Foresight FSX Ver 2.0 Review

[Yongchai]

This is my own personal opinions on Ver 2 of FSX by Foresight which was released sometime in Feb 2016.

FSX system requirements are as follows:

Operating System: Windows 7 or greater (64 Bit Required)
Processor Speed: I5 or greater
Memory: 8GB system memory
16GB if using the swing analysis camera (purchased separately)
Video Card: Stand Alone Video with 2GB of memory or greater (Recommended: Do not use AMD, rather NVidia GeForce 750ti or greater)

If you want to know what FSX is about, read the review of FSX Ver 1. For this, post i'll be focusing on what has changed in Ver2 and what i feel can be improved.

The most obvious thing that has been changed is that Foresight has integrated all 3 modules (play, compete, fit) into a single unified program called FSX. You might not think it's much of an improvement, but it comes with the benefit of not having to exit and load a new program everytime you want to change your mode of play (ie. Moving from playing on the course to practicing on the range is now easy and much faster). Also, when you load up a course, it takes a while for the textures to load. However as long as you stay within the same course for any other mode of play, the course loads up immediately. (Having 8gb of ram comes in handy here, i had 4 gb before, and i had to reload the course every single time. So if you are on a budget, upgrade the ram first for FSX) So not a big change in terms of gameplay, but great in terms of a time saver.

This new version also fixed a pet-peeve of mine which was having to log-in every single time you loaded up the program by saving your username and password. Nothing great in the scheme of things, but one of the most appreciated changes in FSX.

One quirk to the main interface page is that the 3 modules sometimes still acts as different programs. If you enter one module, you have to back out to the main interface page before you can interact with the other modules. Not a big thing, but it'll be nice if from 1 module, you could just click on another module and carry on, instead of having to back out to main page first.

Another problem i have with FSX is its Full screen mode. (I'm not sure if this is unique to FSX or happens to all programs). My current setup has a projector with FSX and a side monitor in front of me sometimes running kinnova (a free recording app) or some other programs and one issue i found with running in Full-Screen mode on the projector is i can't interact with the apps on the side monitor properly. Whenever i click on the side monitor, FSX will stutter and minimize on the projector before i can click on anything in the side monitor. After finishing on the monitor, i have to maximize FSX again which takes time to start-up. The current solution is to run FSX windowed (but then you don't get the full screen effect and there's a distracting border), and you can then click on the side monitor without having FSX stutter and minimize. So it'll be nice if foresight can fix FSX such that running full-screen mode still allows effective interact with side monitor without minimizing.

With all the changes to the UI, Foresight still needs to fix the brightness/saturation/ contrast ratio in FSX. I am using Optoma's GT 760 with 3,400 lumens projecting on a 16ft by 10ft screen, which does an admirable job but admittedly is slightly overwhemed by the large screen size during the day time. But by comparing to other sim software, it seems FSX should be able to fix many of the projector's short-comings but doesn't. The color palette used on the course is too dark so i have to turn up the brightness and contrast on the projector, but when i do that some buttons/parts get washed out and becomes barely legible. Foresight needs to make the courses more vibrant and compatible with other graphics so that they can co-exist on the same brightness/contrast setting without having to choose between either being able to see the course or discern the buttons.

Moving on to the play side of things, not much have changed here. I admit i have not spent much time on this module as i don't have huge chunks of time to commit to finishing 18 holes and the provided course (Tenton Pines) just wasn't that inspiring after my first playthrough to make me come back for more. So it's probably not a complete list of things that have changed, but just a few things which they have advertised and i've noticed.

In the set-up menu, FSX now allows you to choose if you want to allow players to hit practice shots, enable lie penalty and a new scoring system for putting called fast putt (I think these are new).

In practice mode, you make a swing and it'll will show how the ball will fly and land with a side panel popping up to show you all your ball numbers. If you're happy with your swing and the results, you go back to normal mode and see if you can replicate the swing when it actually counts. This is obviously illegal in golf, but if you're trying to break your own personal best, or see what kind of score you can post if you don't screw up, then this practice mode is useful. Though it'll be helpfull if the practice mode was slightly more accessible instead of looking in the menu to activate it.

The lie penalty option is abit of an enigma because you don't know what kind of penalty you're going to get. Is it a flier lie or is it a distance and spin penalty? FSX doesn't tell you so there's no way to prepare for it and you might as well hit it as if there's no lie penalty since you could either hit it long or short. To implement the lie penalty properly, FSX needs to tell you what the penalty is so you can account for it accordingly.

