What's the exact problem you have? I have no problems at all on an old Core 2 Duo laptop. Strike Commander and Privateer run great. There are varying speed issues with WC1, but this is due to how the game was programmed rather than emulation afaik (and even with that I finished it and had a lot of fun). I can imagine that DOS games that required Pentium wouldn't emulate well (e.g. Quake and Carmageddon), but there should be no issues given that you have i7, and for sure not with simulators.

You do realise that most games didn't run at that kind of frame rate back then, right? You're unlikely to see 30fps out of any game which couldn't manage such a high frame-rate on even the fastest hardware of the day. Even if (and it's a not-inconsiderable if) your modern PC is capable of emulating in software a significantly faster version of the hardware of that time, the games themselves quite possibly do not support such frame-rates.

Even if a game accounted for varying CPU speeds (and many simply didn't), the software still might not handle running on a faster machine than it could ever have been tested on at the time it was written.

You don't need to stop being excited about classic games -- but you do need to have realistic expectations.

I remember when the likes of 25fps was considered the holy grail of absolute buttery smoothness. In recent years I've seen people (elsewhere) hilariously describing 30fps as "unplayable".

then in my opinion these VFS suck. i was at 360th and Wolfpack and they had training for absolute rookies.
the one thing you DON'T want to do is to join and then don't be committed to it (skip appointments, bail after just a few weeks, ...)
Trust me, that's because it sucks (*). You're better off doing what I said in my posts and add notes yourself along the way.
This is mine: http://docdro.id/0HPCq9m
Don't mind the document title, at that time BMS did exist but our squad used AF for stability reasons.

(*) for the purpose of being a newbie, it's very out of order and too elaborate and thus is only usable by someone already knowing the ropes for bed lecture, which kind of defeats the purpose. if you read it, you never get any actual flying done. again, set up your stick and jump right in to free fly mode and get your feet wet, flying f16 is actually easy compared to ww2 machines, try going low speed (the flight model of BMS is awesome), try loopings... have fun!

You can get high frame rates from any and all dos games that were in 3D, you have to set the number of CPU cycles to maximum and the emulation core to dynamic, both in Dosbox.

What you mean by 3D? The games in question far predate the advent of 3D hardware for the PC, and I'm awfully dubious that there's any difference for the purposes of this discussion between drawing a software-rasterised frame of a 3D game and drawing a frame of a 2D game, so I'm not sure what relevance the number of dimensions has here?

Key-phrase "until the individual completes some training". I'm sorry, maybe i didn't phrased it correctly; Of course they encourage people to set up their equipment and do some online training missions while at the same time they use teamspeak to communicate in real time, so the seasoned pilots help the newbies familiarize with the game, learn how they operate etc.

Having said that, it's common sense that a completely newbie (one that just bought the game and has no prior flight sim knowledge) won't be able to participate in more advanced, force on force scenarios where some level of skill & knowledge is required although he can enjoy flying & fighting with others in more casual missions.

And i'll have to agree that dedication is the #1 prerequisite, for all to enjoy the sim!

The expectations for smooth framerates were somewhat lower in the DOS times, I think. It does seem some games were designed to run a bit jerkily.

For instance with The Elder Scrolls: Arena, if you add so many cycles in DOSBox that the movement feels at least passably fluid (probably something like 20 fps), then many things in the UI happen far too fast, like browsing the spell list. Not fully sure though if that is an issue only with DOSBox (as I never played the game on real MS-DOS).

I mean exactly what I mean, my answer is self contained and needs no further explanation. The fallacy of your argument is that I can tell you have never tested it yourself, that are going off the assumption that these games are locked in to a certain framerate and therefore won't change their framerate. Don't reply with straw-man responses, you look like a fool

My goodness. What you did was make a blanket statement about a particular (yet ambiguous) subset of games. What I did was request clarification about which subset of games your blanket statement actually referred to. In response you have (a) refrained from any such clarification (is there any point in mentioning that if your answer was self-contained and needed no further explanation, I would hardly have asked the question?); (b) misinterpreted my comments; and (c) bizarrely referred to my request for clarification as a "straw-man response".

My god is that a (complicated) mess

Yep you are right :) , with the retail CD it was possible without installing.

Holy crap, I just tried GOG's version of Falcon4 on my Win7 64-bit machine and it works without any additional tweaks (both software and Direct3D renderer)! I don't know if GOG altered something as I never tried retail version on my Win7 machine, only on XP which I had troubles with (although manage to get around them with nGlide and the patch from zeus' page).

One thing though, the videos doesn't play but I have the same issue on my XP system too with retail version.

I did.. Arena would run relatively smooth in most cases - although players using lower-end systems wouldn't probably have said that -, but in some environments, like towns, it would start slowing down, even on what was then a relatively new and performing system.

Ok, but if you ran it smoothly (fast enough PC), how about the lists? Currently navigating in the spell lists, or even merely selecting your player class from a list in character creation, feels far too fast. Or changing the volume settings in the options screen. Was this also an issue in real MS-DOS?

Playing the game on DOSBox, I've noticed the same you say. When using a fixed amount of cycles in DOSBox, some dungeons/areas run quite smoothly and fast, while others may run in molasses. I think it depends e.g. on the level size, smaller dungeons run much faster than bigger ones, or so it appears. It is great though that you can change the virtual PC speed on the fly in DOSBox, with Ctrl-F11 and Ctrl-F12.

What is not so great regarding TES:Arena is that to me it seems faster PC/cycles doesn't just improve the framerate, but also makes the game run faster? So you have less time to react to enemies, you run faster around etc. Or am I only imaging that? E.g. when I swing the weapon, it seems to travel across the screen much slower with lower cycles.

Thanks GOG! I have the boxed versions of Falcon Gold with manuals as well as Falcon 4.0 with manuals. These were actually my father's games as I was between 10 and 12 when he first purchased Falcon Gold. Sadly, my father is no longer with us which is why these games are in my possession. These digital copies will make playing these titles easier (current PC doesn't have an optical drive), so I can relive the nostalgia of the good ole days when my whole family were still living!