Hi everyone,First off...... this post is not for those that are getting error messages.AMD 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+2 gigs of 533mhz dual channel rameVGA 7950 GT 512Seagate Barracuda 250 gig SATA/PATA HDD32" Samsung Wide Screen monitor (2ms response time - 3000:1 contrast ratio)Are you tired? I am, thats for sure. Since SP1, I have had maybe 20 hours sleep. Anyways, thats not what I wanted to write to you about.I am coming to the realization, that the main problem with FSX is us, the consumer. Everything I am about to mention, I am guilty of also. Many of us, including myself, have spent alot of money for good up-to-date hardware (or so we think) and we are over rating what our hardware can do. Add ignorance or computer illiteracy and we have quite a mix.I have come to this realization after reading just about every post in the forums and played with every tweak listed, that I have over rated the hardware I have. Thus leading me to believe that I should be running everything at max settings to squeeze the max out of FSX which will in turn give me the maximum sim experience. This attitude or way of thinking couldn't be more wrong.I have learn't since the SP1 release that squeezing the max out of FSX will only lead to one big disappointment and not a very good sim experience. The sliders, settings, tweaks, configurations are all there to allow us to get the max out of our HARDWARE. Getting the max out of our HARDWARE, FSX will in fact give us what we all want. Remember, FSX is designed as a platform.Pushing these settings beyond what each indivdual's hardware capabilities are, you can be sure FSX is going to let you know about it. And sometimes that can get us frustrated. Hence, the complaints, the obsession to find that "ultimate sweet spot" beyond what each individual's computer hardware can provide, is like expecting to buy something with an expired credit card.I am currently having the ultimate sim experience, and trust me when I say, the graphics are incredibly sharp and stays sharp, incredibly smooth, no stutters, no errors, no issues of any kind. With the mediocre hardware I have, I am not kidding when I say I am getting an incredible "flight sim experience" which I will explain how that has happened.....With the current hardware I have (listed above), with FSX, and with Tileproxy (photo-realistic satellite images laying over the FSX terrain), and SLIDERS not even close to being near the maximum settings, I am getting the same eye candy as if I was looking out my car window. Alas, VFR fliers, it doesn't get any better right now in this day n age in a flight sim. All of this running incredibly smooth, no stutters either, and no blurries whether it be the terrain or the sky. I resolved that problem today when it dawned on me that I don't need a sweet spot, that there is no need for max slider settings. Terrain tiles are reloading/refreshing fast enough to keep everything nice n sharp. Incredibly smooth also (70fps). I sent a bunch of pictures to friends, and to my folks who barely even know how to operate a computer, and they all called me back asking me how the heck can technology produce something so incredible. They all thought at first that it was real-life aerial photography and I was pulling their leg. It took alot of explanation to tell them how it was possible as they were completely blown away.So again Phil, I cannot thank you and the Aces team enough for providing me, the consumer, with the most incredible experience I have EVER had with flight simulation software !!!! THANKYOU !!!!!I would of uploaded a screenshot of the quality of the flight environment, but the file is too big. Email me, I'll send it to you.

I know it may not seem like it at times, but I *enjoy* the tweaking.

Yep, unfortunately I tweak more than I play LOL!

Right on and Amen. It's true - we have met the enemy, and they are us.After making some small inroads tweaking, I also decided to take a time-out for a short reality check and 'fessed up that my PC isn't any better than anyone else's PC simply because it has parts and configs that I did and not some clueless schmuck. All that TLC still means it's just a PC running (properly) at spec. Not like my car where I can tweak this or that and be a bit quicker than the next guy with the same bone-stock vehicle.So I backed off a few sliders and sure enough, as I lightened the load for FSX to have the headroom to be able to do what it wants to do, it responded. Huge, huge difference in the smoothness, response, and VC panning. Had one of those real "Wow" flights afterwards, where you're muttering to yourself how good everything looks! Lower is better indeed, and when ACES told us they made those sliders so people could adjust for systems which are far down the road - NOT available today - they weren't lying. Why not listen to them. I still agree that's a good call because three years form now when I get a totally hot system I won't need a new sim - the sliders will bring me one. Enjoy your flights and thanks for having the nads to come out and champion the "sliders-left" way of thinking.....