The fast putt scoring system is one of the most innovate ways i've seen so far of scoring a putt. Basically, once you're on the green, you get 1 putt. If you hole it, it counts as a stroke, if you don't hole it, it measures the distance left in inches and counts each inch left as 0.1 stroke. So if u are 2 on and made a putt with 4 inch left, your score will be put down as 3.4 and the decimal scoring carries all the way through 18 holes without rounding up or down. This is the perfect scoring formula for those who believe a 1 inch putt shouldn't be counted as a full stroke and also a great equalizer for sim golf putting when interpreting slope is not as obvious as it could be.

This brings up putting. The grid lines showing direction of slope does not come up automatically once you're on the putting surface. I don't care if there are people complaining about the purity of the game or aesthetics with grid lines showing, if you are playing sim golf and you're trying to make a putt, there's no way you can read the slope without the grid, so it should show up automatically instead of looking for it in the menus. Arrows showing slope could also be a bit bigger and clearer. Also, for some unkown reason, the aiming stick is like 10 feet behind the flag stick and you have to control aiming using the left right keyboard arrows. It'll be nice if you could set the aiming stick by mouse clicking on the green instead of using the keyboard to manipulate the aim stick 10 ft behind where u want the putt to go.

As good as fast putt is, another welcome addition would be to have a 'tiger-eye' option, where you don't have to read putts and the game automatically aims your putt for you like a caddie would. In sim golf where it takes a different skillset in reading grid lines compared to reading real greens, i would rather the game aim the putt for me so i can just focus on the speed and hitting the putt straight.

The mini-map in game is also great. FSX makes good use of the available space to show you a nice big mini-map showing you hazards/distances and ability to click and aim with the mouse. Its now so informative and easy to use, that i spend more time plotting my shots on the mini-map then actually looking at the simulated course. It's not saying much for the first person graphics and view but its a great recommendation for the mini-map.

FSX have also added sound effects and 3D grass. Some of the new sound additions are welcome, such as ball sound effect, and others not so much, like having my AI companion telling my ball to 'get down' when it overshoots the green. (Seems kinda insincere on its part). When i play golf, absolute silence is deafening (thats when all eyes are on you, and the nerves start creeping in) so there is still a host of sound effects that can be added to FSX before the course starts sounding more natural like.

As for the 3D grass, i'm not a big fan of the change because my AMD 5770 hd 1 gig video card can't handle the load (Foresight actually does not recommend AMD video cards.... What?!?) Before the changes, things were relatively decent, but now my framerate has dropped to single digits and the ball seems to be floating in mid-air with the ball bouncing like gravity does not affect it. My video card is not up to their recommended spec (and brand... What?!?) so i can't complain too much about it, but at the same time, other golf sims i've tried with similar or even better graphics does not have this problem, so i think i'm entitled to gripe a little. If the 3D grass was a huge improvement, i probably would just bite the bullet and get a new video card, but all the 3d grass seems to do is just hide the ball a little when the ball goes in the rough, so for me the framerate trade off is not worth it. Hopefully foresight can optimize their software to increase framerates or have a graphical option to uncheck 3d grass so i don't have to spend more on a Nvidia video card.

Moving on to the compete module, nothing seems to have changed significantly other than the before mentioned log-in fix and some UI redesign. The log-in fix comes in most handy here as they have cut down 1 step to starting your game, though 1 quirk i found is that if you have 2 players profile saved, the program assumes you are going to have 2 players competing. If Foresight can fix this such that the program only asks you once, who are playing, then great, but if they change it to asking you every single time, i rather they leave it alone.

I am going to bring up previous suggestions for ctp, that the ground seems too hard and its much easier to roll the ball up rather than stick it at the pin, as well as having the default leaderboard view be 'monthly' rather than 'all time'.

The leaderboard shows yardages in feet now rather than yards, and has been pretty static with very little movement now that decent scores have been posted. This static leaderboard makes things boring and i find myself looking for other challenges at other distances if the board shows scores less than 3ft. A default leaderboard view of monthly (running 30 day cycle) will provide more movement at the leaderboard and provide more incentive for other people to take up the challenge.

