FSX

[esurfman]

"Just tried the new FS X with Pierre (on his system). Has a little bit more that the minimum recommended and it was very jerky. It his a monster and to run it to get like the pictures on the box, you will probably need a Cray Supercomputer. Plus it his expensive; came down to about $91.00 CAD Ouch. If your machine is barely running FS9, don't waste your money yet. "

[nwadc10]

"At least download and run the free demo first. If you got the demo from an earlier post on here, there's an new build on the demo dated 10/03/06. Many graphics issues have been fixed since the original demo. I've only got to play with the demo (I keep checking the stores around here but come up empty every time) but it runs as well as FS9 on my computer. I have an Intel Pentium D Dual Core 2.8 GHz, 1 Gig DDR2 ram, ATI PCIE graphics card w/ 256 MB onboard memory. It's a couple years old. This is typical of forums that I've been reading. One person reports good frame rates and another says it's horrible. I'm no expert but this leads me to believe it's a hardware issue rather than FSX issue. One report of good frame rates I read was with a less than 2 GHz CPU and a report that had horrible frame rates had a greater than 3 GHz CPU. I am planning to format my HD before installing FSX so it has a clean system to run on. At minimum I will defrag the HD and remove any programs I don't use anymore. Just my thoughts Justin"

[thansson]

"Well, I got my copy!!! (EB Games, Ottawa, Canada) I will give it a spin this evening and maybe tomorrow morning and post a brief report. None of our add-ons will work for now, at least not until FSUIPC 4.0 is released which is expected to be in a week's time or so..."

[esurfman]

"Justin, I'm taking about the full game. I also think that Vista and DX-10 are going to be very important graphic wise."

[nwadc10]

"

Justin, I'm taking about the full game. I also think that Vista and DX-10 are going to be very important graphic wise.

I know What mentioned about forum reports was in reference to the retail, full version of FSX also. The demo produced the same type of posts also that's why I mentioned to download the free demo first for those who aren't certain if their system can handle FSX. I just purchased my copy of FSX Deluxe edition. I won't get it until the 17th though, it's reserved at EB Games. My local EB Games has a good deal on the reserved copies. I got my deluxe edition for $53.49 USD including tax, $20 off the regular price. I paid it in full but it can be reserved for only 5 USD. I hope other EB Games has the same promotion all over so more of you can take advantage of it. Justin"

[Avwriter]

"I picked up my copy of FSX Delux at my local Best Buy. Seems like many, but not all. BB stores are selling it in the US, based on teh forum traffic. So far it looks pretty good, though its a bummer not to have the PMDG birds working in it. Yes there is a performance hit, but its manageable with the sliders. In any case, it may be several weeks , or even months before we can fly our Globe flights on it."

[yoni63]

"Gosh, it seems like just when things get lined out, you gotta do a bunch of programming to keep up with stuff. I am going to just fly my FS9 with my PMDG stuff for a while hmmmm maybe a year or a little less, then when all the bugs get worked out, I might switch. But for now, I have to just accept the fact that a blue sky is a blue sky no matter what version you run. "

[cyoo eddie]

"I checked on the canadian best buy website, bestbuy.ca, they have both versions listed for online shopping, I hope to grab one off the shelf locally this week however.... It is going to be interesting few months to see what payware works and what doesnt....I think the next few years we will see a big expansion of payware stuff. I am thinking the missions may have possibilities for us, and 2 pilots in the same plane, could be used for checkrides..."

[nwadc10]

"After continuing to read posts on other forums I may have to concede to Lo uis' original remarks. Seems 90% of the posts say the sim is unflyable while the remaining say they love it. Many don't report what their FPS is so I hope it's just a case of people not being able to accept FPS less than 20 which they consider "unflyable", but I have a feeling that isn't likely. I will still fly a sim at 12-15 FPS which I think is far below the bareable limits of many virtual pilots. I anxiously await the arrival of my copy to see for myself. Best Buy in my town will not sell FSX until the official release date. Now that I have a reserved copy elsewhere I won't bother looking at the stores anymore. PMDG has posted more information about the 744 package upgrade for FSX. Check out the post on their forum as is also includes updates on the rest of their product line. Justin"

[nwadc10]

"Well, after reading more, some people are finding ways to fix the frame rate issue. A couple fixes mentioned are to reduce the number of tree types and roof top types available to the autogen system and another is to install latest video card drivers after installing FSX. ATI has a beta driver available for download on their website. Justin"

