Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I should preface this review with a statement: I've been a fan of the flight sim franchise since I first played Bruce Artwicks' version on Apple II. And no other software title has inspired me to spend as much money over the years to upgrade my pc hardware as much as Flight Simulator. I know this kind of game demands the latest and greatest, and generally, I have no qualms about making this kind of investment when a new FS version comes out. And I really wanted to like this game. However, I really believe that Microsoft has over-done it this time. What I mean is, I think it will be about a year before the hardware that is required to run this game at acceptable speed and display quality settings will even be available to the average person. Like I said, I expected to need high-end hardware to run FS X, I did not expect that the hardware required would be stuff that isn't even for sale yet. Now, if you're willing (and can afford) to go out today and buy an ultra-super-extreme-high-end gaming rig, with the very fastest core 2 duo cpu available and a water-cooled quad-SLI video subsystem, you can probably get this pig to fly, but if you don't, you won't have much fun with this "game." Case in point- my machine has an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ cpu, 2Gig of RAM, and an ATI 1900XT video card with 512M RAM. While not quite "bleeding edge," I think by all rational standards this machine is a pretty solid gaming rig. I can play FEAR, QUAKE 4, LOCK-ON, and a half-dozen other graphics-intensive games with all the settings turned up to MAX and I still get very fast frame rates. But when I loaded up this dog, it was like watching a slide show. I am not kidding - 5 or 10fps, tops. Even after turning everything in the graphics and scenery settings way down, turing autogen OFF, it barely got up to 15-20fps. And often it would still dip below 10. This is not a playable frame rate for flight simulation- not even close. Frankly, I almost think this version is a step backwards- I say this because if you turn down the display settings so that you get flyable frame-rates, the view out the window will look considerably worse than FS2004. By comparision I can fly FS2004, with detail and video settings at or near max, AND MegaScenery installed, and I consistently get 35-45fps. It appears that Microsoft is selling this title primarily based on the improvements in the eye candy, but in order to get that eye candy and have reasonable frame rates, you need to spend at least $3000 to $4000 on a completely new and very, VERY high-end machine. If you're OK with that, knock yourself out. Hell, for that amount of money you could almost get a real pilot's license. But for the vast majority of people out there, I would say, save your money, because FS2004 looks and flies MUCH better on today's hardware. MAYBE, when the Vista version comes out, AND we give the hardware guys about a year to catch up, then FS X will be a playable game. Because it's sure not right now. =(