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I can confirm that unplugging a controller causes a CTD. I've reproduced it with two different controllers. Both from the menus and in-flight. Hopefully this should be easy enough for MS to reproduce and fix. If only I knew how to report the issue.

I bought an 1000HE a couple of weeks ago and can report FSX does indeed work at about 10 fps. Its doable for some casual flying while you're away from the desktop. You cannot run SP2 on it however because of the requirement for SM2.0 shaders or some such. FSX SP1 works fine however.

I have to vent here too. I've tried to be patient. But after finally downloading, now I can't get the wrapper to validate (connection timeouts). I tried the manual validation and it told me I have exceeded my number of validations!!!! :( Honestly, I can see a few issues with a release but this is a whole new level. My only advice for anyone thinking about purchasing REX, don't do it. Wait and save yourself some frustration. Chances are you won't be able to use it for a while anyway.Don

>Do you have Ultimate 32 or 64 installed ? Unfortunately the>Dakota isn't 64 bit compatible (yet?).>>Heiko>I'm running Vista Ultimate 32.

I bought the Dakota last week and have absolutely no problems. I'm running it in FSX SP2 on Vista. The Dakota is one of the smoothest, most professional, highest quality aircraft I have ever purchased. As Geof mentioned, check on the Dreamfleet forums and I'm sure you'll get the help you need.Don

Another possibility is to use just use a game pad. I sometimes use an old Microsoft Sidewinder game pad with tilt sensing.Don

Well assuming (since he said "this guy") that its an AI plane, the AI should flip the plane to IFR mode (since it autolands anyway) and let it land. Or the AI could divert it to another airport. A little testing and a few lines of code would have fixed yet another small bug that would have made FSX seem more like a quality product rather than yet another game that was rushed out the door to make the Christmas sales list.Since I'm speaking ill of FSX and that's not allowed here I'll add my disclamer that I actually like FSX and enjoy it more than any other version. I just wish it would have been tested better and continued to be patched rather than abandoned.Don

Another thing you might consider is driver updates. I haven't followed ATI but Nvidia has not had an official updated driver for its 8 series for almost 3 months, which is unprecedented. I don't understand Nvidia's logic on that decision and I don't like it at all. I have an 8800GT that I bought in January that now seems to be abandoned. If you are into installing hacked drivers it may not be a problem, otherwise it is something to think about.

Ha! Eaglesoft's google page rank will probably go up if you release that one. Its good to see all of the humor in these posts!

I appreciate that products want to let us customers know that their thing works with FSX, but my head is spinning:FSX, UTX, GEX, ASX, FTX, FEX...I'm sure I've missed more. And is Ultimate Traffic for FSX also UTX? Oh crud, we also have the Citation X but that one's real. Maybe I should switch to Mac OSX too :(Don

The 174.16 drivers are on the official Nvidia site for series 9 cards. So what's up with that? What happened to the "unified" driver approach? Does this mean that my 2 month old 8800GT is now obsolete and drivers for it have been relegated to the backburner? Maybe ATI hasn't lost the war after all if they can continue to support their cards while Nvidia can't. These kind of shenanigans by Nvidia will definitely make me think more about my next purchase.

Have you checked the windows performance monitor to see if windows is unloading a bunch of memory to the page file when this happens? That would be my guess.

I'd be willing to bet that most causes of stuttering (and many more evil symptoms) happen to those of us with _only_ 2GB of memory. I was having stuttering and pauses and finally correlated it to paging by the system. I've just switched to a fixed size page file on a different drive and so far it seems like it might have helped. I'll be looking for more memory as soon as I can.I'd be curious to find out what percentage of people who have many problems only have 2GB vs. people with great running systems and 4BG. Also if Phil or anyone at Aces has done any profiling to see how much memory you really need and what settings really use up the memory or what features might have severe memory leaks. Don

>I don't think so! Explain how - if you can - that I can run>FSX+SP2 with NONE of the problems cited here and>elsewhere?>>The only difference being that I have an ATI Radeon 2400 Pro>DX10 card rather than an nVidia card?My point is that at the very _least_ MS should be lighting a fire underneath someone at Nvidia to get this fixed. I see no evidence of that. Maybe they need to implement a work-around for Nvidia's bug but I don't see any chance of that either. If that doesn't work, maybe MS should put up an ATI splash screen when FS loads. The point is their product doesn't work for many people. I've just gone through and re-installed again following David's instructions to the letter and still get 1/2 the fps in DX10.There are a bunch of add-on's I'd like to buy for FSX but I cannot justify in my own mind spending another dime on FSX when the platform is broken. So in that respect, if I were a third-party developer, I'd be lighting a fire underneath Aces to do whatever it takes to fix things before my business collapses. Eaglesoft and other vendors have some nice aircraft I would buy today were not for the lack of confidence I have with FSX.Don

Anyone with problems in SP2 can consider themselves totally abandoned. Aces has stated clearly they are done with FSX despite its lack of quality and Nvidia does not acknowledge these issues as bugs. Neither the menu problem nor bad dx10 framerate are listed in Nvidia's release notes as known issues. So Aces points the finger at Nvidia and Nvidia points it back at MS (If they are even aware that there are problems). We as consumers are stuck. I put the blame on Aces for this mess for not fixing the problems. If it really is a driver problem they should be on the phone with Nvidia every day trying to get it fixed. I find it impossible that they could have tested SP2 without finding these issues. Contrast Aces lack of response and lack of quality with a company like Bioware who is still issuing patches for a game it released in 2002. Aces cares about its schedule not its customers.So bottom line, go back to SP1 if you want to use FSX. You can abandon any hope of ever using DX10.Don

