Nice post Maurice. I couldn't have said it better myself.Scott

Maurice, I believe I spent a total of perhaps 2 hours tweaking. What's so hard about that? I can fly now on a midrange machine. Not a machine of the future. What's the difference if MS gives you a batch file or some kind inventive FS fan provides one for you. Apparently your time must be very valuable if you don't have the couple of hours to tweak. I'll even make it easy and free for you. Here ya go. http://www.fox-fam.com/wordpress/?page_id=41 Of course if you don't have the time to download and apply the tweaks perhaps you can get your butler to do it for you. Kindest regards, Craig

No need to be nasty Craig - one could similarly call you a servant of MS ;-)I've tried the major tweaks and they make no noticable difference for me. It only took a cloud tweak to make FS9 work most sliders right on my average hardware of the day. Not so this time, the performance rot is extensive enough and I've wasted enough time tweaking that this sim has been relegated to FS GA in the boondocks until a suitable patch is released.Gary

Your problem was your expectations exceeded your processor. I'm sure you've seen enough posts by now the the biggest complainers are the ones with the newest CoreDuo processors. I've added a total of 2 tweaks. Cloud texture size Frame Fiber No big problems with a lowly AMD64 3500 512K cache

Well, Maurice, you bring up some good points. I agree with a lot of what you say, but some of it varies from the point I think you're trying to get across, making it difficult to follow at times.I suppose if you don't want to spend the time reading about tweaking the system, you could just stop reading forum posts. My purpose in posting what I did about Captain Sim's 757 was to alert potential buyers of a critical problem with that add-on that I doubt will be resolved any time soon. I didn't want to get into a discussion about FSX per se. But it seems that you do since it's something you want to fly right now, have it meet your system's capabilities, and enjoy it for a couple of years. Apparently you've forgotten just three years ago when Century of Flight came out. Going from 2002 to 2004 required a number of tweaks, many in fact, of the fs9.cfg to accommodate scenery, mesh and terrain add-ons, then purchasing much faster video cards and processors to handle the additional frame rate requirements necessitated by new gauge technology and increasing panel complexity. Add to that, a flight dynamics engine that made it far more difficult to design aircraft capable of replicating the military jet envelope (FS2002 did it much better), and you have a "new" flight simulator program that had every bit as many idiosyncrasies that needed tweaking as FSX has. Frankly, more.I don't mind that part of it. There's a trade-off in everything, and here it seems that eye candy is what the customer base prefers. There's not a developer that won't agree that that is the way Microsoft decided to go with this version. We can hope that Vista and DirectXv10 coming out publicly in January will alleviate some of the frame rate issue, but I think most knowledgeable people aren't holding their breath. It's still going to be a case of hardware, hardware, hardware. Interesting that MS has entered into all sorts of "partnerships" in there new entertainment business model. I personally know a well-known vendor who's a Microsoft partner and to hear him tell it...well, it's just the tip of the iceberg.Well, I seemed to have veered off course here. I apologize. But I hope it points out that most of us are not that dissimilar in our points of view. We all want a good product, AND we get pretty exasperated (a nice way of saying ######) when a vendor promises and then grossly under-delivers.Finally, the crowning insult of all is contained in Microsoft's oft viewed television commercial wherein the announcer, after touting the beautiful realistic flight environment, has the audacity to say, and I paraphrase, "Thank you, Microsoft developers!" I'm even cringing right now as a write this. Argh!!Cheers,Bart BartholomayDeacontg272

Well, before my C2D I had an A64 3700+, 2G RAM and X800XT, and it ran about half as fast as what I get on my new rig, so I've been there with an average rig too and it stunk even worse.The FS series reminds me of doing the limbo. Each version the (performance) bar gets lower and we rebaseline ourselves to think that the newest low bar level is OK and we can go a little lower next time. Look to your left and right and other games are doing the high jump instead. Eventually, one gets sick of scrambling under the bar and just wants to soar with the others. FSX is the one that has stopped me wanting to scrape my a$$ on the ground! Sorry, but that's just the way I feel.Gary

