Hi Hornit,Read about your reference to the RealAir Spitfire.Some good news -http://www.realairsimulations.com/home.php?page=home"

.. the upgrade:gpu: http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=187312cpu: http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=129605ram: http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=16452mobo: http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=129713p/s: http://www.infonec.com/site/main.php?module=detail&id=10693Not $3000, Alex: that lot above cost me $1458 Canadian. My point being that you absolutely do NOT have to spend $3000 US on a system in order to get the graphics and fps as posted by Chinga, (great shots, by the way) Nick and others - including myself. Comments based upon heresay are nothing more than rhetoric, and serve only to confuse lesser-aware people and to inflame negative input.My sliders are not quite as high as Nick's - I get 24 - 34fps, but the whole experience is much closer to the MS vision - "As Real as it Gets", than FS9 ever was. I just need my DF 727, FS Passengers and FS Nav. I have the Spit and a few other "lovebirds" installed - and I have no regrets about spending that money. It's the money I didn't spend on golf, on a two-week vacation, on 18 months' worth of beer. It's the difference between a Corolla and a Camry. I probably spend two hours a night on that machine; I'm 61 and I think I'm worth it. My wife, too.. .and I love it.

I agree with Paul. I jsut built my new computer (only thing I skimped on was not getting the Core2 Extreme) and I built the whole system for $2200 Canadian. And that's including case, pwr supply, everything. It's not hard to find cheap computer parts, you jsut gotta know where to look. I'm happy I spent that much too, FS is worth it

It is not just about the looks of the addons, it is the features. They have usualy have better gauges and an arguably better flight model.But here is a side by side comparison of the default B58 in FSX and the Dreamfleet B58 in FS9 virtual cockpits.Default in FSX....http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/46/fsxb582st4.jpgDreamfleet in FS9....http://img482.imageshack.us/img482/5802/fs9b582cv8.jpgYou decide.Ron

My message to all who don't have the ability or "where-with-all" to enjoy FSX......WAH...........WAH............WAH........C'mon, get with the program. The flight models and the upcoming enhancements are well worth the little bit of aggravation you seem to be suffering.Am I sympathetic....not in the least.Keep reading the great reviews and fun we are having, and I'll keep enjoying your envy.Sorry to be "inflaming" you, but that's the way I feel. Every day and in every way, I'm enjoying my new sim. FS9 is but a memory! Long live FSX, and I'll be the first to buy a new computer for FSXI or FS11. My hobby and enjoyment will NOT be denied.

Seems to me that there are alot of people who shop at the dollar store in this forum.

"Fsx is the first time I've actually felt like I am taking off and landing in a real plane in the FS series-in years. The riding on rails feeling is gone-the sliding around on the runway is gone, stability is there in flight allowing precise altitude control,and true xwind landings and feelings of ground effect are there." - The above quote from Geofa is one of the most important posts I have read so far on FSX. While I have several thousand hours flying in FS and many hundreds of hours flying as a passenger on commercial aircraft, the reality is that I have never flown an real plane or even on a small private aircraft. Knowing that the sim is close to the feeling of flying the real thing is an achievement of FSX.Now on the performance side I am running FS9 and FSX on a P4 2.8 machine with an ATI 9800 pro 128meg video card. Certainly not top of the line by any means, yet with the tweaks and sliders reasonably set I am getting acceptable performance and enoying the sim. The only thing I am really sacrificing is AI but I am mostly flying on Vatsim so who cares. My strategy all along was to buy a computer about a year after release, I am sure by then we will be getting more than acceptable performance from FSX + all of our favourite addons.Mark.

According to the packaging, it seems that MS has different ideas about what they consider the necessary hardware to run this glop of code!

>wow you people are insulting on your ivory towers. I'm glad>you all have current top of the line computers to run FSX>without big framerate drops with DEFAULT settings.>>Unfortunately, the only thing I've said about FSX is all this>happiness for FSX running well is all with "default scenery">"default textures" and "default aircraft" and zero AI traffic.>Ontop of that, you have to spend over 3 thousand dollars just>to get this performance.>>I never doubted the future of FSX, CFS3 was a great game with>great potential but performance issues and some glaring bugs>kept it from being popular. I believe FSX is heading down the>same road unless MS reacts ASAP.i do believe we are not being insulting. I believe that this is basically a case of "penis envy". Are you ######? Jealous? that we have top of the line hardware? That FSX runs good on our systems? As far as default settings...i am Not running default settings...i have pretty much everything maxed. AI? I am also running commercial and ga ai at 35%. Far cry from none. And guess what? i didnt spend 3 housand dollars for this system. I'm willing to bet you have spent more on add-ons for FS9 to make it look ALMOST as good as FSX as i did for this system.

