FSX 7 Years Old Now.

[jonss1948 20]

Observing the age of the program and the leaps and bounds hardware has made during its lifetime, I'm wondering if there was a point where any further improvement in FSX was a bit superfluous. ie: Technology eclipsed the program.

 

I'm going to unload some serious change on a new computer. How serious does it have to be to max FSX out?

 

Jon

[Dirtybird1980 6]

I can max out FSX now, doesn't mean it is going to be "Smooth" 30fps. If this is what you are looking for, you will probably need something from Win20 era... that is backwards compatible software to allow FSX to even install

[simmerhead 884]

Sadly there still isn't a computer out there that runs FSX fluently with high settings, and you can forget about maxing everything out. That said, fluently is a highly subjective concept.

[Guest]

Observing the age of the program and the leaps and bounds hardware has made during its lifetime, I'm wondering if there was a point where any further improvement in FSX was a bit superfluous. ie: Technology eclipsed the program.

 

I'm going to unload some serious change on a new computer. How serious does it have to be to max FSX out?

 

Jon

 

Give it another 5-7 years of hardware development and I think you should be able to max out everything with any add-on and retain 30 fps min (overclocked of course). However, the real limit is going to be FSX is a 32bit application ... what this limit effectively does is cap how many 3rd party add-ons you can have ... in fact, it's already like that now where one has to be VERY selective about what 3rd party products they use together to stay away from out-of-memory errors.

 

Although the P3D folks "might" be working on DX11 version -- everyone seems to think they ARE working on a DX11 version but everything I've read (if you read the words carefully) has not gone as far as saying "we're coding DX11 support in Version 2.0 of P3D" ... but a lot of people seem to think they are??

 

FSX still has many years left in it, but there is a real cap on how many 3rd party add-ons you can have installed at the same time ... and this is obviously not good for 3rd party content. However, as CPU/Motherboard/RAM/GPUs continue to improve this effectively moves up the LCD user (Lowest common denominator) ... ya know, the user that thinks everything should work maxed out on a 5 year old system. For example today's i7 3970X is around $1000 and can run FSX very well ... as new CPUs come out, the 3970X will drop in price so that it becomes affordable for those on a budget (LCD users) which will revive the LCD user and get them motivated to use FSX and buy 3rd party products.

 

It's a slow process of dragging along the LCD user, but once that user catches up, we will all be captive to the limits of a 32bit address space. And like I said, moving FSX to 64bit WILL break any and all 32bit DLL's unless some type of IPC is used to communicate with the 32bit DLL as a separate thread -- not great (read slow) but would give 3rd party devs time to update to native 64bit DLLs.

 

But as I understand it for FSX, there is some direct assembler code that is 32bit (this is usually done for speed) ... not many really good Assembler programmers left in the world so figuring out that code and moving it to C++ or to 64bit Assembler could be the big hold up as to why FSX wasn't moved to 64bit a long time ago. My hunch is that FSX Assembler code has been around for a long time probably going back to 2000 and is a key code chunk -- so much for OOP -- do what I say not what I do .

 

Cheers, Rob.

[VeryBumpy 231]

Sadly there still isn't a computer out there that runs FSX fluently with high settings, and you can forget about maxing everything out. That said, fluently is a highly subjective concept.

 

This. We need a 8GHz cpu or more before maxed out will be smooth. In other words, buy the current fastest you are willing to purchase.

[Luis_KMIA 223]

If ACES Studios would have been able to push a software update (a hypotherical Service Pack 3) to make it truly 64-bit and DX10 compatible, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I really enjoy FSX and run it with DX10 preview since it runs smoother, despite some add-ons not being compatible. In theory, my system should max FSX out, but with the older code, it's very difficult. P3D does not seem to have our community in mind with its development plans, and I don't know if Lockheed would want to separate P3D into separate training and gaming versions. The current Lockheed policy makes it impossible for great developers like PMDG to get involved. Just my humble opinion...

[ChaoticBeauty 3,062]

In my opinion, FSX will be maxed out when it will run at 60 FPS. Shouldn't that be achieved sometime?

[BIGSKY 126]

And we still have clouds that rotate.

[Sizel 4]

Yes, Quite frustrating really that we probably already have a computer capable of maxing it out or near. But old FSX code won't allow it.

[Shaun Mclean 11]

It's crazy to think that, considering I've just moved over to FSX. Onwards and upwards!

[Dillon 737]

Just when I was thinking of moving from FS9 to FSX I see threads like this. FS9 runs flawless and fluid these days with nothing more to do than jump in and fly. Outside of a scenery upgrade (that would actually run slower than my current setup) there's really no incentive to switch. FSX has better water and clearer ground textures but that's about it over FS9.75. I love the new add-ons coming out for FSX but if the experience is not fluid or you can't finally today see FSX in it's maxed out glory what's the point? On top of that if I want to see what a great looking sim looks like, runs, and takes full advantage of today's hardware I load up 'Flight' (the gutted FS11). I hope Microsoft rethinks their development of Flight Simulator (which I actually think will happen at some point), we can then have a true 64bit version that moves us all forward once and for all. :unsure:

[Christopher Low 2,910]

Sorry for being pedantic, but FSX is actually 6.3 years old.

[ahuimanu 49]

Acceleration/SP2 - October 23, 2007

 

So, we're 5.5 years old, going on 6. Surely, nobody is really running RTM (or even SP1) by now.

[Matthew Kane 984]

 

Sorry for being pedantic, but FSX is actually 6.3 years old.

 

You are correct sir. The first copy of FSX hit the shelves on October 10, 2006, so how does that make it 7 years old now???

 

 

Anyhow, FSX is the only software I can think of that is as old as it is and has this many third party developers actively working on it. No sign of that letting up soon as well.

 

So on October 10, 2013 we can say happy 7th birthday to FSX but that is in another 7 months. I think that day will come and go and no one will really notice.

 

Cheers

[pegger74 18]

I'm going to unload some serious change on a new computer. How serious does it have to be to max FSX out?

To answer your direct question, buy the best system you can afford...period. But most importantly, ensure your MoBo will support an upgrade or two over time. Do not attempt to build a FSX specific computer. As others posters have stated above, there is no such thing. You are better off building a good computer that will serve you or many years in all the other things you might want to use your computer for. This will give you a computer you can also enjoy FSX on, but perhaps expand to another sim if one ever comes along worth getting into.