Good news and bad news after a trip round whatever island it is in the Beech Baron.
Part of the bad news is the frame rates. I found the frame rates slowed to 14-18FPS in some views when a lot of scenery was in the frame. But that was with everything in the display settings set to "Ultra High" and at full screen on 1280x1024x32. That may sound good news, but the machine I got that on is powered by an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ dual core processor, with 2GB of DDR RAM and a Radeon X1900 XTX video card. If I've got to go back to compromising on display settings then FSX really is a frame hungry beast!
One major change is that there is no "aircraft" folder, but it is possible to add new aircraft. Instead of putting the main parts of the aircraft into the "aircraft" directory, you put it into SimObjects/airplanes/ Everything else seems to go where you'd have put it in FS9.
The good news is that this brave new world does look pretty, as far as the jerk-o-vision of sub 20FPS will allow me to judge. The Caribbean island has a slightly "Tin Tin" cartoon feel to it, but there's lots of scenery, and the moving cars on the roads and boats floating around the place look really good. In fact, the scenery really does seem a step change for the better - give or take the fact that the airport fence makes stuff seem to float in the air on the other side of it.
The biggest change is the sea and lagoon textures, which made a real effort to convince they were actually water: though the "waves" seemed a bit over scale for my taste. Clouds looked good from a distance, but I didn't fly in any.
The Beech Baron looked and felt and sounded really good, too. Not the sort of aircraft I ever normally fly, but good nonetheless. I got a bit confused over the views. Pressing S cycles through a virtual cockpit, a spot, a tower and an "aircraft" view that I didn't quite get to the bottom of, but seems to hold at a point and in a direction related to the aircraft. There is also a 2D cockpit, but it didn't seem to be included in the normal cycle of views. Aircraft animation and accompanying noises - undercarriage and flaps etc - seemed very good.
Very much a quick first view, then, but given the power that is going to be needed to get the best out of FSX, I'm not sure that we should all start uninstalling FS2004 just yet...
Oh: and the best news of all is that Microsoft are using a faded Saltire as the desktop icon for the FSX demo!
Meanwhile, you can pre-order FSX at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk: the former with an early October release date, the latter with a later October release date. And widely different prices: $64.99 on amazon.com or £54.99 on amazon.co.uk, which at today's exchange rates equals $103.96. Even given the US price includes a $5 discount, it makes you wonder how that difference is justifiable!