Some hope for FSX

The bad news (for me, that is) is that the Demo version 2 is supposedly what you will see in the final product. The good news is that I have been able to get somewhat tolerable performance by making some compromises. The biggest one is to turn the water effects from 2x to 1x. I lose the cool reflections, but the water still looks much nicer than in FS9.

You can see in the attached shots that the scenery looks pretty good, and if you look closely at the upper left corners you can see frame rates in the teens. In fact, the scenery looks far better than the default FS9 scenery. The only real disappointment is that the first demo version suggested I could get better results.



Another encouraging thing is that 15 fps in FSX feels a lot smoother than 15 fps in FS9.

The bottom line is that after experimenting for an hour I feel more confident that I will find a decent compromise that will make me happy. And of course folks will find great tweaks in the weeks and months after release. And, one of these years I'll be able to swing a computer upgrade!