I imagine that most (if not all) of the 'adjustments' and 'tweaks' that you mention, bobc1, have been tried (at least a dozen times) by the multitude of frustrated users. (The hundreds of threads in the hundreds of topics, just in this Forum, will demonstrate the amount of work, help and 'plain stuffing about' that has gone into this Sim and it's multitude of problems over the last 12 months). 

Many times, when a Sim isn't working well, or has a specific problem, the users PC (or some part of it) is responsible, but surely the amount of people having the very same problems with CFS3, after so much time and energy has been applied to this Sim by certainly the best minds in the Sim World, it must be clear now that it's the Sim and not the people or the harware or software running it. 

You quote:

"People with brand new top of the line P4_3.06, Radeon 9800XT 256mb and a gig of DDR RAM can't max out LO:MAC and I assume CFS3 either."

is itself a perfect admission of the very indictment made by most people who are angry and frustrated with their inability to get the Sim to run better than "just barely OK', even with their $3000 PC's and $500 graphics cards.

I allege that Microsoft have at least 'misrepresented' to anyone with anything less than what you mention above, in terms of hardware. (Remembering also, that when CFS3 was released over 12 months ago, some of this may not even have been available).

Hi Professor Brensec,

It wasn't my intention to rehash old CFS3 adjustments or tweaks. I don't use any tweaks in CFS3 because it runs fine on my mid-level computer as is. I only mentioned how I have CFS3 and LO:MAC setup because I wanted to convey just how demanding all of the newer flight simulators are on hardware. My suggestions or recommendations weren't aimed specifically at CFS3 but to a common sense approach to basic computer configuration and maintenance.

MS and UbiSoft/ED would be taking the easy way out if they didn't try to push the flight simulators to take advantage of the state of the art rendering engines to a make a "new and improved" product and these require modern powerful hardware. If your mindset is that the status quo should be adhered to then MS should just market add-on products for CFS2 and UbiSoft should do the same for their Flanker series and call it a day. All software makers want to appeal to the mass market and sell as many copies of their product as possible and that's why they spend their resources making these sims to be backwards compatible so they'll work on most computers. LO:MAC/UbiSoft even drew the line in their "minimum requirements" at DirectX_8.1 compliant video cards thus decreasing their available market. Don't expect all the bells and whistles to work on an older computer. A large portion of any game or simulator is spent programming the "Options" selection to allow people with different computers to adjust them to meet their own needs. They could just have everything set to "High" or "On" and leave it at that.

If it were possible to get the graphics quality that the people want/expect in a newer flight simulator with older slower hardware then they would do it. If you can't get CFS3 to run properly on your older computer then YOU have the problem, not MS. You're gonna have to put up with low FPS and many of the graphic details set to low unless/until you upgrade. Don't expect the world of flight simulators to come to a halt because for whatever reason you can't get CFS3 to run properly on YOUR computer. You either have a software or hardware problem and no one out here in the cyber world can sit down in front of your computer and diagnose and fix it for you.  I guess all of us who do have it running properly are just plain "lucky".

It belies common sense that CFS3 can run on my computer with common hardware in it but not on yours unless something is wrong with your hardware, hardware configuration or your OS or something in its configuration. When all else fails bite the bullet and DFT (Disk Fitness Test) or whatever utility your hard drive uses to examine and "fix" itself with, then totally format your hard drive and clean install your OS (and SP-1 etc.)  like I described above and then install CFS3 with as little else on your hard drive as possible. If this doesn't help then try to borrow a different video card from a friend (hopefully a newer one) and see what happens. Then try another soundcard etc. Complaining about it isn't going to fix anything for you. But setting out in a systematic approach of diagnosing the problem just might.

Here is a screenshot from LO:MAC showing how realistic the water looks. I can't run LO:MAC with the water set at this quality and get good framerates but it shows the potential of the simulator. It has legs and will last awhile until I'm able to afford a new modern fast computer. My guess would be that we'll need to be able to benchmark in the 20,000s in 3DMark2001 SE for LO:MAC and by inclusion CFS3 to get these sims to look and perform up to their capabilities.

I'm not gonna buy a new computer until they offer one that can because I know I'll be disappointed and frustrated having to struggle maxxing out the settings trying to get the sim to perform to its potential. We probably should be blaming the hardware manufacturer's and not the software writers.

Good luck.

[quote author=Professor Brensec link=board=cfs3;num=1070374405;start=30#33 date=12/15/03 at 00:03:34]
None
400 Mhz or better Processor
64 Mb Ram for Windows 98/Me
128 Mb Ram for Windows 2000/XP
16 Mb 3D Video Card
A sound card with speakers or headphones!

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