FinnN

Well, personally I find FSX better at rendering the types of terrain I like to fly over than FS9 - even with add-ons designed for FS9. With phototerrains for example I get little or no blurries, the detail degrades realistically into the distance rather than in sharp jumps, and I don't get weird colours in the far distance. I get comparable or better fps but at much 'smoother' rate rather than the stutters that were in FS2004. FSX with a couple of freeware add-ons for FS9:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161237.jpgA shot like that in FS9 would have been impossible for me without pausing or flying really slowly. With the Horizon demo of the GenX photoscenery for England&Wales the detail goes off the scale, and with no impact on performance at all.Autogen and water at any of the 2.x settings causes me problems, but reducing the density to a level my system can cope with results in acceptable (but not great) fps - and with looks and performance better than FS9.

Yarbles! This one works a treat for me (I have 2G of RAM)!Thanks!!!Have funFinn

Well, I finally got FSX yesterday. I had pre-ordered it, but it was taking so long in the end I cancelled the order and went down to the shop to buy a copy - the long wait and all the comments here on performance etc had me a little concerned to say the least. I have an OK system but definitely not the supercomputer I was half expecting to need, it's a 2.8 P4 with 2G of RAM and an ATI X800 graphics card (256M).I thought I might as well see it at its worst straight away, cranked up all the sliders to maximum and off I went. As expected the sim was unusable - shift+Z was reporting 5fps but I think it was more like 5spf! Taking AI traffic, water and autogen to minimums gave me flyable framerates, so next I installed the Horizon Simulations demo of their new photoscenery/mesh for the UK to see how photosceneries are handled. I was immediately struck by the high resolution but I noticed a couple of other things - first of all when out of the autogen areas the frame rates and overall smoothness was extremely good, but more importantly for me (as I'm a big fan of photo-sceneries) there were no blurries at all! After an evening of tweaking and fiddling (using the at http://www.fox-fam.com/wordpress/?page_id=41) I eventually got the sim running smoothly in both autogen (15fps) and photoscenery (35fps) areas with a lot less stuttering than in FS:CoF. The key things to do for me was to select one of the 1.x water options and the reduced tree diversity modification. Finally I installed some of my favourite add-ons - Lago Venice, the France VFR series and some spanish photosceneries. Sadly Venice (my favourite) was a mess in FSX, and the French areas had problems too although not as great. The spanish sceneries worked fine though, but with (wait for it) no blurries and better performance than in FS9. No issues with add-on planes yet either, but it'll take a while to go through everything.In the end I have a sim with comparable performance with FS9 in the autogen areas (albeit with more autogen visible than I have in FS9), and much better performance in photoscenery areas (plus much higher resolution when the addons become available). I'm perfectly happy with FSX and other than issues with the addons, and it's taken me roughly the same amount of fiddling as the previous couple of FSes did to get going smoothly (if anything less, although I guess that might come down to experience).

Well, that's not really true - there's loads of variation in water colours here in the UK both due to location and weather conditions. This is Lake Vyrnwy in the very much less than tropical Mid/North Wales:http://static.flickr.com/84/249316578_3ef135319b.jpgAnd yes it really was that colour. Admittedly grey-greenish and grey-brownish is a lot more common, but I've seen plenty of blue lakes, rivers and seas in my time.Have funFinn

Get Venice - it's fantastic! I'm also really looking forward to Rome.Have funFinn

I'd seriously like to see a video of these textures in action, I have to say I'm not at all convinced they're significantly different from the various free ones out there.Have funFinn

I have to agree, I really don't see the point of this addon. Whilst I don't doubt that whoever has done it started from scratch, I can't see anything in the screenshots that makes it more attractive (or even significantly different) than the various freeware sets out there. Maybe if it had better water landclass possibilities (like there was in CFS2) or new coastlines or something, but as it is the weirdest thing to me is why someone would even bother to put it out?Have funFinn

I'm a big fan of the VFR scenery, both the photo sceneries and the new mesh, but I have to say I find the lack of trees a bit offputting when taking off or landing. There are some areas though where people have been adding their own autogen trees, for example here's a screenshot of the free Oxon scenery that's designed to work with the photo textures.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/74632.jpgHopefully more will gradually appear.Talking specifically about the new mesh, it's by far the best I've seen in the European area and most importantly it has amazing coastal outlines. As a frequent FS2004 coastline hopper in floatplanes and flying boats the difference this makes is absolutely incredible, every single inlet and bay is clearly delineated and cliffs actually look like cliffs. And of course when you're off/around the coast the lack of autogen is much less noticable. Here's a screenie looking down Holy Island towards Anglesey:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/74635.jpgHave funFinn