Also, a personal gripe is that this new version kept the leaderboards for the driving range, but not for Tenton Pines. I spent alot of time trying to populate that board which makes me sad to see it get lost in the upgrade. So great if it can be restored, otherwise, it just means i have to go work at it again.

Another way foresight can add value to FSX is by increasing the holes available for CTP. Right now only par 3s are included, which means 4 holes. Foresight can easily add another 14 holes by setting up the ctp for those holes as approach shots (starting from 100 yards for the red tees, with 20 yard increments up to 200 yards for the black tees). For a software where many are grumbling about the price, adding holes which are already designed to ctp costs them very little but can be a huge increase in value of FSX.

Another slight change to FSX is the on screen ball finder which tells you where to place your ball so that the gc2 can find it. They have now added a confirmation telling you thats its ok to hit the ball when before, the finder will just disappear once the ball is in the correct location. The irritating part of his is that the confirmation graphic takes too long to fade away, leaving you waiting for 1-2 seconds before you can hit the ball. Also, the ball finder continues to pop-up after hitting the 3 balls in ctp and the leaderboard comes up.

One issue that concerns both compete and improve mode are the tracers. For the first version, i complained that there were too many ball tracers on the screen so Foresight removed them all except 1, which is too little. In my first review, i gave kudoes to the accuracy of the GC2 and FSX saying how when you hit the ball on the screen, the ball flight will start off from that same point, using previous tracers as a reference point for impact position. But now with only 1 tracer, you lose the reference point and makes it harder to judge the accuracy of the gc2. So put back the tracers (at least 3) or better yet, put them all back, but allow the older tracer shots to slowly fade away with each shot so that you can tell from the beginning of you practice session to the end, how your shot shape has changed.

This brings me to the final module of improve (previously called fit). Best addition so far is the practice mode where you choose your course and the hole you want, and by right clicking on the mini-map, you are placed right at that spot and can begin hitting practice shots from the distance you choose. It would be nice if it could show you the layout of the hole in the selection menu, instead of loading the hole and not finding it to your liking and backing out and selecting again until you find a nice challenging shot u want to practice.

Other things they need to fix is the flight dispersion table in the analysis page. The first few shots are represented nicely on a side and top down view, but once you hit more balls, the table scale goes whacky (eg. 100 yard pitch shots will be shown in a 600 yard scale) clumping all your shots together, making it impossible to see your shot dispersion. I think the scale should never exceed more than 10 yards of your furthest shot in order to give you the clearest information possible.

Another suggestion would be for data collection. Right now ball data is group under club selection. Makes sense, but also abit of a hassle, when you change clubs, you're also going to need to change the distance so its a 2 step process. If Foresight can change it to a 1 step process by grouping your ball data according to target distance that will be nice. Or otherwise, when you change clubs, change the distance accordingly to pre-set individual distances you've saved in your profile. So when selecting an 8 iron, the distance will automatically change to 140 yards. A 1 step process.

The swing capture function has not seem much discussion mainly i think because of the cost of entry (around $1000). So another suggestion that would add value to FSX and make it a definate buy over other competing software is if they could support Apple's iphone/ipad slow-mo camera which captures videos at 120-240 fps. This i'm sure is the same or if not better than the camera foresight is selling. So instead of a single use camera stuck in your sim room, you can get a new iphone/ipad instead at a cheaper price. I don't know what kind of margin foresight is getting by selling 3rd party cameras, but i'm sure it can't be more than what they are making on their own software. So supporting apple's mobile products (or another cheap option, the PS eye at 120fps @ $6!) in FSX would not only add more value for their customer, but also make Foresight more profit by being able to sell FSX to more customer who are otherwise balking at its current price.

Talking about cameras, another long awaited for addition is a new viewing camera mode called chase. I have always wanted a view where after hitting the ball, i could get a player's perspective of the ball showing its flight and peak height before the camera catches up to the ball to follow it on its way down. The new chase camera view tries to provide this, but is imperfect.

There are other options to the chase camera for ball flight but i'll just stick to the closest one to ideal and hope that Foresight will fix it, which is 'chase/none. The first problem with the mode is that after hitting a shot, the camera pans to the right. This might look fancy in demos, but it destroys your perspective of the ball flight. You do not know if its drawing or fading once your viewing angle is from the right, so cut the panning out. Keep it at a straight ahead perspective.

