fsx-se Are people making the switch to FSX Steam?

[MarkW 1,493]

Martin has said on the Steam website that they developers have the new Beta now and Steam plans to release it on April 1st (give or take) with hopefully develops having updated their programs accordingly.

[bonchie 2,305]

What's changing in the new beta?

[Gypsy Baron 10]

What has the price of tea in China or the price developers charge have to do with the topic of tjis thread? I'd rather not have to 'wade through' a bunch of totally unrelated posts to read those that

are actually relevant to the topic at hand!

 

 Paul

[Pete Dowson 558]

II guess wishing they'd publish a "Change Log" would be too much to hope for. :rolleyes:

 

I was looking for something else on their Forum and came across this is the "official" notice of the Open Beta they did for build 62610:

 

Update

 

Please find below the full changelog for the update. Further details of how to join the open beta will follow next week. 

 

• FSX: Steam Edition can now be used in Steam’s offline mode.
• Steam Dumps are now created following crashes to help with diagnoses of reported issues.
• Fixed issues reported with g3D.dll affecting some add-ons
• Number of fixes for the terrain.dll crashes experienced by some users have been made.

   

• Multiplayer:

  VoIP communication is now using the correct device as identified in ‘Settings’.

  During mission-based Multiplayer flights, if the host has activated the ‘Anti-Cheat’ flag, users who have modified their aircraft are immediately disconnected without affecting the host or other users. 

  The Steam ‘Invite to Game’ feature will now work by buffering the request until the user enters the Multiplayer menu.

  Users are prompted to use the Steam Client to invite someone from the Multiplayer menu to become a friend on Steam.

  On the Multiplayer Session and lobby screens, the text in the “Weather” section is now aligned correctly. 

   

• User Interface:

  If ‘Show Saved Flights’ is enabled, the time stamps on the saved flight data will now show the correct time the flight was saved.

  The HTML content displayed in some windows, eg. tutorials, mission help, etc., now runs in IE9 compatibility mode, rather than IE8, providing better presentation.

  On the Multiplayer Session screen, the user name of the host is now shown.

  On the Multiplayer Session screen, before a session is started, ‘In Briefing Room’ is now shown.

What's changing in the new beta?

 

I don't know if they are trying to do more that what was planned already, as per the list above. Certainly the reason 62610 didn't make it into a full release as it was was because of feedback on that 62610 beta.That's the point of making Beta releases, to get all the things you are changing tested in real user systems.

 

Pete

[n4gix 4,947]

I was looking for something else on their Forum and came across this is the "official" notice of the Open Beta they did for build 62610:

Once again, thanks. However I was actually referring to the 57MB "update" that was pushed out a few days ago. It would be nice if they were to provide even a short text file explaining just what it is they are "pushing" and why it's needed.

 

As mentioned previously, it may actually have nothing whatever to do with FSX per se, but instead be changes to the Steam platform itself. Even so, it would be nice to know!

[jcomm 5,939]

Guys, are you still at it, discussing the Sex of the Angels ?

 

C'mon... move ahead... Enjoy - I am enjoying FSX:SE as I never enjoyed FSX Std... or even P3D v1 and V2... your mileage may vary... yes I have better and smoother display, no OOMs even on 10+hrs flights in PMDG 777 with ASN, and use Steve's DX10 fixer.

 

Regarding the opinions... they're all worth reading, but HECK!!!! Pete Dowson himself has shown us why FSX:SE DOES FEEL BETTER!  Do you happen to know who this guy is ?

 

Yes other Commercial members can critique FSX:SE / Dovetail for their policy, but that's a completely different matter and has nothing to do with the true / effective performance and stability gains offered by and even vanilla install of FSX:SE.

 

BTW: Someone posted FSX:SE can now be used standalone ?  Where is the info on how to set it that way ?

 

Thx!

[Pete Dowson 558]

Once again, thanks. However I was actually referring to the 57MB "update" that was pushed out a few days ago. It would be nice if they were to provide even a short text file explaining just what it is they are "pushing" and why it's needed.

 

As mentioned previously, it may actually have nothing whatever to do with FSX per se, but instead be changes to the Steam platform itself. Even so, it would be nice to know!

 

Hmm. I never really notice those updates, they just happen whilst it's connecting to my "account" (as it says).  And it didn't seem like 57. I expect, because I use FSX-SE every day I get trickle fed. I assumed they were just improvements to the Steam app itself, which doesn't really interest me at all in any case. They certainly don't affect FSX-SE itself.

 

Sorry I misunderstood you. I've no contacts at all in Steam, only in DTG.

 

Pete

[Wobbie 938]

Rob, As I posted elseware,

As far as Steam's special pricing reduction on the add-ons, this obviously has an impact (50%?) on the add-on developer's renumeration. They probably have to take a huge knock without any kind of negotiation?

 

If so, I, as well as others, should share your disgust.

It's all very well the guys crowing about getting FSX:SE for $5, but I dont think anyone realises how this is affecting the developers?

[jcomm 5,939]

Does any thing prohibit vendors / developers from continuing dveloping for both platforms, or even the 4 available now, or even 5 if we add X-Plane ?

