.. think about it. The leaps that PC's have made have all been  forced by software being more and more demanding, but this latest flight sim is utterly ridiculous. I've been reading about people with recently bought/built PC's which can play all the latest games, yet this game reduces their systems to an expensive slideshow.
When fs2004 came out, yes it was more demanding than the 2002 version , but not THAT more demanding. This game is written for people who either have great connections in the hardware business, are very wealthy, or very very lucky or dedicated people. I fear the rest of us who have just bought recently flashy Graphic cards/motherboards/processors..etc..have just purchased a lot of expensive and very soon to be outdated junk.
Well , not this boy. I'll stick with my smooth framed fs2004 till I'm ready to upgrade. Not when Bill Gates needs another castle.

Um, right. Before I flame you, put on the kevlar. FSX is one of the first in a new generation of games that were designed to run off DX10 and Vista. The hardware required for both are just barely on the seene. Therefore yes, haveing a top of the line SLi or CrossFire and E6600 rig that can crush anything else get only 25 ~ 30FPS on max settings in FSX, but you must remember that the FSX engine is ment to run on DX10 hardware which is soon to be released. When we do have the correct hardware then we should see FSX flying at the 60+ frames that we expect. We must also remember that the sceenery and polygons are almost twice that of FS9.

Cheers
Cameron

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+1...MS rushed it a bit..

cam is 100% right, the hardware for FSX to run amxed which what eveyrone wants is not avaiable, however im happy with my FSX on high with 20FPS and thats without tweaks so i will hopefully be able to lock it at 25 FPS  and im happy until i upgrade to vista and DX10 next year

as for it being released to soon and rushed... its out in time for christmas...it runs well on up to date computers and i would just like to say that on release everygame is buggy that is why companies release patches... liek BF2 has had about 4 major patches since its release, games are never perfect its just the pure size of FSX that makes it such a challenge and why everything is not yet de-bugged and in all fairness all those people who bought FSX and are onw complaining about perforamnce. you knew it was going to be demanding so why keep bogging down the forums with your crappy complaints.....

john

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Poor Executives of Microsoft,we have to understand ,..they needed  the money, Coulpes Billons of little dollars......

" you knew it was going to be demanding so why keep bogging down the forums with your crappy complaints...."

Em...just a guess , but thats what the forums are FOR, flymo. Not for you to sit and brag about how great your new rig is, but to help people with problems overcome them.

" Well , not this boy."
I'm confused, Boca . . . did you buy FSX?

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And I am just finding out that a 128 Mb on a GPU is not enough even with all the sliders set to almost zero in FSX.

Just starting my FSX loads the GPU 128Mb memory up to 99%...  ...!
...and as for thinking about applying Autogen....forget it...!!

I am even wondering if 256 Mb of GPU memory is really enough now......?

Looks like a very expensive, top of the range card, fitted with 512 Mb of fast, quality memory will be necessary....way out of my price range I'm afraid.... ...!

Paul... ...!

Warning... Sli and Cross fire can acuatly kill your Frame Rates. if your going to do it your main Graphics card has to have a lot of memory.

Thats exactly my point, Nick N. You're correct.
The software is out too early for the appropriate hardware. And all people like Brett Henderson making the throwaway line ..." A person starting from scratch need ONLY spend about $2,000 on a computer that will whizz through FS9. ", just lets you know he's not living in the real world with people with families ,mortgages..etc to take care of before they simply nip into their pockets and find a spare $2000.
   My point isn't directed at all these high flying (pardon the pun) whizzkids with goldcard bank accounts, but to the people like myself ( no Wji I haven't bought it ), can't afford the latest and greatest ....which incidentally will be about as useful as a Pentium 1  when DX10 comes in.
    My initial point is, the game is too demanding to be out at this moment.  Be guinea pigs if you want.  I'll wait till the  technology AND the patches are more available to us 'paupers'. 

The thing I find truely comical is that you all sat and requested a payware quality sim right out of the box. MS did that perfectly with a 70mm terrain mesh, and aircraft with the amount of polygons that PMDG have. Also the new physics models, not to mention all the other stuff they put in to make it the most realistic ever.

So has MS become greedy, or are they trying to f*** you in the arse? No, they are replying to what YOU! the CUSTOMER! said YOU! wanted. Unfortunately your requests forced them to use the latest in graphics rendering technology to creat a game that would preform to the standird YOU set for it. The only draw back is that the engine requires technology that most of you can't afford for whatever reason.

