FSX quirks

After reading the many negative posts about FSX here, I strangely felt an intention to sum them up and shine a light on them without giving too much room for being subjectively inclined in the pessimistic direction.1. ActivationDon't know if MS tries to pull the plunge here and gently force everyone into the X-Box arena (let aside it would need more than only a reworked species of such a device to decently run FSX, see below), but the activation emerges as a serious problem.Agreed, most won't have any troubles with it at first. But I guess many will when they gradually start to change hard- and software and thus invalidate the Hardware-ID (whatever this takes into account to generate the unique number).It seems to be like a disease: no one cares, many speak about it, almost nobody believes (s)he could ever get it, and some are really shocked when it finally catches them.IMHO, MS did their customers a very bad service. Look, a crack to circumvent activation is available and already heavily used, and the minority of "poor people" who do everything "the right way" have to suffer. Flight1 shows how protection can be done the positive and user friendly way, but it seems that big companies like MS need to prove they can top that :-((2. PerformanceProbably the most problematic issue with FSX, therefore a long article:When looking at what happened in the hardware sector during the past 2 years, I for my part are pretty disappointed. Gone are the days of "doubled processor speeds" and rapidly dropping hardware prices.Comparing my almost 3 year old rig with the self-made piece of "super"-PCs I built for my children, I'm unimpressed by the speed gain. The cost of the hardware is disproportional to the performance it gives, means the pieces cost a heck of a lot and the benefit is that Windows needs 5 seconds less to boot ;-)Frankly, software is more and more a braking factor, and I hardly see any hardware on the horizon to iron that inequality out. Sure, when looking at the sheer numbers, those quad-cores look promising. But it's the subjective feeling I get when I play, not the numbers which count. And in this area, a lot needs to be done.FSX is a resource hog in every meaning of the word. Hardly any hardware available today is capable that one can put all sliders to the maximum setting. Past FS versions showed that complex add-ons eat lots of FPS, no matter what artistic gimmicks in terms of programming have been put in place to avoid this as good as possible. Is there any reason to assume this will be different with FSX? I mean that the point of incapable hardware will become more of only a nasty side effect but an apparent problem as soon as the first complex add-ons will appeat. Combine some of them, and you'll probably in the below-10s framerate-wise no matter how far the sliders are pulled back.And there's another lurking around the corner: Vista. Anyone tried to run that overbloated piece of j**k (sorry, promised to stay objective) with FSX yet? I dare to announce it will be a very tough task to get some performance out of PCs when running both...But there's a cure: new hardware. And here's where FSX users are divided into two separate leagues: the ones with real fat bank accounts and the ones which would need to wait another 1 or 2 years until they can beef up their PCs so they can run FSX satisfactory. A 2 classes society, nice...So, in the end, those who want to fly their full blown A320 in real weather with ASV7 or so and replacement textures, mesh and land at complex to-be-developped airports will need to have a long breathe and a well stuffed wallet. Lucky GA only fliers, FSX is probably only for them...FS9 still isnt' in the shape I like it to be FPS wise on my PC, and this more than 3 years after it's release with soooo fast hardware ;-)3. FinalI guess it serves no one to say "for me, FSX is great, 'cause I use only what's in the box and those lamenters I can't understand" or "FSX is crap 'cause I get only 6 FPS out of it, anyone here to buy a pre-used version?" without concentrating on the pure facts.And these facts are more than disillusioning at least for me. Maybe the major part of FSX users is a happy community right now 'cause they got what they expected, but I for my part are a hardcore simmer and on the losing side of the game. I know too well what it means to get into FlyTampa's KSEA with a complex airliner (take whatever you like here, LDS, PMDG, PSS,...) with ASV6 active and lots of clouds and traffic. I don't like the idea of needing to reduce FS features to a bare minimum only to keep the sim fluent enough to land - maybe I need to switch off that runway as well ;-)And since there's a life without FS for me too, money is a core issue and certainly nothing I'm gonna blow into hardware full load.FSX shows the limits of today's hard- and software capabilities too well. And the overload are those who want to fly the airliners-to-come in the VC's of FSX-- maybe the super-computer clusters used for weather simulation will come to the rescue?! Welcome to the reality, dreamers, that's all I can say.Sure, FSX is the standard in the future, and even the moaners will adapt to it one day. But it's hard to accept that FSX breaks into the FS world like a new airplane where the engines need still to be developped to get the bird into the air. Too many "wish we had this and that visual things" are incorporated in a time where it's possible to see that it would take a long time for hardware to make this reality.At least for the small minority of us "airline captains", I guess it will be a hard time to make the switch from FS9 -- as much as I wish to do.Luckily we finally got that long awaited animals and moving cars (nice to know they're there when at FL360), maybe there are some ants there as well if you only zoom in enough...Andreas