FSX software biggest pile of rubbish

[neon123678 0]

Flight simulation is one of my favorite hobby's and I enjoy doing it and sharing my experience with people on this forum,I have been doing it six years , not as much as the older members of the community but I still think I can give an honest opinion. I am sick to death of my hobby being dependent on a software that has a infinity number of faults.

 

Most noticeably the random crashing issue,a few weeks ago I gave FSX a break because I was sick of wasting hours of my life on a piece of crap program,that wastes hours on my life , the only reason I overcome my hatred day after day towards this program is to use the NGX and the other brilliant add ons available . I came back tonight after my long break from fsx .I did a flight in my favorite add on aircraft the NGX from EGSS to EIDW .While descending I was admiring the weather and the detail of the of the NGX,and told my self this is worth the constant BS I have to endure. Then all of a sudden ,what a huge surprise it crashes , and I ask my self ,why the hell do I bother?

 

I was going to shut the pc down there and then before I screamed , but I decided to try load the fsuipc auto save , but like usual it loads me up a dead aircraft that goes hurling into the ocean.

 

Please excuse my ranting , I know im not the only one with problems. My anger doesn't lie with any developers , they do an exceptional job . My beef lies with Microsoft , they basically took our money and ran , gave us two MINOR service packs , which only one actually benefited us performance wise. I find it absolutely ridiculous that people in the community are forced to spend thousands of there hard earned money on gaming rigs to run this software , and still the majority of us can only dream of coming into an airport like Heathrow with full graphics and get reasonable frame rates. These are the same rigs that wont break a sweat running games like Battle field 3 .

 

Whats Microsoft's response to this , Microsoft Flight ,give me break, I think Flight will get second place for the biggest disappointing software , we know what gets gold, they knew this as well , that's why they dropped the piece of garbage and not soon enough in my opinion.

 

I think its time to start abandoning the sinking ship ,which had massive holes in it to begin with . The sooner PMDG start bringing there products to X-Plane the better and I hope other developers are not that far behind . I haven't purchased X-plane my self , but judging from videos and reviews Laminar research have a good thing going , they deserve our money , more than that faceless corporation of idiots, that don't give a toss about there customers.

 

Before I start getting replies like"have you tried these CFG tweaks?, etc" yes I have a friend who helped me do some tweaks . That's not the point , the majority of us are not computer technicians , we want to come home and enjoy our hobby and not be digging around forums looking for ways to improve dreadful frame rates and crashes.

 

I want to thank the developers for improving are hobby , and for the hard work they do , I just look forward to the day when Microsoft doesn't have a presence in our community unless they get there act together , which is highly unlikely.

 

Thank you for reading

[JonRD463 146]

I can understand the frustration, but I think it's hardly fair to blame Microsoft completely. Have you ever done a FS ATC controlled flight in the default 737 with no other addons installed? My guess is no, and that's understandable. Who flies with all default stuff anyway? But I would also guess that if you did, you would complete the flight from startup to shutdown without a hitch.

 

That's the product MS delivered. Used in any other way than "out of the box + official patches" removes some responsibility from their shoulders. Believe me, I'm no cheerleader for MS, and I'm not leveling blame on any 3P developer, but it's disingenuous to load the program with all sorts of resource-intensive after market add-ons and then say it's MS's fault when things go south.

 

 

 

Regards,

Jon Dodds

[1mikel151 71]

Every time i read a rant like this I have to wonder if the person ranting gave any thought to the fact FSX wasn't developed for 3rd party addons like PMDG or ORBX , so it's unrealistic to expect to not have issues when throwing hi def addons into the mix. I am not saying FSX is perfect, far from it (never had a CTD myself) but the scenario your are describing is demanding and far from what was probably envisioned wihen developing the sim.

[neon123678 0]

Every time i read a rant like this I have to wonder if the person ranting gave any thought to the fact FSX wasn't developed for 3rd party addons like PMDG or ORBX , so it's unrealistic to expect to not have issues when throwing hi def addons into the mix. I am not saying FSX is perfect, far from it (never had a CTD myself) but the scenario your are describing is demanding and far from what was probably envisioned wihen developing the sim.

