HiI've had fs9 for a long time (and intend to keep it), and I'm planning to get FSX as well.I have hundreds of addons to fs9-planes, sceneries, utilities, payware/shareware/freeware/whateverware.My question is two parts:1.Hardware- I want to put FSX on an external hd. It's a Toshiba 160 GB drive FAT32 file system. That's because my other two drives are pretty full, and I'm not getting new ones for now. Will FSX work on that external drive?2. Addon compatibility.My most treasures and most used payware addons for fs9 are- Utimate Traffic, Radar Contact 4.3, Active Sky 6.5, Ground Environment Pro, the Flight1 planes-the ATR and the LevelD 767, and PMDG B737 series.I'm asking if these can be installed into FSX, or would I have to get totally new products.Thanks in advanceEytan OrnsteinIntel Core 2 CPU E4400 2.0GHZ2.0GB DDR4Nvidia Geforce 9800GTWindows XP with SP3

It'll run just fine on an external hard drive (my installation of FSX is on a USB external drive), and the only thing you have to remember is to change the drive letter when installing add-ons, since they almost always automatically default to 'C:Program file/etc', so in my case I just change that C to an F and all is fine. Remember to stick the drive on your fastest USB port though, i.e. not USB 1.0. That DDR4 RAM will be a big help by the way, so don't bottleneck it with a slow USB port.All of the add-ons you mention will work in FSX, apart from the PMDG 737, although I understand it can actually be made to work in FSX with some effort, but frankly, you'd be better off just waiting for the FSX version or flying the PIC 737 whilst you wait (or just fly that one in Fs9). You might have to download some tweaks or different versions to get things working for some of the programs you mention though, and possibly buy an upgrade FSX version for one or two of them, but on the whole it'll be relatively easy to switch things over which requires nothing more than to install them into FSX instead of FS9.There are one or two things that you will notice though, for example the clouds will disappear behind the prop disks on your ATR-72 on an external view, because it is not a native FSX model, but it does work okay in FSX as far as systems go, and that is the only visual anomaly, which you can put up with easily enough.Even some aircraft and add-ons which theoretically don't work in FSX can be made to do so, for example, I swapped out the gauges on the Aerosim B737-200 for FSX gauges in the config file, and it now works fine in FSX. Similarly, although the Just Flight UK VFR terrain I have for FS9 cannot automatically install to FSX, since there is no option for it to do so, I was still able to manually drag the files over from the FS9 folder to the FSX one and it worked just fine. So a lot of the time, the only thing preventing FS9 stuff from going into FSX can be worked around in that way by simply having both sims installed and using FS9 as a 'mule' for installation purposes, and you will find that most of your FS9 stuff can be transplanted in that way, although it is worth bearing in mind that some of stuff won't work when you do that, and it's occasionally better to bite the bullet and cough up for an FSX version.Al

I'm not sure if any of those addons will for X.Most are legacy and you'll need to buy the FSX versions...Seeing as how your system is already on the weak side sticking with FS9 might be a better option. Also, flying FS9 portovers in X only leads to worse performance.

Stick to FS9. Running FSX on your rig will require such low settings that it just won't be worth the effort.Sorry about that!Noel.

I don't agree with those who are saying that it wouldn't run on anything other than low settings on your computer. It's true that it wouldn't have massively high frame rates with the detail cranked up, so you would have to make a few slider concessions and keep the resolution down to maybe 1280x1024, but FSX isn't doomed to be a slide show on a dual core computer by any stretch of the imagination, especially when you evidently have a motherboard that can support the bus speeds necessary for DDR4 RAM.I've got a laptop with lower specs than the OP's computer that doesn't even have a dedicated graphics card, and it actually runs pretty well on that. I'll admit I was surprised to find that was the case, but it is nonetheless true.Al

Well I figure his PC is nearly identical to mine. His 2.2GHz clock is closer to my 3GHz 4 yr old AMD chip. And we have similiar video cards.I enjoy FSX outside of big cities. Payware planes can get rough even in rural areas. 15-20 fps with weather on.Autogen is normal and AI traffic is set to zero.But the second he adds those portovers he'll not enjoy it anymore...

DDR4? Must have one of them time machine thingys.Avoid FSX with that system. It'll be nothing but disappointment.Keep enjoying FS9 until you can build a new system.

You could actually have DDR4 RAM if you were in a position such as working for a company that is manufacturing it, since it isn't that far away from being available to us mere mortals (i.e Christmas-ish), so I'm presuming the guy has what he says he has, although admittedly it would be like putting a V12 into a pedal car if you have a 2 core CPU.Al

Hi GuysThanks for all the feedback.BTW I thing I have DDR3 not 4. My error.Anyways the reason I'd like to get FSX is mostly for VFR flying in the UK.Here Just Flight and Horizon have produced photorealistic scenery that the FS2004 versions can't match, A far as other experiences- I fly on VATSIM with SB so ATC procedures are paramount, not the autogen. So online flying in FSX with sliders down wouldn't tax my system that much, would they?.What single piece of hardware could I upgrade to so that FSX would run on medium settings, more memory?Also my external hd is in FAT32 file system format. Should I reformat it to NTFS for FSX installation?Eytan

What single piece of hardware could I upgrade to so that FSX would run on medium settings, more memory?Also my external hd is in FAT32 file system format. Should I reformat it to NTFS for FSX installation?Eytan

The two things that would help most are a processor clocked at 3+ GHz and a fast SATA disk drive.Your video card or memory would not be the bottleneck.Unfortunately, that pretty much translates into a new system, unless your motherboard supports a fast Intel quad..

More memory never hurts, and it's simple and relatively cheap to do. FSX loves to eat up the CPU though, so if you could bang a faster processor in whatever your motherboard slot would support, that would almost certainly speed things along. But as I noted previously, I'm willing to bet that it would run reasonably well on your system, providing you back the settings off a bit (i.e lose plenty of autogen). Might load a bit slow though with just 2 gigs of RAM though.You're bound to get people with faster processors saying it will be a disaster if you don't have the latest 10 Core Intel Sex Bomb 9000 processor, or whatever model is flavour of the week, but before those faster processors were around, it's not as if nobody was using FSX, because it's been with us since 2006, and quad core processors didn't actually show up until 2007, so somebody must have been running FSX on single or twin cores, mustn't they? and they'd have been doing it on DDR2 memory as well, because DDR3 wasn't around either when FSX came out.Trust me, I'm not making this up, FSX runs okay on my twin core laptop that has 2 gigs of RAM and only a built in graphics chip, it really does, I use it occasionally to review stuff for Avsim, and in fact will be doing exactly that later this week when stuck in an hotel in London.Al

Well you could always try the demo (horribly optimized, the post RTM service packs helped performance quite a bit) for free:http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorx/

Hardly seems worth bothering with the demo when you can get FSX deluxe version for 15 quid, it's not a disaster if it doesn't run okay at that price.Al

when you can get FSX deluxe version for 15 quid, it's not a disaster if it doesn't run okay at that price.

Where can you get it for that price?Eytan

Actually 15.99, plus 1.95 postage, but here it is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B000GBPLYI/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&qid=1289331519&sr=8-2&condition=newAl