FSX-MS Too Many Addons?

[Dougal 165]

Strange post this one, but thought I’d check out views or ideas on this…

 

Although it’s due to reasons I’d prefer didn’t exist, I have a lot of spare time to use FSX and other sims and games. I’m also reasonably fortunate, in that I’m able to afford ‘most’ of the addons that I choose.

 

This means that:

a  I have a very large number of mostly high end addons

b  That my FSX installation tends to be large, and so sometimes more unstable than it otherwise might be. Sadly, the more addons that you pile onto FSX, the more unwieldy it tends to get.

 

Anyway, to my point…  There must be others out there with all these complex addons installed. Do you guys end up like me…. Being something like a “jack of all trades, but master of none”? I tend to spend a few weeks in one aircraft, say the PMDG T7 or NGX, then get bored and switch to say the Majestic Q400. And so the cycle continues until I start again;-) Not only do I never really become totally proficient in any one aircraft, but by the time I switch, I’ve pretty much forgotten the systems, and so make many mistakes!

 

On a similar note, it wasn’t too long ago, that while trying to sort a glitch with an addon, the developer said, “ …you have to many other addons installed to FSX”!!!  Also, that I should remove some other payware products, before trying to solve the relevant issue! At first I thought he was joking or being sarcastic, but not so. Theoretically, I understood his point, but sometimes, it feels like vendors and developers think they are at the centre of the universe. Do they want my business or not? They can’t (or shouldn’t) expect me to purchase their product at the expense of uninstalling another! Okay, short rant over;-)

 

Someone suggested to only have the products I want to CURRENTLY use installed. Great in theory, but makes using FSX extremely tedious, and completely removes the abaility to spontaneously jump in the seat and fly!

 

Just curious how others deal with this?

[Don t moderate me this way 882]

I just bought another 2 TB of internal disk space and a 2nd USB backup drive, 4 TB this time.

 

'Nuff said, Phil!!  

[Glynn 405]

If you are using complex aircraft addons to their full extent, and by that I mean flying them by the book using correct procedures (as far as the addons allow) then I personally am unable to stay fully conversent with more than two or three and that includes remembering how my Goflight modules are programmed with each one.

 

Try going back to the Leonardo Maddog after spending a month or two in the iFly or PMDG 737's

It's amazing how much you forget and so quickly.

[fisheye 3]

I have had a similar problem with add-ons and found this new program for FSX, DX10, and P3D very helpful.  It is called SIMstarter and a video overview can be seen on YouTube at this link.

[odourboy 1,288]

How ironic - the solution to too many add-ons is another add-on.

[AJT1967 1]

I too experienced this problem up until a few months ago, when I made a concerted effort to think about exactly how I wanted to run FSX (This time). Essentially, I put a few factors together, those being:

1. The actual amount of free time that I have to sim.

2. The aircraft that I like.

3. Routes that would fit into my allotted sim time.

4. Global areas that I know.

 

As a result of this, currently my sim is set up to basically do regional flights up to a maximum duration of about three hours. Being English, at the moment I am flying mostly European routes using the BaE146 and RJ, and the 737NG series. This keeps me interested because these are the places that I know. Also, it is NOT a placebo, removing global areas that you are not flying in does have a positive effect on the sim.

 

SO, what invariably happens for me, is about every six months or so, I uninstall the sim, reinstall, add new scenery and aircraft, and on I go. Thus far, using this method I have done:

 

1. Airliners in Australia (where I live now) usually reflective of the types that are flown here.

2. GA in Australia (I once held my CPL, so I'm very familiar with the territory)

3. GA in the UK / Europe.

4. Regionals in Europe (Including the USSR).

5. GA in Alaska.

 

In future, I will be switching again to North America and Canada, although I have to admit that I do not have a great knowledge of the regions. I will study up on this. After that, once we get some decent global sceneries for South East Asia, I will do that as well.

 

At the moment, there is only one problem that this gives me, and that is the actual install and set up time of FSX and acceleration when I do this. I invariably end up removing all of the FSX missions, and all default aircraft and panels, and installing the best payware ones that I choose at that time. All of my payware is on seperate drives.

 

It's a shame that nobody can create a new custom installer for FSX, so that I did not have to spend time doing this post install.

 

I find that this method always keeps my interest in the sim going. Apologies for the long post.

[Dougal 165]

I too experienced this problem up until a few months ago, when I made a concerted effort to think about exactly how I wanted to run FSX (This time). Essentially, I put a few factors together, those being:

1. The actual amount of free time that I have to sim.

2. The aircraft that I like.

3. Routes that would fit into my allotted sim time.

4. Global areas that I know.

 

As a result of this, currently my sim is set up to basically do regional flights up to a maximum duration of about three hours. Being English, at the moment I am flying mostly European routes using the BaE146 and RJ, and the 737NG series. This keeps me interested because these are the places that I know. Also, it is NOT a placebo, removing global areas that you are not flying in does have a positive effect on the sim.

 

SO, what invariably happens for me, is about every six months or so, I uninstall the sim, reinstall, add new scenery and aircraft, and on I go. Thus far, using this method I have done:

 

1. Airliners in Australia (where I live now) usually reflective of the types that are flown here.

2. GA in Australia (I once held my CPL, so I'm very familiar with the territory)

3. GA in the UK / Europe.

4. Regionals in Europe (Including the USSR).

5. GA in Alaska.

 

In future, I will be switching again to North America and Canada, although I have to admit that I do not have a great knowledge of the regions. I will study up on this. After that, once we get some decent global sceneries for South East Asia, I will do that as well.