So the question is: Is MS to blame? Or is it you the over demanding FS dork that has pushed the sim to be so good that it can't run on your rig that your parents / wife wouln't let you upgrade.

I think the only people to blame are us on the forum, not MS.

Cheers
Cameron

Seems to me there are two camps of people complaining abot FSX.

The first are those with complaints about features or actually errors in the sim. Be it an incorrect mesh issue resulting in dimished accuracy of the scenery, or any of a few other errors people have mentioned here on the boards. These people I think have legitimate gripes, because it wouldn't matter if you had a $4800 Alienware monster - these same issues would still be there.

The other camp are people who feel the game as advertised promised the rich enviroment along with all the other eye candy and features - runnable on what they have now. If memory serves me I believe when word started coming out about FSX it was infact said that it would be optimized to take advantage of DX10 and Vista. I remember everyone panicking about htis . people were talking about how "OMG the sims not going to run without Vista or DX10". Now people seem to be surprised by the version that WAS released (without the delayed Vista and DX10)not running full bore on their current rigs. I have a relatively dated 2.8 Ghz PC that will run it, I had to get 3 gigs of ram to get to run, but it does run - fairly nice too.

Point is, the only really legitimate compaints should be those regarding errors - if you cant run at 50 FPS, that's not an error, you just don't have what the sim needs to run enjoyably.

IMHO any way.

Keni

[quote author=Brett_Henderson  link=1162387609/15#19 date=1162408090]..  If you were going out to buy a brand new computer right now,, that you knew you'd be gaming on.. $2000 is pretty darn reasonable. [/quote]

You are JOKING!!!!! no one in their right mind would spend $2,000 and certainly not in order to play just one programme!!! If you can spend this money and want to then good luck to you but most of us can only afford to upgrade slowly.  I have never spent more than £300 on a new build.  In 12 to 18 months time that's how much it'll cost to build a top of the range PC that will run FSX at a good speed.  And by then there will be patches for all the bugs in FSX, Vista and DX10!!!
Vololiberista

PS As for DX10 NO ONE knows how it will work. All we have is an artists impression of how M(qualcosa)s hope it will look like. Both Vista and DX10 are in their infancy. I think FSX should have been left until next year before release.

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You'll be surprised that there are people out there who complained that they were unable to enjoy FSX at 120FPS and could only get 30FPS. Many people laughed at them and told them they should be glad that they even got 30 when most of us barely get passed 10-15.

Have to sort of chime in on keni's thought.

How many people run out and buy close to $1000 shaped skis, $200 bindings, some nice carbon fiber poles at about $100, a comfly high performance set of boots with footbeds for another $500 or so, and then pop about $50 -90 a DAY on a lift itcket?

Plenty.

Looked at from the standpoint of stuff like skiing, golf, hunting / fishing (bought a good gun lately?) and otherr hobbies......... a $2000 computer to be able to "play" is not that "out of line".

What starts to get "out of line" is people who do the computer AND the skiing AND the golf AND the hunting....AND.....AND.....AND.......

I come back to the "truth in advertising" bit as the real crux of the matter.  it is not truthfully TELLING people what they might expect out of the sim on a given machine.

best,

..........john

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I would disagree with that statement, my current "cockpit"  ranks in at approx $5,000.00. Built specifically for flight simming and no one ever thought I was in my right mind anyway

For what I think is the first time I agree 100% with Cameron.

Fact is MS told everyone (as did CT and Nick in thier posts here) before the release what FSX will require and how it was designed for future hardware and software, there was nothing hidden in that. As for how they can develop software for hardware that isn't released yet is easy, you don't think that MS and other programmers already have access to the new current hardware that uses  DX10 and Vista? of course they do just becasue the general public doesn't have access to it doesn't mean it is non-existent.

And as mentioned above this was to be released with Vista and DX10 so I don't feel it was a premature release.
And you know all the crap talk that would be out if MS decided against releasing FSX until the others would be available.

Bottom line is exactly what Nick stated
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Too many forget or more likely do not understand the difference between a game and a simulator. And far to many base their experience on the FPS counter.

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Tweek, I wasn't talking about what I could do as far as FPS. I'm lucky to get things fairly smooth locked at 20. I was only saying that if you have issues with FPS you can't blame the game, blame what you have for a pc.

