We are all aware that FSX is a major leap forward but the fact is that it doesn't run well on most rigs. Some very talented people of this community have found great tweaks or workarounds to make it run much better :- deactivating shaders- removing autogen.xml- reducing the size and amount of autogen textures- replacement clouds- etc...Do you think that the average user has the technical knowhow and will take the time to search on the net, manually edit configuration files, spend hours resizing textures, change hard to find video card hardware settings just to be able to run FSX decently? It is not up to the community to spend more time tweaking than flying, that is up to you ! How about a simulator that, compared to FS9, is an improvement for at least identical framerates ? We now know it can be done (search this forum for shaders). How about the possibility to fly over a major town without frames dropping below 10FPS ?How about an updated settings page which will allow the user to use shaders or not, medium res clouds or not, less types of autogen or not, lower res autogen textures or not, etc... Allowing the user to fly the sim NOW and add features when hardware or $$ are available to upgrade. How about acting professionally and admit there are problems (landclass ?).How about fixing things now instead of speculating on DX10 and Vista.How about selling more copies of FSX just because more people will be able to run it? FSX has great features but it is so frustrating to see that it needs so much hacking in order to make it run.Jean-Paul

I agree and I also fail to see why they release a game that wont run on todays hardware without these tweaks. I love the new sim and all but my computer is not the greatest so alot of sliders are turned down. But I notice that even people with far better computers than mine are still having problems. Seems like we need to take it a bit slower and release a sim that is useable the day it comes out, not 2 years down the line when there will probably be a new sim on the way out that will just take another 2 years for the hardware to catch up with it.

We already know ACES will patch FSX. They have to, for DX10.So many of the problems can be attended to at the same time.And for your information, the game works fine without these tweaks. It just means moving the sliders to the left. That may not satisfy those of us with FS9 and a heap of addons, but for most of the target audience it probably will. So you don't see the sim in all its glory? Well, even if you push those sliders far right neither do we. For that we will probably need Vista, DX10, updated hardware - and a patch!Allcott

I fully agree.I wish they would had spent more time in the devolpment of such sliders in the user interface instead of giving us some elephants in Africa.Walter

The people that developed animals in Africa have different skill-sets than the ones working on the graphics engine.Tony

Ok, I have spent tons of time with this but first my specsfx-52, 2 gig dual channel ddr, 7800gtx in sli (AA mode)oc'd 490,131,, 2 10k rpm sata drives in raid(0). Not a slouch by any stretched of the word.I installed first all of the reduced autogen,clouds,pavement,buildings etc offered at Matts site, in combination with the 2 modified default.xml files and also taking the default.xml file out of the equation and of course the tree and building count entry in the fsx.cfg file. With each of the combinations of all of these variables including multitudes of combinations of sliders, as much as I wanted to be able to be happy with autogen, I could not convince myself to use it. Consequently through multiple trials I always ended up setting the autogen off. With this machine I was able to max out everything, Traffic, Texture, Mesh you name it and around KSEA even on approach to ruway 34, with the skyline in view, retain 24 FPS. The photo textures are beautiful. They do skew of course at times but even at relatively low altitudes they still look Great. IMO even with high autogen,which I was able to get 12fps which to me was unliveable, the buildings etc looked funny to me, like a cartoon. Anyway, I am a tweaker and tweaked the #### out of FS9 and I love doing it but for now I am going to wait. Some scenery designer somewhere may come up with an answer. I will continue to try new approaches that others may come up with, but for now, by just flying I am finding sooooo many cool features. But what Im doin now is Flyin Baby!BobBob

A correction to my CPU. I put fx52,it is an fx-57. 52 was the year I was born (-:

I have to say that despite the fact that FSX is running okay for me, I do agree with you that the patch (or A patch) which would allow some more menus with tweeks and perhaps even the possibility of a lower res set of texures to be created, would be a nice thing, one might even say vital for a large portion of FSX buyers.Much of it can be done with your own graphics card tune-up utility admittedly, but the ATI Catalyst utility (for example) offers both user-friendly and advanced set up options for this sort of thing, for the very reason you state, which is not everyone wants, or is comfortable with manually tweeking the inside bits of a game.It might seem that such a patch would have to include all those low res textures, but this is not so, the technology exists to automatically open and save texture files at another resolution and even another format without resorting to Photoshop. Quark XPress 7 can do it for a start.So yes, I agree with you, they ought to react to the desires of users here, particularly in view of the fact that probably most of the people who post on AVSIM are of the ilk to do those tweeks, but they are likely small in number compared to the many who have bought FSX, do not come to the AVSIM site and expect it to work straight out of the box.The people who post on here are what might be regarded as the voice of those who never come to AVSIM and are sat at home wondering why FSX doesn't work like they thought it would, an automated patch would be a tremendous help to those buyers of FSX, who otherwise, will probably not be buying FSXI if it ever happens.

Alcott,You seem to have missed my point. I am fortunate enough to have a recent PC (C2D E6600 @ 3 Ghz, a Asus P5W DH Deluxe mobo, Nvidia 7950 GT 512, XP Pro SP2, a dedicated SATA2 drive for FSX and 4 GB of RAM which runs FSX pretty decently but not as well as it should considering the amount of hardware as it is now a proven fact thax FSX can run as well with many of the new features if not better than FS9 as long as the appropriate tweaks are used.Would you accept having to tweak i.e. Microsoft Office to the same extend as we do for FSX just to get the spellchecker to work ? Then call support and be told that you will need to spend another 800

Hey, while a completely agree with all the suggestions being given here from the original poster, please leave the elephants alone. I am looking fowrad to seeing them with girafes, lions, Cheetars and company.

I'm glad I'm not one of the idiots that bought the software without doing their homework.Jean-Paul is making some legit statements there. Aces should listen.

At this point, then, those of us without tweaking know-how with love and patience to doing it are surely left in the dust. So, I am very grateful to the one who started this thread.dito

>So yes, I agree with you, they ought to react to the desires>of users here, particularly in view of the fact that probably>most of the people who post on AVSIM are of the ilk to do>those tweeks, but they are likely small in number compared to>the many who have bought FSX, do not come to the AVSIM site>and expect it to work straight out of the box.>>The people who post on here are what might be regarded as the>voice of those who never come to AVSIM and are sat at home>wondering why FSX doesn't work like they thought it would, an>automated patch would be a tremendous help to those buyers of>FSX, who otherwise, will probably not be buying FSXI if it>ever happens.WELL SAID, THANK YOU!

<>And we are, in case it's not obvious. We're reading forum posts, logging support calls, and discussing the issues people are having--just like we do with every release. And, just as with every release, we'll decide on what we can do to help.I know it's frustrating to those of you experiencing problems but we're not going to to anything until we understand what's happening and the best way to address the problems. One of the great things about a strong community like the one on AvSim is that you can get immediate turnaround on trial-and-error approaches. We, as a large company, would find that hard to replicate. So, hopefully you can spare some patience while we continue the investigations on our end.

I think an "Autogen" tab in Display Settings would be nice to see in the patch. It could have all sorts of Autogen sliders in it. :)RhettAMD 3700+ (@2.5 ghz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (94.47), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian