Hey guys,

 

When you're reading through the FSX forums, you can easily get the impression that FSX out of the box looked like rubbish and wouldn't cease to do so only after installing gazillion of addons. Now, here's my experience:

 

I had been using FSX for maybe two years on a notebook (CPU: i3-2410m, GPU: GT 520M) with next to no addons and although I had most sliders far to the left, it had hardly been playable for me. And it looked like rubbish indeed.

Since I started earning (and saving) some money a year ago, I could now finally afford a decent system (CPU: i7-4770k, GPU: GTX 770, 27'' monitor [1920x1080]), had it delivered to me on friday, did a clean FSX+Acc install yesterday and was truly baffled: It looked like a whole new sim to me only with sliders to the right! I found default FSX to be visually stunning, immersive and as smooth an experience as one could imagine. It was just a joy to take off in one of the default airplanes, look at the bright and detailed ground textures, pass through some bad weather and fly past Cologne Cathedral in a 737 at 600 ft...

 

To conclude: I am very happy with default FSX. In case anything goes wrong with the addons I am installing right now or if they are too hard on my performance, I'd have no problem going back to the default. For a program that's like 8 years old, it's as pretty as can be.

 

Yet, I guess it all depends where you're coming from...

For a program 8 years old, it is badly optimized since it doesn't work on most current laptops (even medium range ones)

I, too, immersed myself in default textures after my migration from FS9 to FSX ...   :rolleyes:

 

What still could be a factor is, that people run fixed graphics settings, no matter whether they are flying in addon or default scenery. In default scenery, you can move those sliders to the right, and that narrows the gap between default and addon textures a good deal.

If you're happy with your vanilla version of FS-X, that's great! Many simmers have an insatiable and uncontrolled addiction to add-on software and overloading their flightsims with tons of crap they hardly ever use.

 

Default FSX + great aircraft (payware usually) is definitely a winning combinatinon. I'd go with default FSX + PMDG 777. 

 

And if I had to add only one addon, that would be Real Environment Xtreme. It completely transforms everything you see on FSX: sky, water, sun, clouds etc... FSX + good aircraft + REX (in that order of priority) is the best bang for the buck.

Another factor is probably YouTube. After watching dozens of "as real as it gets" and "5.2 Ghz" videos, I did say to myself: 'I want that, too!" However, such insane levels of graphics won't be achievable for me, I'm afraid.

 

@Alpha Floor: I agree, but I'm also very fond on my home airport (Vienna), so I'll add that to my list.

Another factor is probably YouTube. After watching dozens of "as real as it gets" and "5.2 Ghz" videos, I did say to myself: 'I want that, too!" However, such insane levels of graphics won't be achievable for me, I'm afraid.

 

 

 

Don't let yourself get fooled by YouTube videos. Many of the extreme graphics with smooth and high FPS we see on YouTube, were in fact recorded at 1/4 the speed (or less) and then brought back to 1/1 speed in order to multiply frames by 4. If they only uploaded what they really get on their machines we wouldn't be that stunned. And not to mention video-editing...

 

Of course, then there's the league of people with 10,000$ PC's or more...

A LOD_radius setting of 8.5 will result in great screenshots - but also very likely in an OOM ...

 

 

Don't let yourself get fooled by YouTube videos. Many of the extreme graphics with smooth and high FPS we see on YouTube, were in fact recorded at 1/4 the speed (or less) and then brought back to 1/1 speed in order to multiply frames by 4. If they only uploaded what they really get on their machines we wouldn't be that stunned. And not to mention video-editing..

 

Perhaps this explains why my FRAPS recordings are no where as clear (resolution) as what is seen from my monitor. I've been using Windows Movie Maker to assemble the FRAPS frames and then Handbrake to compress the final product so I can send it to friends. What program would allow a 1/4 recording speed that you mention?

Perhaps this explains why my FRAPS recordings are no where as clear (resolution) as what is seen from my monitor. I've been using Windows Movie Maker to assemble the FRAPS frames and then Handbrake to compress the final product so I can send it to friends. What program would allow a 1/4 recording speed that you mention?

 

That's FSRecorder, there's a tutorial video here: 

 

Thanks. This is an excellent tutorial.

 

 

Many simmers have an insatiable and uncontrolled addiction to add-on software and overloading their flightsims with tons of crap they hardly ever use

Many of these simmer, including myself at one time, want to create an environment to be as real as it gets.  However, it's not because it is hardly used, but in my case, it is usable because of the toll on frame rate, OOM issues etc.  However, I am now cured of this expensive addiction!  It is painful to think about all the money that I have wasted on add-on sceneries, but I have now passed the denial phase of grief and moved on.  For some, 15 or below with complex, beautiful sceneries is acceptable, for me it's a total ruin of a simulator experience, as your virtual aircraft becomes uncontrollable!

I too, initially ran with FSX on an I3 laptop. It was what I had. My Core 2 tower is not much, but as a dedicated machine with attention most of the sliders run midrange, and to the right. I have been reading the forums for some time. The FSX 'genius' crowd would have nothing less than $500 graphic cards. As a former design engineer, and pc hacker, I was in the 'I have to have it' also. Then I realized it's just what makes it of worth for your own satisfaction.

Many of these simmer, including myself at one time, want to create an environment to be as real as it gets.  However, it's not because it is hardly used, but in my case, it is usable because of the toll on frame rate, OOM issues etc.  However, I am now cured of this expensive addiction!  It is painful to think about all the money that I have wasted on add-on sceneries, but I have now passed the denial phase of grief and moved on.  For some, 15 or below with complex, beautiful sceneries is acceptable, for me it's a total ruin of a simulator experience, as your virtual aircraft becomes uncontrollable!

 

Exactly.

 

It's all a matter of establishing priorities. To me it goes like this:

 

75% - Aircraft. The "most" important thing of a flight simulator. Many simmers tend to forget this.

 

24% - Environment: Here I'd put REX and weather engines like AS and so on (mesh enhancements like FSFGlobal too). This is where you transform your "flying" environment. If you enhance the default airport, runway textures, runway lights etc. that's also here.

 

1% - Everything else, including highly detailed airports and so on.

 

I don't have add-on airports in my FSX, only Aircraft and environment enhancements. And quite frankly, I don't miss them, I'm flying with 25-30 FPS to a default airport happier than with 10 FPS to the latest Mega Airport Frankfurt.

If I had a better machine I would think about adding airports, but then again even the best computer in the world will have OOM issues with FSX because of the way it was designed. It won't matter if your machine has 192GB of RAM, FSX will never use more than 4GB because of being a 32bit application. That's not the case with X-Plane 10, which will use "all" of your hardware to the limit.

You just said how happy you were with fsx and sliders to the left... then you were surprised and amazed at how much better it looks with a good computer. But you don't seem to understand how much more amazed you would be with all the addons.

 

 

but then again even the best computer in the world will have OOM issues with FSX because of the way it was designed.

 

Wrong again. I have a 4 year old computer, use a ton of add-ons, and have NEVER had an OOM, even flying 12-14 hour flights.