 

At the moment, there is only one problem that this gives me, and that is the actual install and set up time of FSX and acceleration when I do this. I invariably end up removing all of the FSX missions, and all default aircraft and panels, and installing the best payware ones that I choose at that time. All of my payware is on seperate drives.

 

It's a shame that nobody can create a new custom installer for FSX, so that I did not have to spend time doing this post install.

 

I find that this method always keeps my interest in the sim going. Apologies for the long post.

No apologies needed Andew - a good post. As stated above, there one or two addons that can do much of this work, but as also stated.... its yet another addon;-)

[Bjoern 1,153]

My entire FSX installation has never been larger than 50 GB. Currently 42 GB.

 

 

I don't know why you guys are so keen on having stuff clogging your HDD that you rarely, if ever, use anyway...

[pilottj 198]

My advice is to do different things.  Don't fly 737s ALL the time, don't fly GAs ALL the time, and don't fly A-B ALL the time.  No wonder it gets boring if you do the same kind of flying all the time.  Flying a 737 from A-B or flying a King Air or even a C182 from A-B isn't all that different kind of flying experience.  Even within GA there are so many different things to do besides going from A-B.  

 

You know I chuckle when I hear someone say  I like to fly GA....well that can mean anything since GA is such a large genre covering many many types of flying.  Thats like saying I am in the medical field....which could be anything from a dentist to a proctologist.   Both ends of the spectrum, literally LOL.  Did you ever try gliders, float planes, bush flying, airshow routines, aerobatics, combat, air racing, helicopters?  Have you ever done things outside your routine?  Have you broken virtual FAA regs for the fun of it?  Have you mixed genres...ie turning a military fighter into a bush plane?  Why?  For Fun!  You won't be fined by some virtual FAA.  

 

Speaking of gliders, Aerosoft just released their ASK-21.  I got it, flew around the Orbx NZ Picton area, riding the ridges with ASN's weather engine, it was wonderful and lots of fun.

 

Flight Sim, especially FSX is a very open world open to practically anything, there are no rules, no goals, no points, no winning or losing.  Be your own boss, and set your own rules or standards by which you succeed or not.  

 

Cheers

TJ

[Dougal 165]

My entire FSX installation has never been larger than 50 GB. Currently 42 GB.

 

 

I don't know why you guys are so keen on having stuff clogging your HDD that you rarely, if ever, use anyway...

You obviously didn't understand my post....  I DO use all my addons. Every single last one!

[Bjoern 1,153]

You obviously didn't understand my post....  I DO use all my addons. Every single last one!

 

I have a very hard time believing that, but whatever floats your boat.

 

You might want to get FSXSE during the next sale and then do a side-by-side installation. Use one FSX flavor for airliners and the other for GA.

Scenery is shared between both anyway, so all you have to do is launch the right fsx.exe.

[mmann 72]

 

 

You might want to get FSXSE during the next sale and then do a side-by-side installation. Use one FSX flavor for airliners and the other for GA.

 

No need to waste money on FSXSE, I just run two installations of FSX with Acceleration. One with all the addon scenery and aircraft, and the other with default only (for development work). I have created shortcuts to the folders that need to be renamed, so it only takes about 1 minute to switch from one to the other.

[~Craig~ 10]

Like the OP, I used to have an insane amount of addone installed in to FSX.   Although, to be honest, I never felt the impact of that in terms of instability.  Whenever I came across an unstable addon, I tended to uninstall it, thus preserving a pretty stable, but flabby FSX.

 

But about 4 months ago, I had to completely reinstall FSX, and decided at that point to do the "just install when you use" technique, and I still use that to this day (although I now only use P3D).

 

It makes things much lighter and easier.  If I'm on a tubeliner thang then I'll probably just have the NGX, AXEs, and Q400 installed.    If I get bored and fancy some raw Metroliner flying, then yes, I uninstall the tubeliners.   If I then get a fancy for the A2A and RealAir birds, I'd uninstall the Metroliner.   I rarely have more than 5 addon aircraft installed at a time, despite owning 30+.

 

For scenery, well I'll always have FTXG+Vector+OpenEU installed but Orbx regions I'll only install one at a time when I fancy some flying there.   Airport sceneries I tend to install in 'batches', so if I'm flying the tubes in Europe I might install 10x European (FlyTamps, Aerosoft, etc) airports.    If I then fancy some Canadian/US flying, I will uninstall the European airports and install my North American addon airports.

 

Just used to doing this now, and it seems to work well,

[Alan_A 1,650]

Timely thread for me.  I've just used the P3D 2.5 full-install requirement as an excuse to upgrade my system and am now reinstalling from scratch.  This time I really mean to keep the add-ons to an absolute minimum.  I've told myself that before... but then have gone through the usual sequence of having things pile up incrementally ("oh, that looks like a cool aircraft/airport/scenery/utility, I'll just try it out..."  and then it hangs around for years...)  The idea of a simple, clean-running setup is really appealing to me, and I'd like to be able to reinstall in future without having to dread the experience or commit days to it.  Let's see if I can keep discipline this time.  Wish me luck!

[FlyAndFight 37]

I had a similar experience to Craig's.  A reinstall had me really think about what addons I wanted to include and I was able to only install those addons that were regularly being used.  A lot of addon aircraft and scenery were left uninstalled...