After playing with FSX for two full days I uninstalled it. The box looks nice on the shelf. I will take another look at it in a year when I expect to upgrade my hardware - maybe.  :'(

If FSX has not been released in your area you can count your blessings. Think twice before you buy it. You need a US$6000 PC to run it with any 3rd party add-ons with lower teen FPS on the ground and decent graphics (decent=better than FS9).

My point is this. For at least another year I will expect to run FS9. I hope the 757 Block F with fully functional 2D panel will be released for FS9. If it is not I will not be getting block F for FSX.

FSX is so demanding on hardware that it barely runs MS stock models. 3rd party add-ons have no chance of any decent performance.

MS has pulled a bad one on all 3rd party developers. Please Alex and Co. - don't forget FS9 for at least another year.

Just my 2 cents.

I hear that...

Well said.  It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

I have a reasonably powerful computer, getting frame rates in the
20-24 range at high atlitude and 5-10 range at low altitudes near
cities and large airports.

Add the outstanding Capt. Sim C-130 (my favorite) and my computer
would simply stop.

I too will keep FS 2004 for a long time.  We can just hope that Microsoft
releases a fix soon?

this is a shock I feel like i got took for 50 bucks I was going to buy the deluxe glad i did not my computer is not bad 160 gb 256 ati 850x 2ghz 1 gb ram and will not run
this so called flight sim i did tweak a little did help some and tried to put captain sims 757 200 in forget it hope this helps you who are wondering maybee i can save you money


Autogen tweak that might help  
Many of you have been frustrated that you can't control the density of autogen trees verses buildings because we only have one slider to cover both of them. Some have also been frustrated that our lowest autogen setting is more dense than FS2004 at max density.

If you add these two lines to the [TERRAIN] section of your FSX.CFG, you can define the max number of objects in a terrain cell for trees and buildings independently. The slider will scale down from the numbers you set as the slider is moved to the left. The max tree value in FSX as released is coded to default to 4500 and the building default is 3000 (as shown below) and the absolute max FSX will recognize at all is 6000. Of course if you raise the values beyond the defaults, you will obviously be increasing density and lowering fps (so don't complain if you do this...). The point in sharing this information is that with these settings you can specify what the values are yourself. Set buildings or trees at 0 and you won't get any of those objects no matter where the slider is set.

TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=4500

TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000
change it to 1500 1000

found in simvation.com forum

I find that it runs quite well on my not nearly new PC. Just like FS9 needed alot of tweaks to fine tune it, the same is true with FSX. After applying a few tweaks and finding the sweet spot for the settings I get an average of 20-30 fps and sometime even higher. All this without turning off a single background process. I imagine after I whittle those down it will run even faster. Most of my sliders are set mid to high.

ok what tweaks shere would you what system you got

Go to the FSX forum on http://www.avsim.com.

They have all the tweaks listed. You can improve performance a lot but I am still not sure how add-on aircraft will work in FSX.

I am keeping an eye on new tweaks but still flying FS9 for all 3rd party add-ons.  ;)

Do not expect to switch to FSX until I get new hardware (a year or so from now ).

Having said that - for those of you that only do bush flying FSX DOES provide good performance (none or scant AI traffic and no resource-hungry airports.) Love the Beaver in the Horizon Simulation VFR demo.

I am planning on getting an intel core duo 2 e6700 @ 268ghz which should run fsx fine. and a dx10 video card.

Well, I spent days tweaking FSX.

The initial setup is horrible. You have to go in and tweak everything.  Initially I got like 15 fps and was going to throw FSX in the circular file. Also, make sure ALL of your drivers are up to date (both Nvidia and DirectX relesed new software this month). Also, make sure you do a good defrag after installation.

System Specs
AMD 64 X2 4800 overclocked to 5184
2 GB matched DDR400 overclocked to 433
PCIE bus overclocked 8%
7950GX2 520M 1GB video
XFi sound
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI motherboard

Anyway, I get between 27-80 FPS with usually mid30's to high 40's in the KMIA area  flying on Vatsim with all tabs at ultrahigh, AI traffic off, Water effects off(like it better this way anyway), Light bloom off, Global texture all the way up..makes for nice paintjobs), Autogen off, Scenery complexity Extremely dense.
I fly using real world weather.  The B206 and CRJ both get great frame rates. I think the newer "stock" planes do better than the others.


The water effects just don't look that real to me. I like the default ocean better. AI traffic is off because I like to fly with human controlled planes.  Autogen Off is a personal thing for me. With Autogen on, the FPS hit is not too bad for Normal setting. I 'm still tweaking.

