After all these years, I'm still surprised at times how easy it is to "destroy" something in FSX, often in an irreversible manner.Sometimes scenery gets "out of control" and there's landmass instead of water, or straight coastlines, or holes instead of lakes, or perfectly rectangular islands etc. etc. Sometimes strange things like gradient banding (see my posting of my recent landing light beam problem here) occur, the list of possible problems is sheer endless.Unfortunately, it's very likely that one runs into one or the other with almost no chance to recover. Sure, there are methods to counteract this general problem (using "sandboxes" or data imaging techniques), but I happened to detect some problems only after weeks or months and after the installation of several add-ons. So, many problems are left undiscovered until one stumbles over them fortituously. There might even be problems lurking in someone's FSX folders that would never be revealed because that person never flies under the conditions required to make them pop up and become visible.The downside is that except of a few, most of these problems are unresolvable because of the lack of "user friendly" tools needed to "debug" them. This way, the installation of a single scenery add-on has the potential to corrupt scenery in a region far away from the region for which this add-on is designated - and may become one of the undiscovered problems.I for my part am repeatedly forced to troubleshoot such problems in an endless quest for keeping my FSX installation as clean as I can. And still, I run into troubles where FSX suddenly crashes because of a missing .bgl file and such.I only wish that there will be a simulator version one day that is capable of better taking care of itself so that most problems can be avoided. As long as it is like it is, I'm cought in the endless cycle of tuning and troubleshooting without any hope for an end of this loop, and often enough I spend a whole lot more time troubleshooting and tuning than flying...Rant mode off. Needed to get this off my chest, back to daily work :(

It's because FSX is one of the worst coded games in history

...I for my part am repeatedly forced to troubleshoot such problems in an endless quest for keeping my FSX installation as clean as I can. And still, I run into troubles where FSX suddenly crashes because of a missing .bgl file and such....

I can only second that! :( small randmode on:A few years ago after many years of avid simming the frustrations you mentioned contributed to my decision leaving the hobby for a while. I sold all hardware and archived all downloaded and purchased applications.After five years, recently, I decided to slowly get back in to it. Cleaned the PC following the advice of many forums topics here, Installed as was advised. Purchased FSX as I had stowed away FS9 to well ;).Then considered only to focus on three things, PMDG b747, b737 and location Schiphol and Hong Kong. My most favorite addons.Everything went fluid for some time. But after a while you wonder again...- Loading flights to continue after sleep makes the speed and altitude indicators go crazy- Aero Theme was damaged after many shutdowns and restarts of FSX- Sometimes when launching applications too early or in the wrong order...wham... everything unstable...reboot and try again...- Many more weird things enroute (S-curves when using ASE), pitching altitudes.And then you go back to the community to find answer. Because one thing I learned, you are never the only one.... Mostly the answer to your problem is already there...And that is what is keeping me hooked on... The complexitely we all brought in with our demands and the excellent work of the developers keep it attracting. Keeps you in the mood of making this special flight you want to fly...well...my 02 cents...

It's because FSX is one of the worst coded games in history

Yep .. I remember it getting the award at the annual "poorly coded games in history"  ceremony.  :(

After all these years, I'm still surprised at times how easy it is to "destroy" something in FSX, often in an irreversible manner.Sometimes scenery gets "out of control" and there's landmass instead of water, or straight coastlines, or holes instead of lakes, or perfectly rectangular islands etc. etc. Sometimes strange things like gradient banding (see my posting of my recent landing light beam problem here) occur, the list of possible problems is sheer endless.Unfortunately, it's very likely that one runs into one or the other with almost no chance to recover. Sure, there are methods to counteract this general problem (using "sandboxes" or data imaging techniques), but I happened to detect some problems only after weeks or months and after the installation of several add-ons. So, many problems are left undiscovered until one stumbles over them fortituously. There might even be problems lurking in someone's FSX folders that would never be revealed because that person never flies under the conditions required to make them pop up and become visible.The downside is that except of a few, most of these problems are unresolvable because of the lack of "user friendly" tools needed to "debug" them. This way, the installation of a single scenery add-on has the potential to corrupt scenery in a region far away from the region for which this add-on is designated - and may become one of the undiscovered problems.I for my part am repeatedly forced to troubleshoot such problems in an endless quest for keeping my FSX installation as clean as I can. And still, I run into troubles where FSX suddenly crashes because of a missing .bgl file and such.I only wish that there will be a simulator version one day that is capable of better taking care of itself so that most problems can be avoided. As long as it is like it is, I'm cought in the endless cycle of tuning and troubleshooting without any hope for an end of this loop, and often enough I spend a whole lot more time troubleshooting and tuning than flying...Rant mode off. Needed to get this off my chest, back to daily work :(

I think you guys are probably being unfair here.  For a 49.99$ piece of software .. the content and feature set of this sim is outstanding.  Few of us run a default MSFS, how could we reasonably except that this sim (at this price point) would not have any potential for conflict with any of the 100's of addons .. developed by 10 - 20 different developers.   Fly more, tweak less .. its never going to be prefect anyway!

How many of these problems arise using FSX straight out of the box with no add-ons? Very few, if any, I suggest. This implies the problems are with the add-ons not FSX.also, it's completely unreasonable to expect FSX to provide error checking/recovery for 3rd party add-ons. These add-ons are written to whatever standards the individual developer's choose and, in some cases, not even in accordance with Microsoft's published SDKsFSX is a sub-$50 game - not a commercial application..

