Microsoft Flight Simulator X Deluxe DVD

Customer Reviews:

Returning It Unopened
Thank you for all your comments. I am taking my copy of FSDeluxe back, unopened. I am greatful you all saved me the frustration and anger. Sorry you all endured it though. The hardware requirements for new software is getting crazy.
--2006-12-16

I think J. Casper got it right
I've been a long time user of FlightSim. I remember there have been other releases that have stressed the hardware generally available in the gaming community over the years, but this one takes the cake. In order for you to run this product to the highest level of capability it has, you'd have to have the absolute most recent hardware available on the market; duo video cards, high speed raid drive, DuoCore CPU, lots of memory, and then have everything configured perfectely. I thought I was doing good with my DuoCore 3.2ghz Xtreme Edition Intel processor, 1g memory and 256 ATI video card. Not close.

Yes, I agree with the comment that this is not a game, but rather a simulator in which you can learn the specifics of how to fly a plane, but I still like to see how much realism is being baked into this title. It makes the hours of flying more interesting.

Overtime, I'll probably go out and upgrade my system to fully take advantage of this game, er simulator, I just wasn't expecting to have to spend $100's to really enjoy this title. But upgrading is inevitable, right?
--2006-12-12

Terrible Design
Half of designing a game is making it available for at least half of the users out there. This game fails because it is simply too demanding on the system. It makes me wonder how Microsoft even tested it. I loaded the Demo on my system and knew it had problems, but figured it was because the demo was referencing limited files and it required more from a DVD... I tried this game out and my system 3.8Ghz with 2GB RAM and a ATI x1800 and I still had to turn everything down. You cannot run anything else on your system while in this game. Don't waste your money. I started with flight sims back on MSFS95, got 98, 2000, 2004... Flight Sim 9 is much better and there is no sound reason to upgrade unless you're running an SLI setup with 3+GB of RAM. Maybe Vista will make this work better...who knows, but my XPHome setup cannot handle it. I just wish I could return it. (Look for it on eBay)
--2006-12-12

Slideshow deluxe
To start with my system specs: D830, 3Gb DDR2-800, 7950GT 512MB OC, 2xSATA2 NCQ in RAID0

I was pretty confident I would be able to run the game - with the default scenery - at reasonable FSP's. I was wrong as wrong can be. With the sliders in medium range, I was enjoying FS-Slideshow Deluxe !
So I started fiddling with the settings and really, I was actually getting flyable values but for which price ! Autogen almost off, all the advertised bells and whistle not present !
So I started to to look what FSX would offer me. Did anyone at MS ever look at the textures? Who came up with that idea of a fixed mipmap setting ? The more I looked around, the more I got ticked off. Improvements of ATC over FS9 - negative. Better designed mde's (flightmodels) - negative. I'll spare the rest of it...
I am sorry Microsoft but unless you people come up with some major patches - or better FS-XI - i'll stick to my trusty FS9.
I've been simming since Apple2e times and cursed those neccessary hardware upgrades more than once, but almost always I did get rewarded by improvements - not this time! Oh, sure, if your priority is on animated birds, underwater reefs, swinging pamtrees or the ability to control a plane with your x-box controller, THIS IS YOUR GAME.
--2006-12-10

FS X is a BIG joke
Pure garbage !!!
Microsoft is selling an unfinished product.
You should better burn $ 50 bucks and save yourself the annoyance of poor design and lousy programming. Stick to your FS-9...!!!
I've been a flight simmer since FS-2, and had never seen such a poor package.
Shame on you Microsoft, instead of all that sophistication in the registration online, should better use your developers in building a quality product.
With some hope, wait to hear about patches before buying this piece of garbage !!!
--2006-12-08

- Microsoft