Well got my copy yesterday, and after a long 15 minute install couldn't wait to see what hassles I would have fun dealing with, lol.. So fired it up to check out the hype.

Upon first launching I decided to leave all settings as the install saw fit, everything was fine but obviously needed to crank settings FSX was being generous to me and trying to not disapoint with stutters. Maintaining a smooth locked 20fps I decided to go for it and set all the general  settings ultra high, WOW! looking better and still in the 17-20 fps range, I am getting lucky or all the forum posts I have read just had me concerned over nothing.

FSX looking real good now, althought I was a little disappointed in the night textures, to many sporatic areas that appear too be using daytime textures, and as I expected default aircraft look bland in comparison to third party. Decided to now go into the graphics card settings and start getting ready to bog my rig down, cranked up AA,AF and then hit the Sli appears to work very well on all SLi settings, with maybe a loss of 1-2 fps and WOW!!!! Now were talking!!!

Without any "tweaks" other than playing with graphics settings in game and on the GPU I have been fortunate and maintain really good FPS and smooth flight, slow load times have been decreased with a good defrag but overall extremly pleased and slightly disappointed (always look forward to issues to fix, lol) .

So am I just one of the lucky ones? So many posts here and there about issues even with higher end rigs ( many with similar specs as mine) had me concened for awhile, or is it just too many expecting much more than their hardware can provide?

Now it is off to see whatelse I can do with this,i know I can make it better!

Now that it appears that I can handle basic ultra high settings time to crank up the traffic and scenery to highest settings hit the worlds busiest airports in a stupid attempt to make a so far enjoyable sim experiance into a unbearable disaster


AMD 3800
Nvidia Geforce 7800GT CO (2)
2 Gig RAM
2 Raptors in Raid 0

(no current overclocking anywhere)

Cranking up the autogen starts to make it choke a little, if I recall this was a issue with FS9 in its early days. Same with traffic. It got a little scary at the major airports but held up ok.

For a SLi setting I seem to get a pretty good performance boost using SLI antiaslising out of the other combinations running 8x AA 16x AF .

Difference in FPS between 20-25 is un-noticeable so without the meter running you couldn't tell the difference. With FPS unlocked average between 23-44 FPS with a occasional dip below 15 when cycling views (think the most recent Nvidia driver is to blame).

Ran with both 1 gig and 2 gigs RAM, FS9 runs better with no more than 1gig, FSX seems to like the extra

Trying to figure out how to disable the refections on the inside of the cockpit window, thinking this may give a little boost without losing anything, after all I have flown many aircraft in real life and never once remember seeing my instruments or myself reflected of the windscreen, so not like losing a realism factor Time to go in and play with the configuration files and maybe try a few FS9 add-ons.

Still pleased so far, knock on wood..........one annoying thing, when pushing the Alt key while in flight to change settings or weather I can't get the in game menu bar to go away without exiting the flight , in FS9 you just click ALt again to make it go away any clue?

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and in the release

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I dont know from what I read at other places the AMD 3800 has had issues running it.  That and seeing some of the issues with similar setups I never thought I would even make it out the gate.

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If I were you, don't buy FSX until a great number of addons build up over time, until DX10 hardware and Vista are released and when more tweeks come in. Then buy FSX so that you can fully enjoy it.