level (I realize the in-cockpit voice is "always on", but it would help to know when the person in the other seat speaks up by showing their name in a different color).4) Relating to the above, we must get a mute feature. Way too many times I've had to put up with horrible feedback / echoing when the person sharing a plane with me has refused to use a headset. Whenever someone said something, I could hear it both from my headset and through the in-cockpit stream from THEIR speakers - horribly distorted, of course. This makes it impossible to understand anyone. This isn't the only problem that could be fixed with a mute option - sometimes people just get obnoxious and you want to mute them, or their voice setup is so bad that they come through as a mess.All-in-all FSX has a lot of good things to offer, but these are among some of the rough corners that still need some polishing to really make it shine. Thanks for all the hard work!---None of these issues can be fixed by end users, they all require a patch. With FS9 we got ONE PATCH long after the game was released. I really hope that won't be the case with FSX.

Can't speak for multiplayer as I haven't tried it yet. Need to get over my dislike for gamespy first. ;) Good observations though. There's no "push to talk" function? Every standalone voice over ip software I've ever used has that. I can remember more than a few guild runs in WoW with people who couldn't grasp the concept of holding a button down to speak, headset or not. Screech, echo, more screech. Ugh. At least that's a native feature of real world aviation....feedback. :)Framerate though is a very big deal to a lot of people, and rightly so. Making a comparison to quake and its kin with their limited closed environments is unrealistic, and the majority of those who are complaining understand that I think. They aren't asking for 120 fps, they're asking for a stable 20fps as a minimum, and they can't have it. There are two camps of simmers who I'm guessing are most put off by the performance problems right now: the heavy iron guys, and a much smaller group, the helo flyers. Never really seen the fascination with flying the heaviest and least manoeuvrable planes in the sky, but I only have to scan a single page of any avsim forum to know I have the minority view there. I figure the airliner crowd can do without most of the eye candy once at altitude, but the scenery looks pretty unrealistic down in the stix, high res textures or not, without autogen, and as most of these guys are doing city-city hops, and prefer good heavy IFR weather for the challenge, they're getting the fps hit the hardest. Add the fact that default FS airliners are little more than quaint children's toys to them, then add the frame sucking complexity of their "real" airliners to the mix and a slideshow is simply not an option. But that's all they get. They have to turn pretty much everything off to have a hope, and it just can't compete with their evolved FS9 setups. It's all well and good to say "forget the framerate, just enjoy it", and kudos to you if you are able to do just that, but for many people, framerate *equals* enjoyment. It's a very important part of suspension of disbelief, if not the most important part.As for helicopter lovers, they'll have even more problems with the state of performance right now. Instantaneous feedback when going for precision flight in a helo is an absolute must have, given that a sim can't give any spatial kinetic sensations. You have to get it all visually of course. 25 fps isn't good enough for that, let alone 5. You pretty much have to have stable 30+ to get the best out of helo flight, especially in rough weather. I find 60 fps to be just about right for it, haha. Helos are viciously unforgiving should you get 'behind the curve' with them. High fps makes them a fun and satisfying experience.If you're into bush flying though, especially with floats, seems FSX is instantly the sim of choice. That's all I'm doing with it really until performance improves. She's awfully pretty though!

FSX's voice comms are divided into two camps: the ones that require a key to be held down (talk to all, talk to frequency) and the one that doesn't (cockpit voice). If you want to talk to the tower or other players you need to hold down a key, but one isn't required when you want to (or even when you DON'T want to) say something to your co-pilot.So far I've heard people humming, singing and breathing very heavily while sharing a cockpit with them. Someone was probably watching TV, too, or listening to a local radio station or something. so far no one's SO or mom has busted into the room complaining about undone chores or homework, though... ;)Anyway, realistic or not I want to get rid of that feedback resulting from the co-pilot using speakers instead of a headset. The easy options are to mute them (not possible at the time) or to kick them from the seat (only possible by exiting to the briefing room, but then you have to re-start your flight).

>Current system:>Pentium 4 Cedar Mill 641 (3.40GHz), Abit AW8D, Gigabyte>GeForce 7900GTX (512MB DDR3 PCI-Express x16),>Corsair XMS2 Pro 2GB PC2 6400 (DDR2 800), 2 SeaGate Barracuda>250GB hard drives, Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum>Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 speakers, NEC 20" CRT, Microsoft>SideWinder Force Feedback 2>Duh.....sure you're happy with FSX, you have a brand new $2,500 top of the line computer. As do most of the other people that are happy with FSX. Unfortunately most of us don't have equipment that is capable of running FSX in such a way that it looks or flys better than FS2004.Do I sound jealous? :)Matt