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David, This is grossly overstated. Much less powerful computers can run FS9 smoothly , with all the bells and whistles, Tons of addons and most if not all sliders to the right. All too many, report medium to low/poor performance with fsx even at medium settings on bleeding edge machines. (and that with FS default aircraft and scenery) The new textures and features are a beautiful and welcomed addition yet the price in terms of performance results in a very bad tradeoff - IMHO In that respect I really look forward to the results of Alex Lawrences latest endeavour. one more point to keep in mind - MS had put its hope that hardware development will "catch up" with the sims demands, but alas had taken the wrong turn in predicting the course of this development. The current trend is multiple core processors rather than fast 5-6GHz single cores. FSXs code can not utilize multiple cores! hence, not only is there no current technology to deal with FSX - there will be none in the near future. Some people put high hopes in DX10 unleashing the performance gods and magically doubeling or tripling frame rates and eliminating all stutters..... again, one should keep in mind that fsx, not unlike its predecessors is mainly cpu dependent when it comes to performance. Obviously no-one can promise it will indeed rectify, or even show any improvement over the current situation. My point is not to bash FSX or scare-monger, I'm just trying to perhaps make people stop and think for a moment before they resort to the amreican solution of throwing money at a problem... Read carefully and CRITICALLY what people write on major FS forums before you make any hardware upgrades - Granted, someone there will "volunteer" to do the experimentation for you.....

My original point was that since it's all a question of technology (or future technology) one cannot but speculate or guess. Be it even an educated one, but a guess no less. I can't rule out a possibility of a future development that would replace a human pilot altogether - and my guess is as good as anyones

It really boils down to decision making. I'm not familiar with an AI that can evolve outside its pre-programmed conditions or emulate human decision making process to be able to reproduce human thought process we must first gain good knowledge of the brains modus operandi in that respect. we understand quite well how things work in a single neuron or a nerve. There are way more unknowns at this point in time when it comes to the Central nervous system (read: brain)

very much like direct x, in order to live to its potential the software needs to be able to use multiple cores. In that context, there is no flight simulator which does that. Hopefully we could see it with future versions of x-plane or fs11

While familiarity with an area or a field in science is often good to make an educated guess, I often feel that to try and predict the pace of advance one should better rely on a crystal ball.... only yesterday I held in my hand a product that came from a semi human-semi mouse DNA and was grown inside an E. Coli bacteria....a completely science-fiction notion until not too long ago.

Actually, the reason for the other 0.1% (1-2 in reallity) is forgetting to take one.... but your advice is very valid, if you don't hang around dodgy places or use dodgy software...the chances of getting infected are much lower

Early reports posted on Avsims FSX forum show some improvement with this card - though by far not a revolution. Probably one would get better results with the advant of DX10 and its compatibility patch. On the bright side - the new card has great results with FS9....

True, it does not. Tough I am assuming that the target audience of an upgrade guide are the ones who intend to do so in the near future and not a year or 18 months from now - hence my additional remarks

Alex, with all due respect to hardware guids, I believe the best advice at the moment is just to sit and wait. with DX10 around the corner one would probably like to get a card that supports it. The snag is, that there is a fair likelihood of the first generation cards turning out crap. Add to this the time it takes for prices to drop a little and that waiting period might drag even longer This is my biggest issue with fsx - it should run decently out of the box! having to spend litteraly THOUSENDS of dollars, just to get an acceptable performance is simply outrageous, especially if you condiser the official "minimal requirements" I , for one, am not willing to pay so much for high-res textures - lovely as they might be. but then again, to each his own......

most would beg to differ

Don't know about DX10, but it actualy runs slower on vista

I know that the Russian supersonic plane... the Tupolev whaterver... had retractable Canards for take offs and landings... Tu-144 you meant, but if you want to look for the first plane to use the concept, you should track it back to the ...flyer one....

Don't return it, eventuall y we'll all switch to it, the question is when. at this point in time though, you might still consider keeping it in its box.

