Unless you have a top-of-the-range PC with a hoge RAM and outstanding graphics card and processor than you are better off with FS2004. Just as good from the point of view of flying and much faster (and cheaper). That's why I havn't upgraded yet; an expensive piece of software for my purposes just as good as FS2004, and which would exacerbate my already chronic speed problems. However, if you've got the hardware and the money then by all means go for FSX; is has various improvements on FS2004.
With regards to the system requirements you should, according to Pilot, take the Microsoft recommended system requirements and regard them as the minimum. Even with a reasonably powerful PC, Pilot's flight simulation correspondant found that the picture soon descended in to a series of small 'jerks'.
Also, the missions are one-off-flights and you can get flying just as well without them as with them; there is no system of mission-evaluation and they are just like a flight you would set up with a page of mission briefing.
Happy flying!
FSX is a graphics hungry sim, and yes to have the same graphics you see in pictures will mean most of us will have to spend large amounts of money upgrading. The main thing is to get more RAM and a better graphics card, the next thing to consider if your computer is still slow with FSX is to uprade to a better CPU such as the Core 2 duo's.
In the end its best to buy or build a PC from scratch unless you know how to maximise performance settings of the hardware etc.
I have FSX and FS9, and ive got a every low spec computer that even struggles to Run FS2004. However FSX does run better because of its new way of loading textures in game. So although the graphics cards as good i have a much smoother flight without it jumping like mad.
Buy the January issue of PC-Pilot which is about £4.99 or so. This issue has the FSX demo on CD. I find itmuch easier to just as too downloading of the internet.
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