Sorry daube - I don't think so....
People are reporting that with autogen turned off performance is still way below FS9. That would knock your theory into a cocked hat. You obviously don't know - it's just your theory.
I don't have the demo installed now and I won't take delivery of the release for a day or so, so this is from memory. In the main folder there's a folder called Shaders, or something like that. It contains bitmaps that apply to a whole lot of different aspects of the sim and it ain't there for fun. My guess is that a lot of graphical horse-power is going into applying fancy effects that you can't see right now on current cards (or at least, only on very high end cards). However, I don't know for sure which is why I'd like someone technical who does, who was maybe involved in the development of the software, to tell me.
There's been a lot of discussion about hardware to run FSX and unfortunately we're all in limbo until we get DX10 (or DX9*!* or whatever it'll be called for XP) and then know something about the cards needed to run it. I see lot's of guys asking whether their AMD 2400 and 6600GT will run FSX. Yes, of course it will run the software, but there's no way the software will perform - there's a difference.
I've said in other threads that MS owe us the courtesy of telling us about the systems they tested this software on and how it performed, but I won't hold my breath as I don't think the news would be good for anyone with low end systems - and then they wouldn't buy it. Cynical aren't I - no, just realistic.
But think about this.
A 6600GT 128MB is now selling in the UK discounted for as low as