Accessories

Great JoyStick
Installed with out a hitch. Makes Flight SimX much more fun to fly. Controls are just about right. Buttons are easy to reach and understand.
All in all a great product.

Great Game
Ok the other reviews are fairly old so this comes from a year and a half perspective off of th eoriginal reviews.

General: Overall, FSX is a great game with OK scenery. Airports look great. Traffic is great as well, it runs pretty well on my rig.

My computer specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.40GHz, 4GB of DDR2-800, nVidia GeForce 8800GT Superclocked edition with 512MB, Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit.

Settings:
I have everything set to ultra high. Well almost everything.
General Ultra High with Antisoptric and AA(also have the nvidia control panel running alot of high things). Running at a 1366x768x16 resolution. FPS Locked at 30.

Aircraft: Ultra High

Scenery: Custom.Pretty much ultra high except for autogen set to normal and scenery complexity set to very high and water set to low 2.x.

Weather: Ultra High

Traffic: Ultra High

I get about 30 solid FPS doesnt really go below 20FPS except for random 9FPS stutters that last like less than a second.

This is now considered a mid-range PC today I would say and it gets that well of a frame rate. Made in Fed. 2007. Upgraded the card to 8800 and ram to 4GB. GREAT GAME!!!

Fun for 20 minutes and too easy
it is fun for 20 minutes and then it gets so old. its not way too realistic. graphics are good but is too hard on your system. get x plane 9. it does not have as manny missions, and i recommend you have a little expierence with flight sim and computers. but it is so much better with way more planes.

Flight Simulator X
I will start with this statement: You must install Service Pack 1, and if your system has 2GB of RAM and a dual-core processor, Service Pack 2. If you don't install either of those, your FSX experience will be miserable. Now, on to the review.

Flight Simulator X (FSX) can be run on most any system nowadays, but running it on a computer that barely meets the minimum requirements will give you an experience with poor framerates and poor graphics. That said, if you want to run FSX with around medium settings with good framerates (what I mean by good is 20-30FPS), I suggest using my system requirements, metioned below:

2.0GHz dual core processor
2GB RAM
Nvidia 7600
Windows Vista SP1 or Windows XP SP2

Of course, with the system specs metioned above, you would get better performance with Windows XP. If you want to run it on Vista and use DirectX 10, I suggest something along these lines:

3.0GHz dual core processor, 2.40GHz quad-core processor
4GB RAM
Nvidia 8800, or an ATI card with DirectX 10.1
Windows Vista SP1

Using DirectX 10 actually speeds up the performance I have found using my system, but I generally use DirectX 9 because there are a few bugs such as flickering on the runway using DX10.

I can run FSX on Ultra High settings with this system:

Intel Core 2 Quad 9450 2.66GHz
4GB Kingston HyperX 800MHz RAM
Nvidia GeForce 8800 512mb
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1

In more detailed words, here are my FSX settings:

Graphics: Ultra High
Aircraft: Ultra High
Scenery: Custom (scenery complexity is highter than in ultra high)
Weather: Medium High (I don't run it on ultra high because drawing a lot of detailed clouds cuts performance a lot. 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. At first, I was getting lower than expected framerates even at the default Friday Harbor (barely more the 20FPS), with the FPS locked at 60. I changed the lock to unlimited and now I get much better framerates.
It seems to me, that locking the FPS helps a lot on single core systems and helps some in dual-core systems, but it hurts quad-core systems.

Now, on to the game.

What's New: the Dynamic Living World

Now there are moving animals, people, cars, boats, jetways, airport vehicles, and also wing flex. Enable them to appear by enabling advanced animations and adjusting traffic options. Except, animals seem a little hard to find. So far, I've only seen them in videos and in a mission where are saw four elephants.

What's Improved: the graphics

The graphics have improved. You won't notice it as much low to the ground, but get 1000+ ft and you will notice a difference if the settings are high enough. Night effects and water effects are improved also.

Should you get this game?

Yes, if your computer meets my suggested system requirements. If they barely meet the ones on the box, stick with FS2004. Also don't get it if you want 60+ FPS all the time. This isn't a 1st-person shooter, this is a non-combat flight simulator. You don't need anymore than 20FPS to have an enjoyable flight experience.

I hope his review was helpful.

P.S. This game is CPU limited. A good CPU is more important than a good graphics card. But that doesn't mean you can skip out on one. Just don't bother with SLI if FSX is all you are going to play. It doesn't improve FPS much.

Quite enjoyable on average system
Flight Simulator runs better than expected on my P4 2.8GHz (single core), 2GB RAM, nvidia 7600GS 256MB, Windows XP computer. I run at 1600x1200 (native LCD resolution) and the frame rates do not ever drop to a point where the lag is annoying or where it would become a hinder in playing the missions. I can confirm that if you want to have all the details on high, the game will run miserably, but the medium+ level of detail is not needed for a good experience. I had to customize the graphics detail to reduce quality on the items not important to me, and seeing what the game can do with the right hardware does encourage one to get a faster machine, but the simulator is very enjoyable on my "older" hardware.

Complaints: Installation was horribly slow. The game takes a while to load each time, especially the first time. Limited paper documentation (this may be a pro, since I'd rather spend the difference on the reference/guides of choice). A better interface for the flight review desired. Only runs on Windows (Flightgear and X-Plane support Linux and MacOS).

Pros: Runs on my computer today, with graphic options to take advantage of tomorrows hardware. Missions are fun and well done. Nice choice of planes, quality models. G1000 cockpits. Price is right.