complicated question involving Mac computer

[ondaweb]

Hi all, I just joined the forum b/c I have a question I can't imagine finding an answer any where but here.

I've had PC's fro thirty years, though my first was an Apple ][. I've got flight sims back to 98, though I really haven't flown them all that much. I recently got re-interested for two reasons: Last year I got a 42 in plasma HiDef TV and this year my wife bought me a MacBook for Christmas.

That got me to thinking. If I could connect my MacBook to the TV and run a flight sim, that would be cool. I've got XP running under VMware Fusion so in theory I could do that and it is possible to hook up the computer to the tv with a cable I ordered.

Then I looked at FSX and naturally wanted it, downloaded the demo and that's when fantasy came crashing down. So to two questions.

1. I was totally disappointed with the scenery in the FSX demo. Unlike the photo realistic scenery I saw in the screen shots on the Microsoft page, this looked like more of the same colored pixel backgrounds of FS 2004. Is the scenery different in the demo, or because I was flying the ultralight, was I just too close, or were my expectations too high?

2. The performance was crappy on my MacBook. This raises the harder question. Can my MacBook run the program at decent rates (30fps) with decent (i.e, really good) scenery? Or am I just out of luck? Or, if I ran FSX under Bootcamp would that be any significant improvement? My Mac stats:
Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Any thought/ideas/suggestions would be welcome.

Thanks,

Roy

[loki]

The photo realistic pictures Microsoft had up (if I'm thinking of the same ones) were not actual shots from the sim, but what it might possibly look like with DX10 support. These were apparently from the marketing guys trying to push DX10 and not from the ACES team themselves. However, they were still very misleading and many people were not happy.

There are many add-ons that do improve on the default scenery though and FSX does allow for better scenery than FS9, though you would need a higher end machine to run it.

If you want to run FSX on your MacBook, you want to do it through Apple's Boot Camp, not VMware Fusion. Running in a virtual machine means that you have two operating systems running at the same time, using up more of your hardware resources like RAM.

Is your MacBook one of the new aluminum models with a nVidia 9400M video card? If so, it will run FSX, but not very well at anything above mid-range settings. It will definitely struggle with higher resolutions that many HDTVs support. The 9400M is a low end video card, though it is far better than the Intel integrated video Apple used in their previous MacBooks. Upgrading your memory to 4GB would help a little bit.

Hooking up the laptop to the TV should be relatively straight forward if the TV has HDMI, DVI or VGA inputs. Many HDTVs have at least HDMI and either DVI or VGA. Just pick up the correct adapter from an Apple store.

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/mac_accessories/displays?mco=MjY0NTQ

[Thunderbird8]

If you search my post history here you will see a lot about running FSX under Vista Pro on a Mac Pro. I get excellent performance, but that is with a pro.

Regarding FPS (I know this is a contentious issue so I will say just this), film tends to run at 24 FPS I think, and there is a limit to what the human eye can cope with anyway. Especially if you fly heavies, as I mostly do now, 10-15 FPS is fine for me but I am using the PMDG 747 or the LDS 767 and am 38 years old and not a tech junkie or video game freak.

Hope this helps. I would agree 4GB of RAM is essential, as is the Pro version of Vista, don't get the 'home' version, it will do your head in if you are a Mac user. You don't need to run FSX maxed out to get good enjoyment anyway.

[ondaweb]

Thanks for the replies and suggestions. I guess I'll see what Bootcamp can do. It still might be fun on my HDTV.