Not for me....

[RollerBall]

Well, after all the build up and the hassle setting it up, if this is the quality of the genuine software it won't be for me. Not with this rig anyway.

You've seen the quality of my screenies in FS9 and there's no way I'd pay money to get the level of visual quality I've obtained in this sampler. There's no comparison for me. Loads of AA jaggies, blurry textures and water that looks great close up (on max setting only) but plain weird from certain angles on lower settings. Maxing everything last night even crashed my system and this morning I had to turn down the AA on my card.

And even with many sliders lowered quite a bit, a FR in spot view of 2 - 6 just ain't on, not when I get 18 with a target of 18 even with thick cloud in FS9.

So there you go. I haven't tried any of the gamer-gimmics (ie missions in the sampler) - just free flight. I thought the VCs were superb, what I saw of them, but if I can't look outside at all of the graphics features that FSX is all about (land, water, autogen, traffic) what's the point of it?

BTW I didn't have SP2 installed on my freshly installed hard drive but installing it didn't affect my FS2004 FR I'm surprised to say.

So it's an initial thumbs-down from me I'm afraid. And as I can't see me EVER paying for a

[expat]

[quote]Well, after all the build up and the hassle setting it up, if this is the quality of the genuine software it won't be for me. Not with this rig anyway.

You've seen the quality of my screenies in FS9 and there's no way I'd pay money to get the level of visual quality I've obtained in this sampler. There's no comparison for me. Loads of AA jaggies, blurry textures and water that looks great close up (on max setting only) but plain weird from certain angles on lower settings. Maxing everything last night even crashed my system and this morning I had to turn down the AA on my card.

And even with many sliders lowered quite a bit, a FR in spot view of 2 - 6 just ain't on, not when I get 18 with a target of 18 even with thick cloud in FS9.

So there you go. I haven't tried any of the gamer-gimmics (ie missions in the sampler) - just free flight. I thought the VCs were superb, what I saw of them, but if I can't look outside at all of the graphics features that FSX is all about (land, water, autogen, traffic) what's the point of it?

BTW I didn't have SP2 installed on my freshly installed hard drive but installing it didn't affect my FS2004 FR I'm surprised to say.

So it's an initial thumbs-down from me I'm afraid. And as I can't see me EVER paying for a

[Saitek]

I have to admit it wasn't much of a release with all that missing.

[congo]

I installed it, had a terrible time of it, re-installed it, figured out my problem and it's fine now, I like it.

Maybe try again Rollerball? With SP2 perhaps?

I remember when FS9 was released, all the screenshots looked fake and cartoony to me, I reckon this one looks a lot better at this stage than FS9 did when it was new, but I know this is very subjective.

[RollerBall]

nah congo. I've got SP2 installed but the problem basically is my graphics card can't handle these graphics in this engine I think. That's my conclusion at this stage anyway. Take a look in freeware screenies. My FS2004 Bell has texture problems and my FSX 747 textures are horrendous. Unless this is one of the demo limitations (sorry ex-pat, still can't be bothered reading the Read-Me  ??? )

[congo]

I imagine the full program will be on a few DVD's.

They obviously tried to keep the filesize to CDROM size for the Demo, so it's bound to be severely crippled.

I'm actually getting way better results than I thought possible with the demo, but it means nothing until the actual final release, we'll see then

[Hagar]

After reading all the comments I wasn't going to even try it but, I thought to myself, might as well give it a go. Much to my surprise it runs quite well on my machine which is nothing special. The DVCs all work fine but I haven't tried the 2D panels yet. (It's either one or the other unlike FS2002/4.) Haven't tried tweaking it much yet & don't expect miracles (like the full water effects)

[RollerBall]

Hiya Doug - I tried just changing the Bell textures to DDS but the model is mapped with the full original texture name (ie bmp) so it stays grey. You'd need to find a way of remapping but Premier did with the Dash 8 so there must be a way.

I just dropped the Kingair in. It flies fine and the VC looks not bad except again textures are poor especially external which are horrendous.

But a lot of this may be down to my card, I don't know.

[Hagar]

But a lot of this may be down to my card, I don't know.

Hi Roger. I think a lot will be due to the card & also the drivers (& display settings) people are using. I could never get the full graphics effects in FS9 so wouldn't expect them in FSX. Maybe this is the reason I was happier with it than you.

I haven't tried many addons yet. Some FS9 3rd party aircraft appear to work quite well with their original textures so the answer might be the texture format.

[Tweek]

2-6 FPS is very strange indeed. It must be something to do with your graphics card, as there doesn't appear to be anything lacking in other departments. In fact, your specs are overall much better than mine, yet I'm still managing 15-18 FPS on fairly average settings.

I tried it on my dad's computer, and his is just beyond a joke. Although his specs are better than mine, it was running at what must have been less than 1 FPS, even with lowered settings.

I think some graphics cards just don't like it!