I was away from flight simming almost completely for more than 18 months now (but have followed the sim news and most developments during that time) and now plan a slow comeback (incl. new hardware). Since I'm not up to date information wise, I'd appreciate opinions about what sim and base add ons to use, that would become my setup for the nearer future then. In the past, my FSX was crammed with stuff and big iron (in other words I have tons of FSX add ons, I think I can update most of them to recent versions)...

• Guess FSX Steam Edition (purchased that "ahead" for 5 EUR today) is a better solution nowadays than the original FSX (I had troubles with Windows 8)
• What about Prepar3d? Should I favor this product over FSX SE?
• And there's X-Plane: Is it mature and competitive enough or better to avoid for (ex-)FSX simmers?

Andreas

I was in same shoes. I would choose Prepar3dv2 but again it's extra money and repurchase of lot of add ons. If you have a lot for FSX - decide basing on how much you want to spend. X-plane has nice flight model but feels somehow empty to me. I can't really explain it.

 

I'm short on money so I went with FSX steam fly between add on airports in NGX without crashes so I'm fine

If you're in for the long haul, and don't mind spending a bit of money, I'd go with P3D.

 

If you don't want to spend any more money, stick with FSX: SE. Most add-ons work, W8 does have some bits you need to work with (FSX and FSX: SE are the same), but I'm running happily on W8 and so are lots of others. Most of it came down to EZDok and running that as administrator in W7 compatibility mode, and ALWAYS running FSX as administrator. Apart from that, everything works fine.

 

XP as far as I know, about the same it was 18 months ago. Some love it, some can't get passed it's issues. Weather engine, barren landscapes, taxiways missing on airports. But, if you spend the time getting hold of all the freeware scenery, some people swear by it. You probably need to research more if that's for you and you can stick with FSX for the mean time till you've made your mind up. You find a lot of people around here use both for different scenarios.

If you go with FSX-Steam, follow Jordan's excellent advice found here:

 

 

Jose

The highmemfix was added as part of the default SE .cfg, however was the WideViewAspect=True entry added as default as well?
 

I use it did not change anything

What the WideViewAspect=True fix? Made a huge difference to me

I use FSX Steam edition, not a tweak needed here.