• Microsoft Sidewinder Mouse

From award winning game developer ACES comes Flight Simulator X.The latest installment will include the usual genre leading realismthat continues to awe real pilots and will serve as the graphicalbenchmark for games on Windows Vista. Additionally Fl

Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Fun
Comment: I have had many issues with FSX- when it came out I had what was then a medium spec PC... and promptly uninstalled it! I eventually got a new graphics card which helped, and finally ran it a a decent speed. I recently invested in a new PC- spening about £400 on it (as of July 2008), and I felt willing to try FSX acceleration despite the problems people have had. I was very surprised that it not only ran at a good framerate, but did so with the graphics sliders at the high or very high setting for everything. The graphics are stunning!!

As for the pack itself, it adds three very different aircraft to FSX and many many missions. All the aircraft present a new challenge. Air racing is fast paced and very tricky, landing on a carrier is more difficult (and I imagine more realistic) than on any other simulation that I've tried, and the Heli missions (particuarly the ones where you have to haul loads under the helicopter) take the biscuit! Despite the challenge, they are without exception great fun.

FSX has always had performance issues, but a reasonably new PC with a decent graphics card seems to be working for me. If you can get FSX to run at a decent framerate, this will definatly add to the experience and is worth buying.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Worth persevering with any installation issues
Comment: I too was surprised to see Acceleration failing to install telling me I didn't have the English version of FSX (I did).
It turns out that if you've moved your installation of FSX around your machine trying to get better performance out of it (I had) then the registry settings can get out of sync.
There's a simple free fix program for this on the Flight1 downloads page.
Once you're past that point, Acceleration then insists that you unload FSX SP2 if you've already got it installed(!) before it will continue. This is fine if your windows PC isn't suffering from the common 'Please wait' bug in the 'Add or Remove program' dialog box which means you can be waiting for 10 minutes+ before the screen populates (mine permanently sticks).
Although I couldn't find a fix for this on the Web , there is an alternative program called SAFARP you can use instead which works fine and it's free: Do a search for 'SAFARP download'. Plenty of positive reviews exist.
So, after you've done that, Acceleration loads fine and it's worth it just for the F18 hornet and the opportunity to try carrier launches and landings.
FSX and Aceleration are both mind-bogglingly complex programs and it really is worth the wait if you have the patience to see the load process through.
I've also seen another reviewer say they had problems with the game and an NVIDIA card: Ive got an 8800GT and I haven't experienced any problems with it at all.
So, hope this helps somebody.Hope you enjoy it!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: All depends
Comment: If you only have a clean version of FSX installed this add-on will probably work a treat and provide an extra slant to a great sim and get 3 or 4 stars. However if like me you have lots of third party add-ons they refuse to work (most do). I tried 3 times doing a clean install then adding Acceleration and then my add-ons, had to give up and leave Acceleration well alone, but like I said if you have no other add-ons it will probably be fine.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Works good!
Comment: I nearly didn't get this due to the reviews. Luckily I had already said yes to a chrissy present as it loaded fine and plays fine. No problems at all. Vista, 3 GHz dual processor, 8800GTX 768Mb, 4 Gb mem, Asus Striker M\B. Maybe it needs high spec?

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Customer Rating:
Summary: nVidia users avoid at all costs
Comment: Title says it all. Buying Microsoft software is becoming a game of chance. In this case a quick glance at two of the main community forums (Simviation & Avsim) will show you that nVidia users are getting game freezes, system hangs and crashes to desktop. The frame rate increase (3 or 4?) is certainly not worth the hassle of having to use FSX in windowed mode while you try to remember never to use the menus without first pausing the game. Oh and the extra missions are great provided the game doesn't crash when you try to load one.
All in all I'd say FSAcceleration was a cynical attempt to get early adopters to buy the now free Service Pack 2 which in itself was a cynical attempt to exploit customer disatisfaction and get people to upgrade to to DX10 (and therefore Vista). FSX works fine with SP1. Leave it at that or you'll end up writing 'Frankly I'm outraged' reviews like this one.
Grrr.

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