Considering FSL Concorde X - Request Opinions

[CaptKornDog 281]

Hello all,

 

I've been having a look at the Concorde X the past few weeks.  I upgraded my 4-year-old PC about 6 months ago and can finally enjoy FSX at some reasonable, mid-high settings (but still split my FS9/FSX flying about 50-50).  See my avatar for specs.  For those who follow FSL, I posted pretty much the same thread over there, so disregard if you'd like.

 

I've always loved the Concorde and when the Concorde X came out, it wan't even a consideration for my old system.  Now, I've started having a second look but would like to solicit some opinions since it is a few years old (unfortunately, the price is steep for me, so maybe I'll wait for a boxed sale on another FS site) and I've read about some of the up's and down's here in the forums, some more recent than others.

 

-How functional is the VC?  Can everything be performed from the VC or is some 2d panel interaction required on a routine flight?  Are the analogue/needle gauges 3d? (I can't quite tell from pictures but understand there is a tradeoff for performance, but just am curious.) 

-I've read in several areas that OOM's were prominent for a while for some users.  Have these improved with hardware technology and the latest theories on fsx.cfg/settings tweaking?  At a minimum, I'd love to be able to run BA001/002 JFK-LHR with FSDT JFK v1 and UK2000 LHR v3 without worrying about OOMs.  Some settings I currently run are:

1. Internal FPS set to 60, limited externally to 30 through nVidia Inspector with 1/2 refresh rate (for some reason this, to me, has provided the smoothest experience after meticulous trying FSMark11 benchmarks countless times...still [as always] some stutters I'd like to try to iron out)
2. Global textures resolution very high with lens flare and advanced animations
3. Anisotropic filtering set internally in FSX (8xSQ anti aliasing through Inspector)
4. LOD large (but set 4.5 in fsx.cfg, not 5.5 or 6.5)
5. Mesh complexity 100
6. 5m mesh resolution
7. 15 cm texture resolution
8. Water effects 2.x low (with SweetFX, FSWC and REX) and land detail textures
9. Scenery complexity extremely dense
10. Autogen dense (with FTX Global installed)...as much as I love very dense, it would occasionally cause the OOM on routes like LAX/DEN-LHR in the PMDG 777.
11. Ground scenery shadows off, aircraft shadows on
12. Special effects detail high
13. Cloud draw distance 80 miles
14. Cloud coverage density maximum, rate of change none (use ASN)
15. AI planes 0%, cars 15%, ships/ferries 25%, leisure boats 25%

-How frequent are updates to the Concorde, or SPs, or has development more or less been shelved for the A320?

-Perhaps I missed it in the description but are panel states able to be saved?  (to continue a flight or scenario later?)

-How in-depth is the failure system?  Can failures be programmed at random intervals, or other parameters?

-What is entailed in the "multicrew support"? or is this the virtual flight engineer?  (I'm told now there is no true multicrew support, for some reason this is an advertised feature on other FS stores).

 

All in all, I'm certainly on the look out for another study sim, and the Concorde X certainly may be as complicated as it gets.  I'm just curious if I'd be able to run it enjoyably in the FSX environment I have, and if it's starting to show its age (hopefully not).

 

Thanks!

[spesimen 135]

hi

 

-How functional is the VC?  Can everything be performed from the VC or is some 2d panel interaction required on a routine flight?  Are the analogue/needle gauges 3d? (I can't quite tell from pictures but understand there is a tradeoff for performance, but just am curious.) 
 

 

the front half of the VC is mostly functional. this includes the center console, overhead, and main panel. the engineering station, however, is not. it is modeled pretty nicely but clicking on areas of it will bring up the appropriate 2d panel. you'll definitely need to interact with them a bit as there's quite a few things to do back there.

i'm not positive but the gauges look like 2d ones to my eyes. performance isn't bad, i'd say it's at least on par with the pmdg stuff for example.

 

-I've read in several areas that OOM's were prominent for a while for some users.  Have these improved with hardware technology and the latest theories on fsx.cfg/settings tweaking?  At a minimum, I'd love to be able to run BA001/002 JFK-LHR with FSDT JFK v1 and UK2000 LHR v3 without worrying about OOMs. 
 

 

unfortunately this bird uses a ton of VAS. when i measured it a while back it was around 1.6 gigabytes...(i think?? unfortunately i didn't write this down and it was several months ago). i use fairly conservative settings and didn't have many problems with default airports or lightweight airports, although i use sparse autogen and keep the other settings conservative.

 

however, flying over orbx norcal pretty much gave me an OOM every time. with flightbeam ksfo and the norcal scenery, it would crash before i even left the gate! however it worked ok with just the flightbeam airport. i don't have the addons you are listing so i can't be more specific unfortunately, but i would say you might be pushing your luck with it. maybe you could monitor your memory usage in another plane and then compare, if there's enough room for 1.6 in overhead maybe it will be fine. for comparison the pmdg's use something like 700-800 megs if i recall.

 

-How frequent are updates to the Concorde, or SPs, or has development more or less been shelved for the A320?
 

i may be mistaken but i don't think there really have been any updates since the second service pack, which came out a couple years ago, i'm not sure since i purchased it more recently than that..

 

-Perhaps I missed it in the description but are panel states able to be saved?  (to continue a flight or scenario later?)
 

i think so, but i almost never do this so i can't say i've tried it.

 

-How in-depth is the failure system?  Can failures be programmed at random intervals, or other parameters?
 

i think it has a fairly complex failure system although i pretty much always leave that stuff off so i can't comment on this one.

 

What is entailed in the "multicrew support"? or is this the virtual flight engineer? 
 

maybe they are referring to the 'multicrew experience' addon. don't have it so i can't comment.

 

the virtual engineer is pretty handy, the workload on this plane is high even with letting him handle a lot of the stuff.

 

All in all, I'm certainly on the look out for another study sim, and the Concorde X certainly may be as complicated as it gets.
 

 

you won't be disappointed in that regard. it's operationally complex to power it up... has an extremely unusual flight envelope, and the old school nav unit is quite interesting. there are some utilities around (i think i found them on fslabs site and also by google) that make it a bit easier like letting you convert a flightplan into a series of civa cards for the nav so you don't have to enter all the coordinates manually, and also a topcat type utility to get all the parameters correct for takeoff..

 

cheers!

-andy crosby