Silent Warrior

Eh... Wantz one myself... Student-life's a b... bore some times, innit?

I don't think they've released a demo for BS yet, so... It's just not prioritized as high as having a finished product in a reasonable timespan. As for the complexity - that's just the way it is, input devices being what they are. If your son's ok with it, power to him. If not, we certainly won't blame him.

Sorry to hear that... Have you tested them?

Looks to me like a modification for night-time lighting. (Correct?) If so, it looks quite promising to me.

System RAM and graphics card memory are separate entities and controlled by separate chips, so differing memory-types won't matter in the slightest in the case you describe.

... Seriously, there has to be others besides me who'd never play anything more demanding than Battle for Wesnoth on a laptop. Never mind if the hardware is actually up to the task or not, I just find the whole device too small for simulations. Well, maybe if you have an effin' huge screen/projection, but...

... An' here's me running a 9600GT and thinking about upgrading to a Radeon 5770. :music_whistling: Off to examine this new fancy gadget, then.

I'll see if I can get around to testing them, myself.

Hm... Isn't Crossfire best with the same cards? Whatever, I'll be playing at half that resolution anyway. :P Sorry, I have no answer for you.

Lulac: Since this is a CPU-intensive game, it's difficult to say for sure whether it's the CPU or GPU that'll be the weak link in your setup, but you should reach playable FPS if you set graphics options moderate. And... be careful with traffic, mkay?

Speaking with no experience at all of any sort of any Flanker/Lock-On/DCS mission editor (FRED2, on the other hand...), have you compared your settings to voice-messages that work? Correct sender/receiver/channel? How are your in-game/sim volume sliders? How did you encode the .oggs? (Hm, I guess that might not matter - I see you tried .wav too with the same result.) How many channels, what bitrate/quality settings? (Both OGG/WAV.)

... THAT's why Nvidia-cards haven't been playing nice with Falcon 4 the last few years?? Well, the more support, the merrier, I'd say.

Um, do you have different time-tables or something (someone working night-shift)? Did you put the computer in your bedroom? I have difficulty seeing why there'd be a problem if both of you sleep at the same time... Besides the recommendations already given, I can spread the gospel of fan-less cooling solutions for graphics cards (though, to my knowledge, they're only up to 57xx-derivatives). In extreme cases, you COULD, I guess, invest in a boat-load of extension-cables for keyboard, monitor, mouse, whatever else, and put the case somewhere far, far away.

Oh, it's pretty sweet, alright - though I think plane-builders notice the differences from v8 much more than little average me. Well, scenery developers too, of course - something with DDS/PNG hierarchy or support. I didn't really notice any difference going from v8 to 9 besides add-on compatibility. An' I'm not looking back. :) Oh, right, the FMS had some poking and prodding done to it as well - I noticed THAT. And the revised list of subsystems in the Failures-screen. Although I understand IL-2 had some pretty fancy damage model, and FC2/DCS can't be any worse, the v9 line-up of potential failures and their combination is just... perverse, really! Now you can have FUSES blow, not just tires!

Get LED instead, the plasma option will leave a lasting mark on your electricity bill. As for framerates, I understand just about every recent TV is capable of up to 100Hz. You can cap that to your liking in Windows' monitor properties, though. And LO will most likely render the pit across all 50 inches - you won't be needing any magnifying lens before you're 90 with that configuration, I'm sure. I don't know the first thing about setting up multiple displays, though, so I'll just excuse myself for now.

I wish you luck with this - it sounds exciting. And my vote is cast. Just to clarify, you WILL bundle the missions up as a campaign when it's completed, right? So I won't have to check back here and download the individual missions successively?

DX11 or not, that looks like my 9600GT just ain't gonna hack it... And when I get a new plank, I'll be able to play Dragon Age at full tilt! Yay! ... Uh, right, this is DCS. Um... :D

Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarty!

Voodoo 2? I haz one of those! :D EtherealN: Regarding the driver-situation, I have to disagree. See, past version 196.21 (or .45) Nvidia broke something critical to NWN2, and the latest drivers give (or give ME, anyway) crashes and slowdowns in FSX (the later beta only more pronounced, and earlier crash). If ATI is worse, I'd say we're in a world o' hurt... I suppose I have to confess, for completeness's sake, that Mass Effect 2 appears to work A-OK with the latest WHQL-forceware. (And lookin' hella sexy at 1024x768 with reduced settings!) In response to the OP: My GeForce 9600 GT seems to be at the lower tier for getting eye-candy and FPS out of FC2. It's really not a smooth ride, but if you're careful with your settings (i.e. no AA, reduced visibility, shadows, etc), it works well enough. Maybe I'm even running 1280x1024 with typically 20+ FPS...

I don't know if I have the time for an early beta, but I strongly suspect I'll take great interest in this as matters progress.

I asked someone the very same question once (maybe that was in the flesh, though). The answer I got was that it WILL work, no problem at all, but the fancy new stuff PCIe 2.0 brings to the table over 1.0 (... Like what, exactly? Anyone?) will, obviously, not be available to you. Like JLZ says, you're likely better off concerning yourself with hunting for compatibility reports. My 9600GT is capable of running Mass Effect 2 (demo, sheesh!) at moderated settings, so I don't think you'll have to worry about performance with either card.

Got Core i7? That smells of hyper-threading, to me. (As far as I can tell, hyper-threading effectively tricks the OS into thinking the available number of cores are doubled - duplex computing. Is that correct?)

If this means you got your drivers through Windows/Microsoft Update, you're ten times braver than I! I've had nothing but trouble with drivers available through there... All the same, it warms my little heart that you've found your solution.

What people like about X-Plane? The flight-model, mostly. And the included FMS - no need for payware, or hacking any aircraft.cfg, though not every cockpit/aircraft come with one. Most of the rest is really just personal preference - I much prefer its lighting bells and whistlies, and visibility, over FSX's, for example. But that's me.

*Prod* That should mean it doesn't make a bit of difference whether PhysX is turned on or not, shouldn't it? ;)