Hi James,

I am sure your story is very familiar to many flight sim guys here. I agree we seem to spend more time tweaking than flying....

My story was similar to you. In the end, well, presently....I got a new Win 8 machine for emails, downloads and house keeping etc that is super reliable. My Win 7 64 bit machine, which is a grunty water cooled girl is only for FSX. The best thing I did when I loaded Win 7 on my last re install was to carry out no WIN updates what so ever. This machine still thinks it is the same date and code when Win 7 was released. Other than verifying a/c purchases with suppliers, the machine rarely downloads(usually REX weather). I use my other machine for downloads and mem stick them across....Touch wood, my FSX system has been very stable for the last several months.

 

But, knowing FSX, one day some of the very innovative code from third party suppliers will trip it up the old timers platform and despite my best efforts, it will throw the towel in again.

 

I'm retired now and hopeful live long enough for a "reliable" platform to be developed. Will never forgive Bill for walking away.   

I'm no expert but not loading the Windows updates seems very risky in the long run.  On my previous setup, before my Windows 7 OS crashed completely and I had to restore to factory, I hadn't done any updates.  I don't know if that contributed to the problem but I suspect it did.  I also used the computer 99% only for FSX. 

 

I also suspect that too many system restore to earlier dates can be a problem.   

Microsoft's screwup is that they gave the sliders too much play. If they cut them in half  noone would complain about performance.

Every single one of you has a valid point. That's what makes it all so ridiculous and yet impossible for us to walk away from!

 

It's been 7 years on October 10th since FSX was released. In that time hardware has caught up so that most of us are able to run it to a decent degree (in theory). Yet for many it still isn't stable!

 

What other product or software does anyone know that is like this? Imagine if it took more than 7 years to figure out how to get your car running smoothly. Or if you bought a TV and then it required you to hard code various parts in order to be able to watch a channel in HD for example. We wouldn't accept any of it but for some reason with FSX we have and continue to do so. I know I do! Why I earth did I spend £100 on a new HDD last week? Because I desperately wanted it to work and to experience the new add on from PMDG (which I must say is fantastic when FSX plays ball).

 

The fact is that FSX seems to be the most sensitive bit if software ever developed. You add the wrong add on: crash. You tweak the wrong setting: crash. You upgrade to windows 8: crash and your joysticks don't work. You actually have to add code to it to get it working properly! My dad was thinking about buying it. Can you imagine? I told him to wait until there is a product out there which you download, click install and then just open without needing to have some basic programming knowledge. Amazing really isn't it? I bought Bioshock Infinite recently. My system absolute flys with it and I have about a billion FPS on 3 screens. All I did was click about 3 times and away I went.

 

PMDG have developed a software copy of one of the most complex aircraft of our time for us to enjoy on our desktop computers AT HOME. The coding that went into it must be phenomenal yet for the bottleneck is the software it's designed to run on - or at least it is for me.

 

I go back to my original offer and double it. Hell, I'd even triple it again if this amazing product worked on something that didn't need to be nursed into life every time you booted it up.

Mta00jtl,

 

Read this. May help people understand why FSX doesn't render as fast as your typical game.

 

Another thing to note, is that in other games which have big levels (eg. Mass Effect 1), it also had framerate issues as well. Bioshock Infinite uses a bunch of smaller levels that are loaded when needed (streamed from hard drive). It doesn't load the whole thing at once. That's why it may perform better. Unfortunately, in FSX, there is one big level (the entire planet). They can't load the entire planet into RAM, so they load little bits at a time. The biggest map you can make in Unreal Engine 3 is around 6 km from what I've read. In FSX, 6 km isn't that big.

 

In short, the amount of stuff FSX has to render is quite a bit more than what most games have to render. This is why is may not perform as well as other software. Even XPlane will slow to a crawl if you try to run it on max settings, because of the amount of stuff it has to render (same as FSX).

Magnetite, great article and makes sense. Although let me just repeat: FSX is seven years old! According to Moore's law in 2006 there were (approx) 100,000,000 transistors on circuits. Now there are (approx) 2,600,000,000 transistors. This power increase has to count for something but no. A fresh install of FSX on hardware that could probably help fly me physically to the moon still can't get me reliably to Tenerife or any other Canary (or Balearic Island for that matter) in the comfort of my arm chair. If I have to add bufferpools=0 or turn water to 1x low or whatever then I'm barking up the wrong tree. What we need is a simulator that can efficiently and reliably make use of those 26 times more transistors and amazing graphics cards we now have - after all, if PMDG can create a software based 99.9% accurate 777 (and 737 etc) that works on a 7 year old dinosaur, imagine what they could do in a simulation created for our current times!