I couldn't agree more. I've seen people call SP1 a failure because sitting at JFK with all sliders maxed they are not getting 50 FPS. I haven't seen 50 fps at JFK since sparking up fs95 a few years ago for s&g's.One option not much touted in FSX is the ability to save your cfg. I've done it with 3 settings, rural, metropolis and city non metropolis. Rural has the highest settings locked at 30, good for around PANC and alaska.I lowered settings for the other 2 until I could fly around at 18-20 and had a good view outside (Denver and Philly). Oddly enough it looks almost as good as the rural setting despite lower settings including bilinear instead of antistropic, scenery complexity is a big fps killer, lowering that a notch or 2 really helped, and AI, mytrafficx ai lowered 10 or 15 % from 35. So when I'm flying in a specific area I'll load up that individual config and not worry about re-tweaking the sliders. I am actually ahead of where I was with FS9 at this point in time (had to fly with god awful low settings), and in a year with new hardware and DX10 performance gains (hopefully) FSX will be usable with all settings maxed. There have been a few who have maxed everything out with the 6800 extreme and 8800GTX so max performance isn't that far off. Ian.

Not everyone considers TileProxy as an option. For me photoscenery without (accurately placed) autogen, doesn't immerse the user. The future in my eyes is what FlightScenery are doing in FZ01 and FZ02. This to me gives the true "ultimate simming experience". Of course opinions vary though.

I have a new wonderful notebook (Toshiba Qosmio, which IS quite strong, except the extreme slow HardDisk - half a minute to a minute to load a mission)and moved all sliders to about 2/3 to 3/4.Smooth moving Pictures, no interrupts, beautiful landscapes, very detailed Panels, and outside views, the Sea even with white foam crowns on top sometimes. The Mirroring of the full moon in the sea is pure beautiful Kitsch.I am happy. Before and after SP1.Only difference is that a small number (when pressing Shift+Z - or was it Ctrl+Z?) is now a litle higher. Who cares? I don't.I just would be happy if I could get the downloaded Planes show up somehow (I opened another thread this morning, but nobody answered by now), and if only I would finaly start to land ON the runways, and not allways besides them :-)Well, I guess I'll stay a good water-plane-pilot for some time :-)One thing which I cannot handle at all is Helicopters. Startet the first Heli-Lesson, and 5 second after it started, before I touched anything the Heli started to tumble around in circles like a wild bull.No way to catch it neither with keyboard nor Logi 3D Force Stick.In general I'd wish the light planes would be a little more stable and not react sooo nervious on a 1/2mm move of the stick or not drop into a full 45 degree curve on a single press of 4 or 6.I think I remeber in a FS some 15 Years ago a press on 5 stabilized every plane into a stable straight and horizontal flight. Well in FSX this doesn't happen. So I fly the big ones and land beside the runways, dashing through fences and other stuff or fly the Water Planes and am happy.

>In general I'd wish the light planes would be a little more>stable and not react sooo nervious on a 1/2mm move of the>stick or not drop into a full 45 degree curve on a single>press of 4 or 6.Have you tried going into the Controls menu and lowering the sensitivity of your stick inputs? When flying form the keyboard it's normal to have control problems because "4" or "6" are constant inputs and will provide continuous aileron input until an opposing key is pressed (or "5" which should neutralize aileron input). Anyway, turn your sensitivities way down and you should find an improvement.As for installing addon planes, seeral things can go wrong and I haven't seen your thread for what the details are so can't comment....

Thank's for Your Suggestions! I'll try it out tonight when I'm home!

