I really need see some pics of modded IL-2 then, FSX looks pretty good to me stock.

From the FSX demo



FSX Gold edition stock



And just for fun, the A2A piper cub with rex, and orbx addons and no one in the front seat (the girl defaults as off and resides in the baggage compartment)

Carrots and cherries.

CoD/IL-2 depicts a limited area, FSX depicts the whole world.

CoD/IL-2 runs way worse than FSX on today's hardware.

Even a modded IL-2 can't keep up with FSX plus UTX.

I play FSX and Acceleration out of the box and it looks great to me. I love playing the missions and extending them afterwards. In fact the missions are what sold the game to me - I love the mission where you land on the glacier etc. And the glider missions/tutorials are also great particularly when you have force feedback enabled. I am not one for flying long flights so I find the missions are great for picking up from time to time when I feel like it.

I have been playing Cliffs of Dover and Rise of Flight recently. They are very good for what they represent (RoF more so than CoD though). FSX seems a bit more grown up than going around shooting things but it can become dull after a while for me. RoF is superb at WW1 combat and flying atmosphere alone - sometimes its really nice just flying around a Sopwith Pup in that game without shooting things. COD needs loads of changes before it gets decent unfortunately but you can still fly a Hurricane or Spitfire around the limited area and get a pretty good feeling of flying. I agree that CoD runs terribly and also it looks terrible compared to FSX and RoF. I think you can enjoy several types of flight sims. For example I usually prefer jet combat and am thinking of getting DCS's A10 at some point as well. I also have Flaming Cliffs 2 which I haven't even tried properly yet

I do find myself coming back to each in turn depending on my mood. Sometimes I get sick of FSX's lack of adrenalin rush and I need a blast on a combat sim. Sometimes I get sick of all sims and try another type of game altogether.

There are actually quite a few options for us gamers around at the moment, well other than space sims/games of which there are practically none (well one). No need to tie yourself down to one game (although FSX is about the only game I would say its possible to do that considering the massive amount of addons and possibilities above any other game). Ive never felt like playing any game more than a few months solid myself.

lol Nats you sound very much like me,bit of this and a bit of that,i do think that FSX is big enough to keep enjoying for longer becuse of the variety and apart form not shooting things although i see an add on coming to allow shooting:).your not a gemini by any chance,

thanks for everyones input its been a big help in convincing me to get FSX,may wait a few weeks or so just to get a bit of space because i know it will take a fair bit of time up once started

I've always been a combat sim nut, but since upgrading my computer and installing FSX, then Acceleration, I can't stay away from it. The missions are really fun except for a few and they are well made.

The other day I flew a Buffalo C-46 from Norman Wells to Deline just because I saw it done on Ice Pilots. Boring flight you might think, but it was enjoyable. Plus I discovered some new things in the GPS that I had no idea was in there...very interesting!

If you want knuckle-busting excitement, try that F/A-18 landing in IMC. For a moderate challenge, the Vomit Comet is a great mission, really fun.

I'm still going through the missions, do them every now and then, currently did the apple delivery one, that second last airport was quite a challenging landing, REX turned the place into storm, raining and I couldn't see hardly anything.

I also love flying around in the cold in my buffalo dc-3 and dc-4, ice pilots is a fantastic show

Does REX slow down the game at all? It certainly looks impressive but my game is about just as fast enough to be well playable, I consider, and I am worried about getting these enhancements in case they slow it down just enough to be unplayable. Surely all those clouds must be very slow?

AFAIK, and experience, no. It just replaces stock cloud and water textures with more realistic ones.