Hi there, 

So about 1 year ago I brought myself a shinny new iMac 27", This has a i7 3.4 quad processor, 8GB ram, 256GB SDD and 1TB HDD, and a 4GB Nvidia GTX 780M Graphics GDDR5.

Now I know everyone will say "why buy a mac for FS you can get better hardware on self build pcs etc etc", that is true however I brought my mac before deciding to start back on FS. 

Basically I want to know if I can run FSX on my bootcamp drive (Win 8.1), and at what kind of level. So I want to get it as realistic as possible so I will list the kind of addons I plan on running and if anyone knows of any other addons that I can use that is great! I would hope to run at a FPS of around 25, with graphics on a fairly high level along with using vatsim. 

 

Aircraft

PMDG 737 NGX 

Airbus X 

FS2Crew

I may go into wide bodied like 777 at a later date

 

Scenery

FTX addons for various areas 

 

Airport

Various Aerosoft Airport Addons 

Possibly FSDreamTeam

GSX

 

Weather

Not too sure what addons to use as of yet.

 

Now I again understand using a mac i do loose some power as they use mostly hardware found in laptops but as a aspiring pilot I do need to get FS running one way or another for the practise and of course the good fun! 

 

So to summarise I basically want to get FSX on my bootcamp iMac running at the best possible state using addons and settings to create the most realism! 

 

Cheers 

 

I think your mac will be running a decent quality of FSX, I also use a mac for my FSX, a top spec of rmbp(late 2013).
with fair amount of tweaking and using the DX10 fixer, flying the PMDG 777 with High1X water, NORMAL autogen gives me a steady 22-25 FPS on the group and 30 in the air.
addons:

ORBX scenery

ASN

PMDG777

shade

UK2000 airports

etc.

I must say that I have never heard of anyone running FSX on a MAC.  I didn't even think it was possible.

 

Interesting that at least 2 of you seem to be.

 

Does it run out of the box or does the mac need to be tweaked or run a Windows emulator?

 

IAN

I ran FSX on a 2012 MacBook Pro Retina before I bought a "real" FS PC. It works absolutely fine if you dial back a little bit on the settings. I was able to achieve 20-25 fps in the AXE on large payware airports.

Hi IAN,

I used to run FSX on my imac a few years ago before rebuilding my PC. As the imacs have intel based processors these days, you can run windows on a separate partition (using bootcamp to set it up) and run it natively. 

Best, Jeff

Hi there

First off all, i apologise for my english, as it is inot my native language, but i will do my best.

The computer i used for FSX was an PC I7 2600 watercooled, mobo Asus P8z77, Zotac gtx 580, 8GB ram and windows 7. That is not paradise, far from be the best you can find here. It runs FSX fine, but i have to put some sliders down, anyway.

We have a now a new IMac i7 3,5 Ghz, 16 GB DDR3 1600 mhz, 1 TB flash, GTX 780 4 GB.

With bootcamp, in win 8.1, i can fly FSX and in My experience, it can do the job well. I use PMDG, PFPX, ASN, RC, Carenado, Topcat, FTX, FS Global and FMS from Navigraph.

Great part of the bugs i had was with windows 8 .

If you wish to have the perfect computer for FSX, go for a PC. But Macs can do the job also, in a good way.

In my opinion, ifi you have the choice to find some Win 7 license for sale at 64 bits, i believe your life at FSX will be easier with bootcamp.

Anyway, i believe you will fly in an acceptable level.

There are two kind of people: those whose hate and those that love Macs. They are not the best way to run FSX, but this does not mean that you can't fly with good adjusts and FPS.

A lot of users are not used to tweak computers for FSX and other programs. Macs are very friendly to those people. Not for us.

I my case, my wife is happy wish the IMac. For me, i think they are pretty expensive and i can find the same for less than half the price. The best thing for me in Macs is the option to convert it to a PC.

As i want to stay married and fly , i bought a Mac.

I wish i could help you

Best Regards

 

André Luiz Passos

I have been using my i5 27" iMac for 2+ years now and finally just a few days ago decided to build my own high end PC. 

 

I did run bootcamp - as the performance is much better than running it using parallels. 

 

I am GA flyer but i also have a couple of jets and aimlessly used it a few times - Yes the performance is very decent. 

 

you may be tempted to run at a very high resolution as your monitor supports -- id say there resist as you may see a drop in performance..

 

To answer your question - you can get decent performance and its definitely possible to run FSX on Mac (provided your expectation is not 40fps)..

Thanks for all the responses i will try some tweeks and see how i go. I saw this guy on youtube and he uses mobile hardware and gets excellent results!