Hi all, I'm looking to move back (yes back!) to FS9 for heavies flying and good airport scenery. Now the thing is, I haven't used FS9 for well over a year, so I can't really remember what addons are the base minimum to install for a great experience! And also, what order to install them in? Help appreciated!Also as you can see from my sig, I have a powerful system so to speak, this shouldnt have any problems with FS9, and a PMDG 747 approaching a major city full of AI with 5 layers of cloud should it?Cheers

I have a very similar system and I can say you'll be happy..GEPro+FE+UT+Mesh+Good Traffic+tons of airports+the best planes = bliss.I'd suggest FS9+Patch...MeshUT USA/CAN/EuropeGEProFlight EnvironmentActive SkyThen from there you're golden.

Agreed. Although I've since dumped my GEPro and don't miss it a bit.

Definitely fSGenesis for FS9! It adds hills and other elevation scenery.

We forgot Active Sky v6.5. You simply can't fly FS2004 without it! And clouds -- I use Flight Environment - so that's a must have for me.

What did you replace it with? I love it and I'm now curious.

Guys, I did the same thing a while ago to finally (or rather again...) enjoy heavy flying.One question, though... I have similar system (though AMD), but I am still having trouble with the blurries... What have you guys done to make them less frequent?Thanks

altstiff -- Sorry it took me so long to get back to you -- I must've accidentally deleted the email notice over the weekend.If I feel I need anything, I use Real Environment Pro by Tim Fuchs, available for free here in the AVSIM library. He's got the best wet runway textures I've ever seen! I also have Bird's Eye View, Ultimate Terrain, Flight Environment (for clouds) and Soft Horizons (another free file) none of which I absolutely won't fly without. I fly high altitude jets exclusively.

And dont forget the excellent freeware Airland textures which IMHO are the best airport textures (runways, taxiways aprons) out there. He had truly done an excellent job. Go to: http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?itW9p06m=main/search.htm ..and search for this file: airland1.zip

>Also as you can see from my sig, I have a powerful system so>to speak, this shouldnt have any problems with FS9, and a PMDG>747 approaching a major city full of AI with 5 layers of cloud>should it?>The same should also be true for FSX shouldn't it?

>Agreed. Although I've since dumped my GEPro and don't miss>it a bit.I'm a little curious about why

So FS9 works with Windows Vista and even 64bit? How does FS-Skyworld 2004 work with Windows Vista? I have the 32bit with my HP Pravillion DV9339. Also, if I have an external hard-drive is it possible to install FS9 or FSX on and external drive? I know I would need my-flights in the my documents folder, but aside from that would it be okay? The reason why I ask is this.1. My Dell 8200 is aging, and it does seem to make a noise sometimes at startup, that is rather unusal, and my event viewer under the system tab says the system log is corrupted.2. My HP hard-drive is almost full with video that I made and I don't think I want to be anything more on c: until I backup my video.3 My video-card is much more powerful I think it is a Nvidia 7600 with 256mb of ram.Any info would be appreciated.Thank you,Kurt.

Kurt:You may now want to go over to the Hardware Forum and ask these questions -- there are many over there with experience in these areas. FS9 was never designed to run on Vista, and I would not screw around with loading it on an external drive although I know there are those that are running it from one. Hard drives are just too inexpensive these days, and I just got done with a new build. IMHO you're now getting into territories where you're just asking for lots of troubles.When it comes to MSFS, K.I.S.S -- or as simple as possible.

Thank you. I do agree keep it simple with FS. It is a very complicated program and alot can go wrong with it if you aren't careful. I just thought I would check on this though.

HiJust a word of caution, FS9 SHOULD work ok with VISTA, VISTA64, Dual/Quad core processors e.c.t. BUT!!! remember this cannot be garenteed. I had a custom built 4Gb Quad-Core system constructed with 4 500Gb hard drives and a top of the range Nvidia GC, and alough im more than happy with it for FSX, I have had nothing but problems with FS9. Im no novice when it comes to Flight simulator/Hardware, and I know where to look and what to try in order to try to get things working. Including how to stop getting Out Of Memory Errors.But with literlay thousands/millions of hardware combinations it is impossible to garentee that a machine will work with a simgle peice of software.My advice would be to construct a system using the system information proviided good folk here on this forum who who say there system is fine with FS9 as a blueprint. However since they built there system, even if you can get exectly the same hardware, drivers change, so that is no garentee.What i did was buy a cheap Dual-Core with 2 Gb of memory, a 200Gb hard drive and a decent NVIDIA graphics card running VISTA32. And I have found it to be most stable.In my opinion if you are going back to FS9 and not going to use FSX you would be mad to waste money on a high end high spec system running VISTA64 and Quad-core processors, as FS9 does not require one. (and in fact FS9 isn't even optimised for mulit-core processors, alough you will see a slight speed increace over an old P4) And remember people get fixated with frame rates, but the human eye wont see frame rate flicker so long as the frame rate is above 14-15 FPS so as long as your system can average out at 20 FPS'ish you shpuld be fine.Best regardsAndy