Anyone think FSX is TOO demanding..?

[NicksFXHouse]

256 will work Paul but it was designed with 2 512 cards in mind.

Its a matter of give and take. As time goes on things will get fixed and more and more information about settings will come out. I posted a FSX config file for the demo which ran x800 series ATI cards (256mb) fairly well and quite smooth. 22FPS was the max frame lock.

Purchasing hardware right now is tough... your coming up on xmas. After xmas prices are going to drop again and DX10 will be floating around. Anyone who buys DX10 hardware before march is in my opinion thowing money down the drain and being a ginny-pig for the bugs that may follow the first release cards.

[justplanecrazy]

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.

[Fozzer]

Hi Nick...

It always seems such a bloody disappointment...

Every now and again I fire up FSX, and fiddle about with the various sliders in a desperate attempt to show some nice Autogen scenery, (which is the most important thing for me as a low-level flyer), and at the same time get smooth frame rates, and I weep.... ...!

Then I close it down, and fire up FS9 and I am in Heaven again with a big smile spread across my face, flying over the very same area with Autogen, and everything else, maxed out and everything below me looking absolutely sooper-dooper fantastic.... ...!

...and all this from the reasonable specification in my Signature below... ...!

It's interesting to note that each small hardware upgrade from one flight sim to the next has cost me on average, no more than

[Boca]

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'.  :P

[Brett_Henderson]

My comment wasn't about how one goes about budgeting hardware purchases into their life of priorities.

I was pointing out that the hardware to run FSX isn't some fantasy of the future. And that EVEN IF you were starting from scratch.. the computer needed to run FSX well isn't the hyper-expensive gaming-monster everyone's making it out to be.

Forget FSX..

[ctjoyce]

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

[Woodlouse2002]

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

Thats bollocks that is. How can a game be designed to run on software and hardware that doesn't exist? All they've done is taken todays hardware to the absolute limit, and by their own admission they will release a patch to take advantage of DX10 and Vista when they're released.

[bbstackerf]

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

[Joe_D]

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

MS developed a new sim solely to make money as sales of the old vers always drop off after a while. They made FSX  to increas sales to the masses.

If they listened to us, they would have improved ATC and the flight model etc.
Instead, they chose to wow the general public with graphics and sales pitches and broke some of the things that were right with FS9.

[vololiberista]

..  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.

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

[Tweek]

if you cant run at 50 FPS, that's not an error, you just don't have what the sim needs to run enjoyably.

50 FPS to run it enjoyably?! I somehow don't think so!

At a push, my sim can get into the mid 20's on nearly maxed out settings, and it's usually in the high teens. This being on a pretty low end rig. I certainly don't need an extra 25-30 FPS just to start enjoying Flight Sim, securing the knowledge that my computer has more than enough power to run the sim.

As Nick said, it's laughable that anyone 'needs' more than around 25FPS. Perhaps 30, max.

[Katahu]

As Nick said, it's laughable that anyone 'needs' more than around 25FPS. Perhaps 30, max.

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.

[bbstackerf]

Quote:  "no one in their right mind would spend $2,000 and certainly not in order to play just one programme!!!"

You'd be surprised. The Desktop I have now with upgrades cost be me to date $1640,00, and I got it just to run FS9. Everything else I run on my laptop. If I had the scratch, you better believe I'd have an Alienware PC to run FSX. For some dorks like me FS is a main hobby, something we spend waay too much time doing but get much joy from like rc planes (checked out the prices onthose things?).

Keni (FS Dork)

[JBaymore]

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.

[Fozzer]

50 FPS to run it enjoyably?! I somehow don't think so!

At a push, my sim can get into the mid 20's on nearly maxed out settings, and it's usually in the high teens. This being on a pretty low end rig. I certainly don't need an extra 25-30 FPS just to start enjoying Flight Sim, securing the knowledge that my computer has more than enough power to run the sim.

As Nick said, it's laughable that anyone 'needs' more than around 25FPS. Perhaps 30, max.

The problem which I constantly have, is banking my craft at low level, where the frame rates drop from 15/20 FPS down into low single figures and the whole scene just judders along.
This always has been a problem since the first computers were designed due to the graphics engine having to shuffle pixels around on the monitor in the x y coordinates, involving very complex calculations...!
But this is much more noticeable, and troublesome in FSX, compared to the previous Flight Sim versions operating under similar flying conditions.... ...!

Fly in a straight line....fine... ....
...just don't try and change direction... ...!

I think the only way to enjoy FSX without a considerable upgrade cost involved, is for MS to release a temporary patch to downgrade FSX slightly in the Autogen scenery/texture area to be slightly better than FS9 and therefore run on our low cost upgrades for a while.......!

Paul... ...!

...anyone got the keys to Fort Knox to enable us to fully upgrade.......!