If I could get 50 FPS I'd be a happy camper indeed! 

Keni

Well, there's merit in what everyone has said, either for or against. I'm just relieved that I'm not the only one feeling this  "left behind syndrome". For a moment there I was thinking everyone on this forum had ..

Quadruple Conroe 8900. deluxe.
Nvidia 9000 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXTT Sli 
30 trillion gb hard drives running at 20,000 rpm....

...etc....you get the drift. 

Anyway, glad to get you all talking, maybe next time  MS will take notice of the hardware market.   

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Now you're yelling at me and mis-quoting me all at the same time...

I said:

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As in...  NO.. not just to run one game (forget FSX ?)..  I said, that if you're buying a new computer (for all your computing needs) and KNOW you'll game on it too.. $2000 is on the low end of mid-range gaming rigs..  Not even a rocket computer and it would STILL run FSX nicely..  If your budget allows.. you can splurge and run it full bore now.. or wait until hardware prices come down...  That's pretty much how it's always been.. right ?

Look guys... right now I am swamped with work. I work 6 months on and 6 months off. That’s why you have not seen me post that much lately. I am tied in with Boeing Aerospace and Microsoft with a few other things going on as well.  

When I get time I will sit down a play with FSX again at which point I will post a set of configuration file settings which should do the job however you guy pissing and moaning about medium grade hardware not running the sim, .. Think back to FS2004 and trying to boot and run that on a MMX video card... the same gripes were made and its SILLY because that’s how it works...

hardware gets faster and software gets more demanding so hardware gets faster and software gets more demanding so hardware gets faster and software gets more demanding so hardware gets faster and software gets more demanding so hardware gets faster and software gets more demanding so hardware gets faster and software gets more demanding so hardware gets faster and software gets more demanding so hardware gets faster and software gets more demanding so hardware gets faster and software gets more demanding


That’s how the game is played... its called innovation and business

VISTA is going to SUCK 1 GIG of memory to run right so you BETTER be ready for that. It takes 512 just to boot and that does not include FSX on top of it.. 2gigs minimum, preferably 3.

Unlike WindowsXP that has a 3.xx gig limit, VISTA will run virtually unlimited memory

I totally understand the gripes about the software bugs but the hardware issue is not an issue... if this were 2003 you would be crying the same tune if you were running back then what was considered medium grade hardware, and YOU know it because I watched it back then,.  same gripes... then the cloud fix came out and then the AI fix came out... and then people started buying the right hardware and everything settled down

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They did take note...

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For god sake if you had a system that would run FS9 back in 2003 when it was released that got anywhere near smooth performance with decent visual settings and without a bunch of hacked tweaks, you had experimental hardware in your tower, possibly military grade

LOL!!!!!!!!!



I hate to tell you guys this but working in the aerospace industry on military, defense and NASA projects I work around hardware you people won't see a wisper of for 5 years, possibly longer.

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My drivers settings are set on 'Quality', to prevent any functionnality to get disabled automatically. (This happens if you go to 'Performance' for example).

Maxed out means full autogen with original textures, ground scenery shadows, a lot of clouds in the sky (several layers of dense clouds), 100% AI traffic, etc... in the middle of Seatlle.

I can get acceptable FPS with my config and those settings in fact... oh but wait, my drawing distance for scenery and clouds are still to minimum... 

I can get nice frame rates (15-20) together with nice Autogen scenery....
...except that it all goes tits-up every time I bank, or look out of the side windows, then everything judders along at 3-5 FPS until I straighten up and look forward again... ...!

Paul... 8)...!

....Must put curtains on the side windows, and put a steering lock on the Yoke to only fly straight ahead... ...!
LOL... ...!

I need to say that if you now buy 2X 7950GX2 in SLi just to run FSX smoothly your brain mostly is made out of $hit.

Well then, it all depends on someone's opinion of what 'fine' is.

What settings ya got on it?

Well it´s not only FSX. FS in general has some features
that are extremly slow compared to other games. Especially
clouds and autogen is a real fps killer in FS.
I was really hoping they would rewrite those features for FSX. Other games
that use similar engines like Oblivion or Just Cause
can easily display a dense forrest (even with grass and
animated wildlife)
or volumetric clouds
without going from 30fps to 4fps (this is what FSX does when I turn on autogen at lowest possible settings).
In both cases (clouds and autogen) it absolutely doesn´t matter if you can move through the whole world or just 4000qm (like in "just cause") because those features
are generated on the fly and don´t require thousends of static coordinates to be loaded like non-autogen static geometry.

