I recently bought a racing sim that ships with and requires DX9. All of my other games have no problem with this except AH. My framerates suck down to 2 or 3 fps and netstatus goes nuts. If it makes any difference, specs as follows:
AMD XP 1800+, ASUS A7V-333 mobo, 256 meg DDR 2700 ram, ASUS 8420 GeForce 4 Ti4200 w/128 meg DDR, SBLive! 5.1, Win98SE.
Although I am in a squad and everything, I really can't justify having to reinstall DX everytime I want to play AH, as good as it is. (And AH is very, VERY good)
I realize that you want to keep a fairly tight lid on AH2 until it's actually released, but will it be DX9 compliant? I really hope so... I've gone and gotten hooked on this sim and don't want to have to stay away.