I am inherently unstable; for instance, I am not wearing pants while typing this!!!! Haha, what do you flight simmer enthusiasts think about that?

That's disgusting LOL Cheers jja

I am not wearing pants while typing this!!!! Haha, what do you flight simmer enthusiasts think about that?

 

Who does?

 

Well, it's winter here and too cold for that, but wait a few months.

 

Hook

The menu problems in FSX with Vista/Win7 are more or less cured with the UiAutomationCore.dll. Programs that run in-process with FSX (.dll) and suffer a runtime problem will bring down FSX. Programs that run out-of-process (.exe) will not cause FSX to crash. Check your dll.xml and make sure to only enable sections required for the flight. Programs run on a per machine basis and (without being technically precise) don't use up FSX memory. A scenery file with a glitch will bring down FSX at the same point in the flight each time, I've seen that a lot, run your repair from the DVD to refresh the files, check for updates to addon scenery.

 

Improved security in Vista/Win7 has caused a problem for addons that were written on WinXP (or before). Programs should be made for the “Users” account, but the default user on a WinXP machine had admin rights. Any writing to admin parts of the registry or protected folders should be done during the installation. Installations should be made from a program that checks itself for malware before running in admin mode. Infected programs set to ”run as admin”, will deliver their payload as soon as you double-clicked the icon. Let’s hope the bad guys don’t realise what a minefield the FS addon arena is.

 

The Program Files folder is a read only folder, yet addons insist on making directories in that folder and expect to have write access to them, there are folders for applications to use for read/write purposes. Many programs don’t work properly unless “Users” write and modify rights are given to the default FSX program directory before any addons are installed.

 

I have found registry corruptions causing problems such as certain simconnect versions becoming unavailable, or windows intercepts an app (FSX included) thinking it will not understand a period for a decimal point in a .ini file on a non-English format system.

 

Let’s face it; FSX is hardly ever to blame for problems.

 

Steve

On my old machine, a Dell with a Core Duo and a 8800GTS card when I was out over totally open water for more than 30 minutes FSX would crash. When I upgraded the graphics card that issue went away.

 

On my new computer, a sandy bridge extreme with 16gs of ram and a 580 card with planes like the Eagle Soft cessna Citation CJ1 I still have to crank back the sliders a bit otherwise I run out of memory when on approach to scenery intensive areas.

Steve, good post and it has lots of useful information. It's pretty much the same thing we've all been reading for years. The closest I've seen to new information is in Lewis' post above, and if I start getting crashes again I'll shoot him a PM and try his troubleshooting script. Lewis: Hope you don't mind. I'll be sure to use the Cub when I'm doing it.

 

Steve, the next part isn't directed at you, but at everyone in general.

 

The problem is, everyone thinks the problem is simple, and he has the solution. The solutions have been the same for years, and for some people they don't work. After you've exhausted all your options, then it's either the user messing up or hardware instability, and you can still claim a 100% success rate in fixing problems.

 

It reminds me of certain doctors who blame the patient for his problems. I actually read the words "dismiss with scant courtesy" concerning a bowel problem that in my case was actually caused by a rare genetic problem that manifested later in life. The bowel problems were a precursor. Oh, and Doc... that tumor on my kidney was from all that radioactive dye you've injected into my veins over the years. I could write a book.

 

I really really wish I had Super-Duper-Mega-Colossal scenery installed, so all I would have to do to be sure of getting through a flight is to delete it. Same with AIEverywhere, RoadTrafficEverywhere, PeopleEverywhere, ShadowsEverywhere, RealFolliage down to the individual blades of grass, and AwesomeATC. The only thing I normally have running is Active Sky, and I've gotten crashes without it. I just *wish* all these stock "upgrade your video driver and call us back" answers worked.

 

Hook

It's pretty much the same thing we've all been reading for years.

The problem is, everyone thinks the problem is simple, and he has the solution.

True—I find myself constantly repeating information about tweaks, but while many of us already know and/or have tried them, new users such as the original poster may not have heard of them. If tweaks have had success with some people, and the original poster has not specified whether he has tried them before, it's worth a try to mention them yet another time.

