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I have CFS3 installed. Let me know when someone else gets it so we can test out the MP.

What do you think of it? I have seen at least two bad reviews of it, and lots of complaints in SimHQ forums...

I saw one good review, but that was from flightsim.com...and M$ put those folks up in the air in an T-6! as part of their gold preview of the game. Gee, would you give it a bad review?

only played it for about 15 minutes. seems ok. an evolution of cfs2 - good and not so good. scenery ok. fm's ok. Maybe the coop multiplayer will be exciting.

I have CFS3 installed as well, and I like it. Snapdad and I played a couple of mission last week and it seemed to run very well. I have my settings tweaked to run CFS3 smoothly (AVG 20 FPS) and have no complaints. We flew a co-op mission where we had to bomb an airfield 130+ miles away. About half way there, we realize we have no bombs on the wings(forgot to add them in setup, doh!) So we attacked the airfield with guns only and quickly ran out of ammo. We resorted to insults and harsh language after that.

Our next mission was a Bombing mission, where you can fly together in a bomber. You have the ability to switch between gunner stations on the bomber, very cool (Remember B-17 II?). Snapdad was flying the plane and I was a gunner, about 10 minutes into the flight, the plane started decending and we went through the ground, literally. I tried calling Snapdad on RW but no answer. Apparently his computer crashed, and we were done for the night. For me, CFS3 runs great so far, and my small MP experience was good.

The flight models seems good to me. When you bank hard, you can hear the plane creaking from the tension, and the speed bleeds off quick. I don't really pay any attention to the FM, I am lost in the graphic detail of CFS3. Wait till you fly in a full on rain/thunder storm. OMG! Very very cool.

I would love to try CFS3 MP again. Maybe sometime this weekend Madrus or anyone else who has it? I know Robo has it, maybe he can join us too? I will ask him.

Do either of you have IL2 as well? If so, comparision?

The more I fly it the better i like it. I don't have IL2, but I am planning on getting IL2 within the next month.

I guess I just like the complexity of modern weapons systems so much more that I don't warm up to these prop sims so easily. But maintaining your energy in dogfights and learning to effectively use older weapon systems is so much more important in these prop sims I just need to appreciate them for those qualities.

I definitely recommend this for WOF Heritage wings

I have IL2 but havenot flown it since in came out. So, I have not played it with the latest patch. IL2 to mee seems more fluid and polished than CFS3. CFS3 to me is a compliation of CFS2 and FS2002. That doesn't mean I dislike it, I like it alot. Let me re-install IL2 with the latest patch and mess around with it and I'll give you a better comparison.

Either way, both sims require above average systems. Im not sure what an average system is now a days, but I would say somewhere in the 1GHz area, 256MB RAM, and a 32MB 3D card.

Raptor wrote:Got rid of IL2. It really did not do anything for me.

Kind of like flying the OV-10 in F4 huh? Slow and low.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..........RATATATATATATATAT.......BBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.........RATATATATATATATAT.........TYPHOON 1-1, I'M WINCHESTER!! :lol:

Miss you Striker, also.

I flew CFS3 about 4 or 5 hours over the weekend and I love it. I haven't had any problems with the program yet; it works fine, no lag, good scenery. If you liked CFS1 or 2, you will like this one even more. If you did not like CFS1 or 2, you won't like this one either. Microsoft appears to know it's market, and that probably does not include hard core flight simmers.

I wanted to chime in on the DX 8.2 issue and tell you my experience.

When I went to install CFS3, it automatically installs DX 8.2, no way around it. IMO, that is BS! I think it should at least check to see what version you have installed and add or change the necessary files, or allow you to bypass it. Anyway, after the install was done, I had to reboot. Upon reboot, I had numerous errors telling me that critical files DX (like DDRAW.dll) were missing. Huh!? I tried a reinstall of DX 8.1, and that further hosed my DX setup. I now was not able to go into my video card graphics setup, it would just freeze up and none of the GF3 settings were there. It was like my video card (GF3) was not a 3D card.

What I ended up doing was going to the CFS3 web site, browse through the forums for a similar problem, and found a nice little utility that UNINSTALLS DX completely. I ran the program, uninstalled DX completely. GRRRRR! I then went to the MS web site and DLed the latest version on their site, DX 8.1b. I reinstalled my GF3 drivers, and then reinstalled DX 8.1b. After all this, I went to run CFS3 and play a MP game, it would not load, CTD. After another reboot, I accessed the CFS3 CD and reinstalled DX8.2 directly from the CD. I also installed Direct Play 5.2(I think?) just to be safe. After installing all of this, CFS3 works great! Great sim so far, CRAPPY installation. Thankfully I am somewhat computer savy, so I could troubleshoot this problem myself. However, the average gamer would probably be lost and very pissed off.

Bottom line, some people, especially if you're not running XP, might want to hold off on buying and installing CFS3 until DX 8.2 is the standard.

I have not had a single problem running any other games as far as DX 8.2 goes. If anything, games seem to run better and faster IMO. What I don't understand is that if MS is forcing us to install DX 8.2 with CFS3, then why is it not available on their web site? Hmmmmm?

Now i am having a problem. nothing similar to what i have read on the boards - my engine cuts out in the middle of a mission sometimes. the throttle is still on 100%, there is fuel, but the thrust and airspeed and engine sound all disappear suddenly. a manual restart or an automatic restart do not solve it and any tweaking of the throttle does not get it working again.