Whoa! WIN 7 and FSX

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

I went out yesterday and bought WIN 7 Professional to replace my Vista Premium 64. See my hardware specs below - none of which were changed from the Vista install. I did a complete install of WIN 7 and spent the better part of last night and today bringing FSX back to its former glory. Hardware consists of CH Products Flight Stick, Pedals and Throttle. I am also running about 3 Terabytes of external WD drives. WIN7 detected and took care of installation for all. I had to re-install NVIDEA and NHANCER, and of course FSX and all my add-ons from the ground up. My add-ons placed on the system today consist of the PMDG 744, MD11, the J4100, Flight1 Mustang, Kodiak and the LD767. I also have the Boston, KIAD, Paris Degaull and Heathrow sceneries. I have not re-installed ASA, but will tonight or tomorrow evening. Am still trying to get Sasha's FSCommander to work, but am confident that that is an operator error and not the program itself.Anyway, bottom line - this baby screams. My FPS doubled at a minimum and tripled in most areas. What really floored me was the performance of the PMDG 744 in Boston, KIAD, Degaull, and Heathrow. What had been a painful 10 - 14 frames jumped to 20 - 35! If you are debating upgrading to WIN7, don't hesitate. My experience with this OS over the last 24 hours has impressed the heck out of me; and that doesn't happen often. :(

[Guest United]

You are not the only one impressed Tom. I am impressed and very envious of your success. I have nearly the identical hardware set-up as you Tom, same amount of RAM, huge amounts of defragged hard drive and the identical Nvidia card, even a slightly stronger Core2 Quad at 2.83 mHZ. I tried many fresh installs of FSX with Win 7 64 bit and came up with nothing but blacked-out screens flight after flight at random and inopportune times during using many different Nvidia drivers over many, many reinstalls. I did it all as Nick suggested on simforums with NHancer and his various suggstions, but eventually gave up ad had to punt back to Win XP 64 bit. That has nearly elimnated all my problems, but nothing is perfect and trying to explain why you and others can utilize Win 7 64 and me and others cannot is fairly futile. Enjoy your success, I hope it lasts! :( Randy Jura, KPDX

[darem 84]

Tom, not to rain on your parade, but this MIGHT be because of the fresh install. On most machines, Win7 doesn't speed up FSX, maybe just a bit, but not THAT much.Anyhow, Win7 is nice and stable and a good step forward.

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Tom, not to rain on your parade, but this MIGHT be because of the fresh install. On most machines, Win7 doesn't speed up FSX, maybe just a bit, but not THAT much.Anyhow, Win7 is nice and stable and a good step forward.

Well, I do have to admit that I am getting old and senile, but numbers are numbers... and mine have grown considerably since installing WIN7. For example, with the PMDG 744 and Aerosoft's Paris I was getting 12 to 14 frames holding at the numbers. Now my frames are 25 to 35. Both of those are without ASA running.

[Walt90 0]

Hi Tom,Thank you for the insite. I am about to do the same upgrade to my system and appreciate the information.Did you purchase the RETAIL Win 7 Pro 64 or the OEM version?How did you prepare (clean) your existing Vista OS hard drive for the upgrade to Win 7?Appears you are spending additional time with FSX now that it's running better. But no excuse for not updating your Signature. :(

[Guest firehawk44]

Well, I do have to admit that I am getting old and senile, but numbers are numbers... and mine have grown considerably since installing WIN7. For example, with the PMDG 744 and Aerosoft's Paris I was getting 12 to 14 frames holding at the numbers. Now my frames are 25 to 35. Both of those are without ASA running.

I had the same experience you had and never saw better frames (even with PMDG 747X) BUT reality set in when I started to reinstall all my addons, like MegaScenery, MegaEarth stuff, and the AI addon, MyTrafficX. Suddenly the frames went back down into the teens and sometimes single digits (I had to remove PMDG's 747X as it was impossible to get it into the air with real weather and excellent addon scenery turned on). I have since disabled some of the MegaEarth and MegaScenery and will activate it only if I decide I want to fly in that particular area. That has helped a lot. My system is starting to show its age though and I'm starting to look at building a new system with the latest and greatest. Best regards,Jim Young

[Guest FSXBuster]

It's the magic of a fresh install, with no add ons etc.Why don't we keep it that way? :(

[McCrash 3]

I went from WXP Prof x64 to W7 Prof x64 and would never ever go back!

