Hi, I am evaluating to switch from FS2004 to FSX but need to understand how many and what kind of aircraft addons I can get with FSX. My hangar has currently a lot of payware aircrafts but think that almost of them are not suitable for FSX.First, waiting the PMDG 737NGX launch I would like to know what is the best boeing 737NG on the market and if it is comparable to the PMDG for FS9.Second, need you help for a good 777 (if exist for FSX), except POSKY which has the defaul panel, and 757. About this last one I know there is on the market the Captain sim but I had the 757 Captain for FS2004 and was very disappointed about the frame rate kill of that product. Is it the same for the FSX version?Thanks for your help. Bye.RR

As you probably know, the vast majority of payware developers are slowly but surely waving bye bye to developing stuff for specifically FS9, as there are simply things that cannot be made to work as well in FS9 as they can in FSX, and in recent months this has been apparent with many add-on releases. Obviously there are still things being made for FS9, and some add-ons that work in both sim versions, but you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.It has taken a while for hardware to catch up, but providing you have the computer to do it, these days FSX can be run at the sort of frame rates that now make it entirely playable with decent payware airports, scenery and fancy add-on aircraft installed. So at some point, as with preceding versions of FS, you find you have to wave goodbye to your older version even though you have lots of stuff for it, because the newer version is the one that is getting all the love from developers, which has really always been the case with FS. FS9 is far from dead, and still very usable, but as with every other older version of FS, it eventually becomes the second fiddle as far as developers are concerned, and you only have to look at PMDG's forthcoming 737NG for FSX to know that is true.With regard to the 737NG, currently, there is no spectacularly good NG for FSX, but then again, that is also true for FS9, since the PMDG FS9 NG is getting a bit long in the tooth these days, and frankly, the Ariane 737NG for FS9 is a much more fun than the PMDG one if you change its FMC to the ISG add-on version. This is the price the PMDG FS9 737NG pays for having been the very first really decent 737 for FS9, because it was designed to suit computer graphics capabilities that were available several years ago, and so its cockpit looks a bit dated these days in comparison to other FS9 737s which followed its impressive lead.As you know, it's soon to be a different story in FSX however, where there is the promise of a new PMDG NG for FSX of course, and there is little doubt that PMDG's FSX NG will be as innovative and spectacular as their FS9 NG was when that was new. But ironically, in the meantime, the best NG you can currently get for FSX is again the Ariane version. There is an Avsim review of it (written by me coincidentally), but to save you the trouble of reading that review, I can tell you that it is not all roses as far as the Ariane NG is concerned. For one thing, the Ariane 737NG is very pricey indeed, but in spite of that price, it lacks several systems that most real NGs have, and these are things you might expect it to feature given the price you pay, although despite that, it is still very usable. So there is no denying that it is good fun (if you have the cash to spare), it flies beautifully, and runs very smoothly (which is a major plus for FSX). Nevertheless, considering its price, you would have to really want an NG for FSX right now to truly justify not waiting for PMDG's effort, although as with the FS9 Ariane NG, you can add an ISG FMC to it and make it a lot better than it is by default. But as noted, for the money, you shouldn't really have to be doing that, and as the PMDG NG draws ever nearer to becoming available, it is going to be harder and harder for Ariane to justify the price of their NG, so if I'm honest, I'd have to say that unless you have money to burn and really desperately want an FSX this instant, then waiting for the PMDG one is probably the wiser choice now that PMDG's FSX NG is mere months away from release.So in the meantime, if you don't want to buy the Ariane 737 and cannot wait for some FSX 737 flying, you could do a lot worse than buy the PIC/Wilco 737 Classic 300/400/500 package, which is easily on par with the PMDG FS9 737NG in terms of realism, and more importantly requires no faffing around with it to fly it, as it is good to go straight from the box. For the money, this is the best 737 FSX has to offer, and will remain the prudent choice until that PMDG one shows up. It also happens to be one of the few 737s you can get for either FS9 or FSX that has its own expansion disk, in the form of Aviation and Mission, which is a very enjoyable airline pilot career add-on specifically the PIC/Wilco 737 in its FSX incarnation.There are several Triple Sevens for FSX, but none of them are especially realistic if you want 'hard core realism'. What most people do for a 777 in FSX, is buy one of the payware ones (of which there are several), or get a freeware one, and then soup it up with Integrated Simavionics (ISG) instruments. Personally, I did that with the Aerosim FSX Triple Seven, by adding the ISG Smiths FMC, the Captain Sim weather radar, and the Flight Keeper ACARS, which makes it into a pretty good rendition of a 777's cockpit in terms of the real thing's avionics capabilities.By now you can probably see a pattern developing, and that is, quite a few FSX and FS9 airliners benefit from slinging ISG FMCs into them, so that's a payware add-on which is well worth looking into, as it can even make the default FS aircraft pretty fancy.With regard to Captain Sim frame rates on the FSX 757, it is certainly true that we are talking about one of the FSX add-on aircraft that puts quite a lot of demands on your computer, but the truth is, with a decent computer it is not the issue it was before the hardware caught up with the dream, and nowadays if you have a computer that can run FSX satisfactorily, then it will do that with the Captain Sim 757, although there is of course also the Quality Wings 757 for FSX as well which is less demanding as far as FPS goes.Note that some of the above is of course my opinion, and others might disagree with it, but in any case, I hope it helps a bit.Al