I've been riding the middle of the road since before getting FSX. Even though some have gotten a bit nasty with negative reviews, I give merit to their complaints, as it's a subjective thing. Different people have different opinions of what is acceptable, and no one is actually wrong. If someone hates it, who am I to tell them otherwise? Likewise, for the positive side. I do, personally, hate extremes, so I've maintained a wait and see mentality.I've now put in a good 25-30 hours flying time in and am ready to give my opinion. Maybe someone can get something from it, but just use what I say in the spirit in which I offer it. Your mileage may definitely vary.First, a note on activation, since it seems to be a hot button issue. I bought the deluxe version, installed it, and activated it online. The process was painless and quick. Microsoft now knows I legitimately paid for the product and that is that. Any further installations I make of it due to upgrading my computer or OS or just to reinstall after PEBKAC issues cause it to be corrupted will use alternative means to get around authentication. That's all I'll say on the matter. If MS feels it's worth their time, expense, and potentially negative PR to come and get me, well... here I am.Out of the box, stock, and with the default configuration it set for my system, it ran okay at Friday Harbor. Starting at KSEA was a totally different matter, as most of you have experienced yourself. What I did was systematically apply CFG tweaks and adjusted detail levels accordingly. I got the display quality to look better while maintaining the same low framerate. My next order of business was to apply the texture tweaks to autogen and the reduction of trees. Frames got better by 3-4 FPS. I applied the clouds and runway/taxiway texture reduction tweak and got another 2 to 3 frames.What I've finally ended up with is maxxed autogen (with the CFG autogen level at 500), maxxed scenery, water at 1.0 high, clouds full, visibility at 80 mi, and no traffic and can maintain a steady 24 fps in the back country. Around cities varies, as some are more detailed than others. Seattle, however, must exist in some kind of temporal vortex, because regardless of how I adjust my settings, I can't seem to climb out of the single digits. To contrast, I can get at least 15-16 FPS in Atlanta, which in FSX is amazingly smooth for the numbers. The GA aircraft are great, but some of the jets seem overpowered. I am not a real pilot, however, so I may be talking out of my backside. The A321, which was my most anticipated aircraft in the new sim, takes off like a rocket and with the autothrottle unchecked, shoots me into an overspeed condition at 30 degrees of pitch within seconds of cleaning up. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the flight models of some of the a/c need tweaking.Visual models are another thing altogether. For default aircraft, these are probably some of the finest looking birds to come out of Flight Simulator, even taking into account the relative nature of graphics improvements over the years. Virtual cockpits are wonderful, and I can fly exclusively from them. This may not be the case for everyone, but for me, there is no difference in performance between the VCs and 2D panels. I also like the head latency effect. It's subtle enough to not be too distracting, but provides enough cues for me to know what's going on in terms of accelleration, deccelleration, sinking, etc. My biggest issue has to be the cockpit window reflections. Realistic? Eh, maybe. I've never been in a cockpit before. However, since they don't change in intensity with the position of the aircraft relative to light source, they're a static distraction. I wish we had an option to shut them off.In conclusion, I think FSX is a good product overall, but there are two big issues that keep it from being great right now. In order of appearance, they are: Activation (given a choice, I'd rather keep the disk in the drive.) and the need for serious after-market tweaking. I'm interested in seeing how DX10 will improve the sim, but given that Vista is such a controversial product, I'm going to abstain. Maybe on the slim-to-none chance MS relaxes the Big Brother behavior of the OS, I'll take the plunge, but right now I don't feel like having a modern equivilant of the 1984 two way video screen to "keep me honest".

I'm generally quite impressed with FSX, but I will say this:You are not incorrect with regards to the Airbus being overpowered. I am a pilot in real life and one of the Airbus Industrie designers has literally just left my house about ten minutes ago (he's currently working on the A400) I've just pointed out the performance of the Airbus in FSX to him and he was laughing his head off at it.And I guess if anyone ought to know, it'd be him.