Well, as much as I love FSX I am really having a lot of issues with the multiplayer.First and foremost, I absolutely cannot host a multiplayer session. Why? No idea, I have been working with comcast to fix this to no avail. Been searching all forums, my firewall ports are all unblocked... I just can't figure it out. When I host a session nobody can talk to each other and I lag out really bad... which is odd because I ping 50/MS with no loss when I ping against www.google.com in the CMD prompt. I blame comcast, they truly have terrible service but the other issues in FSX multiplayer leave me with my head scratching and questioning if it is truly my ISP.Second issue, I constantly get disconnected. Change to a different room? Gone. Leave a session? Gone. Sneeze? Gone. This isn't so bad when changing rooms, but when I get disconnected from a multiplayer game I get quite frustrated... especially when I am on final with 500 feet to go!VOIP? Forget it. This is such a mixed bag. Sometimes it works brilliantly, then again there are times that I am getting a nice 100 or less ping and all you hear is "Can you repeat your last...m...age" *shrugs*Gamespy. Don't get me started. The should rename it to Gamespyware.I attempted to fly tonight with Geoff. Things started off good, then BAM, we got hit like a ton of bricks. We couldn't talk to each other, and when we did it was either 10 seconds ago that I asked if he could hear me or I can't hear anything but sss-tu-tter-s. We switch controls between each other, nothing happens... switch again... still waiting for the message. OK, I SEE IT! We switch controls, I get the aircraft, take off then 20 seconds later he has control of the aircraft again, then me, then him, then me...? What the heck?I may be alone in this, but I doubt it. Is anyone else having these problems? It is really quite frustrating. I really feel like I am not going to waste any more time on multiplayer if it continues to act up like this.

Yup, I feel your pain buddy. I have a rock solid high speed cable connection, and its still a mixed bag. Ping, and framerates on both ends can really garble everything up. In an odd way you're sort of lucky it doesn't work though. When it does sometimes it can be even worse. ;) Too many people have no idea what their actual tail number is, as set by aircraft selection, or just make up random ones as they go. A few don't even know which aircraft they're flying, haha.Been controlling for awhile now, IFR, and it's mostly great, but there's invariably some yahoo, almost always in an Extra 300, who refuses to use voice, and that isn't put off by 1 mile visibility and snow, determined to pester everyone he can get within range of. Aces...we could really use a "boot player" function in there.That said though, when the voip works, and I get a crew of pilots up there who know their stuff, wow, it's a surreal experience, I love it. They really make controlling enjoyable, no matter how hectic it gets.And I have to say, in my experience so far, mad props to all the Aussie and Kiwi pilots out there from this canuck controller. You guys are uniformly friendly, reliable, polite, and extremely good fliers. I can throw hurricanes at you guys and you always seem to manage it. Cheers!

I just tried multiplayer for the first time tonight. The experience was much better than I expected. There are some really good ATC controllers online. Combine them with the other pilots/aircraft and it definitely adds another dimension of realism to FSX. The experience could have been much better if it wasn't for the voice communication "break up" issues and some lag. For a short while voices would come in clear but much of the time it was moderate to severely broken speech. In fact I was hitting up the forums this evening to look for solutions when I can across your post. So, all though you are having more issues than most, I feel your pain on the voice communication issue. Hopefully, in the coming months, that can be improved whether by ourselves or with the help of MS and Gamespy.-Thad

When I saw the gamespy logo I was terrified. GSPY was a really great program, but calling it gamespyware is closer to the reality now. I personally have used "all seeing eye" and it seems as though it has bulked up. Im not sure if we can use another type of hosting program, perhaps something more behind the scenes, not commercial software yet... but that would be great. Why is it that some great programs seem to go drastically downhill as they become more popular?? Gamespy was used back when I was playing quake online (1998-1999), and counterstrike (2001), but I downloaded it about a year ago, even then it was horrible. Also, I do believe when I had it running it was using about 30 megs of ram, somehow - and those banner ads downloading might be stealing some bandwidth...hahaha.d- -

As another poster mentioned in a great post in the tips and tricks forum, there are several things you can do to improve your multiplayer voice experience. Aces really should have run the voice system through ventrilo or something equally clear and reliable, or made it possible to offload all sound processing to a second core.CPU overload seems to be the biggest killer when it comes to voice clarity. There just doesn't seem to be enough free cycles for most people's systems to handle the extra load of voice comms. If flying IFR, definitely bring all the sliders left and kill the autogen, not like you're going to see much of it anyway. I've also found that turning off Vsync helps. Basically anything that can induce a stutter can kill your voice clarity. Tested this out my first night controlling, with all my visual settings maxed. If I looked out the window while talking my voice quality was terrible. If I stared at the floor of the tower (track-ir), it was crystal clear.And the poster was right in stating that it is most important for the controller to keep his or her cpu load down. When I'm controlling now, even on my core2duo, all sliders are full left except weather, so at least I can see what the pilots are having to deal with. Controllers also need to find the sweet spot of what their connections can handle number of aircraft wise. For my cable ten to twelve is about the limit.

Well I hope you guys are reporting the multiplayer problems to [email protected]'m reporting every problem I see.Regards,SD

Yep -I see the same problems you do. When I can connect to a session, the VOIP works well. But, as you've found, switching rooms, etc. quits you out.I'm also frustrated that when trying to find a person (on the left lower side), the constant logins/logouts by people continue to cycle the list back to the top...JerryG

Oooh, yeah... nearly forgot that. VERY annoying. Was trying to find someone last night in a session and had to scroll numerous times after it reset me back to the top. One step forward, two back it seemed like.