Hey and also if your only using a keyboard and a mouse to control your aircraft. I VERY much recommend using an xbox 360 controller. Controlling that airplane on the ground and in the air will be WAY easier.

Yeah but with around same price you can get joystick which is actually made for flying and boosts experience way beyond Xbox controller.

Yeah but with around same price you can get joystick which is actually made for flying and boosts experience way beyond Xbox controller.

 

true about the experience part but a stick and throttle will cost you over 50 bucks... and thats just for a cheapy one. And if your just starting then an xbox controller will be really handy cause you will have your (rudders pedals, sticks, throttle, speed brake, flaps) plus any other button on the controller you can assign to anything you want. Controllers are affordable. Just keep that in mind kay man.

Can forget addon software for the timebeing. Instead make a simple vor to vor flight plan for a baron or c172 and set off with ATC and use the GPS for guidance. Get a few short flights in first and you will soon start to get a feel for FSX. FSX/P3D will be hard to beat for some time to come.

You might get out-of-memory errors with high-end add-ons,as the optimal amount of video card RAM is

1.5 GB,

After this, the video RAM might be consumed and give these errors.

There are plenty of posts in the forum regarding these errors.

2 words: REX ESSENTIALS

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Hey and also if your only using a keyboard and a mouse to control your aircraft. I VERY much recommend using an xbox 360 controller. Controlling that airplane on the ground and in the air will be WAY easier.

 

I currently use a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick for flight. Hopefully, it has enough buttons (12) to cover the critical functions in FSX. It has a throttle lever and the stick controls the rudder as well as the elevator and ailerons.

 

You might get out-of-memory errors with high-end add-ons,as the optimal amount of video card RAM is

1.5 GB,

After this, the video RAM might be consumed and give these errors.

There are plenty of posts in the forum regarding these errors.

 

The video card in my laptop has 1GB dedicated RAM and shares 1GB with the system (12GB). Sounds like that could be a challenge. Thanks for the info. :)

2 words: REX ESSENTIALS

 

Skip the addons until you get familiar with the sim and have it tuned to your liking. Throwing a bunch of addons into the frey out of the box could prove detrimental. Its a mistake often repeated! There are many good post in the Harware forum on tuning suggestions, I suggest looking at them first in order to not have a bad experience out of the box.

 

A person by the name of "Word Not Allowed" is your FSX performance friend. DO defrag your computer after installing FSX Gold. As you have probably already surmised, you get excellent and terrible advice here :) Oh, laptop, those are for FLIGHT, term papers and writing a thesis. Your on your own!!!!!

First off, welcome to the "dark side"! I think this is the first actual thread I have read where a simmer has started with Flight and has progressed into FSX. That's exactly what I was hoping Flight would do for nubies.

 

Lot's of good advice is being thrown out here. If I might add a few suggestions that helped me when I started.

 

1. Get you system stable with the default setup of FSX.

 

2. Review tweak sections in the forums to improve FSX performance.

 

3. Not sure how good your system will run FSX so start sliders on the lowest settings and turn on you Frames Per Second indicator (FPS). You'll probably say "eeech"! this is so ugly compared to Flight. No prob. Start moving sliders up to increase detail, watch your FPS go down as you do. You want to find a nice, pleasing balance of the two.

 

4. Get a cheap joystick or yoke... and I mean cheap! Just something to start with to get away from using the keyboard and can figure out what you really will want for hardware. My first joystick was $10 off Craigslist. Check the forums as they have a classified.

 

5. As mentioned above.... tons to explore in FSX Learning Center. You could spend months there - I did and still go back.

 

6. When you ready for "add-ons", start with some freeware to get you feet wet to learn about installing, the different parts. When ready for payware DO YOUR RESEARCH! Read comments, reviews, etc. The quality and price of addons can vary widely.

 

That's it, hope that helps. Welcome to your new addiction.

 

Clutch

First off, welcome to the "dark side"! I think this is the first actual thread I have read where a simmer has started with Flight and has progressed into FSX. That's exactly what I was hoping Flight would do for nubies.

 

Lot's of good advice is being thrown out here. If I might add a few suggestions that helped me when I started.