Maybe there's a tweak for it somewhere in fsx.cfg:

 

[Magic]

ALLOW_CTDS=False

GAIN_30_EXTRA_FPS=True

LOAD_SCENERY_IN_NON_CORPOREAL_TIME=True

BLIND_TRAFFIC=False

I agree, but some people are getting errors without all the normal culprits like overclocking or too high settings. Getting the timings and synchronization right on multiple processes isn't a trivial task, and problems may be caused by some slight imbalance anywhere in your hardware.

 

Unfortunately, it doesn't explain why people can have problems across multiple computers and operating systems.

 

Gawd I hate being this contrary, but those who haven't experienced constant crashes no matter what fixes you've tried have no idea what we're going through. Or why, in the end, we just give up and accept it.

 

Hook

 

I've been running various incarnations of Flight Simulator since I got my first copy from Bruce Artwick Organization for my Amiga 500 (yes, I'm that old.....).

 

It's always had its quirks, but the latest version is monumentally stable, IMHO, if installed correctly.

 

It _feels_ like it's unstable as even more than Windows itself, it's a tweaker's dream, and there are so many interactions between so many different variables that it's very easy to trip over yourself, even with good analytical tools at hand.

 

I'm astonished that so many people can run so many add-ons (I've created headaches for myself today by picking up the PMDG 737NGX, for example..... <g>) and still keep things going reasonably well.

 

FSX is really software from the good old days, before everyone in the world of computing decided to go for the mass audience, you know, the ones that can just tap on a screen on an iPhone, play something simple for five minutes and be done. Simplicity and stability are good, but they and the mass market are not all there is to life.

 

If you get into FSX, you have to understand that you're going to be engaging in a system that proliferates massive changes as you use it. You have to learn, step by step, what those changes are, master them, and not take a "blame the software" attitude when something goes wrong.

 

After what, more than a decade of using Flight Simulator? I've learned that I can always make it stable again, worst case, by uninstalling and reinstalling from scratch (painful, and only something I've had to do a very few times). Mostly, it takes close attention to each and every one of the details of what makes it run.

 

Last word, sorry for blathering, but _the_ biggest thing on the 'net I've found with my returned attention to FSX is that, even with the community-acknowledged top tweak lists (Nick's for instance), there's clearly a YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY embedded in the info. That is to be respected. I've found for one small example that things like HIGHMEMFIX=1 and TEXTURE_LOAD_MAX and other "bullet-proof" tweaks have sometimes completely messed things up, in _my_ case, requiring full delete of FSX.CFG and going back to semi-scratch.

 

You have to be willing and interested in all that to run FSX. If not, there's simpler stuff out there to play with, for sure.

 

I'd say the same thing for Windows, ultimately; MS has done a good job of making a giant, bureaucratic beast run reasonably well for millions, but the reality is, there's an encyclopedia of stuff running behind the scenes every moment that is mind-blowing once you look into it, and you either respect that and live with it and work with it, or go for simpler things if that is too much to contemplate.

I find myself constantly repeating information about tweaks, but while many of us already know and/or have tried them, new users such as the original poster may not have heard of them. If tweaks have had success with some people, and the original poster has not specified whether he has tried them before, it's worth a try to mention them yet another time.

 

You're right, Owen. The fixes do need to be repeated as they do help some people.

 

[Magic]

ALLOW_CTDS=False

 

I had a section like that once.

 

I even tried the OR-ELSE directive: "Complete this flight OR ELSE!" Hey, it used to work on mainframes! I once sincerely threatened my old computer that I'd donate it to an elementary school. I got at least 5 good flights out of it before it crashed again. I think the new computer started working when I started considering leaving the side off for the cats to use as a litter box.

 

Hook

I once had to visit a client as the computer locked up with failed backup every night. I sat there next to the computer and at around 6pm I heard a vacuum cleaner start up in the office next door. Since there were no spare sockets, the cleaning lady had plugged the vac into the socket marked clearly “computer power only”.

