I can recall FS9 even bringing my 6800 ultra to its knees so its not been that long ago that FS9 has really come of age with me it was when my Geforce 6800 died and I replaced it with the Ati 1800xl which seemed to be a huge step up. I was shocked at how much better that card did with FS9.:) Thanks great post. Some people seem to have forgotten the tweaks and help that was needed to make FS9 shine. So give FSX time it should also.

Interesting thread. I don't know about the majority here, but I still can't run FS9 with every slider maxed. I think I would have to go back to FS4 to get guaranteed totally smooth movement. Pushing pixels in 3d is always going to be a hard task, until someone with an inspired piece of lateral thinking manages to go about things in a fundamentally different way. The answer is clearly not to continue throwing RAM and CPU speed at it. The former has a limit and the latter has reached a dead end.The problem is the whole culture of software has got bogged down in "features" which demand ever more of your system, and assume that you can match the demands by spending more and more money on more memory, higher and higher CPU speed, etc etc, rather than looking at ways in which software can run better.As we know a limit has been reached down this cul de sac, which is why I still happily run Word For Windows - I think it's the 1999 version - and it loads in about 2 seconds. I don't know how long the current version takes, maybe ten times longer?Rob Young

Flight Simulator 2000---------------------"Although the graphics in Flight Simulator 2000 might be heaven for the flight sim enthusiast, getting them to look good has a very steep hardware requirement. The box actually says the minimum system for the game is a Pentium 166 with an optional 3D accelerator, but you'd best not even try the game with a machine that slow. In fact, you shouldn't even bother unless you have a high-end Pentium II or Pentium III, or else you'll be too bogged down by poor frame rates to care about much else."-Gamespot.com, December 13, 1999Flight Simulator 2002---------------------"The graphics engine does tend to jump momentarily when initially drawing an approaching urban area or high-density chunk of scenery. Flight load-up times are substantially longer than ever before, and computers barely meeting the minimum 300MHz processor and 8MB video card requirements will in all likelihood continue to experience slowdowns and delayed rendering."-Gamespot.com, November 7, 2001Flight Simulator 2004---------------------"At 1600x1200 resolution with all the graphics settings cranked at their highest, our 2.66GHz test system with a Radeon 9700 Pro video card and 1GB RAM tended to slow down in thick cloud cover. Things smoothed out considerably as the fluff cleared from the sky and the buildings in dense cities faded into the background, but if you've got a computer that just barely meets the game's minimum system requirements, don't expect to run the game smoothly with all the graphical settings turned all the way up, unless you actually prefer to watch a slideshow."-Gamespot.com, July 28, 2003Flight Simulator X------------------"The power of this software package is mind boggling. But that power comes at a price. On a system with an Athlon XP 3400+, 2GB RAM, and an Nvidia 7800 video card (certainly not cutting edge but also not unreasonable, particularly for the broader market to whom Microsoft is trying to reach out with Flight Simulator X), with performance options all set fairly low, frame rates averaged about 8 to 14 frames per second."-Gamespot.com, October 16, 2006As the saying goes, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." ;)

I have removed this Borat fellow from the member roster. I have also banned his IP address. I will not tolerate this type of abuse on AVSIM's forum system.