Ryan...I bet the majority of those who frequent these forums spend more time than they want on tweaking. There is NO doubt that tweaking is justified when you can't even get your textures to load. That is the biggest snafu. But if/when this is settled (and likely to be different fixes for different folks)... we all ought discipline our selves to 5 to 10 minutes of forums/tweaking for every hour of flying.I am a r/w pilot and also have a technical bent (not computers,however)... and it is so tempting to want to squeeze every last ounce out of the hardware and program... that I look at the clock... its time to move on... and I haven't simply "ENJOYED" the flying experience.Maybe we ought to form a 12 step program and a new organization called "Tweakers Anonymous" and set aside a special forum for weekly support group meetings. Ha! Ha! Steve

>Not everyone considers TileProxy as an option. For me>photoscenery without (accurately placed) autogen, doesn't>immerse the user. >>The future in my eyes is what FlightScenery are doing in FZ01>and FZ02. This to me gives the true "ultimate simming>experience". Of course opinions vary though.>>Fully concur, Max. Even as problematic as it is now, autogen is a major immersion factor along with the meshes, textures and clouds. No at all, or sparse autogen is not an option for me even with the best meshes and realistic textures around. If they learn a way to plant 3D objects in the ground efficiently (one big scenery, no autogen) then only in that case I'll accept no-autogen concept. I wrote already here that passangers and pilots in real life tend to gape at the ground at low altitudes much more than higher up. Your first 10 mins of ascend and final descend from 3000ft is almost all that matters in the flight. And that's when you see the objects of the scenery, that's when autogen kicks in.Dirk.

FSX is a really tough one. In the end, any slider not set to full is a compromise and reduction in feature. It's up on everyone's own likes whether certain settings are acceptable or not.We've 3 core technologies there (Vista, FSX, DX10) waiting for a real power horse of a PC, something which doesn't seem to be available yet (wonder how long it takes until hardware catches up, guess not before one year from now...). So, no one can set all sliders to 100% and get good FPS, that's why this forum is mostly about tweaking and not flying.The bad thing is that when complex add ons like PMDG's MD-11 will appear on the scene, getting acceptable framerates would mean to reduce sim features beyond any reasonable level with today's hardware I fear.It's interesting to see how things will turn out, I'd really like to have FSX back on my drive again, but the computing power it demands are too much for me at the moment (and I doubt there's any hardware around that would suffice it if anyone goes further than using only what's in the box).Andreas

Jim,Your'e so right. Time to stop tweaking. Turn some sliders down a notch and enjoy flying this spectacular FSX. SP1 was a really good arrival. Now I'm waiting for Ground Environment X and Ultimate Terrain X Europe :-)Ulf B

What's interesting (and I think I'll do this for the heckuvit) is what with all the talk about the "b" word 'round here, I haven't seen anyone back off ALL the sliders - and I mean every single last ever-luvin' ONE of 'em - all the way to the left. Make the sim as primitive as possible. And then increase the Texture Resolution to where you have nice, neat, clear textures you like, then go fly around and see if they keep up. If this has been suggested I guess I missed it....it's not possible anymore to keep up with some of the longer posts and I don't come here to read about X-Plane.So what (for testing purposes) if the land is flat with little terrain mesh complexity, or has no autogen, or AI traffic and boats n'stuff, or no advanced animations or aircraft shadows or puffy clouds. Who cares (for this purpose) even if the aircraft textures are blurry since you're in the cockpit. Just test and see if your system can even update scenery tiles at a constant, full pace with everything disabled, and thus eliminating all the other variables. If it can, adjust one slider at a time (justifying which one is the most important to you for each trial) until you find the limit your system can and can't handle. No fair just throwing sliders to the right to see what happens or because you think your system "should" be able to cope with it.Bingo. Ends the discussion of whether the sim can do it or not or if it's simply a case of asking FSX to do too much given the system and OS config it's running on.This doesn't mean you'd have to stay with those settings, but you'd at least know what the limits are or whether your system has a more elemental problem. I'm at least thinking that by doing this I'll gain a few FPS in places I didn't look before, and also, I'm curious because I'm using saved setting files from Pre-SP1. Seems to make sense to start 'er up from scratch.

Hi StoopyI tried it, and it worked! Especially as I took off the powercord from my Logitech force 3D Pro, so turning the force-feedback of.This makes the handling much easier.So thank's again.By the way: Several Flyniki Planes were standing around on Viennas airport :-)