FlightSimExpert

SpiritFlyer, no one from my outfit has represented 'as today's leading edge best'. I said it no where in a post and it's not on our website. You just formulated that as a matter of your opinion. It is also your opinion that our product under performs even though you've never actually seen our product. Your underlying tone suggests that you think we're trying to take advantage of people which once again - is your opinion. If you want to go back to the old school FS9 days of discussing frame rates, our current systems will run 25-30 over maximum density but they are well into the 40s everywhere else. In my opinion (for a change) FSX runs smoothly all the way down to around 20 FPS. If you're a hobbyist who only cares about benchmarks then that would be a dissatisfying number. However, if you want to actually fly your sim then you never look at the FPS. You just want it to fly smoothly and not stutter, clear graphics, etc. Of course, I'll admit again this is my opinion but it is based on my experiences. Our systems perform exactly as advertised and we've never had a customer complain about it. I do appreciate and respect everyone's opinions. We're still new at this. You don't see us putting up banners on sim sites or anything like that. So far, we've been taking it to the real pilots and letting them give us feedback. Mostly we've found they don't care about the hardware. They only want to know it will do what we advertise and they want a complete system that they can plug in and start flying...not tweaking. This thread has been helpful because we know what areas to work on....and yes we know our website isn't great. We're not web designers but we're hiring one. Sometimes hiring someone to do a job you're not good at or don't have time to do is best. That's what we do! So zblast, I hope you at least give us a call and let us see what we can do for you. Anyone with Google can look up the cost of parts and software so you'll see whether or not our quote seems fair. ThanksJonathanp.s. SpiritFlyer, I really do appreciate and respect the fact that you obviously want other simmers to get the best they can and not get ripped off. I don't want you to feel like that went unnoticed. I just hope that I can impress upon everyone that we are indeed trying to do the same thing. We want people to get a good product so they tell others and come back to us...it's just good business.

Thank you alainneedle1 - that's a great way to put it. We're not trying to outdo anyone and we're certainly not marking our product up hundreds of percent. In fact, I feel we're quite reasonable considering you get an entire rig, loaded with all the software and good flight controls that have been set up and adjusted and a monitor and you can customize it with your favorite planes, hardware or whatever you ask for. Anyone who has tweaked FSX and all the 3rd party add-ons knows how painfully long it takes, all of that degfragging and updating drivers... it literally takes hours. I've even designed people's home airports so when they light up FSX the default flight is sitting at their home field! We really love flight simming and want people to be happy with our product. Our systems perform as promised and many people have had the opportunity to fly our machines before buying them. The idea of a video camera shooting some action real time is a great one. I'll go a step further by shooting video of all the people enjoying our systems at an event. If the clear graphics and smooth operation don't convince you the smiles on faces and the unsolicited compliments surely will. ThanksJonathan

We will run the FSXMark11 benchmarks on the next system we build. It looks like we must start with a fresh FSX install first. This interests me very much as I'd like to see how we do.We don't charge $300 for a 22" Asus V228H LED monitor as that would be ridiculous. He's referring to the 'deluxe' systems that include the monitor, additional throttle quadrant and the speaker array. That also adds a lot of shipping weight but we still ship Fedex free in the US for all systems.We are aware many of you have up to the second systems and may have had our base system in the past. However, we've never had anyone ask for a refund because the sim didn't perform to their expectations. We fly our systems at events and fly ins and people are amazed at the graphics clarity, realism and smoothness. Many of these people own FSX themselves and are real life pilots too. The systems run for hours at a time under the load of FSX as dozens of people play. As I previously posted, we'll give anyone a quote for ANY custom setup they want. If they want SB or a GTX570 or bigger drives then we can do it. If the hardware costs the same as what we normally use then it would cost the customer nothing more. If the hardware they want is dramatically cheaper then we would adjust the price in our quote. If they feel like they can build it themselves to save some money or buy a friend a case of beer to do it then great. There is no reason to call out the dogs on us when we can put together any system you dream up. Then we can battle the tuning, tweaking and adding all those (fully licensed!) add ons you may want. Moving forward we can start looking at some of these newer/better components and offering them as the base. We're still new as a business but we're just as experienced and knowledgeable as many of you are. The great thing about dealing with a small shop like us is the ability to be involved in the creation of your ideal system but having pros put it together and tweak it for you. ThanksJonathan