Once you get in some good flights with descent FPS on FSX, you won't go back to 2004.

BTW I consider my 1 year old system (except for the video card) to be minumum. And it's NOT a $6,000 system. More like $1700 to $2000 if you build it yourself.

seaviper wrote on Nov 1^st, 2006 at 3:52pm:

And it's NOT a $6,000 system. More like $1700 to $2000 if you build it yourself.

Exactly what I was saying. To run it out of the box you DO need a killer (read expensive) PC. But the tweaks really DO help.

It's interesting reading peoples views of FSX (I currently run FS9). It does appear that, Microsoft have released FSX a bit too early for all us flight simmers, as it appears that there are not many pc's around that can actually handle FSX with all the settings set high. No doubt, as time goes by, we will have pc's that can handle FSX set to high settings.
My system was fine with FS9 to start with, but as soon as I started to add all of those add-ons, then my pc started to struggle at times (this is why I have not bought FSX yet), and this is my concern with FSX - how powerful will your pc have to be to handle FSX and the many future add-ons? Only time will tell.

I just posted this FSX vs FS9 opinion for the benefit of CS in their survey section. This is therefore redundant, but for the benefit of the membership at large. Is FSX ready for prime time? The short answer to that question is a resounding no, unless you’re one of the few more among us that happens to have access to a Cray Supercomputer. Over the last week I’ve been testing FSX on a Dell XPS “gaming computer”. This machine is configured with an Intel dual core processor (2x2.13 Ghz), a 512 MB Nvidia 7900 GTX graphics card and 2 GBs of RAM. I thought this machine could handle anything a graphic’s designer could throw at it, well folks I was wrong. To be fair I must admit that I am simply not interested in degrading my settings or sacrificing quality for performance to get my frame rates up to some acceptable level. I want quality and functionality. Toward that end my FS 9 program currently exceeds 30 GBs with add-ons. Frame rates have simply not been an issue for me since the advent of Dual Core processors. It is true that FSX scenery has been significantly improved over FS9. Unfortunately, with nominal frame rates of only 10-30 FPS without add-ons, FSX will simply be a novelty for that occasional scenic Cessna flight and FS9 will remain my primary flight program for the foreseeable future. --- Ziggy

I have a pretty fast computer , P-4 - 3.4ghz, 2-Gig Memory.
My FS-9 runs fine at the high quality settings, but FS-X does not run well with one big exception.  The 3-D frame rates for the instrument panels have been substantially improved and now the flight instruments respond quickly and smoothly to control inputs.

Frame rates for outside terrain is much slower and choppy.
The instant replay feature ( which I use a lot to analyze how I have flown) is terrible. Its more like a slide show than a smooth replay.

I have adjusted many of the quality settings with little improvement.

Because of my less than satisfactory results with FS-X, my FS-9 will still be my primary flight-sim. Because of this, I hope that you keep development and improvement of your FS-9 products as your primary focus.

There was news from another company working with Microsoft to upgrade their aircraft that MS was working on a performance upgrade for those of us stuck with Windows XP.  For some people, even though their computer claims to be Vista capable, not all of their hardware is.  For example, my sound card and DVD drive is not currently compatable with Vista.  It might be fixed before the final release but for now, I look forward to this upgrade.

(This is my first post here. The register system kept refusing me but the staff were good enough to clock me in. Thanks.)

Far as FSX vs. FS9 goes, I have both, but 99.9% of my flight time is with FS9. Besides, I can't fly my CS F-104 in FSX yet.

I have installed several upgrades to FS9; Ground Environment, Flight Environment, Ultimate Terrain, and several areas of Genesis mesh and FS9 has become FS9 Deluxe. The eye candy is beyond belief. Sure FS9 needs upgrades, but so does FSX. At least with FS9 I can fly over stunning high detail scenery and have excellent FPS over all terrain, be it city or bush flights.

I'm about to order another five sets of Genesis mesh. I'll have from San Diego to the Aleutians in a level of beauty and detail that FSX cannot touch, with FPS that FSX could only dream of. Simply put, FS9 offers more flying fun than FSX. At least for now.

CanadaOne wrote on Dec 27^th, 2006 at 7:02pm:

I have installed several upgrades to FS9; Ground Environment, Flight Environment, Ultimate Terrain, and several areas of Genesis mesh and FS9 has become FS9 Deluxe.

;D