Hi

 

New simmer (PPL) here. Having made a big personal investment to get as real an experience as possible, would very much appreciate advice from some old hands with regard to an optimum install sequence to ensure each add-on installs ok with the others please. Here is a list of packages, anything need to be installed before something else to avoid trouble later please?

 

First the Hardware:

3 Monitors

 

MSI Z77A-G43 Intel® Z77 ATX Motherboard - CrossFireX™ Support
Intel® Core™ i7-3770K Quad Core Unlocked Processor (3.50GHz, 8MB Cache)
Corsair H60 High-performance CPU Liquid Cooler
Professional Overclocking Configuration (4.2GHz)
16GB DDR3 1866MHz Memory (2x8GB) Kit
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 680 Graphics Accelerator- 1536 Cores,2 DVI,HDMI,DP
240GB SSD - OCZ Agility 3 Solid State Drive w/ Windows 7 Pro installed

2TB SATA III 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms Hard Drive
24x DVD Writer (read/write CD & DVD)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCIe Sound Card
Microsoft Windows® 7 Professional 64 bit w/SP1)
Microsoft Wireless Bluetrack Desktop 3000 Keyboard and Mouse

Saitek controls set + headphone,

 

Software:

MSFSX

FSUIPC (Yet To download)

Track IR

EZCA

VoxATC

PMDG J4100

PMDG 737NGX

Corenado C172 (Yet To download)

Multi Crew Experience (Yet To download)

Topcat

REX (Yet To download)

FS Global Europe

Ultimate Terrain

Horizon UK Photographic Scenery

Ultimate Traffic 2

GSX Ground Services (Yet To download)

Various UK 2000 Airports

Various Aerosoft Airports

AccuFeel 2 (Yet To download)

Shockwave 3D Lights (Yet To download)

Electronic Flight Bag (Yet To download)

 

Sorry that this list is so long, but anyone who would be kind enough to help me avoid sequencing errors, I would be very grateful. PS Any clashes or duplicate facilities here?

 

Thanks in hopeful anticipation

 

Andrew

 

 

The only scenery you have to worry about as far as installing before others is:

 

FS Global Europe

Ultimate Terrain

Horizon UK Photographic Scenery

 

After installing FSX, I would install ultimate terrain, then FS Global, then Horizon UK Photographic Scenery.  Once you install this scenery, run it and look for anomalies.  If you see any, you can easily disable one or the other to see what is causing the anomaly.

 

Next MIGHT be Ultimate Traffic 2 but only if Ultimate Traffic 2 shows up in the Scenery Library like My Traffic X.  My Traffic X loads AFCAD's for airports so that the AI can take off and land successfully in accordance with the flight plans.  If placed too high in your Scenery Library, it could trump an installed commercial addon located below it.

 

Next would be the various UK 2000 Airports, and the various Aerosoft Airports in any order you want.

 

The rest of the software can be installed in any order you want.

 

Best regards,

Jim

this is my install sequence:

 

1. install fsx+acceleration

2. boot fsx one time to create cfg file.

3. use bojotes tuning tool or kostas guide to get tweaks into cfg file

4. boot fsx again, and get various sliders where you want them.

4a. install FSUIPC

5. install terrain meshes

6. install Ultimate terrains (i have usa, canada, alaska, and europe)

7. install GEX if you have those

8. install orbx stuff if you have that

 

at this point i consider "the carpet laid" and i just add whatever after that. 

 

A word about My Traffic X, i use that, and love it, and the developer suggests that it gets put in the scenery library in below "addon scenery" and above "propeller objects", which is pretty far down.

Just to add to the end of the good lists above: be very sure to defrag once all of that is done!

Many thanks to those who have kindly responded, your advice is much appreciated. One supplementary if I may. I have a Solid State Drive as drive C. Should I install any  particular packages onto it to optimize Frame Rate performance as a result of its high access speeds or should everything go onto the 2Tb drive D? I have read something about FSX as follows:

 

 

 If at all possible FSX Installation should be done on any drive other than the C:-drive, so that the drive is not handling requests from the OS and from FSX at the same time, and especially – it should not be installed in the “Default” C:\Program Files(x86)\, as this folder is owned by “Trusted Installer” and you will have many frustrating arguments with FSX and your pc if this is the case.

 

Once again, your advice very much appreciated to help me cut through the fog.......

 

Andrew

there has been debate upon debate about this, but from what i have read, the speed of your HD, be it SSD or whatever, will not increase framerate, it may make things smoother as far as textures getting accessed faster, but FSX is 90% processor based, you could have the most badassed vid card in the world, but if your processor isnt fast, FSX will have issues

I have 2 identical systems, 1 with SSD's and the other with 2 x 1TB drives in RAID0, and the only noticable difference is the amount of time it takes to load a flight. It has zero impact on FPS at all, because it seems, what your flying in is already in the RAM and will be fetched accordingly when needed.

 

It does however mean that flight loading times, software install times etc are seconds, not minutes, plus zero heat/noise generated from SSD's, and they are small enough to mount in your case out of the way of fans, so dont block airflow :-) Plus you dont need a system page file either, so can switch that off to save a ton of space.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. I have completed my install taking into account all advice gratefully received. x