 

Its called Flight simulator x, meaning they were on there 10th version.You sound like its there first simulator they brought out and there were bound to make a few mistakes . No at that stage of the software's life they knew that other developers would be making new add ons. PMDG made there 737 for FS2004 , in 2004 , so Microsoft should have known what kind of work the developers would be using fsx for . Im not asking for fsx to be completely perfect, but we all know its very far from perfect.

[JonRD463 146]

PMDG spent years coming up with the programming wizardry that resulted in the NGX. How could Microsoft POSSIBLY have known what 3rd party devs would do? The very notion that they should have anticipated everything that would come out after market is the real biggest pile of rubbish here.

[neon123678 0]

PMDG spent years coming up with the programming wizardry that resulted in the NGX. How could Microsoft POSSIBLY have known what 3rd party devs would do? The very notion that they should have anticipated everything that would come out after market is the real biggest pile of rubbish here.

 

And I suppose a few more service packs to keep things running smoothly along the way would be far to much to ask for, would it?

 

Instead of making Flight, why didn't they just make a new service pack that looked at all the main flaws of fsx ,fix them and then charge. I know paying for an update is ridiculous, but it would make thousands of people very happy. This would have been much cheaper for Microsoft , and would have made them a fair bit of money.

[VLJ510 16]

I've been simming since 98' and FSX since day one. I've had a handful of CTD over the years with FSX over three different rigs but hardly plagued by them so something outside of MSFS is to be looked at here.

 

I would never start a flight until cured as I would never board a plane in real life if I doubted its ability to make it to its destination. While results are different in the sim (death vs ######) I would not wanna start out with the time invested in planning and executing to only be doubtful of outcome. I know some get them regularly and I admire their passion for aviation and flight simulation but I mostly consider those people to either lack in system upkeep/maintenance or be over ambitious with either settings or add-ons installed to name two big reasons. Last CTD I had was a year or close to it ago witch bummed me out. I can understand those that get them more so being flustered. However in just the past two years I've walked away from FSX (and PC gaming) a few times for over 3 or 4 months to do other hobbies or chase other goals.

 

What I have installed now is GEX, UTX, PMDG NGX, and the better developed airports that I know I will use regularly (maybe 20 airports FSDT, Fly Tampa, FlightBeam, and newer Aerosoft like EDDM or PANC). Also on a rig just for FSX witch helps truly IMO. I'm not like before were I'd buy anything just about and really started weighting what I installed after looking at my investment in add-ons vs what I really got use out of. You mentioned Heathrow, those (mainly Aerosoft published version witch I have but not installed) are so old the development tech are just not up to visual or performance par for me. Its sad but not worth trying in the style I like to fly and the frame rates I like to see.

 

I'm amazed some theses systems run with everything ever made installed or a system designed for commercial/IFR flights with complex airliners and big airports, then best of private GA/VFR with ORBX and a whole host of GA planes and interfaces to switch stuff back and forth and it seams all this doesn't play well together and from what I see in my UTX/GEX interfaces they warn about ORBX and settings.

 

Maybe just a reconsideration of settings/add-ons, little walk away cool down, and you'll be able to do what you wanna mainly do with FSX. I wish you the best witch ever direction you go.

 

And to your comment to Mick, yes MS knew about add-ons (why they made Flight) but doesn't mean they have to accommodate anything other then themselves and the stock holders.

[Chase 303]

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[RWFeldman 159]

- CPU: AMD Bulldozer FX-4 Quad Core 4100 3.60GHz Processor

 

Dont surprise me

[Daveo 36]

I can't vouch for the graphics card but with your system specs you should not have any trouble running FSX.

[EngineRoom 205]

Nice rant. We've all been there.

 

I'm curious how you know the problem is FSX and not any of the following:

 

-Your hardware.

-Your drivers/software environment.

-The combination of 3rd party addons you are using.