This is absolute rubbish, a receiving device cannot interfere with the reception of other devices, unless they are in very close proximity (and even then, only under secial circumstances)

While all of this might be true, you can't deny that at this point in time, attaining in one way or another commercial software with a broken / cracked security code, is no different than shoplifting. The fact that there are readily available means to do so makes no difference really - p2p technology just makes it easier to perpetrate (and p2p isn't the only metod, as I'm sure you know) just a pint to ponder: why is it , that piracy is by far more prevelant in some countries than others?

Tal, IMO you're blowing it completely out of proportion - we are dealig here with addons for a computer game - not basic food essentials or a life-saving drug. So life can easily go on even without having PMDGs 747F or the 767 from LDS, can't it? second - there's quite a few QUALITY freeware out there with a decent level of complexity and fine system simulation. Who said that everyone should use the 767 from LDS?? try some of those, you might even find that handflying or doing your own navigation can be no less exciting than watching the plane follow a magenta line.... Tal, like I said, the feeling of entitlement is unsubstantiated in this case. If you can't afford both a night in town and the latest addon then chose ONE. So this is the alternative that you seem so reluctant to accept. Oren, this coin has another side, in that the market is small, with a limited turnover. even if the production costs are smaller than for your average computer game, so is the sales volume, which is compensated by a higher price. Basically the rational behind the price of a luxary product, which is exactly what those addons are. I'm not refering to the price of this or that product , or wether it is inflated or not. I simply resent the labeling of such addons as "basic essentials"

what's not logical about that?? כפי שרשמתי, בתאוריה מדובר ב 2 מותרות, אבל בעיכרון מה שיצא זה שאני לא אקנה משחקים לעולם כי אני לא רואה את עצמי מחזיק חודש שלם מבלי לצאת (לפרוס לתשלומים זה לא כולכך תופס בעולם המחשבים-ניסיון מר)...... עכשיו אתה תגיד לי, מה לא הגיוני? what I find illogical, is the feeling of entitlement. it's alla bout choices and compromises which, for an obscure reason you don't think one should make..... .

what's not logical about that??

What people consider "overpriced product" is often an excuse for piracy - and a lame one as such. It's nicer to drive a Lamburgini than a subaru, but alas not everyone can afford it, and most "settle" for a Subaru. The price of addons is in a direct relation to the demand and the willing of people to pay that price. The price of the platform has no relation to it. This is how it goes, if there is a demand and the will to pay, don't expect prices to go down. All the best,and happy capitalism! //Michael

That's correct, but as Oren said, it's not the point I was trying to make. I see people are eager to get fsx as soon as possible. Prerhaps those of us who don't have a super computer (which seems the only way to run the new sim ) better wait a bit, at least until the flightsim world undergoes complete "giraffization" .

Both are available in some stores, it may very well be that the store you found simply didn't have it in stock. The real question is, wether investing in fsx now , would be worth a while. Reading many peoples comments, I get the impression that a stripped down fsx (for performance reasons) is considerably inferior to a fully loaded fs9, and that's before we even started talking about addon compatibility issues. So, in my case at least, I prefer to wait and live without any galloping giraffes below me.

longer loading times = stutters if I understand it correctly. Anyway, its not too long until fsx is out, then we'll all know for sure how well it performs. At any rate, you won't see me lining up to get it in the near future. my rig has good speed (3.5 Ghz) reasonable card (9800 pro) and standard memory 1Gig 3200pc, but I seriously doubt its abilities to run Fsx smoothly.

the question is, how feasible would it be to run FS10 with the settings that provide such quality. I would ba content if FSX could be set to perform as well as FS9 for a similar visual quality, but perhaps MS had taken i t one step too far in terms of "future potential"

I don't disagree with anything you just said, I was just wonderig about the feasibility of including any changes in the final edition in such a short time.

Actually the LAS scenery is not that bad in terms of frame rates, I think it was moleled using a different technique but I'm not really sure.