Why I hate FSX more and more

[WarpD 824]

Really JSkorna? Really?

 

I realize your favorite pastime is to toss gasoline on a fire and watch the flames build... but...

 

Your posts here are the first ones I've been tempted to click the coveted 'troll/spam' link on.

 

You're not actually contributing to the topic as much as you're looking to pick a fight. Please stop.

[DylanM 1,069]

I love one-sided arguments

 

Folks generally don't post "I'm having a great time" topics but you still get this on page 1:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/440404-ok-im-sold-completely-sold/

[SteveW 1,792]

...Please stop.

Steady on. I think Jim is trying to say that it's not all smelling of Roses.

 

...and be informative early adopters...

early adopters have to expect a few bumps in the road.

 

Funny, a similar heated argument exists around the site between Win7/Win8, except in that case it is said the new software should be avoided. :smile: 

 

 

 

 

[WarpD 824]

Steady on. I think Jim is trying to say that it's not all smelling of Roses.

I think he could say he disagrees with Dillon's point of view in a less 'flamable' manner.

[Dillon 2,197]

I think he could say he disagrees with Dillon's point of view in a less 'flamable' manner.

 

Like the 'Dislike' button...

[Anxu00 176]

 

 

However, the one about Bufferpools is a setting I just got in there from Venetubo.

Without asking for an indept explanation, is there a simple way to explain
what increasing or decreasing the bufferpools will do for good??

Try this:

 

Don't use bufferpools=0, use a sensible value, then reduce your settings.  You are using a modern GPU that FSX has no knowledge of.  Whenever I use the bufferpools=0 ore reject threshold tweak, I have spikes and graphic artifacts, even with High 2x water.  Once you obtain stability, be very careful about adding stuffs like plane or scenery.  Doing it only one at a time and if trouble shows up uninstall the culprit immediately.  This is the reason I have not bought anything in a year.

 

Hope this helps.

[JSkorna 137]

A fine read here:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/440670-the-day-fsx-vanishedand-left-in-its-place/

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

FSX flaws are known, but no program flawless. Can't always get what you want with FSX. FSX is buggy at times but for most part long as you dont overtweak Cfg file and count fps it will run decent.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

Let's be honest, Prepar3D 2.2 is not perfect. There are still lots of issues (http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=6507), performance is not at its best, and there's still the need of using an AffinityMask value to get good terrain paging performance.

 

But? Prepar3D 2.3 will eliminate the need for the AffinityMask tweak, more issues will be fixed, and they are still working on extracting more performance and optimising VAS usage for the 32-bit version. I disagree with those who say that at its current state it's perfect, but I don't think anyone should make a big deal about its current issues because it's a platform in ongoing development. Why don't we compare it to FSX again after the next couple of updates are released?

[maf 10]

Try this:

 

Don't use bufferpools=0, use a sensible value, then reduce your settings.  You are using a modern GPU that FSX has no knowledge of.  Whenever I use the bufferpools=0 ore reject threshold tweak, I have spikes and graphic artifacts, even with High 2x water.  Once you obtain stability, be very careful about adding stuffs like plane or scenery.  Doing it only one at a time and if trouble shows up uninstall the culprit immediately.  This is the reason I have not bought anything in a year.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Thank you so much!

 

Its so true! I didnt touch anything the last months and everything ran smooth until I decided to update my Airbus X to

version 1.16.. 

 

Currently experimenting with the bufferpools now, and seems like I hit somewhat of a sweet spot. Things are currently stable.

 

Great feedback.

 

And finally, let me point out to all y`all: I have had great experiences with FSX and I truly love flightsimming, even more so after PMDG brought their unbelievable NGX to the market.

 

But right now im finishing up EASA ATPL-H to join real world pro flying, and so Ive kept doing this more for the practice of procedures and instrument approaches, and my hate

has increased for FSX due to all the problems ive encountered (versus flying for real), but I still love that sim! All the joy microsoft has brought me since age 7 is endless!

 

I have to admit, I was once sitting in the jumpseat of a Widerøe Dash-8 on startup, just waiting for it to CTD, when it quickly dawned upon me

that this is the real thing, so no need to worry about that..  :lol: (just amazing how those pesky CTDs can effect your flying experiences..)

[EngineRoom 205]

A few thoughts...

 

As the FSX detractors often point out, FSX is static. No further development or improvements to the base platform are going to happen. That's both a bad thing and a good thing. Bad because it means the problems and limitations we have now we are well and truly stuck with and no hope of them ever being addressed. It's good because it means FSX is a known quantity - there is a wealth of information out there on how to correctly tweak and set up this sim. It's also good because it has allowed third party developers to really push the boundaries without having to worry about an entirely new version coming along every 2-3 years and breaking compatibility, learning new SDKs, etc.

 

Having said that, P3D2 isn't the flight simulation panacea that some might try to make it out to be. As jskorna points out, peruse the first page of the P3D2 forum here and you'll still see people having problems. It's the first signs of the P3D2 honeymoon period coming to an end. Let's be honest here, P3D2 isn't a new sim, it's a further development of FSX/ESP and as such has inherited a lot of the old flaws and limitations. However, it is in active development which means as time goes by it should steadily improve and we will hopefully see some of the old problems and limitations inherent to FSX addressed in future versions of P3D. That's a double edged sword for third party developers though as it means the are back to aiming at a moving target again. Let's not also forget there's only so much the developers can do with the legacy FSX/ESP code before they have to make the kind of major changes that would render pretty much all the addons out there incompatible.