[Guest marquisor]

I went from WXP Prof x64 to W7 Prof x64 and would never ever go back!

same here, win7 subjectively increased FSX performance (FPS and loading times) by 20-40%. i was upgrading from vista64. and i remember even xp32 couldn't run it faster than win7!

[Bob Scott 7,720]

I did a side-by-side trial of the Win7 RC and Vista 64, with the same software configuration on both. There was negligible difference when the configurations were equal and well controlled.I'd suggest that FSX on a clean-disk install of Vista 64 would be just about as fast as FSX on a clean-disk install of Win 7 64.RegardsBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

[2dogtripper 0]

I went out yesterday and bought WIN 7 Professional to replace my Vista Premium 64. See my hardware specs below - none of which were changed from the Vista install. I did a complete install of WIN 7 and spent the better part of last night and today bringing FSX back to its former glory. Hardware consists of CH Products Flight Stick, Pedals and Throttle. I am also running about 3 Terabytes of external WD drives. WIN7 detected and took care of installation for all. I had to re-install NVIDEA and NHANCER, and of course FSX and all my add-ons from the ground up. My add-ons placed on the system today consist of the PMDG 744, MD11, the J4100, Flight1 Mustang, Kodiak and the LD767. I also have the Boston, KIAD, Paris Degaull and Heathrow sceneries. I have not re-installed ASA, but will tonight or tomorrow evening. Am still trying to get Sasha's FSCommander to work, but am confident that that is an operator error and not the program itself.Anyway, bottom line - this baby screams. My FPS doubled at a minimum and tripled in most areas. What really floored me was the performance of the PMDG 744 in Boston, KIAD, Degaull, and Heathrow. What had been a painful 10 - 14 frames jumped to 20 - 35! If you are debating upgrading to WIN7, don't hesitate. My experience with this OS over the last 24 hours has impressed the heck out of me; and that doesn't happen often. :(

Tom. Have you been able to install any addons that don't come with an installer? I'm totally baffled with Win 7 and FSX! I've copied bgl files into my addon scenery folder (I can see them there with windows explorer) but they don't show up in the list of airports in the sim! I've turned off UAC, tried ADDIT Pro, still no luck!

[Guest FSXBuster]

Interesting with a new OS, right?Any update from Tom on the new and fresh install?Still FPS up there in the blue skye of dreams!

[Elsmoko 5]

>>Tom. Have you been able to install any addons that don't come with an installer? I'm totally baffled with Win 7 and FSX! I've copied bgl files into my addon scenery folder (I can see them there with windows explorer) but they don't show up in the list of airports in the sim! I've turned off UAC, tried ADDIT Pro, still no luck! <<Not sure if this will help, but the next thing I'd try is adding each scenery manually within FS introductory screen "Settings"\"Scenery Library" manager applet; selecting Add Scenery .. and browsing to the folder of each scenery in turn. Once your scenery areas have been added in this manner, FS will need to be shutdown and restarted to successfully complete the scenery additions. Then, hopefully they will appear as theyshould.Ken

[2dogtripper 0]

Thanks Ken but that doesn't work either. Tried that left clicking the empty space trick as well but that didn't work. Even tried adding the lines in the scenery.cfg file to no avail. What gets me is that the .bgl files are in the addon scenery\scenery folder (which is line three in the scenery library) but for some reason FSX just doesn't see them.

[McCrash 3]

Tom. Have you been able to install any addons that don't come with an installer? I'm totally baffled with Win 7 and FSX! I've copied bgl files into my addon scenery folder (I can see them there with windows explorer) but they don't show up in the list of airports in the sim! I've turned off UAC, tried ADDIT Pro, still no luck!

Try adding the .bgl files by using the FSX Scenery Library page.