I don't think either of these killed flight simulation. BUT Microsoft has made a strategic decision to ship products on a date regardless of quality and that lack of quality has been obvious to its customers. I don't recall ever before a version of Flight Simulator being shipped before it was "done" and working well out of the box. But with FSX and especially with Acceleration, the ship date was set and MS was going to ship it even if they have to slap a "Preview" label on the DX10 button because the feature is not done. Obviously even ACES was embarrassed by their DX10 effort and hoped a text label would excuse them. I can't think of a single other software product where that has been done (usually features are just plain cut).Same lack of quality goes for Vista and DX10. They have been released and they just are not ready for general consumption. Performance and general quality for both of these products is below that of XP and DX9 (not just in FS but in general).Unfortunately, I don't think ACES gets it yet. If they did, they would have a commitment to continue to improve FSX until it is done and not be so obsessed with moving on to Train Sim 2. I think Vista will improve but MS has no choice but to continue to improve quality on that. Corporations are not and cannot use Vista in its current state and that's where the money comes from. DX10 is probably in ok shape but no one can tell because hardware vendors can't get drivers that work right.Having said that, I enjoy FSX more than any other version. I've also spent my share of money on new hardware to be able to enjoy it. But it is frustrating to see something so close to being excellent yet missing the mark on promised features (e.g. DX10) and on apparently being problematic for add on developers to work with.Don

Allen,I'm curious how the 3870 runs in DX10 mode? Does it have the same performance hit most people get with their Nvidia cards?Don

I think anyone who has looked at video card prices for the new 8800gt and 3870 have wondered the same thing. I was going to buy one but I think I can wait a while until prices are back where they are supposed to be.http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2222929,00.aspDon

>>Is it still necessary to do something to the fsx exe?>>No, XPack has the /largeadressaware flag already set.>Did you increased the userva (bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVA>3072)? >Did you really installed the right updates:>http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html?>It's also important to use the newer Nvidia drivers (163.x)>and the latest DirectX runtime.>Does it happen at any location?Thanks for the reply Nils. I have done all but the userva thing. This is beginning to remind me of running under msdos with all the himem stuff and everything. I _only_ have 2G of mem so I don't think that the userva would have helped. I'm starting to think it is Active Sky X that is causing FSX to crash. I've run all day today without ASX and have had no crashes.I really wish MS would do a stability patch for FSX. No new features, just bug fixes. FSX was rushed out the door last year and Acceleration was rushed out the door this year and we are left with a house of cards. Don

Arrrg. I'm getting OOM CTD now too. I am running fsx/accel in dx9 mode on Vista and have applied the Vista patches. Is it still necessary to do something to the fsx exe? I had a memory monitor running one time and it still was showing 62% free so I don't think it is a system memory problem. Is there any way to track down what is causing the problem? It has happened with different aircraft. Is there any prayer that MS will ever do another fix for fsx? (I know Phil Taylor has said no, but maybe he will throw their MS Project Gantt charts out the window and listen to customers)Don

>that is why I am considering getting the new ATI HD3870>rather than the cinderella 8800GT as it also consumes less>power (will not need a new PSU), and produces less heat .>>>allen I agree with the others. For Nvidia, it is not worth their effort to fix something in fsx. The thing that matters is the latest popular FPS (e.g. crysis, bioshock, etc). I don't think the problems we have will be fixed by a driver. I'd love to be proven wrong but I'm not holding my breath. It is very disappointing to see ACES point the finger at Nvidia and not even considering any of their own fixes or work-arounds. Having said that, does anyone know if ATI dx10 cards have the same problems (poor frame rate, runway textures, etc)? I don't remember seeing any reports of anyone running in dx10 on ATI hardware.Don

Very cool Christian! Keep us up to date on your progress. I'd like to try this out sometime. But I think my wife will really think I'm a nut if I tie a wiimote to my head :)Don

Thanks for that explanation about how the shadows work Phil.I've played around a bit with the various combinations of the nvidia driver overriding AA and AF settings and settings being turned on/off in FSX. I need more testing (darn work, maybe tonight) but it seems like if I have the driver set to override application settings _and_ have the settings enabled in FSX, then I get good frame rates with both AA and AF working. Wierd.I've also noticed that sometimes switching from a small windowed mode then back to full screen improves my frame rates. I assume this causes the application to re-aquire the graphics device or something. Anyway, I think it is a solvable problem. Don

I have the same problem too. My frame rate went from 24 sitting at KSEA down to 3 after installing Acceleration and enabling DX10. I have a 8600GT OC 163.69 drivers. The jagged cockpit shadows look horrible.I also didn't have any water West of KSEA! I have Active Sky X Graphics installed, maybe that is causing problems? I need more time to play with things but this is definitely _not_ what I would have expected.Don

I recently upgraded to a 6750 on a P35 motherboard and am very happy with it. I am overclocking it to 3.61 at 1.5v and was able to go 3.5 at stock voltage. To the original poster, this is my first Intel since a P166. I've been loyal to AMD but Intel has just beat them too badly with the C2D.Don