Just posting that I am still here and reading…but that the debate has moved beyond my knowledge to constructively contribute. 
Don’t you hate it when that happens? 
There are very few people with that much sense, eh?
Anyway, I’m done. An Xbox won’t play a 360 game, but a 3 year-old PC won’t play Bioshock at an acceptable level. A newer well-built one like mine won’t play Crysis at better than medium settings.
In 3 years, someone with an Xbox360 will be able to play the newest Xbox360 game. They will have the same graphics, sound, and physics as everyone else with an Xbox360.
That’s not the case with a PC.
-Joe
Nope, I’ve tried it at 1024x768 with some graphical features turned off (I hear shadows kill the performance) and it still gives me like 3 frames per second. And it’s a 19" CRT monitor which I’ve had almost 10 years (which’ll be the next thing I upgrade).
And my point is, in Summer 2006, when the game came out, NOBODY, not even gamers, had a 4200 processor and 4GB of RAM. So either I’m doing something really wrong (which I don’t understand, because other high end games play FINE on my computer) or this is a perfect example of what’s wrong with the PC gaming scene - releasing games that even 2 years later won’t play on anybody’s computers…which is a perfect reason to feel paranoid about shelling out money for a game that won’t work. Also, I remember that rather than having a PLAYABLE demo, Microsoft released a rather long video trailer for FSX, showing the game running PERFECTLY, and unrealistically for any home computer!
I’d really like to know exactly which graphics card you have. “110 dollar ATI card” (was that the price in 2006 or did you just buy it?) causes me to suspect you need to put all graphics settings on low for that game. Have you tried that?
-FrL-
She (he?) mentioned it had half a gig of RAM–that is by no means an old card, or low end by any definition.
Now, if it were intergrated, then there’d be an obvious problem, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
(For reference, I bought a high-mid range PC around summer 2006–3ghz 64-bit CPU, 1GB RAM, and a quarter-gig of memory on my–then current gen–video card. Fusoya’s machine isn’t even in the same ballpark)
Yep, and this is the third time we’ve been through this point. What you say is true - and the cost of that is that console development is locked in place for very long (compared to PCs) cycles. It’s a tradeoff, not a clear advantage. In 3 years, that Xbox 360 will still be playing games with 2005 technology.
FSX is definitely something that was ahead of its time in terms of technical requirements. But aside from incorrect minimum requirements labelling, I don’t see it as inherently a problem. Those with top-end systems could play it, and in a few years those with lower end systems can play it. They definitely limit their market by making it high end - but the alternative is either not making it, or making it a slight upgrade to FS2004 that’s not as technically ambitious.
I suspect that they intended it to be able to run well on a bigger range of systems, but they weren’t able to optimize it sufficiently. It’s definitely a problem that you bought it under a false impression created by the requirements. That’s more a deceptive marketing issue than anything.
You do sound like you have unusually low performance, though. I haven’t ran the game in a while, but on my system with lesser components (well, the 6800 GT might be better than your video card) I remember it being slow, but more like 12-25 FPS rather than 2-3.
First, before I make my point, let me point out that I’m a PC gamer primarily, and when I build/re-build my computer, gaming considerations come first (anything that can handle games can handle Access databases). For the games I like the most, keyboard/mouse trumps gamepad.
One of the reasons that new PC games tend to make video cards cry is that they are still optimizing code when the game is released. Because new games like to push the limits, and because the developers can only test on a limited number of different setups, the rush to market might mean that the code is finished (the game can be played) but not yet optimized (and sometimes never fully optimized, as the developers are tasked to different assignments).
On a console, the first few waves of games have the same issues. As the markets mature, the code becomes more streamlined, and because it is a non-changing base, top-tier console games tend to improve graphically (and in gameplay functionality) all throughout the life of the console.
The amount of Video RAM is a poor indicator of performance. There are very old, and very low powered card with 512 MB of VRAM. We need to know the chipset and model.
FSX is a dog though. I don’t know who the developer was but that engine was NOT optimized for the hardware of the time, and even on high end rigs it doesn’t run very well. This is an example of what NOT to do as a game developer.
And I don’t even understand the source of the problem with that engine. What the heck is it doing? Rendering a flat plane and a texture on top, maybe a few rectangles (buildings)? It’s redicolous how badly it performs. I do love the game though
The amount of RAM on a video card has almost nothing to do with how it will perform, though. A 95 dollar Geforce FX7300 w/ 512MB RAM will be basically unable to run any game from the more than three years old(er than that card) at full graphics settings. And I think I am probably being generous with that estimate.