 

I will continue to buy Real Air products FROM Real Air, A2A products FROM A2A, PMDG from PMDG, AEROSOFT from AEROSOFT ...

 

What's the problem?  Provided the installers are FSX:SE compatible, I see no problem at all ? 

 

The day DTG chooses to "complicate" the life of their users / developers not selling through Steam, I will jump back to FSX Gold or even P3D...

 

Will I buy a cheap DLC of inferior quality ? Certainly not!

[honanhal 1,420]

 

So: development system has clean original FSX-SE without all this messing, only FSUIPC installed, whilst the cockpit has everything -- except add-on aircraft, which I don't use (except for the cockpit-less Prosim737).

 

So Pete, you've completely sold me on the "Dowson plan" of just redirecting the scenery.cfg and everything possible to an original boxed FSX installation rather than installing from scratch. I've been working a bit on that--and your advice on how to "fullpath-ize" my scenery.cfg was brilliant--but I've run into a couple of snags. One big one being .dlls, of course, but that's something I figure I just need to work through piece by piece. (Actually, I'm quickly realizing it would be easier to simply install any user aircraft directly into FSX-SE rather than having the fsx.cfg point to the simobjects/aircraft folder from my original installation).

 

Another one is textures, both FTX global and REX--is there any way to "mirror" those from my original install other than simply copying files to the "Texture" folder in the FSX-SE install? I'm not worried about disk space, simply that I might inadvertently break something by moving them. If there's a file (along the lines of scenery.cfg or fsx.cfg) that can specify a full path to the Texture directory, I know that would solve this, but I've yet to find anything like that...any advice? How did you handle that in your install?

 

Thanks so much for all your help! Even before getting everything up and running I'm getting much less stuttery performance compared to boxed FSX, which is amazing.

 

James

[Pete Dowson 558]

Rob, As I posted elseware,

As far as Steam's special pricing reduction on the add-ons, this obviously has an impact (50%?) on the add-on developer's renumeration. They probably have to take a huge knock without any kind of negotiation?

 

If so, I, as well as others, should share your disgust.

It's all very well the guys crowing about getting FSX:SE for $5, but I dont think anyone realises how this is affecting the developers?

 

SimMarket doesn't doesn't sell FSUIPC or WideFS through Steam.  Very few if any developers do. Those who have signed up with DTG/Steam will have gone into it with their eyes open. There's no one forcing folks to sign an agreement they don't like, so why the disgust?

 

Pete

One big one being .dlls, of course, but that's something I figure I just need to work through piece by piece.

 

For SimConnect--loaded DLLs and EXEs, I just used a copy of my FSX's DLL.XML and EXE.XML files, either with full paths, or, where the path was to an FSX-specific folder (like Modules), made sure that folder contents was copied over too.

 

Then it was a matter of testing that the DLLs and EXE's all worked. Some won't (yet). The ones that don't yet work, I simply disabled in the XML file until they do.

 

 I'm quickly realizing it would be easier to simply install any user aircraft directly into FSX-SE rather than having the fsx.cfg point to the simobjects/aircraft folder from my original installation

 

Well, yes, if they will install into fSX-SE. But the redirection will work. I don't have a lot of add-on aircraft (only variations of a 738, to martch my cockpit), and those were already stored separately in a "MyAirplanes" folder, so I already added a SimObjects line for those. Also, if you have MyTrafficX installed, it has its own SimObjects path which needs adding.

Another one is textures, both FTX global and REX--is there any way to "mirror" those from my original install other than simply copying files to the "Texture" folder in the FSX-SE install?

 

I made a copy of the FSX-SE texture folder, as backup, then dragged a copy of the FSX one over. Sorry, I forgot to mention that before. I've always keps backups of that folder even when i was only using FSX.

 

I'm not worried about disk space, simply that I might inadvertently break something by moving them.

 

Copy, don't move. And keep a copy of the originals, just in case (though I don't think you'll find a problem).

 

Pete

[Wobbie 938]

Pete, sorry for using such harsh words, but, I recall a lot of dissatisfaction regarding the renumeration offered to the developers who want to use Steam as a distribution pipeline.

 

I so agree that the devs have other well established outlets for their products.

 

Regards,

Robin

[odourboy 1,290]

Another question for those who've made the switch... Are you using the same FSX.CFG tweaks in steam as you used in FSX:MS or is it back to square one with new and different tweaks, or is the Steam version already tweaked to perfection?

[Jude Bradley 659]

Some tweaks such as Infinitymask need to be added.

as far as I can remember HIGHMEMFIX=1 and TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096 are there already

[Pete Dowson 558]

Another question for those who've made the switch... Are you using the same FSX.CFG tweaks in steam as you used in FSX:MS or is it back to square one with new and different tweaks, or is the Steam version already tweaked to perfection?

 

I'm using a copy of my FSX.CFG, just renamed, for FSX_SE.CFG. So whatever I'd done to "tweak" FSX I was also doing for FSX-SE. It isn't a different Sim, unlike P3D. It is growing to be different as DTG develop it here and there, but basically it is still the same "mechanically" speaking,

 

But then I moved most of the sliders in FSX-SE up a lot, as I then found I could and still get better performance and smoothness than in FSX.

 

Pete