In chase/none, i like how the initial viewing angle does not change (other than panning to the right), but once the ball starts to chase up to the ball and follow it on its way down, the camera loses sight of the ball. (Its such a glaring error that QA should have caught this).

Another problem is how close the camera is to the ball. It'll be nice if the camera zooms out a little and if the ball bounces past the hole, have the camera zoom out to always keep the flag in the picture as a reference point. Also, when the ball bounces up and down, i rather the camera not bounce up and down as well. Keep the camera steady and let the ball bounce.

So for 'chase/none', keep the 1st (ball flight up) part and fix the second (downward flight) part to be something like 'ball/exact' and fix the above mentioned problems and this could be my default camera view. (Though i have grown used to the ball/exact camera mode)

To wrap up, ver 2 of FSX is a nice upgrade (though abit slow to release). For practice, FSX in my opnion is the best option out there. But for sim play, with the graphics and optimization of the engine not up to par with other software, and the price of individual courses (as well as the lack of tools for players to create their own courses), Foresight needs to increase the value proposition for customers before they will see meaningful sales growth for FSX.

As an existing customer, i am happy with this current upgrade and glad to see Foresight continuing to work and support FSX. However, as a new customer, i would wait to see how things shape up in other areas before committing to FSX.

Note: one thing i'm worried about is how it seems foresight has the ability to disable previous versions of their software. Even though i was on the offline dongle version of FSX, with this upgrade i'm on the online version but i can't run the old offline version anymore. A bit troubling since i seem to have a knack for being too forthright in my opinions.

[col forbin]

Nice review Yongchai!

I am going to focus on just the Play module. My computer meets all the minimum specs (i5, 8G RAM, Nvidia Geforce 960GTX video card with 2G dedicated RAM) I preordered the FSX module over 2 years ago, and it has been an extremely slow process. I have quite a few of the courses, which are nice, but the playability is terrible right now. I am speaking of the 2.0.0.0 release. Maybe Foresight tests everything out on a maximum powered machine and doesn't encounter problems, but they are there. Like Yongchai stated, the frame rates are really low and I don't know why. I was playing Quarry @ Giant's Ridge with a friend who has played there and we were so disappointed because the ball hung in the air for too long. The screen would glitch constantly and at times a different hole would show up over where we were playing. Doing a flyby of the hole was one big hiccup. The graphics pop in and out. I could go on, but the bottom line is, it is just totally unplayable in the Play mode at this time. I don't know if it is the 3D grass or something else, but my computer cannot handle FSX Play. I am going to contact them tomorrow because I have put a lot of money into this FSX Play with 25 or so courses.

[Yongchai]

My computer meets all the minimum specs (i5, 8G RAM, Nvidia Geforce 960GTX video card with 2G dedicated RAM)

What resolution are you running at? I am researching video cards now and the 960GTX (4gb version) video card has caught my eye due to its price point ($210). But reading up on it, they say its mainly good for running up to 1080p (1920x1080). I doubt you are exceeding that resolution, but its good to check anyway. Amd's R9 390 looks pretty sweet at 8gb (overkill!) at around $320 (but its amd...)

I would also recommend updating the video drivers to the most recent release, but other than that i agree with you that FSX has some work to do on the software optimization side.

The problem with getting a new graphic card is i feel that my HD 5770 still has some life to it. I mean if it died on me, i'll gladly get an upgrade, but it just feels wasteful to throw out a video card that is still in good working order. Also, my current projector is running at 720p (1280x720), so to take full advantage of the card, i would have to get a new projector (optoma eh415st) which is about another $1,000 investment.

I have got an amd R9 270x 2gb in my gaming computer, so i will swap it out with the HD5770 in my sim pc to see if there is any significant frame rate increase or if the bottleneck is in the software side. Will report back in 2 weeks or so.

[col forbin]

I generally run it at 1400 x 1050 to fit the screen. So I don't even have the 4K option, but I am totally fine with that. I had foresight remotely log on last night and they updated my video card. I thought I have always updated my video card when prompted, but maybe they changed the settings. Anyways, they said my video card should be perfectly fine for the software (not at 4k). It does work fine now and runs a lot smoother. The guy at Foresight said the new courses they released have had similar problems because they are graphically a little more intense. So it seems like my problem was more common than I thought.
The 960GTX 4G version should be more than adequate to run the software smoothly and it is a good deal at that price. I had an AMD card originally too and Foresight just didn't know what to do with it. They essentially said change to Nvidia, which I did because it wasn't too costly.
I still think they have some kinks to work out on the software side, so I wouldn't go blaming your computer quite yet.