Hi dazz, Your system is actually very similar to what we build so you should be very happy!Our current system specs - which changes occasionally because better stuff comes out and the prices goes down. We offer it with our systems at no additional charge. Anyone can email us to find out what the exact specs are at anytime. Intel i7 950, 920 or 780 CPU Gigabyte MB 1366 or 1156 socket MB (depending on CPU) Patriot 4GB DDR3 1600MHZ 2 drives – each 10,000RPM VelociRaptor with a total of 320GB 750W 20+4-pin ATX PSU w/SATA & PCIe EVGA GTX 480 GPU Coolmaster V8 CPU cooler ABS A+ Black Pearl or Coolermaster HAF 922 Full Tower CaseWindows 7 Ultimate Edition 64Bit Saitek Pro Flight yoke, dual throttle quads and rudder pedals V7 2.4ghz wireless keyboard and mouse DVD R/W 22” Asus LED 1080p HD monitor (16:9, 5ms) Also, remember our systems are fully customizable to the customer so if one wants more RAM, HDD, bigger monitor(s) or a specific part, we quote our best price to include it with the machine. However, for most users the base system is more than capable of delivering the performance they need. I won’t go into details about the amount of research to reach this set up. Let’s just say we waaaayyyy overbuilt a system at first and some hardware turned out to be overkill. We finally reached what we considered the best system for the price.These are exactly what we would build for ourselves. Looks like you came to a similar conclusion with your setup!

Hello All - I am Jonathan from FlightSimExpert.com. Thank you zblast for the heads up about this thread! You and anyone else are welcome to get in touch with us and we can answer your questions and concerns. All of the software that we install in our systems is registered and licensed individually. We purchase it retail just like you do every system that we build. We're a new and very small operation. We're real pilots and guys who've been building sims mostly for our friends for years. I would hope that the software developers would be pleased that we believe in the product enough to include it with our system not to mention all of the retail sales they're getting from us buying licensed versions of their products!If any developer out there wants to contact us, our email and phone number is right on our site. We're happy to stop buying their products if that's what they want. Yeah, we know our website is behind the curve. Like I said, we are pilots and computer builders not gifted web designers. We're working on improving the site and the screen shots/video. We know about the Sandy Bridge recalls so we haven't been using those. The gentle, cool and very stable overclocking we do is to the i7-870 Lynnfield and i7-920 Bloomfield based processors. Overclocker geeks can contact us and we can go on and on about the subject! :) As far as addressing the hardware we use - I know we left it vague on the website and that is being addressed as we grow into a better website.Anyway most of our customers actually call and speak to us (a rare customer service these days). In fact most of our sales have been from referrals. We discuss the exact specs and even the types of planes and flying the customer intends to do. Some guys want more RAM or want a wireless LAN or specific graphic card and we accommodate that.If a customer doesn't want the system overclocked we won't do it (...but they all do so far!)No one buys a system from us without knowing exactly what they are getting.The key words here are "small custom operation". We're not a big outfit like Jetline. For most flight sim users, especially if they're pilots, they just want to know they're getting a quality system that has everything they need. We're like a little pro shop where a person can come get the exact system he would build for himself with all of the goodies already tweaked and ready to fly and we charge a fair price for it. We stand behind what we build and we provide excellent customer support. Yeah you can do this yourself but not everyone has the time or knowledge. Many pilots just want to get something for maintaining proficiency. They just want to know it's going to work right out of the box and be done with it. Thanks, Jonathan