Hi. I'm back. I was very active about 7 or 8 years ago. Does anyone remember my screen name?Anyway, I got into model trains, the real, physical model trains, and stopped doing much Flight Sim at all. Then, my computer crashed, totally lost the disk with my years of scenery, planes, AFCAD files and AI stuff. I walked away. And now, I decided I missed it. So, I'm starting over.I've got a 1.4 GHz P4, the same machine that I started running (sorry, almost said "playing" there) FS98 and FS2002 on. I've got a better monitor, but that's about all. I'm not buying a new computer.So, what can I do with this? I brought up the original FS2002, and it's OK. I've got a set of CH Pedals and their Flight Yoke. It's the gameport version, but I found the driver and I see no reason why it shouldn't still work, too.Should I upgrade to FS2004? Given the machine, and your best engineering judgment, will it be a real upgrade, or will the framerates suffer so much that I'll end up reverting to FS 2002? If I want to go back to importing scenery and planes, and maybe rebuilding my AI stuff, will most of the FS2004 stuff work with FS2002, or is it going to be seriously hit-or-miss?Thanks for bearing with me on this, gang. You guys have always been a good "online community," and I suppose you still are. That's why I came here first.

Welcome back,I think with that machine you should just stick to fs 2002. I use to use a 1.8 ghz machine with some 512mbram and an nvidia 256mb video card, Although fs9 was playable it wasnt really that immersive as I had to tone most everything down.Im no computer technician(far from it) but I wouldnt even bother with fs9, unless you dont care about the visuals outside the window of the aircraft.hope you will hang around here for a while. :(

I've got a 1.4 GHz P4, the same machine that I started running (sorry, almost said "playing" there) FS98 and FS2002 on. I've got a better monitor, but that's about all. I'm not buying a new computer.

I originally played FS9 on a 2.5ghz P4 w/ 512mb of RAM and an ATI Radeon 9250. The frames sometimes hit 30 but never any higher. I'd guess that FS2002 is probably your best choice. If you want to buy a hardware upgrade you could post in the hardware forum and they'll find you're weakest link and find a good cheap upgrade for your system.

Hi. I'm back. I was very active about 7 or 8 years ago. Does anyone remember my screen name?Anyway, I got into model trains, the real, physical model trains, and stopped doing much Flight Sim at all. Then, my computer crashed, totally lost the disk with my years of scenery, planes, AFCAD files and AI stuff. I walked away. And now, I decided I missed it. So, I'm starting over.I've got a 1.4 GHz P4, the same machine that I started running (sorry, almost said "playing" there) FS98 and FS2002 on. I've got a better monitor, but that's about all. I'm not buying a new computer.So, what can I do with this? I brought up the original FS2002, and it's OK. I've got a set of CH Pedals and their Flight Yoke. It's the gameport version, but I found the driver and I see no reason why it shouldn't still work, too.Should I upgrade to FS2004? Given the machine, and your best engineering judgment, will it be a real upgrade, or will the framerates suffer so much that I'll end up reverting to FS 2002? If I want to go back to importing scenery and planes, and maybe rebuilding my AI stuff, will most of the FS2004 stuff work with FS2002, or is it going to be seriously hit-or-miss?Thanks for bearing with me on this, gang. You guys have always been a good "online community," and I suppose you still are. That's why I came here first.

Hi Captain Barfbag,I`ve been a simmer for many years and have worked my way through all the Flightsims.I got to 2004(FS9) and thought this is good, really good. I subsequently bought FSX. I still have it.....on my external HD ! Nuff said ?As far as frame rates are concerned I get 29.9 (limited to 30) but never less than 25fps, even with some fairly heavy addons.Happy Landings,Dave :( I should have said, we could start a new thread about trains. I`m also very much into steam engines, both real and model.Dave :(

Thanks. I've got FS2002 up and running just fine. The pedals and yoke are working again, too. I've slowly been re-learning things, like TTOOLS and AFCAD.I found a copy of FS2004, and ordered it. From looking around, it looks like it's easier to customize FS2004. The add-on library seems to be more extensive. I was a RAFCAD user, pretty heavy duty, and I think the FS2004 gate assignment procedure gets a lot easier than we had had it in FS2002.So, I'll give FS2004 a try. If it doesn't work, I can put the box on the shelf and go back to 2002.And for those train afficionados - if you haven't seen model trains for some time, go to a train show or hobby shop and see what technology has done for them. The good old days of simply applying DC voltage to make a train go faster or slower are fading away. Now, the track gets a modulated square wave, encoded with commands for each individual engine. The engines have computers, and even downloadable ROM which you can dump through an audio circuit to get sounds.There's never been a better time to be a grown-up kid.