 

Orbx has scenery, landclass and vectors (and possibly mesh) covered. PMDG, Carenado, Majestic and Aerosoft etc have our backs on the aircraft front. FlyTampa, FlightBeam, Aerosoft and Uk2000 can make places for us to fly into. REX can give the ground, sea and sky a better look. We have better weather forecast software than some TV channels. All we need is a team to create the code for flight dynamics - if I can add bufferpool tweaks then this must be a piece of cake! Come on developers, get your a£&es on kickstarter or something, work together and see the commercial potential of a flight sim made for now! There are a gazillion forum posts on here with people asking for help to get their sims working. Create one that works and people will pay for it! In fact I may do it myself. It can't be that hard...

I'm sorry to hear that you are having such difficulty with FSX.    FSX is just one of those creatures that was never perfect (far from it, actually), never really given any real support, then dropped by Microsoft.  There is a reason that are so many people that still use FS9 (not just the issue of older, slower hardware).

 

Understanding this critical point, and further understanding that it is the environment in which we must live in order to sim (x-plane notwithstanding), there are a number of serious choices that one must make when using FSX.  There are those who want to make videos and to do that, you need a whole lot of horses under the hood (aka CPU) and a pretty hefty graphics card....among other things.  You also need to have some depth of understanding as to how to make your hardware work with FSX, because it does not work the other way around.

 

I have been using FSX for the past six years; on a PC that I built five years ago specifically for FSX and, yes, with an ATI card.  Through a lot of trial and error, reading of posts, experimentation, seeking of advice, cries for help and lots of aspirin, I've been able to get an acceptable level of performance out of FSX and mitigate (not eliminate) OOM errors.  I can run PMDG's aircraft well with frame rates that are between 15-30 fps (depending upon where I am and how much wx is injected into the program), but I've had to sacrifice quite a bit in terms of scenery add-ons.  I use only airports for scenery add-ons plus a couple of utilities and that's pretty much it.  I've stripped Windows 7 bare to free up as much processor space as I can save and cobbled together a network which allows me to run AS2012 fine...AS2012 and the AivlaSoft EFB mostly with some success and of course, PFPX on the laptop.  I have Saitek yoke, pedals and throttles that have been a serious problem to install, but I've got them working now for all my aircraft and now, I'm in the process of trimming down the number of aircraft I have in my hanger to those I actually will fly on a regular basis, again, to gain some performance. It takes a lot of work, but I'm satisfied with the results.  As long as I don't OC my CPU (which I keep at 2.8ghz), my little quad core Q9550 intel chip just keeps chugging along.  For now, that seems to work.  I can do some screen shots, but there are limitations to that...but no videos. 

 

I guess what I'm saying is this...if you REALLY want to fly FSX and use PMDG's software, you are going to need to take your PC, do a lot of reading, tweaking, more reading, more tweaking and spend a lot of time on forums and YouTube to get the right mix of information, help and guidance to get you going.  You just have to want it bad enough....and it's ok if you don't.  It's pretty frustrating.

 

As long as I can effectively run PMDGs products on my current profile (which I can), then I will continue to do what I'm doing.  I understand the issues involved with Boeing and the EULA that PMDG must face and respect their position.  Perhaps I am more optimistic than most, because I see a great future for us in flight simulation...because of the work of PMDG, Majestic, and others who build incredible products that truly represent the best in this business.  At some point there will be a simulator platform that will be one in which we can all operate, but for the moment, our three choices are FS9, FSX and x-plane. Since I've invested literally thousands of dollars over the years on the FSX platform, here I will stay.

 

As for PMDG, they make the best aviation simulation aircraft in this industry....full stop.  The good news is that some of the other guys are getting better and actually have developed functionality outside of FSX (I speak of the Majestic Q400) and that opens the door to even more possibilities down the road.

 

So for me, it's pretty simple.  Stay the path...and be loyal to those vendors who really put out the quality stuff...like PMDG.

 

Sorry for the long winded post, but I think a positive point of view about where we stand is in order, because while I understand the frustration of the OP, we are actually headed in a positive direction....and the PMDG 777 is the next installment in our future.

 

I look forward to what comes next...

+1 speedbird034 I hear you totally. Your post is only long winded as you've had to explain what you needed to do to get FSX working at an acceptable level. Compromise is crazy when we are spending $90 US on add ons but for FSX we are happy to do so it seems. Here's to the future though. Someone out there will create something which fixes all this but we are in for a long wait

Yesterday a new Windows update came out.. I installed it.. Then I flew a flight and the performance was horrible.. I then decided to do a system restore back to the point before I installed the windows update.. I flew another flight and it was smooth as silk.. There is not doubt in my mind that the windows update caused the problem..

 

Lol thats exactly what happened to me. I did a long haul flight landed and closed fsx. No problems or errors. Left my computer on and went to bed. Next morning windows did an automatic update and rebooted. Started up fsx clicked fly now and boom CTD. luckily I had a restore point right before the updates so I was good to go

 

Some of the CTD can also be hardware related. I had a crossfire setup with 2 7770 ati cards. I had crossfire off for FSX but I was still experiencing random CTD until I removed one card. Another instance I had 7850 that was OC from the manufacturer and it was always running hot. The fan would be running at 85%. I would get a random CTD halfway to my destination.