-Asking too much of your hardware.

 

As has been pointed out, if FSX worked on your computer with no addons then MS have held their end of the deal. What you do with FSX in terms of loading it down with third party addons is your business, and if those third party addons break it then it's not Microsoft's fault.

 

If you really want to solve the problem your best bet is to format your HDD and start again with a totally clean Windows installation. Make sure you have the latest drivers, reinstall FSX and then test that with NO addons. Then install your addons one by one and test each one until the problem starts occuring again. I can almost guarantee the problem is NOT FSX, it's either your system or the combination of addons you are using.

 

All the CTD problems I've had in the past were caused by either my asking too much of my hardware or faulty RAM modules.

 

As for the idea of MS doing another service pack to fix all the "main flaws of FSX" that's a non starter too. What are the "main flaws"? How much time or code changes will it take to fix them? At what point do the changes break compatibility with existing addons? At what point does it stop being a service pack and start being a totally new version?

 

For a multitude of reasons, there could never be a magic SP3 to address all the complaints.

[RWFeldman 159]

If it where FSX, everybody would experience the very same issue; I run for months/1000's of hours without crashes. Then if i do get a crash its always something I did or shouldn't have done goofing around. FSX could be in constant development, like Xplane and still never satisfy all users and their hardware setups, Your going to race with the big boys, bring your big Horsepower and know how to tune it. If not, drop down a class. FS2004, FLIGHT or yes even Xmen. Pilot error.

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

OP makes some good points and it's up to viewpoint. Either you like Microsoft for making a flight sim or hate them for abandoning it...and all the variables in between. This isn't the first product they screwed up on...but it's certainly the one we want and want to work well. Bottom line is we're in this situation right now until something better comes along.

 

I don't ever get CTDs anymore, myself but I don't fly big iron at all. Sometimes some software destabilizes things. Once you've tried all the standard things...turning off what add-ons you can, installing service packs and putting the hi-mem fix in, not running squawkbox inside of FSX, etc....then, it seems like the best only option is to rebuild (keeping backups, maintaining checkpoints, installing the software that's most important first, proving it's stable before moving to the next). Huge pain in the ****.

 

The other option is to jump ship to Prepare3D and see if it's up to snuff. I'm watching Prepare3D from a distance and, hopefully, I'll be getting it at some point...when they make a big advancement or 3rd party people head over there. I'm already encouraged by their new flight modelling enhancement and the way they went about it...at least it sounds good on paper.

[ldsandon 0]

In my experience - and I'm R&D technical manager in a software company, so I think my knowlegde in HW and SW stuff is pretty adequate - most problems with FSX (or any other software) is user creating any kind of havoc to their machine - installing low quality software (or hardware) and add-ons (then trying to remove them, sometimes, leaving behind often a lot of crap), cracked illegal software of dubios origin (often malware ridden) and so on, modifying settings without really knowing what they're doing just because they read it will give "incredible perfomance" on some unknown blogs, and so on, while often avoiding to install patches and upgrades -

Then when the software crashes they blame the software itself and not what they did to their machine, often because they already forgot.

Sure, FSX could maybe have been better, but unlike most games it has to model the whole world on the fly - there is no precomputed areas, walls and "fog of war" to limit what it has to display - it has to display the way you could see from ground to thousand of feet way, from different angles, different seasons and different time of day. And because unlike most games it models places you may know from real, it has to do in a realistic way. And the model of a real, large airport may be damned complex.

That's while computing your plane flight model, plane systems (navigation systems, engines, etc.) updating weather etc. etc., something very few games has to perform - because that's not what their player ask.

That's why MS had to simplify a lot Flight to make it simpler and thereby more performant. A few months ago I was shown a software able to generate on the fly a realistic high-res landscapes for simulations, it is a professional software for military and civilian use - it was running on hardware starting from €20000, and didn't cost $50. So don't blame too much what FSX developers were able to achieve seven years ago for the price.

[A320driver 17]

Your going to race with the big boys

LOL LOL LOL