[21actual]

Nice review, thanks so much for taking the time. I think I'll just stick with fs1 for practice range and club fitting, and use Perfect Golf for sim play, and ctp challenges..

[Docpjk]

What is the best route for FSX owners to get the new update? I have not received any info yet. Is it a simple install?

[Yongchai]

Nice review, thanks so much for taking the time. I think I'll just stick with fs1 for practice range and club fitting, and use Perfect Golf for sim play, and ctp challenges..

Perfect golf is great alternative for sim play right now that its 'free', but they will still need to finalize the pricing first. If it ends up being an annual subscription, i wouldn't be so keen on it.

As for the CTP challenges, they're fun and a great way to discover all the different courses PG have, but one of the problems is that they are weekly instead of playing whenever you want like FSX is.

What is the best route for FSX owners to get the new update? I have not received any info yet. Is it a simple install?

Contacting your sales rep would be best i think, otherwise contact support through their webpage

http://www.foresightsports.com/contact-support

Installation is the same as the original software, they'll send you a link to download the software and you follow the instructions to complete the installation.

[rdh]

PerfectGolf is planned to be an annual subscription...$250/year.

[Yongchai]

My computer meets all the minimum specs (i5, 8G RAM, Nvidia Geforce 960GTX video card with 2G dedicated RAM)

I swapped out my old AMD HD5770 1G video card to an AMD R9 270X 2G video card during the weekend, and these are the results i got at the practice range displaying at 1280x800.

HD5770
Start : Fly : Grass - 15 : 20 : 12

R9 270X
Start : Fly : Grass - 30 : 30 : 20

I am disappointed that i could not get 60 fps, but i think there is a ceiling limit programmed in and the FSX graphics engine is not properly optimized as i can get FPS around 45-60 for some AAA gaming titles.

But i must say that even at 30 fps, FSX performs much better. The ball flies and bounces much more realistically now. I'll probably keep the R9 270x in the sim rig and get another card for my gaming rig.

Now Foresight needs to get to work on creating higher texture graphics and improving the engine. I don't believe that 4K can be run practically right now, and even if it could, 4K is just going to highlight the low textures/models they are using in-game.

For other users out there playing FSX. Can you do a FPS test using the software below so that we can get a benchmark going?

http://www.fraps.com/

Also, after using FSX for a while more, the previously touted saving of user name in FSX does not seem to be working. For every new session in FSX, i have to input my credentials again (i was pretty sure this thing worked, so something must have changed).

And also, i mentioned that once the course was loaded, it did not have to be reloaded again when changing modules (ie. Play to compete to practice). Well i guess something changed here too (or i was mistaken) because now the course needs to be reloaded whenever you change modules. Hope they get these 2 things fixed to the way i imagined them to be.

[Yongchai]

I swapped out my old AMD HD5770 1G video card to an AMD R9 270X 2G video card during the weekend, and these are the results i got at the practice range displaying at 1280x800.

HD5770
Start : Fly : Grass - 15 : 20 : 12

R9 270X
Start : Fly : Grass - 30 : 30 : 20

FSX was randomly crashing for a while and i suspected it was the video driver. So i installed the driver again making sure to do a clean install this time using DDU program from the bottom link.

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/...-download.html

This solved the problem of FSX randomly crashing and now frame rates have improved as well:

R9 270X
Start : Fly : Grass - 30 : 60 : 30

As previously mentioned, i believe the 30 frame rate is capped for stability (though i don't know why the Flying part isn't capped). So if you are having graphical problems with FSX. Try a clean install of the video driver using the program from the link above. And don't worry about only using Nvidia cards, AMD works fine.

Side note: Foresight seems to be fiddling with the online Leaderboards again. They wiped out all my scores and now it doesn't even register any new scores. Makes competing a bit pointless. Hopefully the glitches means they are improving on it. Hope they get it back working soon.

Also, there is video evidence of a webcam being used to record your swing for FSX's video analysis page. This would be great as it means we don't have to use pricey swing cameras, however the PS eye definitely still does not work with FSX. Per KS-man, the webcam he's using is:

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Webca...ogitech+webcam

Anybody else can verify if they are getting a normal webcam to work of FSX's video analysis page?

