Flight Simulator X looks awful on the M860tu

Does anybody here have this game?

I just managed to install this by sheer fluke (re: recent thread about DVD RW drive not playing ball) and I was looking forward to seeing some amazing scenery on this game like the screenshots show. However, I feel like I am playing a PS2 game with aliasing enough to drive (or fly) me up the wall and I'm also seeing some really late shading and rendering.

I thought that this game would run like a dream, considering that it says 2006 on the back of the box (this is the FSX Deluxe Edition), and the fact that the M8060tu with my chosen specs far exceeds the recommended specs on the back of the box.

I thought I would whack all settings up on the "Ultra High" option. Fraps says I was running on 20fps when I did this. I reluctantly dropped the settings to "High" and Fraps still said 20fps.
I'm seeing trees pop up on the horizon like they have magically appeared, and it's really, really annoying to see such a poor quality appearance on this simulator when I am seeing some amazing graphics on Left 4 Dead and other things.

Does anybody here have this on their M860tu with a 9800M GT inside? Am I doing something wrong? Is this simulator supposed to look a bit poor? Am I supposed to own a modded out desktop with SLI and the works in order to see this game look anything like the screenshots online and on the back of the box? If so, it's really misleading that they have put really low recommended specs on the back of the box. A well specced out M860tu far exceeds all those (by miles) so I'm thinking I may have missed something here...

 

make sure youre in high performance mode, that the plug in the back that slips out super easy is in all the way, that silent mode is off, after that consider trying a different driver to see if that affects performance. if its not the driver it could be a poorly programmed game, or the fact that 2006 was 3 years ago now and graphics may not be as good as you remember them.

 

I just uninstalled the game 5 minutes ago. Yes it looks awful and it runs awful. To top it off its impossible to play it without a joystick. Anyone have a suggestion for a good dogfight game? I remember playing a game a couple of years ago, with toy planes, that was hilarius but i cannot remember the name

 

i dont know if youre looking for arcade style or sim, but ive always been fond of the ace combat series, not sure if its on pc though

 

Descent 3 is a good pick and hopefully something to replace it later on in my lifetime.

 

I run FSX on my NP9262 with a single 9800 GT and for the most part it runs quite well. I think the scenery detail is excellent. Keep in mind that FSX is one of the most graphics intensive games out there even today so expect some FPS slowdown when on the ground taxiing or flying close to the ground with fast moving scenery.

The Windows Vista rating number for this game is 5.0 on a scale of 0 to 5.9 (recommended rating) - higher than any other game that is rated in my game collection.

There are several things you can do that might improve your FSX game performance. One is to download the latest FSX patch. Another is to play with the game settings - scenery detail, screen resolution antialiasing, etc- to optimize your game performance . I run FSX at 1920x1080 res. with some antialiasing and medium scenery detail settings.

 

Gunsmith, FSX has a hard time on my desktop with a Q6600 and 8800 GTS (G92 512). The game is extremely demanding of hardware. You simply can't expect the game to run that well on your system as it stands.

Now I've been doing MS Flight Sim since v5 came out in the mid 90's. Use some of these tips to increase your performance:

Download and install FSX SP1 and SP2 here:

SP1:
http://www.fsinsider.com/downloads/Pages/FlightSimulatorXServicePack1.aspx

SP2:
http://www.fsinsider.com/downloads/Pages/FlightSimulatorXServicePack2.aspx

Once installed, turn on DX10. It actually increases performance in FSX, since it is offloading the CPU and the CPU is your bottleneck in this game.

Turn the terrain details to 0. Even at the very lowest, terrain still looks very good compared to max.

Turn off all unneeded traffic. If you don't need boats and cars, and random planes in the air or on the ground, get rid of them. They can take up to a 10fps hit on performance.

Make sure you have Vista SP1 installed. You'll see a good 4-5 fps gain from SP1 alone.

Make sure your Scenery and Autogen are set to Normal or Dense, but nothing higher. Anything higher takes a huge pull on fps.

Tinker around with everything else. I max everything on my laptop but scenery and landscape, with almost no traffic, and get about 35-40 fps in a detailed scene on my system.

With these setting, the game looks really good. But the game is also using technology back from '95, and is extremely poorly optimized. Many FS users are converting to X-Plane, and MS realizes this, and supposedly is rebuilding FS11 from the ground up. So install those patches (Which will give an immense performance increase) and hope FS 11 will be better.