-FrL-
My ignorance is showing I guess. I’ve always considered RAM to be an indicator of how old a card is, in that the less it has, the older it likely is. But, I never considered myself to be an expert on the subject anyhow. (And there is nothing like going to the store and seeing overclocked versions of your 2-year-old card on the shelves to make one wonder what the hell is going on in the world of computer hardware these days).
At least I learned something today.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/03/14/pc_market_expected_to_continue_double_digit_growth_says_idc/
From Tom’s hardware. 350 million PC’s! I wonder how many of them are equipped with anything better than integrated intel GPU chip? Damn you Dell!
That seemed obvious to me.
The point I was trying to make wasn’t that my PC is about the graphical equal of an Xbox360 (which it is).
The point was that if I went out right now and bought say… Call of Duty 4 for a old 2005 Xbox360 and for mid-2004 computer, it would run just fine on that Xbox, but would look like warmed over shit on my PC, simply because I haven’t kept up with the hardware curve.
THAT is why I think consoles are beating PC games.
It’s an HIS Hightech H365F512NP Radeon HD 3650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
And btw, I forgot to mention that FSX is the last PC game I actually did buy retail. I played it for 1 day, tried it again about 6 months later, and it’s been collecting dust ever since, until I upgraded my hardware in January 2008, and then I tried it one more time, still no luck with decent performance even on low settings, and then tried it again with the service packs, which I think made it even worse. I no longer have the box, but I recall even my OLD system (an Athlon 64 2800+, 1.5GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon 9800 128MB AGP) met the requirements printed on the box. Maybe it isn’t an excuse to pirate, but releasing misleading demos and inaccurate system requirement lists are two good reasons for me not to BUY PC games anymore!
But as others have said, it appears most people have not had the performance problems you had with similar systems.
-FrL-
Been waiting all day for the boards to come back up so I could post this! One of the developers from Stardock has said this about pirating. He says pretty much what everyone here is saying - companies should stop trying to create games that are simply “cool” and will get them editorial accolades in magazines and sites and actually should instead be fun and targeted for the majority market of players (who aren’t hardcore gamers or possessors of mega rigs).
He also says that there is no point in developing games for the Chinese market which is both riven with piracy and also of itself a market that pushes up development costs (he doesn’t say why it does though, maybe someone here could explain that - is translation into mandarin that expensive?).
I doubt localization is expensive. After all, there are more Chinese people than almost any other ethnic group in the world, and I’m sure quite a lot of them speak English. ETA: What I mean to say is that there must be a positively immense body of translators, driving the supply way above the demand in a country where labor is already cheap to begin with.
Maybe it pushes up development costs because different hardware and software standards have to be taken into account? Just a WAG. And of course, defending your intellectual property in China can pretty much be written off as a lost cause.
Bribes are expensive.
Is this a joke?
Every time I’ve tried to upgrade my ATI drivers it’s been a nightmare; I’ve had to first deinstall the OLD drivers, THEN run the ATI application, and half the time, it doesn’t work. This is with a pretty popular ATI card, not something exotic.
Downloading new graphics drivers is not a press-one-button operation.
I’m a big, big PC gaming fan and presently don’t have a console at all, but the idea that console games are in any way comparable to the bugginess and technical irritation of PC games is just utterly, laughably insane.
I have to agree there. Consoles have ease of use all over computers. I was pretty shocked yesterday when I went to nvidia’s site to see if they had an update and they actually had gasp a button to push that would scan my hardware and give me the correct driver for it. How many years has it taken for such an obvious set up to be included? Considering how many people I know (my wife included) who can’t even be bothered to go to the window’s update site once a month it seems people just want everything done for them.
I’m still a little baffled by the open source argument. How do you entice talented people to come develop software full time if you don’t pay them? How do you market a game/application/whatever with no money? Don’t you realize that if you only did open source games/applications that there’d be a massive sucking shrinkage in new products? Plus to the average user open source programs can be quite confusing with hundreds of different types sometimes with only minor differences but completely different support bases. Arguments for open source only development always makes me think of a friend I had in highschool who’d tell me all about the utopia that would happen if we just got rid of money. Sounds nice but doesn’t work in the real world.