Pretty scientific reasoning! Nice to see you back with us 'oldies'!!

 

Thanks for warm welcome!

 

14.65

 

After 4 days of intense mathmatical calculations, statistical analysis and studying many graphs I calculate a rate of successfully installing and running FSX with addons as 99.99 % for me.

 

Well yeah but you're lucky! :biggrin:

 

 

Other-Chris... I don't know how you worked out your calculations, but your premise is fundamentally flawed. You assume that computers are rational devices that can be analysed via scientific methods, but from my years of working in IT can tell you they are in fact malicious, hateful imps from the nether depths of H-E-double-hockey-sticks, who delight in tormenting mere mortals. Since their secret goal is to sow frustration and consternation, the chance of a program throwing an error is entirely proportional to how much trouble it would cause youm how absurd and illogical the error would be and most importantly how funny the imps find it. Thus with a much loved and complex package like FSX that requires a lot of work to tweak and tune and would take a long time and effort to re-install, the chance of a fatal error developing approaches 99.999%

 

Trust me, computers make a lot more sense when you start thinking of them this way. :lol:

 

More seriously though, stick with FS9 by all means. But why don't you try doing with FSX what I've done with FS9 - don't spend another penny on it, but try tweaking it and enhancing it as much as you can as a side project? I found it fun to tinker with, but without the worry of screwing up my main sim in the process.

 

Dr V

 

LOL. I knew it!! They can be very frustrating, but once you can get them to work, it's a dream. Too bad I don't have the same time I used to have for it -_- And you present a very good idea, and I might have to try that ^_^

Steps on how to make FS9 look like FSX

1. Get ultimate terrain USA and Europe

2. Get zinertek water and night environment pro

3. Get ground environment pro

4. Get rex and then get Over Drive with it

5. Get some custom airport lighting and better effects

6. Get world of Ai traffic

7. Get AES

8. Get ASe

9. Get flytampa and fs dream team airports

10. Profit?

It's a good list, and with a few more tweaks under the bonnet, approaches my FS9.5 installation.

But it's not FSX, never will be, and I don't think there's profit in seeing it as an attempt "to get there".

It's just different.

(It does blow a stock FSX out of the water, but that's apples and oranges.)

 

I do like the idea of a stable "mainstream sim", and then others that have interesting features, to tinker with.

Carrier ops in FSX are great, so dabble there occasionally.

I'd even spend a little money on an Orbx scenery to provide a setting for an Accusim anal device.

X-Plane has a great advantage, being a sim in development, and sooner or later must overtake the MS products.

I suppose we'll start reading about how FS2004 can be made to look like X-plane 16, at some point!

 

But meantime I'd like to see more discussion about FS2004 itself, and ways to make it look and perform better.

I'd certainly like to see more modellers have a go at the "unlimited poly" techniques.

All this endless wannabe posting about FS9 => FS10 misses the point: FS9.5 is a great sim in its own right, and still has a fair way to go.

All this endless wannabe posting about FS9 => FS10 misses the point: FS9.5 is a great sim in its own right, and still has a fair way to go.

 

Agree completely. FS9 will never look as sharp as FSX in most instances, but the differences aren't enough to matter for me at this point. As a tubeliner guy who dabbles in GA flying, FS9 fits the bill just fine, and still inspires the "wow" factor on occasion, despite its age.

You sir, made me feel stupid. Whether I did something wrong or not, I dont really care though. All I know is FSX is very buggy on my system, more than usual maybe, but that could just be me

 

I apologize for my tone. What I should have said was: let's try to troubleshoot the problem. Based on what you've stated, it sounds like there may be an underlying hardware issue preventing you from installing FSX. I recommend running hard drive and RAM tests to determine if that is the case. HCI Memtest is a good Windows-based RAM testing utility and you can find it here. HDDScan is a good Windows-based hard drive tester you can find here. I hope you can find out the cause of your problem!

You sir, made me feel stupid. Whether I did something wrong or not, I dont really care though. All I know is FSX is very buggy on my system, more than usual maybe, but that could just be me

 

Well at least you admit that the issue is on "your" system, sorry you had any problems with it. I installed FSX when released and deleted FS9 2 weeks later. I have never had a CTD or any major issues. Then again, while I have my fair share of payware, I don't go installing every addon and mod under the sun also.

 

I truly enjoyed FS9, but there are things that FSX does better/differently that FS9 will never be able to do that keep me from going backwards, despie the obvious performance differences. As long as you are happy, that is what matters.

It's a shame Microsoft pulled the plug on Flight Sim and never fixed FSX. The mouse issue which I couldn't resolve stopped me. One day when I can afford a more powerful PC I'll upgrade.

 

RJ

I apologize for my tone. What I should have said was: let's try to troubleshoot the problem. Based on what you've stated, it sounds like there may be an underlying hardware issue preventing you from installing FSX. I recommend running hard drive and RAM tests to determine if that is the case. HCI Memtest is a good Windows-based RAM testing utility and you can find it here. HDDScan is a good Windows-based hard drive tester you can find here. I hope you can find out the cause of your problem!

