The 780 is an excellent card... Do spend some time on the hardware forum  B)

 

Lots of good discussions there!

PMDG 737

Majestic Dash 8 Q400

A2A Cessna 172

Aerosoft DA20 Katana 4X

Aerosoft Twin Otter

Quality Wings RJ/BAe

Aerosoft Zurich

Anything from OrbX, FlyTampa, FSDreamTeam and Flightbeam

Pilots FSGlobal 2010 (might hold off until OrbX Vector is released).

Active Sky (wait until "Next" is released)

Flight One Flight Environment 2.0

 

 

The 780 is an excellent card... Do spend some time on the hardware forum  B)

 

Lots of good discussions there!

 

I will certainly go and read what is in that forum.

PMDG 737

Majestic Dash 8 Q400

A2A Cessna 172

Aerosoft DA20 Katana 4X

Aerosoft Twin Otter

Quality Wings RJ/BAe

Aerosoft Zurich

Anything from OrbX, FlyTampa, FSDreamTeam and Flightbeam

Pilots FSGlobal 2010 (might hold off until OrbX Vector is released).

Active Sky (wait until "Next" is released)

Flight One Flight Environment 2.0

 

Second post I have seen about the Dash 8 Q400. I think that along with the PMDG 737 is a good start. I thought I would go with the Feelthere 145 but I guess it can cause issues with PMDG planes or was it scenery anyway until I understand what I am doing with installing planes and everything I figure it best to maybe try and only put different addons together that won't interfere with each other.

if you might wondering what addons like fsglobal or fsgenesis are, these are mesh addons.

those replace the stock mesh which is responsible for elevation on the terrain like mountains, hills, canyons and so on.

 

flying over an area and expecting a hill/mountain but none there ? or the mountain doesn't look like its counterpart in the reality ? 

thats the addon to get. (placement and shape, but no textures)

 

I really had trouble in the beginning understanding what those addons do when i started fsx ...

 

mesh addons are more likely to add last if you are on a budget, but those things have big drawbacks because of the bad fsx engine.

the airports in fsx are always flat and the elevation is sometimes incorrect. 

 

since those mesh are more real it can happen that the elevation and terrain don't match and can result into ugly terrain or an airport suddenly on an plateau 100feet above it should be and the ground around the airport is 100fett lower, looks funny and you have to use extra addons to fix the elevation of the airport.

or like a post above said wait for orbx vector ... it has fixes for over 24000 airports because of the elevation (or over 24k airports that works with them dunno) so that you don't have to fix them yourself.

Yea I read about that program. I figured I would get FTX global and then the Vector program when it was realeasd. I just saw on the screenshots they used they had a third program listed which was FS Globlal Mesh so I thought I needed that to work with the other two programs. I guess FS Global Mesh isn't required for the other two.

As far as a "gaming" desktops go could somebody suggest some good companies to look at? I have only looked at Dell so far but I have read that if I wanted to put together my own I could and it would end up being cheaper? Does that make any sense?

 

I would really prefer to just buy a custom built one with everything needed to run FSX basically maxed out.

Jetline Systems aren't cheap but have nice products. I think they can over clock your system

 

http://www.jetlinesystems.com

 

There's also some talented system builders in the hardware forum that would probably make you one for a small fee.

As far as a "gaming" desktops go could somebody suggest some good companies to look at? I have only looked at Dell so far but I have read that if I wanted to put together my own I could and it would end up being cheaper? Does that make any sense?

 

I would really prefer to just buy a custom built one with everything needed to run FSX basically maxed out.

You may want to consider building your own. You can have a great pc, hand picking the parts, and then just upgrade certain components down the road, if you need to. It isn't hard to do.

Thank you for the information. Can you get other liveries for the PMDG and the IFly? More specifically like United, Delta, those types of airlines?

 

Yes.  Keep in mind that people seem to create liveries more for the 600/700 variants of the 737 from PMDG than they do for the 800/900.   So you may want to also get the expansion pack that adds those models.

 

VOXATC for AI ATC with speech recognition.

Ultimate Traffic 2 for a huge improvement to the Traffic around the airport and while enroute.

FS2Crew for Crew Simulation

GSX (Ground Services Extreme) for an amazing add-on that handles push backs and parking better than any others plus some other nice features like bagage loading and catering services.

You may want to consider building your own. You can have a great pc, hand picking the parts, and then just upgrade certain components down the road, if you need to. It isn't hard to do.

 

It does sound like a good option but I really have no clue about computer parts so I made a topic in the hardware forum and hopefully somebody will see it and suggest what I should get and go from there.

 

 

I guess the question would be do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? Is it possible to just push a button for whatever needs to be said instead of talking to ATC?

 

 

 

Its voice activated so you can't do the button thing. However, with ifr flights you can enable the co-pilot to handle the radios and do 99% of the talking. I use this feature sometimes as it can be difficult to man the radios and fly the plane at the same time during takeoff/landing. 

if you want a button thing atc addon instead of a talkie one look at radar contact or pro atc-x.

i think radar contact is only for planes who can fly sid/stars but with pro atc-x you can also fly with only gps ...

so if you want to fly smaller airplanes without full fledged fmc's try pro atc-x.

 

sadly there is no demo and there haven't been fixed all issues yet if i read correctly and radar contact v5 is on ice right now.

so make your choice carefully. but both should still work pretty great.

if i would buy one i guess i would go pro atc-x because it also comes with a moving map, flightplaner + export function, taxi guidance and so on.

Its voice activated so you can't do the button thing. However, with ifr flights you can enable the co-pilot to handle the radios and do 99% of the talking. I use this feature sometimes as it can be difficult to man the radios and fly the plane at the same time during takeoff/landing. 

 

Yea that was exactly what I was thinking about. It is good to know you can give those duties to the co-pilot.

if you want a button thing atc addon instead of a talkie one look at radar contact or pro atc-x.

i think radar contact is only for planes who can fly sid/stars but with pro atc-x you can also fly with only gps ...

so if you want to fly smaller airplanes without full fledged fmc's try pro atc-x.

 

sadly there is no demo and there haven't been fixed all issues yet if i read correctly and radar contact v5 is on ice right now.

so make your choice carefully. but both should still work pretty great.

if i would buy one i guess i would go pro atc-x because it also comes with a moving map, flightplaner + export function, taxi guidance and so on.

 

With pro-atc you get to hear all the radio communications correct? So I would hear other planes getting instructions and everything? I do like the other features of the program also. Is there a variety of voices for pro atc so not every pilot or ATC person sounds the same?

 

One thing that has me a bit concerned is that the program says it can only recognize AI planes while airbone and not on the ground. Does this cause planes to not move correctly around airports or does the FSX default ATC take over for that?

What type of hard drive is better a regular hard drive that runs at like 7200 RPM, or a drive that has a 512GB solid state drive+ 1 TB of additional storage at 7200 RPM?

sorry can't tell you any more about pro atc x because I don't own it (yet)

maybe better asking in their forum for that ...

 

and the question about ssd and normal hdd: even the slowest ssd will blow away the fastest hdd by miles.

I have a ssd and windows 8 boots in like 6sec from logo to desktop/startmenu (without the windows internal quickstart option)

 

if you can afford it get 2 ssd, 1 for windows (120gb are enough most of the times) and another one for fsx maybe (I have it on a regular hdd)

maybe 120gb if you don't have many addons or 250gb for the future and some other games/apps (but not needed)