 

A few weeks ago I had both FSX and P3D2.2 installed side by side with no addons. I made a point of keeping both sims in a virgin state for a couple of weeks and just spent time flying and making notes. I was pretty amused to find I could max out FSX easily and my system never even broke a sweat. P3D2.2 similarly run very nicely. However, once I threw in lots of Orbx scenery, ASN, complex aircraft and AI FSX slowly started to creak under its own weight and I started to see stutters or framerate drops in certain situations.

 

If I put half a ton of bricks in my car it's going to struggle to get up the hill at the end of my road. Just like FSX struggles with all the stuff people cram into it, P3D2 will struggle when it finally gets enough stuff available to cram into it.

 

Sooner rather than later plenty of P3D2 users will be back in the 10fps stuttering doldrums because they've simplly crammed too much stuff into their sim. The flight simmer wants to have their cake and eat it, that's not going to change any time soon.

 

What P3D2 - and XP10 - represents though, is a way forward. As a flight simmer - with thirteen flight sims currently installed - I'm more than happy to keep using any and every flight sim that I enjoy and captures my imagination or interest.

[bonchie 2,305]

Sooner rather than later plenty of P3D2 users will be back in the 10fps stuttering doldrums because they've simplly crammed too much stuff into their sim. The flight simmer wants to have their cake and eat it, that's not going to change any time soon.

 

What P3D2 - and XP10 - represents though, is a way forward. As a flight simmer - with thirteen flight sims currently installed - I'm more than happy to keep using any and every flight sim that I enjoy and captures my imagination or interest.

 

This is a bit of over-simplification. P3D2 actually handles scaled hardware semi-properly, which is the difference going forward. Yeah, you can make it do 10fps, but you can also get a bigger GPU and it will respond accordingly. Those 10fps will also be caused by maxing out a myriad of graphical features that don't even exist in FSX. 

 

P3D2 also doesn't lack complex addons to stress test it. Rob has done a lot of this, demonstrating it's now (as of 2.2) superior VAS usage. Contrary to popular belief, the PMDG 777 is not the most VAS intensive aircraft out there and it's not required to stress test. 

 

Not having to go nuts in the .cfg or baby a Nvidia Inspector profile for hours on end also does wonders for one's stress level. 

 

It has it's own issues. Although if one reads the threads JSkorna cites, which is only 3 on the front page of 20+ topics, it's just much simpler to deal with. And the issues are generally easily solved without multitudes of workarounds. One is about cloud shadow draw distance (not even an option in FSX), another is about curing blurries on a multi-monitor setup (and he got it fixed fairly easily).

 

There are 100+ page "bibles" on trying to get FSX to work properly for a reason. 

[JSkorna 137]

I tweaked my FSX for about 10 minutes about 5 years ago and haven't touched it since.

 

The complex add-ons are all from FSX and they really DO drag P3D2.2 down to it's knees, just like in FSX.

 

Issues are issues, no matter how long it takes to deal with them. Maybe it's because users are so experienced with issues that it doesn't take so long anymore.

[BeechPapa 32]

There are 100+ page "bibles" on trying to get FSX to work properly for a reason. 

 

Well, after 20 pages to hype up the author, 20 pages to belittle other tweaking gurus, 20 pages to blame everything on developers, 20 pages to talk about basic computer building, and then finally 20 pages to talk about the tweaks... you end up with a lot of pages. FSX isn't the easiest thing to optimize, but it really doesn't need 100+ pages. Fair points on P3D though. 

[bonchie 2,305]

I tweaked my FSX for about 10 minutes about 5 years ago and haven't touched it since.

 

The complex add-ons are all from FSX and they really DO drag P3D2.2 down to it's knees, just like in FSX.

 

Issues are issues, no matter how long it takes to deal with them. Maybe it's because users are so experienced with issues that it doesn't take so long anymore.

 

If you only spent 10 minutes tweaking 5 years ago then you are one of the few. The very, very few. This forum provides more then enough evidence of that.

 

If you want to continue to live with the impression that FSX and P3D2 respond exactly the same to modern hardware, then so be it, but it's not true.

 

The fact is, P3D2 responds to modern hardware linearly the way other games do, so if you do bring it to it's knees there's a solution, unlike FSX. And the only ones bringing it to it's knees are those maxing out new features which don't even exist in FSX with mid-grade GPUs. So at that point it's apples to oranges anyway. Rob has proven via numerous videos that P3D2 can run multitudes of complex addons, at or near max settings (including dozens of new graphical features FSX doesn't have) with modern hardware and run smoothly. If you have the horsepower it will go...If you don't it won't. That's much more palatable and simple then the myriad of workarounds, bugs, half-fixes, and logic defying performance issues FSX has had to endure over the years to become remotely stable.

 

And I disagree, issues aren't just issues. Issues vary greatly in their severity. When someone has constant CTD's in FSX that's a bigger issue then the guy worried about cloud shadow draw distance on the P3D2 forum. P3D2.2 is very stable. Plain and simple. And if worse comes to worst, at least with P3D2 I can report an issue to an active developer. Every program will have issues, even the best ones. How they are dealt with is important.

 

We are talking about a computer program here. I'll play whatever actually works the best. I played FSX for 7 years and I certainly have nothing against it.