As far as I can see, the main problem is that people do not understand the concept of performance sliders. They have this completely insane idea that it is good to be able to run all the sliders at max, because then they get the "maximum" out of the game. As people with this misconception tend to be a rather loud crowd it forces game developers to silens them by giving them what they think they - out of ignorance - think they want, and everyone who actually know how to operate a slider pays the price. :(Sliders allow you to prioritize what you want the computer to spend it's limited capacity on (and all computers have extremely limited capacity). How do you prioritize when all sliders are at full. And if anyone think "I do not need to prioritize, I am getting all of it" then you are just fooling yourself. You are getting what some programmer at Microsoft decided to put as the maximum level to please the "all sliders at max" crowd. If people would just learn to operate a slider then Microsoft could increase the maximums and actually allow us to configure FS the way we like.

>I agree with you Rhett, totally, however have you seen the>wishlist for FS11 on the thread somewhere above this one?>Yes Chris I saw it, and some of the items on there made me cringe.For example, I can think of 100 things that are more important than "roads you can drive on" for our flight sim.>I put it to you what most want is not only ahead of the curve,>it's off the current page and well down the road to the next>county. All this and exceptional performance as well.>yep agreed>>Personally I buy the best machine I can afford around every 3>years or so, hopefully co-ordinating the purchase with the>release of FS (On to my 7th machine since a PCXT clone in the>mid 80's), and then a mid life upgrade should there be some>exceptional advance in hardware that will make the experience>more realistic. I just see it as the ticket to the game.>For me, here's approximately how I've gone:Apple //e 1986-1991 SubLogic FS2386SX/20 1991-1994 FS4486DX2/66 1994-1997 FS4/FS5.0/FS5.0a/FS5.1P2/266 1997-2000 FS98P2/400 2000-2002 FS2000P4/1.8 2002-2006 FS2002/FS20043700+ 2006- FS2004/FSXRhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

>>>I agree with you Rhett, totally, however have you seen the>>wishlist for FS11 on the thread somewhere above this one?>>>>Yes Chris I saw it, and some of the items on there made me>cringe.>>For example, I can think of 100 things that are more important>than "roads you can drive on" for our flight sim.>That made me cringe too !