Sounds more like a problem on your end to me. The previous thread you link to relates to what REX may possibly have done to your FSX and not to FSX itself, so if that happened, if anything it would be an add-on installation issue and not a fault with FSX. REX never did that to my FSX, nor did pretty much every other add-on I've thrown at it either.It pretty much works like a charm for me, so I really think you might have some kind of computer issue rather than it being an FSX problem if you are constantly having to sort things out.Al

I agree with you...this is the cinch why most users refuse to upgrade to FSX. Sadly, the truth is, is that this is easier to be done in older versions of Flight Simulator, even FS9. Dave.

FSX is a sub-$50 game - not a commercial application..

I do not dispute it is only 'a 50usd game'. So what you see is what you get. But with all the extras a lot of developers have been developing over the last years, the experience of flying has gone up very steep for people who will most likely never have an aviation career. It is just stunning to see what we have today.Nevertheless, I think you also experience some disturbances sometimes when you are trying something new, or using an addon that 'just does not work' the way you expected. And I am sure you are then also a bit frustrated in puzzling where it went wrong. And then the tweaking starts. Just before I quit the hobby, I was into a balance of 80% tweaking and 20% flying. The tweaking part I accepted as I was looking for 'as real as it gets'. But then you find out you went too far in it without the actual joy of flightsimming...On the other hand, the investment money for Microsoft was not 50USD but multimillion dollar budgets. The only difference they make is that the software can be run on a home desktop/laptop, with a supply of hunderds of thousands of copies to sell. That is a huge difference with the market demand from real simulators which require 'as real you hope it will never get'

Sometimes scenery gets "out of control" and there's landmass instead of water, or straight coastlines, or holes instead of lakes, or perfectly rectangular islands etc. etc.

Orbx was one of those companies that broke the scenery in FSX. Their initial Australia scenery made its own copy of Terrain.cfg and made FSX use it so other entries in the Terrain.cfg file were no longer there.This was an example of a 3rd party developer not doing things in the conventional fashion and caused many UTX users, for example, to have landmass instead of water.This problem had nothing to do with Microsoft but with how others didn't follow the SDK. Now Orbx has released patch number 3 for their Pacific Northwest scenery and it totally messed up 12 of my custom seaplane bases on Vancouver Island. Looks like Microsoft has good company in the "endless patching and still not getting it right" category!!Regards, Mike Mann

Orbx was one of those companies that broke the scenery in FSX. Their initial Australia scenery made its own copy of Terrain.cfg and made FSX use it so other entries in the Terrain.cfg file were no longer there.

If that's the case, it's an appalling example of bad and unacceptable practice. An installation should never adversely affect files used by other applications.Under recent laws it could even be a criminal offence - "unauthorised access". The user may have granted access for the purpose of installing the software; he certainly didn't authorise other unacceptable changes.

If that's the case, it's an appalling example of bad and unacceptable practice.  An installation should never adversely affect files used by other applications.Under recent laws it could even be a criminal offence - "unauthorised access". The user may have granted access for the purpose of installing the software; he certainly didn't authorise other unacceptable changes.

Under the legal "reasonable man" standard, this would not constitute a criminal act.

I'll agree with the theme that right out of the box, on strong, up-to-date hardware; FSX is probably the best $50 piece of software I've ever used. The hours of entertainment and learning I've gotten out of it, are priceless.But, like a nice, factory sports car... When you take it upon yourself to get under the hood and squeeze more HP out of it.. the problems you encounter are of your own making.That add-on companies charge for software that doesn't play well with FSX is not FSX's fault. Granted, it would be nice if they'd have all gotten on the same page; because we all know that MSFS in general, is supposed to be a platform built for 3rd party ad-ons... but again, that's not the fault of FSX.Even my modest work in native FSX add-on airplanes (C177rg, C310, Bonanza P35, and a few others).. have brought tons of complaint email that were ALL based on users not doing their homework (or even reading the readme)... foot-stomping like I had taken a child from them... problems because they were running old hardware, or FSX with no SPs.

Fly more, tweak less .. its never going to be prefect anyway!

Most sensible thing I've seen in a while :(

Orbx was one of those companies that broke the scenery in FSX. Their initial Australia scenery made its own copy of Terrain.cfg and made FSX use it so other entries in the Terrain.cfg file were no longer there.This was an example of a 3rd party developer not doing things in the conventional fashion and caused many UTX users, for example, to have landmass instead of water.This problem had nothing to do with Microsoft but with how others didn't follow the SDK. Now Orbx has released patch number 3 for their Pacific Northwest scenery and it totally messed up 12 of my custom seaplane bases on Vancouver Island. Looks like Microsoft has good company in the "endless patching and still not getting it right" category!!Regards, Mike Mann

Orbx was also dedicated to fixing that problem and finding a better way forward. Unlike many developers, they kept hammering away until they found a better solution. The way they handle custom terrain.cfg entries now is vastly superior to that initial approach. Given the fact that custom terrain.cfg entries were never accommodated for in Microsoft's coding, the result is quite satisfactory. Your issue with the seaplane bases is an entirely different kettle of fish, Mike. As I've pointed out on another forum, the problem of one scenery showing through another is nothing specific to Orbx - all you have to do is create an exclude the same way we do in order to blank out the default MS scenery, then make sure your work is on a layer higher than Orbx's. That's how the sim scenery engine works -- it's not a bug or any malfeasance on Orbx's part.