FSX intial impressions and tech question

[BM357_TinMan]

Ok, just got it and flew the piper for about 20 min over my hometown.

My intial impression is, they seem to have done a fairly good job on the way this new sim looks. Albiet, it will take much more power than we currently have available in home pc's to fully enjoy all the eye candy but still, it looks very nice even when turned down to a runable level. (I might add that I use a utility to turn off all uneccesary background services and applications to help ease the load off of the cpu).

As far as roads and rivers, it seems that they at least made an effort to get the more major roads in the right place and following the currect path in this version (in the US at least). That's a start M$. I don't know about lakes and rivers as I haven't had a chance to check them out yet.

However, smaller roads and even towns are missing so I will have to wait until "ultimate terrain" comes out for FSX and spend another almost $100 to get all the towns, roads and rivers correct in US, canada and eurpoe (where I spend most of my time flying). But at least they made a small effort this time.

I also like the fact that there has been an attempt to limit the range of movement when using trackIR. In FS9, you could lean through windows and stuff, in FSX, the windows (on the sides at least) stop you. Unfortunately, you can still lean through the back of the plane, and I wish that this "limit" was a choosable feature.

It seems to me, upon a short intial impression, that M$ put a little more time and effort into this version did they did FS9. The weather seemed to be pretty good, but it was a pretty nice day in my neck of the woods, so I can't say for sure.

Anyway, that's my $.02 after 30 min in FSX

As far as my shockwave planes, I have some that were d/l'ed off the web and some on CD's. I haven't tried as of yet, but is there anything I should know before I try to install them. Do I need a new installer for FSX or can I just run the installer and point it to FSX folder.

Thanks

[cflord]

TinMan

I have been flying FSX for two weeks now. I have flown the Maule, Gruman Goose, Cessna 172, Ultra Light, CRJ, B737, Piper, Airbus 321, DC-3, Cub, and the Sail Plane.

Most of the planes fly ok except for the Airbus 321, which is a real dog! I found the 321 to be real heavy on the controls and no amount of trim would help.

The scenery is outstanding; but it does take a lot of computer resources to get the full enjoyment out of it, at the expense of frame rates.

The Missions are great fun to fly and I have managed to fly most of them except the missions dealing with Helos. I'm just not a helo guy!

I havn't put any of my WOP airplanes in FSX yet; but I will soon. I reloaded FS2004 on my new computer and I get 70+ FPS and all my planes (Payware & Freeware) fly real smooth so I'm in no rush to load all my planes in FSX until the proper patches come out. I also think that when MicroSoft releases Vista with Direct X-10, FSX will run faster.

Overall I think FSX has a lot of potential and is worth the initial growing pains for us users.

Keep the shinny side up and the dirty side down!
Ret SMSgt Cliff Lord - C-130 Flight Engineer