[mvm]

"Check this out from someone with an inside track to the MS aces team...it's not good news Gents...cut and paste from another forum as follows.. I will start this post off with some facts. I have been flight simming since I started owning personal computers since 1990. I have been building my own hardware for the last 10 years. I know the technology and what makes it work. I have been artistically and creatively involved with Flight simulator and several other popular combat flight simulators for a good bit of the last 5-7 years. When ANY flight or combat flight related sim has been released, there have been problems. Both hardware and software related. As far as I can recall, most of the time, the cutting edge system users have good experiences and overall are satisfied with what they see. I am not sensing this with FSX. It's not a good sign. I am noting a different tone with the release of FXS. We always have the whiners. We always get the revelations about real world system requirements versus whats on the box. We always have the folks who find the magical "fix" to whatever new problem has arisen due to new versions. I see all of that here and at a few other forums which I read. What I note that is different now, is the dearth of threads that say "all is well", "we have reached a new nirvana", "I am ecstatic". I see very limited and tepid reviews where performance is mentioned. I'm not 100% sure at this point, but by first responder accounts, it's appearing as if MS may have laid an egg with this one. I have a fast machine, not the latest and greatest, but it's run EVERYTHING I have thrown at it very well. It ran the beta 3(I am a beta tester) version of this new software acceptably with default settings prior to final release code. I have access to the release code but have not run it yet. What I see is that for us here, the limited few who exploit the sim as a BASIS for greater things, its not going to be tenable or viable until we make a rather big leap in technology. Having the sim run with NO autogen, and limited texture resolutions defeats the purpose of having the program. It's not running acceptably on ANYONES machine as far as I can tell. This was definitely NOT the case during the last few go arounds with this title. We saw some problems for folks who had mid life rigs, but the ones who had the latest and greatest hardware could run it actually quite well. I'm worried that this is not the case this time around. MS may just have reached a bit too far and this does not bode well for the future. I can imagine the frustration for the average user who is trying a flight sim for the first time. That in and of itself is very bad as MS planned this version to be geared towards bringing more casual users into the fold. I fear the opposite may indeed happen. This is just my opinion and I hope that time proves me wrong. I think it would be more appropriate at this point to seek out those who have systems that can run this with some minor scenery upgrades and SOME AI at frame rates near 25 or so. Anything less is just dismal as far as I'm concerned. For me both FS2002 and FS9 were enjoyingly playable with a good bit of the new features enabled and running. Flame suit is on, I just have an ugly sense about this one. Hornit I'm not even going to waste the money with this until MS fixes it...i'll stay with FS9 for now"

[PetriSuni]

"Hmm. I don't know. Like Justin said, you don't always need 25 to 30 FPS in a flight sim. I, too, fly FS9 sometimes at 12 FPS near a big airport and it's not a problem. But, it does seem as if FSX may be a bit of a problem performance-wise...I have gone and bought every version of FS that MS has cared to push out as soon as it was out, so I guess I'll still do the same with this one "

[Avwriter]

"Don't panic just yet, gents. All is really not so bad. With some tweaking I am already getting acceptable performance. I run an Athlon 64 4000+, 1 gig DDR, and a Radeon X1300 with 512 mb DDR. I am now geting 20-25 FPS pretty much every where except for on the ground a major airports or flying around dense cities like NYC and Hong Kong at night. This is with terrain sliders maxed, and most others in the mid-range. There is also a user-made fix availalbe for autogen that makes it usable. This is a very nice looking sim folks. I think that once PMDG has time to optimize their code for FSX, it will work very nicely on mid-range machines. From what they have posted on their support forum, it sounds like MS has created a lot of new infrastructure that will mean complex sims will not have to do as much working outside of the platform. This should significantly improve the efficiecy of the code. We may have to wait a while, but to me it seems obvious that FSX will be a big step forward in our hobby."

[esurfman]

"I don't check the FPS but when movement is jerky it's not nice. We tried it on Pierre's system since mine is out of the ballgame and Pierre's system according to FSX what they say is Best ( there is Minimum, Best and then Maximum). What is nice is they show you how to do a Clean Boot so the program will run faster. As for myself, I will buy a new computer in February-March and the budget is around $2,500; should be able to run FSX don't you think so? "

[yoni63]

"Well, is there any new info on the FSX? I have looked around and have not found much? It looks like a neat upgrade with the moving vehicles and all, but there is sure alot of negative feedback out there that you just can't ignore."