When FSX gets its act together...

[Benjamin J 751]

...it is an immensely beautiful and fulfilling experience. Even without setting all sliders to max!Many of you might have already seen it, but UK2000 holds a pre-Christmas sale. Since I always wanted Newcastle airport, I decided to go over there and buy it, when I saw that the mroe I bought, the more discount I'd get. And so I ended up getting Newcastle, Edinburhg, Glasgow and Belfast, although I might in addition get Bristal and some other airports later on also.Now, I've never really been into flying around the UK. However, I'm gaining more and more interest in it now that I'm writing a huge London oriented review for simflight.com. So, I decided to do some UK flying this past weekend. However, I really wanted to fly with the Airbus X. I had installed those third party FBW plugions and Lua scripts for throttle control with the Saitek TQ, and wanted to know what it's like and if the plane flies well now. Luckily, Easyjet has a large A320 fleet and in addiiton can be found pretty much everywhere in Europe. I downloaded some of Holgi's fantastic Airbus X Eaysjet repaints, and setup my flight.Saturday I was flying from EHAM to EGPH, therebvy re-enacting a flight a biology teacher took when she wanted to go on a field study trip to Scotland but had to attend a symposium the day we left with the bus. At gate H5 and with fog and some rain, I found my FPS to be ghastly. So there the normal FSX frustration started. A bit later, after takeoff, I found I had huge problems with all vector scenery. I could see traffic driving over roads, I saw power lines, and I knew coastlines were drawn as well - except when I came in the scenery's vicinity, then it just disappeared. As such, the world looked hoorible and I already saw time being waste don installed 200+ addons and repaints. I guess I could almost cry of rage and disappointment. I completed the flight succesfully, though, even though the scenery looked horrible. UK2000's EGPH looked great, however.I decided to remain calm, deactive some sceneries, see what happens. Of course nothing of that worked. I then remembereed that when I was testing some scenery a few days before, everything was still fine. because I make screenshots during testing, I could go find the screenshots and see when I made them - appartently the 24th of November. I we nt into the main FSX director and saw if there was any file changed since the 24th, because I had installed some sceneries after the 24th. Low and behold, the terrain.cfg was a 30th of November version.Fortunately, and I thank my paranoia a hundred fold, I bought Genie timeline a few months ago. So, I clicked the terrainb.cfg document, went to the "previous version" item in the menu that appeared, and restored a september version of the file. And then, all was correct again. Roads were roads, coastl;ines were coastlines, and FSX was back to its usual state. Thanks gor for backups!On sunday, I wanted to do another flight, since obviously the saturday one was a disaster, from a general FSX perspective. I decided to fly from EGPH to EGAA, again with the Easyjet A320. I set a visibility of 3nm, at dusk.I was stunned. This was a typical; flight where everything just comes together. The fog, the stars, the moon, the sun, the beautifully modeled Aerosoft Airbus X, the great VC night lightring, the smooth operation of the plane... And then on landing, flying lowre and lower, on final apprtoach, the car traffic, with their headlight shining brightly in the mist. It was great. Taxiing to the stand, the Airbus's lights illuminated the airport's 3D models, and I felt happy. This is was FSX was made to do. This is how great it can be.It's funny in a way. You spend so much time fiddling around that you forget how to attain the pure joy of simming. You convince yourself that you like flying thus and thus. You might just get tired of it all and stop using it for a few months. But then there comes the flight that turns the sim into megaic. I'm sorry for being so melodramatic, but I have re-understood why I fly with FSX. because, as we all know, when it al comes together, it was all worth it.And you know what? I find now that there's nothing nicer then coming out of the fog in a dusk or night setting, seeing the bright runway lead-in lights, and whil you approach the airport, you fly low and slow over houses and cars. As stupid as it may sound, those cars always do it for me. They constitue a really big part for me of "when FSX comes together".This isn't the first thread I write about this. I write posts and start thrreads in which I on and off say that I either love or hate FSX, and it purely bound to these kind of situations. One day FSX like on its back, paws up and completely immoveable, the other day it's a feat for the eye and the ultimate relaxant. I guess that's just the way it is. Above all, I hope it gives some hope to epople who keep struggling with FSX. My tip: get some UK2000 sceneries. I seldom see scenery with such good FPS!