After having read most of the posts here, I have formed the opinion that FSX still has a long way to go before the bugs and teething troubles are ironed out.Perhaps MS should have done some of that work more thoroughly before releasing this sim.Things in general are simple:Either the product is finished or it is not. This one is far from finished, I believe, as a lot of its working parts are not working properly.I will personally give it at least 8 months before I fly in it regularly and discard FS9.

An extra Gig of Ram and a few tweaks from the Avsim forums, have given me a beautiful looking and smooth sim. A real bonus is the greater accuracy of the flight modelling.AMD 4600+ dual coreTwo GT7800 in SLI2 Gig RamRay Keattch

* Smoother, denser and more lively (not kiddding)* Improved view (learn some new keybord shortcuts like the combination of the "s" and "a" key an the space and space hold!), easily select nearest tower etc., move around in the VC, no need for Active Camera.* Improved Force Feedback (No need for FS Force)* Head latency* At least I get a better overall sense of flying (not qualified, but still)* Much better autogen (although I hope GE Pro for FSX will provide better colors)* Working pushback truck and luggage truck for the airliners* Improved ATCI could go on for a long time but I have to sleep now! Every time I fly FSX some new cewl stuff shows up. I was a bit sceptic at first, but that was mainly because I had to reduce too many settings in the demo. After 2 hours of tweaking and one extra gig memory I got a very smooth sim.Yes there are problems, I'm having serious trouble with water textures at dusk/dawn (another post), but my first time with fs9 was worse. Much worse!Friendly advice coming: Give it one gig ram and some care, and you'll love it! If in doubt, take a flight at dusk with the Goose :-)Eagle

Name one sim that upon release was "finished".How many "benchmark" sims needed to be pathced bigtime before reaching their potential?

FINALLY! An actual opinion posted on the subject....migod it's about time!This place has simply been awash in a mess of tips, tricks, details, facts, support, specifications, help, anecdotes and documented functionalities of the new sim. This is now so refreshing to see. It was getting so you couldn't see the forest from the trees what with all the dependable and reliable information flying around between amicable, adult users who share a common interest!At last the worm has turned, and now perhaps the community can begin to benefit from the fruits of rumor, innuendo, insults, personal beliefs, rushed judgements, posturing, and even subjective, unfounded statements.Like you, I don't own the sim either yet, so this kind of firsthand information is surely appreciated while I wait for it to show up. Good on ya! :-wave

You form an opinion on FSX based on a few posts?Maybe you should do the intelligent thing and actually have a go at the sim before you arrive at any conclusion about it. imho it has fewer bugs than FS9 did when it was released.James

:-lol Very good!Gary

There were an enormous amount of bugs and errors in the first demo. This was worrying and I half expected to see most of the bugs in the retail. But in fact most of them were fixed in the second demo.I have ten items in my FSX bug list. It's actually smaller than my list for FS2004. All flight simulators have bugs. In a sense no flight simulators are ever 'finished'.But in my opinion FSX is an excellent product and I have few complaints about bugs and errors (but one or two are quite serious and I certainly hope they will be fixed in forthcoming patches).Overall I am *very* happy with FSX and I certainly have no reason to go back to FS2004. I think Microsoft have dome a great job.Best regards, Chris

I agree on the great job! Naturally there are a few problems but eventually they should be taken care of. I was a little irked when mine locked up so that I had to do a complete reinstall, but since I have done that it seems to run better than it did before.:)

HERETIC!!INFIDEL!!:-lol----------------------------------------I'm not a beta tester, and I certainly don't pay for the 'privilege'. Software should run smoothly on release ;).Tweaking?! Should I tweak a commercial product before it's fit for use? ;)

>HERETIC!!>>INFIDEL!!>>:-lol>>---------------------------------------->I'm not a beta tester, and I certainly don't pay for the>'privilege'. Software should run smoothly on release ;).>>Tweaking?! Should I tweak a commercial product before it's>fit for use? ;)Hehehe - 2 guys that dont total 50 posts between them :-) - How can they possibly contradict so many "experts":-lol

I agree with Ray. My PC has 1 less 7800 but 1 more GB of ram.I'm new to general aviation sims, being a big fan of combat flight sims for many many years.I've got my Cougar, I've got my TrackIR, I've got my FSX and I've applied my tweaks. I just flew a flight around Seattle in the Red Bull plane with graphic settings and autogen maxxed (with traffic turned off) and was rarely dipping below 25fps but mostly around the 40fps mark in wet weather.Load up another config with plenty of traffic and less autogen and still have 25+fps for long haul flights.I'm shopping for a bigass LCD TV to double as a PC monitor so I can have a 40" FSX experience. Kudos to Aces. Never thought I'd be this hooked on a flight sim that didn't have me shoot down or blow up something.

Maybe the announcement of the New Nvidia 8800 series video cards will provide some relief for some of FSX's performance whoes , not to mention the Avsim's forums:) I'm also quite possitive that Vista and DX10 and the ensuing patch will provide even further relief.Unfortunately like every MSFS before it we are gonna really have to pay to play this lastest Flight Sim in all its glory , or atleast the closest most of us will be able to get to it.Best Wishes,Cybersimmer

>You form an opinion on FSX based on a few posts?>>Maybe you should do the intelligent thing and actually have a>go at the sim before you arrive at any conclusion about it.>JamesEXACTLY!Regards, MichaelKDFW

Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI-x16 / AMD

"..Tweaking?! Should I tweak a commercial product before it's fit for use? ..." Are you saying that FSX is "not fit for purpose"? Perish the thought!! I agree that it needs a "root and branch" overhaul. The developers need to "think outside the box" and "take a helicopter view" of the situation, employ "joined up thinking", "incentivise" the team to "bring it up to the next level". Be "proactive" for a "user-centric" "solution"!