With all due respect, Gary, with your system as described, you couldn't have tried all the tweaks and have it not make any difference. My systems isn't that much different than yours (we can compare backchannel if you like) and I default to 19-24 fps for most aircraft and scenery, except for the real high density airports like O'Hare.As I mentioned, the Captain Sim 757 took that down to 3.5 fps under all circumstances.Back to the tweaking. I lock my frame rates at 26 to free up more processor availability for loading of scenery. I was getting around 10-12 fps prior to tweaking. I think what I did worked, don't you? I will say that a part of this tweaking included using UltimateDefrag from DiskTrix, Robert Ferraro's company (he publishes ComputorPilot). It works. And then the tweaks to the fsx,cfg, of which there were about 6 I think, were the only things I did. My sliders are above middle, not maxed, but very adequate. I'm reasonably happy at this point. I'll wait until Vista and DirectX 10 come out and see how those affect what I see. If I see what I'm being told to expect, I may just opt to upgrade to another computer for flying the sim. Bart BartholomayDeacontg272

Bart,For the record, I have tried or considered the following:1. Rename default.xml - marginal performance boost, pre-FS9 like autogen = NOGO2. AutogenDescriptions range tweak - neglible performance boost, major reduction in autogen variety = NOGO3. FSX.CFG tweaks to reduce autogen and trees per cell - neglible performance boost, much less auto gen = NOGO4. Autogen texture coversion - very mandraulic to change and I have a 512M video card, so what would this really benefit me = PASS5. Cloud texture reduction - clouds actually have minimal impact on FSX performance for me, so why bother = PASSAbout this point I gave up tweaking and settled back to my FS9 + every addon under the sun at 40 FPS for the most part.I'm sure someone will point out a later tweak that will maybe give me at least a little boost, but I've spent too many hours tweaking and not enough flying. This is where my strong feelings of MS needing to step in with a patch are coming from. I don't think this is entirely unreasonable, do you?Gary

Hmmm why does FSX work well for so many of us. Are we just special.:) Oh well to bad FSX does not work for you there is a lot of help to be found. If it to much of a bother then please put the sim away come back in a year. Help will still be here.

Holy cow... I've got a thread going on that subject and it is getting pretty interesting.How does telling someone to come back in a year really help solve the problem? How does attacking one another help anything?The reason that FSX works well for some and crap for other is because it is poorly designed and is in need of obvious fixes. It's no secret... even Phil Taylor has 'admitted' that ACES are currently reviewing 'perf' related issues... so there is something more to it than meets the eye. I think that Gary is right. FSX needs a fix, that it is more than simply changing some sliders in the right direction or tweaking the config... it requires changes to the way in which the code is executing on substantially differing hardware platforms.Trust me, since this game came out I think I've flown the exact same 5 minute flight a couple of hundred times in an effort to benchmark the effect of tweaking my system and FSX itself. In all of those hours, I've yet to find a meaningful answer, the only thing I am sure of is that FSX is not doing what its supposed to.As for whether or not people are truly happy with FSX, who cares. The fact that so many people on such a wide range of hardware are having mixed results and bad performance shows that there is something not quite right. You can't knock it down to the fact that FSX is designed for nextgen hardware either, because it was designed on DX9 equipment and released to a dx9 market... it uses dx9 shaders and runs XP optimized code.... one would expect that it would work well on an XP DX9 based system if it were indeed a fairly high end system.... and that the release of the true DX10 update would render this sim as being NextGen, while it's performance struggles on any XP/DX9 based system. But for now, it's a DX9 world, the box says DX9, I expect it to work. All I've gotten from this sim is either fluid dynamics or nice scenery, not both.If a developer is truely going to write software for NextGen equipment, they should get hardware backing to develop on, as well as any other infrastructure (vista, dx10) that they may need. Before FSX came out, DX10 wasn't finished or even fully debugged. Graphics drivers for Vista were very poor, and even Vista itself was unfinished. The screenshots that are available around the web showing the difference between FSX in both DX9 and DX10 modes are artist renditions, not actual screen captures. ACES hadn't written a single line of code for DX10 at FSX release date...... so how could this release be considered as being an advanced piece of software for next years powerhouses?!?!?! Normally a developer releases advanced code for exotic platform changes when those platform changes are solidifies... he does not write a line of code based on theoretical API calls that don't actually exist or can't actually test them. Seriously.... the copy of FSX you have in your hand is built on XP for DX9, simple as that. So why can't it run properly across multiple hardware configurations? Because it was poorly tested. Bottom line, FSX is flawed, not everyone is going to be song and dance... get used to it.

