Question: When FSX initially fires up, is it really necessary to have one of FSX's default planes be the 1st one loaded? I do have the Cessna 172 coming up because it has been said that the sim works better when you start with a default plane. Do you all follow those rules, or is it OK to use other planes (addons) when first starting the sim experience?What plane do you use when FSX starts?Stan

Hi,I use the FSX Cessna 172 as the default at startup. I avoid using advanced add on aircraft as default since that may cause problems when switching to another add on aircraft.

Question: When FSX initially fires up, is it really necessary to have one of FSX's default planes be the 1st one loaded? I do have the Cessna 172 coming up because it has been said that the sim works better when you start with a default plane. Do you all follow those rules, or is it OK to use other planes (addons) when first starting the sim experience?What plane do you use when FSX starts?Stan

The recommendation is because FSX saves a large number of parameters above and beyond what you can see, hear, touch or check the box for. You may however, start the sim, switch to a plane of choice then save THAT flight as an option. All you have to do is turn off the load default flight option, and select your choice at startup.However, I have made it a point to ALWAYS start the sim with the default Cessna, then switching to anything more complex UNLESS I am returning to a saved flight. Given that it can save you hours of useless troubleshooting when something goes wrong because you didn't follow the advice, and you will get short shrift from any technical support bod if you don't, the choice is yours.

A few third party contributions pretty much mandate that a default FS aircraft be used when starting up FS (Dreamfleet for example).For a long time, I ignored this unless one of the above was the bird in question. I started up FS with the Eaglesoft Citation X in the Eaglesoft hanger. By far in large, 99% of the time this was successful. However, I discovered that it did rarely bring on problems with some third party aircraft, in particular, starting the engines from a cold and dark configuration was difficult if not downright impossible. Starting FS with the an MSFS default aircraft seems to cure those problems. I eventually conceded and now always use a MSFS bird for FS startup.You can always save other flights of choice and immediately select them AFTER FS is up and running with the defaults.Good luck:RTH

Question: When FSX initially fires up, is it really necessary to have one of FSX's default planes be the 1st one loaded? I do have the Cessna 172 coming up because it has been said that the sim works better when you start with a default plane. Do you all follow those rules, or is it OK to use other planes (addons) when first starting the sim experience?What plane do you use when FSX starts?Stan

Same here- I was getting wierd crashes with add ins until I saved a default startup flight with the cessna.

What seems to be a point of confusion here is why only a default a/c should be specified in the "default flight" configuration.When loading any third-party aircraft, the parameters that are not specified in that third-party a/c's "flight" file are pulled from the "default flight" file.The "default flight" file keeps track of up to 26 more parameters than a "regular flight" file.For the sake of illustration of what happens, let's simplify things a bit."default flight" file saves A, B & C"regular flight" file saves only A & BWhen loading any third-party aircraft directly or from a saved "regular flight" file, the sim will read A & B, but has to load C from the "default flight" fileOkay, someone is bound to say, "but won't saving XYZ's aircraft as the "default flight" not also save the C information?"Well yes, of course it does! But, understand that whatever XYZ's aircraft sets for C may not be compatible with the C required by YMF's aircraft! That's where the problems usually come from...

Well yes, of course it does! But, understand that whatever XYZ's aircraft sets for C may not be compatible with the C required by YMF's aircraft! That's where the problems usually come from...

Okay, so if I ALWAYS fly with the same addon plane and never switch to another (which is exactly what I do), it's no problem to save a default flight (which is based on the original default flight) with that addon plane. Only when I load another addon aircraft after that, I might get into problems. Right? And if after a few months I want to switch to another addon plane for yet another few months to come, I should load the original default flight with a default FSX plane, make that the default flight, quit and load FSX and then make a new default flight with the new addon plane. Right again?

Thanks everyone....I'll stick with the Default Cessna and just go to another plane after the initial load.Appreciate the input.Stan