I think you're overestimating (except for the graphics card), but I could be wrong:

Dual Core @ 2.5 GHz
3 GB RAM
10 GB HD Space

Let's all remember here, MS said the game will be nicer to our hardware... I'm thinking we are probably going to get something that delivers more than we think - we might just be surprised.

If you can run it on your I phone I don't want it. I prefer at least a bit of a challenge. Saying that, I think the only way to make 'everyone' happy, no matter the hardware would be some form of cloud computing. A central bank of servers that send your graphics to you. But then there would be bandwidth and speed problems.   

With Flight, MS is supposed to improve the multi-core distribution of the various tasks of the game, which means that the number of cores will become even more critical than it already is in FSX.

Also, it's obvious on the screenshots that the terrain in Flight will be even more complex than it is in FSX, so the various cores will be more taxed, power-wise.

I'm not expecting Flight to run smoothly on a CPU like a dual core. Dual cores are already not enough for FSX, they won't be enough for Flight either.

Rocket_Bird wrote on Apr 7^th, 2011 at 3:49pm:

Actually, the terrain rendering is one of the only things that were really optimised in FSX, thanks to the multi-core distribution of the terrain building processes in SP1 and SP2.

Sure in FS9 you didn't need that much power, but FS9 terrain was nowhere as complex as FSX terrain. If you consider just the ground textures as an example, FS9 ground textures (like XPlane9) were in 5m/pixel resolution. In FSX, the default textures are already in 1m/pixel, that is, 25 times bigger !! And that's just for default, addons texures can go down to 7cm/pixel !

Same goes for meshes and the landclass variety in FSX, all greater than what you can get in FS9. All this combined together explains why you need more power to render FSX terrain compared to FS9 terrain. And let's not forget about the autogen density.


Quote:


First, there are not so many games that simulate things that are as complex as in FS9 or FSX. Most "normal" games are just focused on graphics, the CPUs don't have much to do. Also, "normal" games are not as dynamic as our sims, thus there is much more room for optimizations and power saving.

Push the sliders in XPlane 9 and you'll quickly run into problems too. And in XPlane 10 it's going to be even more critical.
Don't be too optimisic for Flight either.

There are other "normal" games that require CPU power, mainly strategy games. Push the sliders and the number of active units in a game like Homeworld, Supreme Commander or something like that => you'll quickly kill the computer.

Strawberry Yogurt wrote on Apr 6^th, 2011 at 5:44pm:

Do you really believe what M$ said? does any one  remember the Minimum requirement for FSX ? after saying that a celeron 1gz and a 256mb video card and 1gbram we end up with the real deal a computer 4 years from the future 
I hope they smart this time ,YES many of us BUY the higher and powerfull video cards and CPU due only to FSX ,My machine bearly runs FSX , More friendly Hardware MORE PEOPLE WILL BUY IT ,remember there's also a world beyond your frontiers that also would buy Flight (Examples India, China, Brazil), and CAN'T afford a super PC like in USA or UK so easily 
...But don't worried owners of super computers  I'm sure neither your PC would be able to run it , we will need Skynet hardware to run it  (without Terminator I hope ) 

Strawberry Yogurt wrote on Apr 6^th, 2011 at 5:44pm:


And I've got a nice slightly used bridge near NYC for sale too.   

The past history of MS's simulator offerings points to the likely fact that the hardware requirements will be well higher than most anyone currently owns to get "maximum" features (all the great sounding stuff in the marketing) running at anything other than a slide show.

I hope I'm wrong...... but I doubt it.

best,

..............john