Sorry for the repeat but i just have to say it again...my post got buried in the middle somewhere. I didn't start this thread thinking it would turn into what it has..but as long as it has.........i do believe we are not being insulting. I believe that this is basically a case of "penis envy". Are you ######? Jealous? that we have top of the line hardware? That FSX runs good on our systems? As far as default settings...i am Not running default settings...i have pretty much everything maxed. AI? I am also running commercial and ga ai at 35%. Far cry from none. And guess what? i didnt spend 3 thousand dollars for this system. I'm willing to bet you have spent more on add-ons for FS9 to make it look ALMOST as good as FSX as i did for this system.My whole intention of this thread was to say that i am very happy with FSX and that it CAN run good given an up to date system. Thx to the forum members who actually saw this post for what it was and not turning it into a "my dad can kick your dad's #### thread"

Last weekend I spoke to a member of the MS Aces Team.The whole team finds that the minimum requirements on the box are rediculous !But it is the MS marketing department that decides what minimum specs you need.....

Fundamentally there are 2 types of people, FS9 people - happy with the present, safe people, take less risks, once they happy with something they keep (i.e. job, relationship), grass is greener beneath my feetFSX people - willing to take a risk, have faith in potential of something, look to the future, grass is greener across the river.Not knocking Fs9 but basically it's time has come and gone , it's at the latter end of it's bell curve and will fulfill the demands of many, problem is fs9 now, is near enough fs9 in two years time not much change. FSX now is in its infancy and will not reflect what it will become.I know people who stick with Win98 and Word 6.0 and that

>I see nothing wrong with showing the result on high end PCs.>Those are the standard of tomorrow.I agree, the sliders are there because it was designed with future hardware in mind. The midrange of the sliders is generally the midrange of computers at the time of release. I still can't run Half-Life 2 with settings maxed, it stutters, sound skips, and eventually crashes with inadequate memory errors. In fact, I haven't been able to run any game with it's graphics settings full out since about 2004.I run a 32.GHZ with 1536MB of RAM and a nVidia GeForce4 Ti4100 with 128MB of RAM. I get about 10-15fps with sliders maxed in FS9, and about 2fps with them maxed in FSX. I figure as I slowly upgrade my system, I'll be able to move the sliders up a little more each time with FSX.Just my thought on the matter.----------------------------------------------------------------John MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private ASEL 141.2 hrs, 314 landings, 46 inst. apprs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach

Thanks for stepping up with a realistic point of view, JohnM. It was my prescient feeling that my old P3.2/2gig/ATI1600XTPro couldn't do justice to a brand-new Flight Simulator. Just as you pointed out with your 3.2 - I've also not been able to run games like "Far Cry", Call of Duty., etc., fully maxed out for a long time. In fact - on an even earlier pc - I remember buying "Battlefield 1942" and being just about unable to run it. I shelved it, swallowed the Can$75, and eventually gave it away. I don't understand how one could reasonable expect MS to put out a new sim which would run "adequately" on our older technology pc's. It's unfortunate that when people's expectations - no matter how irrelevant, unrealistic or ridiculous they may be - are not met, there is a move to complain, and to complain loud and long to anyone who will listen. OK - enough -this is all getting too boring - I gotta go flyin'.

>>Not knocking Fs9 but basically it's time has come and gone ,>it's at the latter end of it's bell curve and will fulfill the>demands of many, problem is fs9 now, is near enough fs9 in two>years time not much change. FSX now is in its infancy and will>not reflect what it will become.>:-rollyes, the age of high framerates with detailed addons, and the idea of addon scenery with custom ground textures, among other things, HAS come and gone, as long as the cheerleaders jump on the FSX bandwagon and believe in hype rather than reality