FSX is great fun, but with all the hassles and poor performance, my conclusion is that Microsoft released it about a year early and without sufficient testing.

Don't forget their are also 2 updated patches that you should download from the MSFX website and install them to get better performance out of the game

Aerosoft, Abacus, Flight1, Just Flight, and many others have excellent add-ons that will boost the performance of FSX

I think it is an overall good update to the Flight Simulator series, and its performance is actually not bad on my PC.

In FS 2004, I had all of the graphics settings maxed out and performance was fine.

On the positive side, the graphics are very easy to adjust for optimal performance.

Do some research and tweaking and youll see much better performance

I am hopeful that Microsoft will provide some updates that will improve the performance of the program

Of course, you could always use simple clouds, which would give you a nice performance boost).Traffic: Custom (I like traffic, so I put everything at 50%, ultra high is 20%)I get 30+ FPS while flying high and 20-30 while low, except in highly-detailed areas.

One downside is that you need to download and install service pack 1 for best performance, since the service pack includes improvements to make it perform better

I'm going back to Flight Simulator 2004 just because I can get better scenery and performance than this one.

SP2Of course, with the system specs metioned above, you would get better performance with Windows XP.

Less than stellar performance due to being so CPU-bound instead

You'll get equivalent graphics and performance, if not better.

They claim, that DX10 pipeline improved framerates by 10-20% by offloading more tasks to video card, and you get better performance.

Exceptional graphics, sound and overall performance.

Unfortunately, "optimal performance" isn't much if you don't have a high-end machine.

I spoke to someone who dropped $12,000.00 on a computer and still didn't get the best performance

I have MS FS 2004 and X-plane 8 and let me tell you I deleted MS FS 2004 as fast as I could

I've run FS9 on several machines with a variety of graphics cards and processor speeds, and although it runs faster or slower as you might expect, it's still fundamentally the same experience

So to wrap up - I highly recommend this simulator to any Aerolover as myself