What do I need to run FSX and the MD-11 well

[Guest Ryan Briggs]

Getting FSX Sliders Opened is useless - Forget about it, with today's technology it WILL NOT Happen. However, You can get a system that will run the MD-11 and FSX Well enough that it looks much better then FS9 does. and that computer will run you about 1500 or so, assuming you build it yourself.

[Guest XM DUDE]

>Getting FSX Sliders Opened is useless - Forget about it, with>today's technology it WILL NOT Happen. However, You can get a>system that will run the MD-11 and FSX Well enough that it>looks much better then FS9 does. and that computer will run>you about 1500 or so, assuming you build it yourself. 500GB 7200rpm Serial ATA II/300 hard drive w/ 16MB cacheWindows Vista

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Are you looking at using this machine ONLY for FSX? I doubt this is the case but if so then yes, it is expensive to fork out all this cash just for one "game". However, if this is going to be your main PC for the next few years then it starts to make a lot more sense, considering the millions of other things you can do on it.If you can't afford a decent spec machine then stay with FS9 for now and look at buying in 6 to 12 months again.Konrad

[tfm 169]

@ Original poster: try starting at:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...&topic_id=44788 @ Gary: Ne'er a truer word was spoken. MS really should not have inflicted on us the agony of having to fiddle around with all this dreadful kit.To my mind, one example above all others illustrates the prematurity with which FSX was rushed to the market. My FSX box has an MS sticker on it saying something like "Works best with Vista". That can only be a reference to DX10: that is certainly how I understood it at the time, as there is nothing else to which it could possibly have referred. But as we all now know, FSX did not work AT ALL with DX10 until SP2. And it is still only a "preview" which doesn't work properly (flashing taxiways etc) - apparently, says MS, because of driver issues with the graphics card manufacturers - issues which were apparently so obscure that they could only be fully revealed AFTER people had paid for Acceleration. So far as I can tell, there was no basis whatsoever for the assertion that FSX "works best" with Vista; and there was no proper basis for promoting Acceleration as making use of DX10.Conclusion: put bluntly, and in my opinion, FSX was released prematurely in order to stimulate sales of Vista. To release Acceleration ahead of the free SP2, without pointing out that it didn't actually work properly in DX10, was also a disgrace in my opinion. They suckered me; and although FSX has given me hours of fun, I am still (when I reflect on it) thoroughly embittered by the whole experience, as well as un-trusting of MS in the future.I can also agree - from painful experience - that the more expensive kit does make a difference that you can't get just by tweaking the cheaper stuff. In the last 3 months I have actually built two PCs to get FSX to work reasonably fluidly: one for about $2000 which I tweaked and tweaked and, when dissatisfied with the results, another one for considerably more. The new one is much better overall (thanks largely to advice gleaned on the Hardware forum at Avsim) - well, I say "much" better, but in fact what I mean is that for the first time I'm getting consistently reasonable performance from FSX in all weather conditions even in graphically-dense environments. And in fact even that is over-stating it because I'm now having trouble with the MD-11, and goodness knows what the cause is. Rant over - for now.Tim

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Gents, you gotta keep the bigger picture in mind here. What FSX has to actually do to bring you a (pretty decent!) simulated world seen from the virtual cockpits on some of the worlds most complex airliners is simply STAGGERING! All on 22inch+ monitors, some folks across 3 of them!Not to mention the amount of other add-ons we all have piled up. FEX with Super High Res clouds, Mega Airports with literally hundreds of thousands of elements each, GEX, UTX, 19m resolution mesh covering millions of square miles... need I go on? We all demand decent FPS and we all push our sliders more to the right at every opportunity! Anyone here run global texture resolution at anything other than Very High? I know I do not. Seriously, just be amazed that you have what you have! Look your rig in the eye and then bow down chanting "I am not worthy". Do it now!Crysis - pfffft! Total childs play play compared to FSX + addons!Konrad

