Well after a long hiatus from casual flight simming due to continued computer trouble and other real life priorities, I have gotten some new equipment and now I want to figure out the best way to install FSX and addons.My computer:Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 EditionIntel Core i7 965 @ 3.2 GHz12GB OCZ DDR3 1333 (6X2GB) RAMXFX ATI Radeon 5870 with 1GB GDDR5 300GB WD SATA II Velociraptor, with XP installed600GB WD Sata III Velociraptor (with SATA III PCI-E controller card) dedicated for FSX1 TB WD Caviar Black and 750GB WD Caviar SE 16, blank drives for recording videos with FrapsGigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 motherboardThermaltake 1200W power supplyI also have a new Acer v233 widescreen monitor with a native 1920x1080 resolution.So after I install FSX, I am looking at buying some new addons, and I am wondering what would be the best ideas. I am looking at Real Environment Xtreme, Ground Environment X, and Flight Environment X, since I see these terms abbreviated multiple times on the board. Which addons or combination of would be best?Then I would probably want to buy the FSDT JFK and Cloud9 MCO. Would using these addons or any custom airport sceneries conflict with any of the aforementioned environment addons?Any advice for optimizing my new setup properly and doing things the right way would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

Real Environment Xtreme and Flight Environment X do the same things, except REX does more and does it better. Buying both would be redundant. Instead, add Ultimate Terrain X to your list. Jim

Check my FSX guide. :(

Thanks for the info,So the ones I would want would be Real Environment Xtreme, Ground Environment X, and Ultimate Terrain USA X? Is there a specific order I would need to install the different addons I want to buy?

I'm not here to help, but leech! Looks like some products I may need! Thanks for creating the topic!

Thanks for the info,So the ones I would want would be Real Environment Xtreme, Ground Environment X, and Ultimate Terrain USA X? Is there a specific order I would need to install the different addons I want to buy?

I believe Ultimate Terrain USA should be installed first, then updated. Then the order of the rest doesn't matter too much as far as I can tell.

Then I would probably want to buy the FSDT JFK and Cloud9 MCO. Would using these addons or any custom airport sceneries conflict with any of the aforementioned environment addons?

No. I have both FSDT JFK and Cloud9 MCO as well as the other stuff you are considering installed on my rig and there are no conflicts.Personally I prefer REX to FEX, although I have both, I now only use the REX textures. You can't go wrong with GEX and UTX either, they're almost must have products for FSX.

bump until I get these installed!

Thanks for the advice everyone, I'm sorry I haven't responded to this in a while as the motherboard in my machine went bad and I have just ordered a replacement, I should be able to set this all up next weekend if things go well.

Ok I think the computer seems to properly functioning now (I hope) so here are the current specs: Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 EditionIntel Core i7 965 @ 3.2 GHz12GB OCZ DDR3 1333 (6X2GB) RAMXFX ATI Radeon 5870 with 1GB GDDR5 300GB WD SATA II Velociraptor, with XP installed600GB WD Sata III Velociraptor dedicated for FSX Deluxe with Acceleration1 TB WD Caviar Black and 750GB WD Caviar SE 16, blank drives for recording videos with FrapsEVGA x58 FTW 3 motherboardThermaltake 1200W power supply I just installed FSX now on the 600GB velociraptor and also I set the page file on the OS drive to 50GB. So now I am going to do the affinity mask 255, disable preload, hide info text tweaks, also I've been going through Relaxx's guide and I can't find the file sm3_current_274662.zip for the shader update, where can I get it? Also supposedly it is better to set the FPS to unlimited then use an external FPS editor, is this confirmed and where can I find it?

Shader 3.0 support - The guide suggests:This tweak replaces the obsolete shader model of FSX with the new Shader 3.0 technology suitable for modern video cards. Download the file SM3_v1.1.zip (http://www.happy-art...de/SM3_v1.1.zip) and install it carefully according to the instructions given in der Readme file. You can also try the performance version 3.0. Just download the file sha3mod.zip here: www.venetubo.com/sha3mod.zip. There is an improved performance for clouds. Also the image quality is nicely improved. Two additional lines shoud be included in the [GRAPHICS] section of the FSX.CFG file:[GRAPHICS] ALLOW_SHADER_30=1 SHADER_CACHE_VERSION=1 The first line is needed to enable the new Shader 3.0 function. The second line is used for versioning. Whenever you make any change in the FSX.CFG file you should change this version. Credit to ******* Altuve aka "Bojote".External FPS limiter: You can google for the file FPS_Limiter_0.2.rar.