Results: FlyII on flat panel iMac

[Guest jrewing]

Hey everyone,My wife finally got out of the house and away from her new flat panel iMac long enough for me to test out FlyII on it.The short answer: under MacOS 9.2.2, FlyII produced FPS on the iMac were about the same as on my G4/450 with the stock ATI Rage card. The screen seemed a little smoother, but that was purely subjective. The frame rates in the Flyhawk, with complex scenery turned on, building and aircraft shadown turned off, was 3 to 8 FPS, depending on altitude.Hardware Configuration700MHz PowerPC G4256K L2 cache @ 700 MHz512MB SDRAMOperating SystemMacOS 9.2.2FlyII version - 2.0.216FlyII assigned 350 Mb memoryGraphics Options:Rendering: OpenGLGeforce MX/AGP 11024x76832 bits/pixelVideo memory: more than 32MbThe loading time, once the splash screen appeared, was approximately 1 minute and 35 seconds - about the same as my G4.For my simple test, I departed Oakland, flew over the East Bay Hills, then set a cloud deck at 800' with tops at 3000' and shot the OAK ILS 27R approach. The results were comparable to my G4 in every respect - acceptably smooth frame rates, but not exactly what I would call realistic. Again, the screen seemed a little smoother to me on the iMac. Not sure why.When I get the chance, I'll try FlyII under MacOS X. Can anyone point me to the patch that was released for FlyII under MacOS X?Cheers,John

[Guest Allan Jones]

John,Here's where the patch hides:http://www.ina-support.com/faq/fly2downloads_mac.aspThanks for the report!

[Guest jrewing]

Thanks Allan!Maybe I can check out the performance under MacOS X tomorrow, while my wife is out working in the garden and away from her machine! ;-)John

[Guest ftessler]

John,I'd be suprised if Fly! II's performance doesn't suffer under OS X.In general, how do you like the new iMac? I didn't like the design when I first saw it from a distance, but it grew on me (pardon the pun) up close.-Franklin------------------------------Franklin TesslerG4/500Fly! for Mac Forum Co-moderator

[Guest jrewing]

Hey Franklin,The flat panel iMac is a very nice machine and the proof is that my wife won't let me touch it! ;-)When I took it out of the box I could tell that it was a well-made design. You can grab it by the display arm, pick it up, and you don't hear any creaking or rattling. It feels very solid and has a clean look.The display is clear (text and color) and has no dead pixels that I can see. The adjustablity of the display is a big improvement over putting old phone books under a 65lb or heavier monitor.The speakers have a remarkably good sound - I immediately noticed this when running Fly and when playing music CDs. How they get the bass response out of such a small speaker is a mystery to me.The keyboard is okay. The mouse ... well, it sucks. Neither of these were an issue as my wife uses a Kinesis keyboard and a Kensington trackball mouse, both ADB devices, hooked up using the Belkin ADB/USB adapter. She just plugged it all in and it worked.My only gripe is that the iMac keyboard has a dedicated key you press to open the CD/DVD ROM drive and there's no other way to open the drive that I have found. She's not using the standard keyboard so she either has to plug in the standard keyboard or always keep a disc in the drive so she can eject it using the finder and insert another disc.The speed of the machine is quite good - a huge improvement of her old 8500 with a G3 upgrade card. She's using MS Office for X, Entourage for email, and MS Exploder 5.1. It all runs very well and her classic apps work fine, too.When I set the machine up for her, I told her she'd have to start using MacOS X (a small lie). I was surprised at how quickly she adapted to the new UI.So far the iMac seems well-designed, reliable, fast, and nice to look at. All in all, we're very pleased with it - and we got it before the price increases were announced. What's not to like?John