As a useful comment...what's your system?

As a non-useful comment...did you get this for Christmas or spend money on it?

Plenty of peeps here a willing to help, but you need to be a little forthcoming to get that help.

Quote:


Take heed my friend. Just answer the questions that are asked of you and I bet you get a fairly good running game. I also had the same problem and followed all the suggestions. I have already won the war as an american, now trying as a german

Why should you tune-up your car?

You do it for best performance.

CFS 3 is

[glb]VERY

[/glb] demanding.

Go without the tune-up if you want...but then you have only one person to blame for poor performance.

That person is not in Redmond, Washington.

It is not completely neccessary to tweak CFS3 all though it is a good idea. I think that alot of people who are trying to help people with problems are saying that you generaly need to find the right settings to suit you.

I think that another reason why CFS3 doesn't run completely 'out of the box' is because the fact the being a simulator and a Microsoft one at that it runs a very complex graphics engine. Which is very much the same reason that it requires more up-to-date systems to run it properly.
Biggles

Considering that the human eye can only perceive a frequency of about 45 Hz at the top end...40 FPS is not "ordinary". People have been spoiled by simplified graphics engines that will generate framerates a high as 150 FPS...but what's the point?

People have to realize that most of the tweaks required to get CFS 3 at peak performance are simply a matter of making sure that CFS and the comp are dealing with each other in a fair manner. There are literally millions of hardware/software configurations out there that have to be dealt with. The average user doesn't know enough about the box to adjust it...so the programmers make allowances and make the program do the adjusting to suit the box.

You should also remember that where most of the First-Person-Shooters only have to deal with a terrain area of a few acres, CFS (indeed all flight sims) deal with an area of up to 2500 sq MILES. Not to mention the fact that the AI has to track a bunch of objects moving in 3D space.

CFS 3 has problems...but they are remarkably slight considering the very high bar the team tried to attain. The real problem is now that they came so close...they have to fix it and actually succeed.

I like CFS3 (let me say that straight up)

However, support is a problem.

Comparing tuning your car to tuning your game is wrong. (I agree with denishc)

New cars have warranties, if you have a problem the manufacturer stands behind their product!  In fact, if I "tweaked" my car I could possibly VOID my warranty.

My car is a "performance" car, as I am not a mechanic, I would be foolish to try and tune it myself, however, if I did, I could pay a mechanic to fix up the mess I created.  I assume you would all agree that CFS3 is a "performance" game.  So far the only support that I have found so far is user groups like this one.

I read with interest that "...Plenty of people here are willing to help..."

I posted a Multiplayer Server Connection problem on this forum nearly a month ago.  41 people have read it (many times it was me), but NO ONE has ever replied.

My problem still persists.

Don't get me wrong, I am not having a go at Silverfox (or anyone else).  I have respect the fact that Silverfox has offered good advice to many people.

However, I appreciate that there are problems that are simply beyond the capacity of end users to resolve on their own.  This is especially true for game development.

Microsoft should be making their presence in the forums VERY OBVIOUS, as I have seen in forums for games from other companies, where game developers are readily identifiable, and take an active role in the Forum.  Marketing professionals will tell you that direct feedback (both good and bad) from end users is very valuable. Here the feedback is provided to Micorsoft "on a platter", and costs them NOTHING!

There should be an official (Microsoft) mechanism for escalating issues that are raised within these forums.
Currently, this is just "hit and miss" i.e. Questions in the "too hard basket" simply go unanswered.

I hope someone from Microsfot reads this and takes note. 

If you ignore the feedback from your clientele you will lose them!!!

I will continue to play the game (via "Quick Combat" mostly since I can only connect to the server once in a blue moon), but I will be thinking very carefully before purchasing another "performance" game from Microsoft.


Quote:

Anybody remember when CFS1 came out?
I had a PIII 450MHz with 64MB RAM and an 8MB ELSA graphics card without this neat features like AA, that´s what I´d call the average machine in those days
Those guys who had a Diamond or Voodoo where lucky, LOL.
CFS ran at average 5-18 fps on my machine and crashed on a regular base.
Was this a problem? Nope, I loved the game.
I´m running CFS3 on an XP1800+ 512MB DDR and Geforce 2 MX 200 (average again, hehe) at 24-36 fps, can go down to 15-18 in heavy action. not bad I think.