 

1. Get you system stable with the default setup of FSX.

 

2. Review tweak sections in the forums to improve FSX performance.

 

3. Not sure how good your system will run FSX so start sliders on the lowest settings and turn on you Frames Per Second indicator (FPS). You'll probably say "eeech"! this is so ugly compared to Flight. No prob. Start moving sliders up to increase detail, watch your FPS go down as you do. You want to find a nice, pleasing balance of the two.

 

4. Get a cheap joystick or yoke... and I mean cheap! Just something to start with to get away from using the keyboard and can figure out what you really will want for hardware. My first joystick was $10 off Craigslist. Check the forums as they have a classified.

 

5. As mentioned above.... tons to explore in FSX Learning Center. You could spend months there - I did and still go back.

 

6. When you ready for "add-ons", start with some freeware to get you feet wet to learn about installing, the different parts. When ready for payware DO YOUR RESEARCH! Read comments, reviews, etc. The quality and price of addons can vary widely.

 

That's it, hope that helps. Welcome to your new addiction.

 

Clutch

 

Thanks for you response!

 

All info is helpful. Performance seems to be a common thread for many replies so that will be the first thing I'll tackle. I've downloaded the FSX demo and will play with that till I get my DVD's. Hopefully, that will help prepare me figure out what settings will work best so I don't waste time when I get the full version.

true about the experience part but a stick and throttle will cost you over 50 bucks... and thats just for a cheapy one. And if your just starting then an xbox controller will be really handy cause you will have your (rudders pedals, sticks, throttle, speed brake, flaps) plus any other button on the controller you can assign to anything you want. Controllers are affordable. Just keep that in mind kay man.

 

A quick search shows the Saitek Aviator, a decent enough stick and throttle in one (not HOTAS) is under $50, and can do everything you've described. There's even an Xbox and PC edition for a bit over $50, but it looks like the Xbox functionality isn't very good and it doesn't have as many switches.

I've been playing around with the FSX Demo and found that medium to medium-high on all the settings works pretty well. Its certainly not maxing out my CPU (65% was the highest my logs recorded) and my CPU temps stayed under 70 deg C. Whether the demo is a good representation of how the full installation with the acceleration pack will behave I don't know. I'll find out next Wednesday.

I seem to recall that the demo is a bit heavier on frames than the full programme, since it didn't get all of the service pack tweaks that the main program got. Unless they updated the demo.

 

Al

I seem to recall that the demo is a bit heavier on frames than the full programme, since it didn't get all of the service pack tweaks that the main program got. Unless they updated the demo.

 

Al

 

If this is the case, I'm ready to rock. I will say though that the graphics in Flight are much better than FSX but then again, Flight doesn't have a Lear

Well, if you like the Lear and you want a minor foray into payware when you get your full version of FSX, then here's one which is fairly inexpensive. This enhances the default FSX LearJet 45, giving it a simple to operate Flight Management Computer and some upgraded avionics displays, which would be a fairly gentle introduction to the FMCs which many payware airliners for FSX have:

 

http://secure.simmar...-45-panel.phtml

 

It is certainly true that the default graphics in Flight are prettier than the default ones in FSX, but the difference is that there are literally thousands of free and payware graphics upgrades you can make to FSX, and most of those will see FSX looking very nice indeed, and in many cases, actually better than what you can find Flight.

 

Graphically, it has to be said that Flight does have some great touches though, such as the scratches on cockpit plexiglass which the sunlight picks out. But if you want to go anywhere in the world, in any aeroplane or helicopter you like, under air traffic control and with other AI aeroplanes also doing that all around you, then FSX is the one that will let you do that, and very often for free if you look in places like the Avsim file library.

 

Al

....decided to order FSX as (1) I hate planes without VC and (2) I love multi-engine aircraft.

Any suggestions and what I should do first after its installed?

 

NOTHING!!

No kidding, one of the biggest mistakes FSX newcomers make is to start adding add-ons right after they've bought the game,, so don't even think about addons for at least a few weeks until you're fully comfortable with how the box game handles.

Anyway, box FSX is beautiful enough without any addons at all, so just enjoy it as it is for a while, there's no rush.

In fact I've had FSX about 4 years and all I've added have been a strip of southern england photoscenery and some addon planes..:)