FSX - What do we all think?

[DarrenL]

I like FSX but then my only previous MSFS contact was with 95 (or 98 cant remember and haven't seen the disc case for years) which I bought to use with the RAF Collection addon and was very disappointed with it. Compared to other flight sims I had at the time it looked old and out of date even then. So when I came to buy another I deliberately went for the last produced version, FSX with Acceleration pack.

I haven't spent much time fiddling with settings, I ran it from the start with everything on full and then just turned a few bits down if it wasn't giving me a smooth frame rate. The only thing I have off now are the autogen trees and buildings as I use GenX and haven't yet added Earth Simulation'sTreescapes as I am waiting on their tree+building addon.

[DaveB]

Having turned AG off.. I've got loading times down a little. Just given the latest Nimrod a quickie (it's that nice).. here was my last load time..
1. double click Icon
2. change time back by 2 hours on select flight page 1745 to 1545 (Cessna Kinloss)
3. FSX ready to fly in the Cessna at 8mins 50s
4. Change aircraft to Nimrod
5. FSX ready to fly at 9min 45sec

It probably loads like a good'un on a 64bit system with a multi-core cpu and a fistful of RAM (4gb+ I reckon) but is pony on anything less I don't have the willpower nor time to suffer an 8min50s load (at best). On the same system, I could have FS9 loaded up (in bloated form).. book a flight on the VA.. plan it.. load the client and be in the air on my merry way.. which is why I stay with and continue to buy for FS9. As I said earlier.. I wouldn't get rid of FSX though

ATB

DaveB

[TSR2]

Defrag Dave

[DaveB]

I did that after the install Ben (as recommended) but didn't think I had to keep doing it It has UK2000 VFR airfields.. a few bits that Trevor made, GenXv2 Parts 1 - 4, Scotflight and some of the Xtreme series plus Earthsim Treescape part 1.. that's pretty much it A defrag probably wouldn't go amiss though

ATB

DaveB

[DarrenL]

If I choose a different aircraft to have in the spinner, I can edit and change any other aircraft in FSX, perhaps you can also install and reinstall without having to quit and restart FSX? I'm sure that FSX reloads all aircraft into the thumbnail menus everytime you click to choose an aircraft, it certainly doesn't use something like a data dictionary (like a cfg file) every time which would be a lot quicker.

Perhaps create a folder on your desktop, install to that then move/ovewrite the files over to FSX whilst it's still running, rather than install directly into the active FSX folder.

Choose the Cesna 172 and change the Nimrod till your happy.

[DaveB]

Hi Darren..

Closing the sim.. removing the old Nimrod and putting the new one in it's place wasn't really the problem though this didn't help. It's the load time itself that is the issue. With my default now at Kinloss.. the sim will start with the current time (a drawback of having a default flight and ticking for the sim to use pc time). I could probably get around this by 'selecting' a flight as that flight would (should.. does in FS9) start as it was saved so a midday flight in June would start in December as a midday flight in June e t c. Simply changing the time in the 'spinner' window will add over a minute before the 'start' button illuminates. Were I to change the aircraft and location too.. gads!
I'm sure more RAM would help but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place there. My current RAM is a matched pair of Crucial Ballistix.. 2 x 1gb dimms. I run WinXP (32-bit) SP3 so buying an additional 2gb is a waste of money and while I could buy another 1gb Crucial dimm.. I'm loathe to do so. I went from 1.5gb to 3gb on my XP3200 pc and didn't really notice the difference so I doubt very much whether an additional 1gb is gonna set the world on fire with this one

I think my best option is to stay as-is until such time I win the lottery. For 99.9% of my flying.. FS9 more than fits the bill. On the odd occassion when I want to fly the payware Islander or Brians Nimrod or perhaps DG's Auster low and slow.. I have the benefit of being able to do so The main disadvantage I have is that my 8800GTX is a much better FSX card than it is an FS9 card and that my friend, is the ULTIMATE pi$$er

ATB

DaveB

[austerdriver]

I don't know what to say about FSX. Runs well on my setup and and get steady 40fps. Don't bother with any sort of AI or anything that takes up valuable resources.

[Garry Russell]

All depends on what your system is AD

FS.X. (SP2) out of the box gives me Frame rates of 1 -3 FPS................when it's not frozen that is.

The self shadowing does not line up with the aircraft properly and looks off to say the least.

But as I said above I only have 1GB of ram and a single core processor so FS.9 does not always run that well.


I know there are tweaks but that is wrong...........no car manufacturer would get away with selling a car and expect the driver to modified and tweak it before they could drive it properly.

There is too much of this in the PC world where you are expected to be a computer expert and spend time making something you've paid for work as well as they lead you to expect it should. when you hand your money over

What is worse as often those not getting the best out of it are looked at as some sort or moron who should know and should do all these things.

The bottom is that to maximise the market the lead people into thinking it will run well on many machines that are really incapable of running it properly

They list min specs where it will run...but that's all.....it won't be very usable on the lower end machine

BTW I have a basic FS.9 with only UK 2000 Scenery part 1 installed so I am comparing basic with basic and not comparing basic FS.X with highly expanded FS.9

I'm not anti FS.X as people who don't run it are assumed to be...if FS.X ran properly I would not be using FS.9, but it doesn't and that is why I stay with FS.9

Unless you have a really good system you are not going to see much of an advantage.

This has all be said so many times before, again and again

[GHD]

Unless you have a really good system you are not going to see much of an advantage.

I totally agree, there is no way that FSX will run reasonably on a system with a processor running at less than 3GHz and with less than 4GB RAM.

Having said that, using FS9 with the Just Flight VFR scenery versus FSX with Horizon Gen-X scenery is like chalk and cheese. In particular it is so much easier to get rid of those damned cliffs at airports in FSX.

I do have both FS9 and FSX installed in XP 32bit but never run FS9.

[DarrenL]

As with any game I ignore minimum specs, I always look at the recommended specs, however if you want it to look like the screenshots on the box you need more than the recommended specs.

Trouble also is that some games/sims are not up to date code-wise and do not utilise multiple-core systems, or latest DX settings or even just use clunky legacy code. So you could have a fast PC but the game still struggles.