Although it is my primary simulation, I generally think FSX is a piece of junk, and I always have. Here is a prime example why: I was getting stellar performance out of an old Nvidia driver, 2.6whatever. Took me months, maybe years to get it running that good, and I vowed I would never change a thing! (yeah right). Then I bought DCS, and with the greatest reluctance, decided the time had come to finally move up to the latest. My performance in DCS is much better with the newest driver than it was on the old--excellent actually. 3 weeks later I decided to get the Dodosim 206, and had a blast learning to fly that. Performance seemed fine. Now, within the last couple of days, I've gone back to the NGX, and much to my chagrin, my standard performance was off by at least 30%. We're talking in the fps teens, and a total disaster in the clouds. I double checked my settings in Nvidia Inspector, and everything was exactly as it had been before. Quite annoyed now, I reloaded the old driver (just to check), and verified it was the driver. Well, I'm back to 310.90 because I NEED it for other applications, but now I'm also back to performance-tweaking 101 with FSX, reading the forums, trying this, trying that. Total trial and error. I hate it, every stinking minute of it!

 

So this is an example of why I think FSX needs to be replaced by something better soon. Stuff like this is so frustrating, I'm actually thinking about cutting my losses and abandoning it altogther. I won't, but the second something better comes along, FSX will be yesterday's tuna :t0103: After this year, and the good addons I know are coming, I think I would rather rip my eyeballs out of my sockets than keep running this FSX rat race, of always having to waste an entire evening getting things put back together again, or much much worse, making those painful decisions to upgrade the hardware you just spent lots of money on less than a year ago.

 

So to the original question of whether FSX is "unstable", well it didn't work well on the hardware that existed when it was released, and the pace of addons pushing it to its limits has ensured that I (just speaking for myself) always feel like I'm lagging behind the power curve, one driver/addon/tweak away from screwing the whole thing up. God help me if I ever have to do a re-install from scratch--it would be like trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

 

Just had to vent my frustration at the cursed FSX!

So to the original question of whether FSX is "unstable", well it didn't work well on the hardware that existed when it was released

 

Sure it did--people just weren't content setting it up the way it was intended--which was NOT at the highest level of simulation fidelity it was capable of some time out in the future when the hardware caught up. I remember the whining commencing because people couldn't put the sliders all the way to max and they complained that MS did wrong in releasing product that wouldn't perform at the highest level out of the shoot. I'm sure glad they did what they did else we would all be chit chatting on the X-Plane forum ;o)

 

Even this poor soul w/ all the troubles he's had, King, is still here on the brink of throwing in the towel, but notice...he hasn't! You can't beat what FSX does for the tweaker in us all! It's true!

I bet the majority of FSX users have killer gaming machines now aside from FSX itself our machines probably run most everything else today. That said we do it despite frustrations because we love to fly and the potential if everything is balanced and your fortunate your net result is some of those beautiful videos it produces on YouTube.

 

 

I bet the majority of FSX users have killer gaming machines now aside from FSX itself our machines probably run most everything else today. That said we do it despite frustrations because we love to fly and the potential if everything is balanced and your fortunate your net result is some of those beautiful videos it produces on YouTube.

 

+1

 

Oh, no kidding! I tried out some other games this last fall, just for a change of pace, and my jaw hit the floor when I saw my machine cutting through some of the more modern, graphics card optimized software out there. But then, you're right, back to FSX, with 20 to 30 fps on a sunny day, and 18 in the clouds.... :unsure:

 

It is actually taking a bit of consumer discipline right now to not get on to newegg and just put the latest and greatest Nvidia graphics card on the tab for a few more precious fps. But that would just be stupid, and this is the endless treadmill that I am finding increasingly difficult to justify.

For me, the day I bought and installed W7 64bit, I have had the most trouble free flying i have ever had (Including pre FSX days), which is why it will take a lot of convincing for me to upgrade to W8. Best O.S. i have ever used.