Now just take a look at these pictures. They are all from the Game "Just Cause" The game runs on my machine absolutely smooth.. with approximately the same graphic settings that were used in these screenshots.
To compare this game with FSX... You can also fly airplanes (also fast airplanes) You have real volumetric clouds unlike FSX (in FSX a plane does not "disapear" behind clouds
if you look from the outside). You have a view distance of 30 miles.
You have water reflections like in FSX even with depth mapping (not supported by FSX) and next to all of these features.. you also have a complete engine running in the background that needs to handle the AI Characters, Cars
that have physics applied to it. A lot of random events and so on. Below the line the game has to calculate a lot of more things than a flightsim has to... but is still way faster.

Here some screeshots from an external site.
http://media.insidegamer.nl/screenshots/public/8497/73581.jpg
http://media.insidegamer.nl/screenshots/public/2713/42971.jpg
http://media.insidegamer.nl/screenshots/public/2713/42980.jpg
http://media.insidegamer.nl/screenshots/public/2713/42978.jpg
http://media.insidegamer.nl/screenshots/public/2713/42975.jpg

Now how can it be... this runs smooth on my machine while FSX runs with 5 fps blurred textures and just some hundreds trees ? It´s not a problem of DX10 compatibility
or the fact that flightsim can display the whole world.
Some parts of FSX are either damn bad programmed
or just outdated !!
It´s probabely not the case that MS has bad programmers. As far as I can judge some parts are just old and do not use nowadays technology. If the clouds
would be completely based on Hardware Shaders I bet they would be 10 times faster.
But it would need a complete rewrite to solve these problems... wich means it would cost a lot more money.

A lot of software that exists for quite some time has
these problems. 3dsmax for example.. is by far the worst performing 3d software out there.I t´s core that old that
some parts are not even accessible for the developers any more (like the "gradient ramp" material for example).
And I think we have the same problems with MS Flightsim.

I hoped especially these two parts (autogen and clouds)
would be reworked in FSX.. but I didn´really expect it.
So I´m still looking forward for my new computer that hopefully then will be able to display all these stuff !!
For me there´s no big difference when I compare FSX with the launch of FS2004.

For my taste the hardware requirements for an MS Flightsim product are way to high on release.

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Yes but it's flight planning "map" is just as sh(one)t as FS9!!!
Vololiberista

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Wanna make a bet?

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35604
Oh, look, 12 are on newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Category=38&N=2010380048+106960964...
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No, actually Flight Planning is improved.

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It runs OK on my old computer. My new one has most settings all the way up.

Well Dizza, I´m a 3d Artist since 10 years, worked 1 year for a gamedesign company, I´m a certified Autodesk 3dsmax Trainer.. and we´re doing alpha and beta testing for 3dsmax
here in the company. Believe me... I know what I´m talking about !! Just go out and ask a computer scientist who has
knowledge about gamedesign (xabbu one of our Simvi MP Server admins for example) and they will tell you the same !!
Some things in FSX are simply performing very bad compared to similar features other games offer !!

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I have some development knowledge, as well as game programming knowledge (including 3D programming, usage of Direct 3D, etc...).

I had a look to your screens... yes it looks beautifull, but sorry, the amount of details is much lower than what is actually displayed on a normal FSX scene.

Sure you have some magnificent trees right in fron of you... but what about the trees 100m away from you ? Ever heard about "Level of Detail" ? The trees away from you are much simplified, but you can't see it, you don't need to see it.

The screenshot in the forest is very detailled as well.... drawing distance = 200m, though...

The is a post out there that talks about replacement textures for the ground autogen. There we get precise numbers: default FSX autogen textures (for example, for one particulat type of tree) is 1024x1024 and weight is 600 kb ?  

FS9 was smoooooooooth.... with its 512x512 - 20 kb textures. One must keep in mind that the textures of FSX are too heavy. The DTX5 format is the reason of course. Textures are bigger, heavier, so you need more ressources to display them.

When it comes to the rest of the game engine, don't underestimate the amount of ressource for AI traffic, meteo, ATC, flight model, gauges, scenery loading etc...
I can't believe how many

EDIT: Errr, where is the rest of my post ???
Anyway, the final sentence was: I can't believe how many people are amazed by the ressources needed by FSX.

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Good god...