 

No worries, I'm all in good humor, I rarely get offended. And it's no worries with FSX either, but I still think FS9 might be the better bet. It turns out FSX has a conflict issue with a certain file with SweetFX. Upon deletion or removal from the folder, everythings fine, but I'm still looking into it. Also, thanks for admitting your mistake, very few people have the guts to do that ^_^

 

 

It's a shame Microsoft pulled the plug on Flight Sim and never fixed FSX. The mouse issue which I couldn't resolve stopped me. One day when I can afford a more powerful PC I'll upgrade.

 

RJ

 

Quite a shame it was, especially ending it's support for the FSX system back in mid September. I guess we'll just have to learn to live with what we have

I use FSX occaisionally for low and slow VFR flying (ORBX)

About 2 months ago however I decided to take the plunge and also use FSX for the heavy iron.

Bought PMDG NGX and could install most of my acquired sceneries because the FSX version came together with FS9 version.

 

After a week, I gave up and started use my FS9 environment again.

I have a pretty high-end system, but I simply can't get satisfying frame rates.

I was prepared to accept 20 fps, but at some airports that is not possible.

FSDT Zurich for example was a slide slow with 5-8 fps.

Believe me, I did most (if not all) of the tweaks but I simply can't get it running smoothly.

So for me it is FS9 all the way.

 

Maybe if P3D has been ported to 64 bits, I might try again.

I was prepared to accept 20 fps, but at some airports that is not possible.

FSDT Zurich for example was a slide slow with 5-8 fps.

 

Holy moly, 5 to 8 FPS at FSDT's Zurich. How is that possible?

 

This is the mystery of FSX, how some people with great rigs get such rotten FPS while others with older hardware get good FPS. I've got that same scenery and get easily 25+ FPS even with all the traffic maxed out, but no cars on the highway. Can't blame you for going FS9 with FPS like that, I would most likely do the same.

I can get a good 15 - 20 FPS at FSDT Zurich in FSX with fair weather and about 60% traffic. Then again I have a somewhat acceptable rig. I can easily get 50+ FPS in the same situation with overcasts and full traffic in FS9. FS9 all the way.

Chris, I'm joining your quest as well.I can't run FSX very well! maybe FS9 has better luck on my laptop.

 

 

 

I can get a good 15 - 20 FPS at FSDT Zurich in FSX with fair weather and about 60% traffic. Then again I have a somewhat acceptable rig. I can easily get 50+ FPS in the same situation with overcasts and full traffic in FS9. FS9 all the way.

Man that is awesome! Surely FS9 is lighter (i.e. more FPS), but what else does it has to offer compared with FSX?

How about flight dynamics, textures, autogen...?

Also, Chris: What has made you embark this quest?

 

Cheers and have happy flying!

Nicolás

Chris, I'm joining your quest as well.I can't run FSX very well! maybe FS9 has better luck on my laptop.

 

 

 

 

Man that is awesome! Surely FS9 is lighter (i.e. more FPS), but what else does it has to offer compared with FSX?

How about flight dynamics, textures, autogen...?

Also, Chris: What has made you embark this quest?

 

Cheers and have happy flying!

Nicolás

 

That is rather awesome! FS9 is definitely lighter on systems compared to FSX, I would guess around 90% lighter on a system from my observations.

Flight dynamics are not from the FS9 engine AFAIK, but from the AIR file in the aircraft folder. Textures are definitely lower in resolution, but still very good for its time and much lighter on systems, but you can easily make it look better than FSX with some addons. Autogen: lets put it this way. FSX with Autogen on sparse has more autogen than FS9 on Extremely Dense. And although that's significantly less, it still looks really good! And I embarked on this 'quest' because FSX is just too much on my system to handle correctly and is quite buggy.

 

Cheers,

-Chris

FSX with Autogen on sparse has more autogen than FS9 on Extremely Dense. And although that's significantly less, it still looks really good!

 

I don't know where you got the math but I somehow agree on that. Is there a way to improve autogen in fs2004?

Holy moly, 5 to 8 FPS at FSDT's Zurich. How is that possible?

 

This is the mystery of FSX, how some people with great rigs get such rotten FPS while others with older hardware get good FPS. I've got that same scenery and get easily 25+ FPS even with all the traffic maxed out, but no cars on the highway. Can't blame you for going FS9 with FPS like that, I would most likely do the same.

 

 

We should be carefull stating that FSX is running full AI traffic, for some this means over 100 visible planes on screen, for others it's a couple of World of AI packages. It's also different running full AI traffic in an american airport (where the majority of planes are Boeing, which have FSX native AI models available) vs an european airport, where Airbus is predominant.

 

AI traffic is a major FPS killer in FSX and is the reason I believe that there is still no HW solution available to run FSX under that specific scenario.