Well FTD, My gameboy has long been sold to you. But if you choose not to read this forum in its entirety thats not my problem either. I have argued valid ideas and or opinions in tons of other post. I don't need to start here. Basically what I'm saying is that this version of Flight Sim can go directly to the dollar store now. Think about it. 4 years of development by the biggest software corp out there and we still have stupid cart bugs and the like. We still have alomost all the same issues as before. And sorry my Vista RC1, AMD 64 X2 4200+ OC, 4 gigs of ram and X1900 GTX 512 card can't run FSX, It actually can better then most. You really don't here me complaining about it not working. I complain about the fact that here we have a developer that openly admits to making something for hardware 2 years down the road. I don't know where you live but here in the US thats called just plain stupid. Imagine what FS9 would be if they spent 2 years out of that 4 improving that sim. And not leaving us hang for another half hearted , atempt at shutting us up for another 4 years.

For those of you who think I'm lazy or who claim they only spent a couple of hours to tweak and 'graciously' offer to help me with those 'trivial' tweaks, I've got news for you. I am in the process of buiding a full Boeing 737 flight deck with a full complement of excellent PM software and I have also built a fully functional replica of a 737 throttle assembly including servos to control the throttles & the spoilers deployment. I'm also an IT professional and I spend a lot of time working with buggy applications. Your trivial 2 hour tweaks would still produce a slide show for me.So, fire away if you wish, but all I can tell you is that I have never worked with an application where the vendor tells you it's not going to work well right away, or it's kind of working with some tweaks, or not all the advertised features are functional with current hardware, or it will work very well in a few years after the developers get their act together etc...etc...At any rate, I wasn't really talking about my 'problems', but simply implying the obvious, namely that this product should never have been released in its present state without at least a fair warning for the millions of people who will buy FSX now while dreaming of being 'real pilots'. And for the not so 'enlightened' people who are not able or not knowledgeable enough to figure out how to make this product usable, those same developers that are praised in the commercials could have made it a lot easier for the less fortunate & clever ones. 'Good job, developers'!

With all due respect, I agree with Gary. I have also tried the 'tweaks' and they make very little difference.Glenn

Yes, some people report the very same. I think there are so many purported tweaks floating around out there that some combinations of them are making a difference and some just don't. One thing I've found that does make quite a difference given the size and fragmentation of my RAID 0 drives is moving all the FSX files to the outside of the tracks and keeping them there. This can be done with programs such as Ultimate Defrag from DiskTrix.Bart BartholomayDeacontg272

>For those of you who think I'm lazy or who claim they only>spent a couple of hours to tweak and 'graciously' offer to>help me with those 'trivial' tweaks, I've got news for you. I>am in the process of buiding a full Boeing 737 flight deck>with a full complement of excellent PM software and I have>also built a fully functional replica of a 737 throttle>assembly including servos to control the throttles & the>spoilers deployment. I'm also an IT professional and I spend a>lot of time working with buggy applications. Your trivial 2>hour tweaks would still produce a slide show for me.Maurice -I agree with the last part of your post (not quoted here). You hit the nail on the head.But the tone of the first part of your post? Is it really productive? Are we to be impressed by the term IT professional? Or that you are one of countless numbers of hobbyists building wanna-be cockpits? You want respect for these things? The IT professionals I deal with everyday in my work have no leg up on understanding the FS9 or FSX engine and what makes it tick, even if they've been flight simming for years. I suspect that you probably do know what you want and how to best get it working on your systems, but leave the "pay heed to what I say because I'm and IT building a cockpit" at the door. You might find that others here have experience that would leave yours in the dust.ciao!Bart BartholomayDeacontg272