Just had a model train expo a few weeks ago here & YES it is incredible what they are doing now - Good bye to the days of the "copper" TYCO slider variable rheostat box w/ 2 outputs LOL . Absolutely mind blowing!Roman

FS2004 looks like it will work fine. It arrived in the mail yesterday. I had it up and running and configured with the yoke and pedals shortly after I got home from work, and by my early bedtime I'd added scenery to half a dozen airports, and taken a few short flights. The frame rates are about what I was seeing with FS2002. I'll try some add-on planes and maybe add some AI routes tonight.

Speaking as someone who has an enormous HO scale model railway in my loft, I guess I can count myself as a big kid then,. and you are right, the DCC stuff with modern model trains is a world away from the stuff we had as kids.Anyway, sounds like you are having fun with FS, so welcome back. Good time to revisit FS2004 at the moment, iFly (on the Flight1 website) just banged out a shiny new B737 for FS2004 that is really rather groovy, and if you check that out, you'll see that toy planes have moved on as much as toy trains!Al

Looking around the file libraries, I've already found a few items for FSX that are not available in FS9. Remembering the transition from FS2002 to 2004, I recall that many files were interchangeable, although some were not. AFCADs have clearly changed completely.Is there a rule of thumb on whether FSX files can be used in FS9, either yes or no, or is it still "try it and see?" How about aircraft vs. scenery files?

The gulf between FSX and FS9 is wider than was the case with previous concurrent versions. A few things make that the case, the SDK for FSX and the SDK for FS9 have some markedly different practices and methods for how to go about producing FS content for one thing, and the actual FS world for FSX is different from the FS9 one in some ways, such as having a genuinely 'round Earth', different resolution and sound capabilities, as well as making more use of DDS texture files as opposed to older texture file formats.Nevertheless, some stuff does work in both sims even when it was not really designed to do so, although you are probably more likely to find that it works more in the reverse of the fashion you would doubtless prefer, i.e. lots of FS9 stuff can be shoehorned into FSX, but it's often not quite so simple the other way around.You may come across the phrase 'native FSX' if something has been created by largely following the FSX SDK practices. A classic example of that not being the case, would be the Flight 1 ATR-72 Regional Turboprop, which is sold as being for both FS9 and FSX, and it is true that it runs in both sims and has an installer that will stick it into both of them automatically etc, but it it is not a completely native FSX product, instead being a portover to FSX, and so you see a few glitches on it, such as the fact that the clouds disappear when viewed through the spinning prop disks when in FSX, because it doesn't use the FSX SDK methodology for the creation of prop disk animations.You'll also find that Native FSX aircraft run better in FSX (FPS-wise) than ones which have merely been ported over and shoehorned into being compatible, as they are better optimised for that sim. Another major difference in FS9 and FSX aircraft, is the fact that FSX aircraft can have a separate 3D model file for the virtual cockpit, whereas with FS9, that's normally all part of the same model as the rest of the aeroplane, which does actually mean it is possible to transplant cockpits between different aircraft on native FSX products, by simply telling the configuration file to look for a different cockpit model when loading up, which is a novel feature that some people have taken advantage of in order to merge several models into one that has all the features they prefer, such as putting a better VC into a favourite model which has a crappy VC.So what it all boils down to, is quite a few FSX compatible but not actually FSX native products will indeed work in FS9 (although not always perfectly), since they've effectively been made in the way which suits the older version of FS. Sometimes that will still necessitate some tweaking, such as in the case of aircraft, swapping gauge references for FS9 ones in the cockpit configuration file. Thus you hit the nail on the head really, 'try it and see' is often the only way to be sure unless you happen to look at the actual code for the thing in question.Al