 

Now I'm just using a non OC ati and have not had any CTD anymore even with 15 hr flights

Oh boy! Can I relate to you James! I laughed and laughed not at you but because I can relate to everything you said. I wouldn't have changed it! I too have given up on FSX. I think I have flown 3% and mucked about for 97%. I dream of the day PMDG change their mind and I am rolling down 36L prepar3d for take off!

 

Paul

What I love the most about FSX is that it has it's own character for everyone's different systems! Sometimes it'll work for months with no issues then suddenly it will take a dislike to something and pack up. Surely FSX is unique in the history of software in this regard? Most software is designed to work on a multitude of platforms out of the box but FSX has to be uniquely tailored for each systems. The various tweaking guides and bibles are full of "your mileage may vary" or " you may find this will/won't work for you" phrases - it's hilarious really. It was such an initially broken piece of software that even after 7 years we still can't get it to play nice.

 

That's why P3D is such an improvement in my mind - someone has taken the time to get rid of the major issues although it is still FSX and a 7 year old bit of code.

 

I was thinking after seeing the comments last night - something like a dedicated flight sim could be ideally suited for the Apple methodology of software and hardware integration. If you could design a flight simulator to fit a specifically designed hardware configuration and sell the whole lot as a package you could end up with something that you almost plug and play. I don't mean specific flight sim PC builds either, I mean a specific box that only has a flight sim on it. For example, EULA's aside, you could take a PS4 or X Box One and use their power and grunt to be dedicated to flight simming. Or similar hardware. Programmed correctly maybe you could add up to 3 monitors? It would come out of the box ready to accept any of the joysticks available and you would turn it on and it wouldn't CTD as it wouldn't have a desktop! If a scenery firm like Orbx teamed up with some of the big aircraft boys like PMDG (maybe 3-5 developers all in) maybe the ultimate flight sim could be created that you would just plug and play. People would argue that the capital investment would be huge - maybe something like Kickstarter would solve this? I know I'd invest and I'm sure many others would too - especially considering how much we all spend on our sims now. There could be future upgrade paths through downloads and there would be no need to worry about the system becoming obsolete - FSX already proves we are more than happy with a 7+ year product cycle! And the PS3 and X Box 360 are still going strong.

 

Come on PMDG, what do you reckon? Not only that, the developers would have a tighter control on things - some would say a bad thing but it works for Apple and the iOS experience is a finely honed experience. 

 

This is probably too much to ever hope but I'd be curious to see if it could work. Let me know your thoughts...

 

James

"With graphics set I loaded up FSX. The menu music played, my girlfriend rolled her eyes"

:lol: I can picture that .

 

when all else fails turn to *******  http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html you have nothing to lose

 

 

when all else fails turn to ******* http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html you have nothing to lose

Good for an old slower system. But has a tendency to over tweak the cfg to death.

 

 

I'm no expert but not loading the Windows updates seems very risky in the long run.  On my previous setup, before my Windows 7 OS crashed completely and I had to restore to factory, I hadn't done any updates.  I don't know if that contributed to the problem but I suspect it did.  I also used the computer 99% only for FSX. 
 
I also suspect that too many system restore to earlier dates can be a problem.   

Hi Phillip,

As a computer programmer who has spent many years writing and updating code and providing hot packs to improve functionality of various systems, my training over the years says updates provided by some company like MS should be an "improvement".  However, my experience says many times the hot packs cause havoc for some systems while greatly benefiting others. Because of the zillion combinations of software, system settings and hardware characteristics, it is not possible for every update to be the same for every computer, just (hopefully) for the majority. 

We updated code as a continual process repairing issues or adding improvements. We would try and carry out exhaustive testing prior to release of this revised code(hotpacks) It was always a stressful time, waiting for the 'new' issues we have just caused....and so it goes round... 

 

On my "external" computer, I update this every month. As its job is mostly MS Office, Outlook and IE/Chrome,( I do not do Facebook or Tweet etc) the updates seem to cause few problems. FSX is a different creature that seems very temperamental and resents system disturbance. We all have to find the sweet spot for our computers and current software. 

 

So far, being in a Win7 time warp has brought me FSX stability. I am sure though, for some other users, this may bring instability. Possibly due to the code from say PMDG might be looking for module so and so from Win 7 version xxxx.xxxx. When the PMDG code does not find this updated code, then the system becomes unstable and code or memory leakage will happen.

 

 

I loaded up FSX. The menu music played, my girlfriend rolled her eyes

 

LOL:  yep same over here.

 

 

I looked into downgrading to windows 7

 

IMHO going from W8 to W7/64 aint no "downgrade", but rather a step in the right direction, sir...at least as a simmer/gamer.

What the heck is wrong with everybody's FSX?! I've had it run on an old 2002 desktop, a crappy 2008 laptop, and on this moderate 2010 desktop. No freezes, no crashes, no OOM errors, nothing.