[Yongchai]

Ver 2.1 of FSX is out. Don't know if its for general release though as i only got mine after enquiring about crashes i got from ver 2.0.

Will update later about changes once i've gone through it abit.

Edit - it seems ver 2.1 was mostly a utility update where they added an option to choose the graphics performance level (1. Full performance 2. Medium Graphics 3. Full Graphics) you want FSX to run at. Running at Full performance as far as i can tell removes the 3d grass and gives a nice frame rate boost, whereas medium graphics and full graphics seem to be the same as there is no difference in framerates between the 2. A good addition for those who don't have specced out pcs.

The other major change was an addition of an updates manager, where after you log on to my performance, you can allow FSX to download updates within the program (previously you downloaded updates from a 3rd party internet file sharer). Not something that would be on my to do list, but download speeds seem snappy so i guess its a decent addition.

Other than that, no fix of my major gripes

[Yongchai]

Ver 2.2 has been released and you get it from the previously mentioned update manager that was added in Ver 2.1

The main additions to this updates seems to be bluetooth link and a weather option,

The bluetooth link allows you to remove your usb cable and use bluetooth instead to send ball information to FSX. Its a nice addition as you can finally go wireless and not have any messy wires lying between your pc and the gc2 unit. However, one issue with the implementation is that the connection is not automatic. You got to click on a bluetooth settings button and click connect for the connection to happen. Not having an automatic connection really limits the usefulness of this new update and i will probably stick with the usb cable as there's no need for extra steps for me to start playing (however, recently with ver 2.x updates, i have noticed a problem if you turn on the gc2 unit before turning on FSX, the program won't recognize the gc2 and you got to unplug and replug the usb cable before FSX gets any data)

I have not put the weather options through its paces yet so i won't go into detail, but from the description, you can use real time weather data or manually adjust cloud and rain intensity (wind was already included previously). Potentially nice ideas, but i rather they fix some of the existing problems instead of adding new functionalities that nobody asked for (well, just me i guess).

Generally, things that are viewed as problems initially, normally gets unnoticed after a while, so i'll just go through some of the things that i was so eager to test to see if they got fixed but didn't. In order of anticipation:

1) fixing of online leaderboards - foresight has decided to consolidated all of the players efforts into 1 entry in the top 10. I don't quite like this change because initially where you were battling other players, a consolidated single entry means you are effectively battling against only yourself, so this kind of defeats the purpose of having an online leaderboard. I do understand why they did this as i was probably the culprit that forced this change since i would grind out on each challenge until i owned at least 50% (sometimes even 100%) of the top 10 on the leaderboards. So seeing 1 user dominate probably looked abit boring to foresight who was eager to show that they had a vibrant community online, which is probably why they decided to consolidate all the player's record into 1 entry. A better solution i can think of is instead of showing the all-time best leaderboard as the default view, (which doesn't fluctuate much) would be to set monthly (or weekly) best as the default view instead to get a constantly changing leaderboard. Also, i'm having trouble posting new scores, but this might be a localized problem as i see other users posting scores as recent as this month. So what began as one of their most addictive gameplay element has been changed into something that i hardly touch anymore.

2) fixing ctp for driving range - i used to be able to select different distances for closest to the pin challenges in the driving range, but now its stuck at 200yards. Its such a glaring mistake that happened since ver 2.1 and which i informed foresight about, that this has to be a localized problem. Its just Has to be, otherwise it just doesn't speak well of their qa efforts.

3) addition of more holes to ctp - still stuck with the par 3's

4) camera viewing angle for chase mode - no improvements there (luckily theres the ever steadfast 'ball/catchup' viewing angle

5) Fsx remembering your username has sadly gone MIA

6)lack of tracer lines

To be checked if fixed (but doubtful)

7) aiming by clicking in the main view instead of minimap. The current way of aiming by clicking on the mini map is like aiming by looking at your yardage book instead of aiming by looking at the course. Madness.

8) wonky scale in the dispersion graph under analysis page

This is not to say that FSX is bad. Now that my favorite pastime of playing CTP has been rendered unfun, i'm spending most of my practice time under the improve module where i get to drop the ball anywhere on the course and practice the shot required... and its fun. I just wish foresight would take a break on adding new features and instead work on fixing some of these problems first.