[tfm 169]

Yes, you make some very fair points. Added to which, I should have given more emphasis to the fact that FSX - when it's working nicely - is of course terrific fun. I know, I know, I should just get over it, but from time to time when something has gone wrong with my setup I do find my pulse quickening a little with re-kindled annoyance that MS didn't go the extra mile, as I'm sure they could have done quite easily.Tim

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The question for Aces, like a lot of FS developers, is not really one of how far can we go? You'd be totally bowled over if you found out what features developers COULD include if they were not worried about whether anyone could actually run it.Think super-high res ground textures as just one example. Think cloud shadows, think fully functional weather radars, think fully modelled high resolution pax cabins with interactive virtual cabin attendants for some others. Even raindrops in the VC are an issue...Unfortunately, it is much more often a case of where are the 'reasonable' hardware limits at any given point in time and trying to limit themselves to these limits.As an interesting example with the MD-11 of the limitations I am talking about start in the VC capt seat and continue to hold Shift+Ctrl+Backspace (shift viewpoint left) until you are way out of the aircraft (takes a few min), then look back at the plane and you will see what is actually moddeled when you are in the VC view. The rest is missing solely to preserve performance in the VC on todays machines. When finished just exit the sim and the viewpoint will reset itself next time you fly.Konrad

[tfm 169]

On your VC point: quite a good tip if you have a joystick with two hat switches is to assign the "move viewpoint" forwards/back/left/right commands to the second hat switch (with a high "repeat" rate) and assign the "reset viewpoint" command to a spare button. This makes moving about the VC much easier than if you only have the up/down/left/right hatswitch: it lets you "lean over" the controls etc as if you were able to move from the waist upwards, instead of just the neck.For the rest: I don't really want to bang on about this having got it off my chest, but my grievance isn't that FSX is lacking extra features: indeed, I think there's quite a compelling case to be made for FS11 adding no "new" features at all. My gripe is simply that the features modelled and promoted by MS don't always work properly. When I said that MS could have gone the extra mile, I meant that - for example - having promised DX10, they might at least have made it work properly. It's not so much that they didn't use a fuller set of the DX10 features (though that would have been nice, too) - but that even the ones they used, they didn't get right.Anyway, if you compare FSX with the full-motion simulators, it's a pretty good price; and FSX's graphics are also much more detailed than anything I've seen in an full-motion sim. So all in all, not a bad deal, I accept.Tim

[Guest XM DUDE]

>Hi,>>The video card will make a difference, definitely. If I take>my card out of SLI mode, performance definitely drops - there>is no doubt. What people really mean is that there isn't the>same kind of advantage getting a faster card for FSX compared>to getting a faster card for Crysis or something that relies>on the GPU far more heavily.>>What do you have now?>>Best regards,>Robin."If I take my card out of SLI mode, performance definitely drops "I heard that you don't need SLI unless you have a large monitor.Michael Pare.

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Tim, thanks for the move viewpoint setup tip!Thing with Vista/DX10 was the long delay so it arrived after FSX had gone in to manufacturing and the hardware necessary to run DX10 was even later in getting here. As a result full DX10 support in FSX was never going to be more than an add-on/preview as it could not be simply integrated with FSX once it had shipped. Given the botched launch and subsequent lukewarm reception Vista and DX10 have received it is no wonder that DX10 features very low on people's priority lists.Having said all that I suspect that most of time you would be hard pressed to tell the difference between DX9 and DX10 anyway. At least that is often the case when other games DX9 and DX10 modes are compared visually. Vista and DX10, as much as folks love to hate them both, are in fact both landmark apps in the sense that now MS has a much better idea of what not to do next time around. What Windows7 and DX11 will be like is anyones guess but at the very least we can expect them to be better than Vista/DX10 ever was.Will FSX ever have full DX10 support? I personally doubt it but I am no expert. Chances are that FS11 will be native DX11 with DX10 backwards compatibility.Konrad