I'm doing a system recovery due to a computer problem . I've been using FSX Gold. My question is , would this be a good time to download FSX Steam only or something else? I have a ton of payware scenery and aircraft. .What would you do and why ?

Did you have problems with FSX Gold? 

 

I'd get the steam version. Just make sure that FSX Gold is completely removed from your system.

If you would like your ton of addons to all work again, I would re-install FSX Gold.

 

If you are feeling adventurous, you might try P3DV3.1 :wink:

I had FSX-Steam for months and I have yet to install it. Too many addons in my opinion don't work.

Make it easy on yourself. Go for the Gold. Everything will still work just as it always has.

 

Doug

I had both and with  my pretty rich catalogue of addons I have to say FSX Steam is the way to go due to various reasons such as:

* better VAS management

* higher performance on modern equipment (probably due to some interesting tweaks) 

* stability (never had any crash) 

 

Only those 3 were enough to convince me, but there is more. What I can tell you is I have no idea what addons don't work with Steam Edition (apart from some ancient ones), but maybe someone has different experience in this area. 

 

In the end it's up to you and your hardware. 

I was a little reluctant to move to FSX:SE for all the same reasons. My FSX Gold crashed for the umpteenth time, I got fed up with CTD's and bought FSX:SE in the sale last year. Never regretted it. Everything that I have works - and I mean everything: ASN, iFly737NG, RealAIr Duke Turbine, CS777, ORBX FTX Global, QW146, etc, etc. I had to look through a few forums for these addons to tweak small things like "Arm Spoilers" not working in the 737 but I got them all fixed through the forums. Been running Steam for 12 months now and NEVER crashed. I cant think of a reason for not moving - realty, I cant.

 

Good luck with whatever you choose to do.

 

Rupert

The main things to note:

 

1. The Steam edition, along with its own version of simconnect, only installs simconnect version 61259 from the legacy FSX versions. Since many addons use 60905, or 61242, they will need to be installed as well, before reliable operation with many addons is achieved. Otherwise there may be CTDs showing ntdll.dll and stackhash exceptions as example.

 

2. The Steam edition has trouble with very long relative paths in the Scenery section. After installing some scenery, the scenery.cfg can be edited and the relative paths replaced with the full paths. Alternatively, FSX-SE can be installed in a short path created by the user, don't forget to add Modify permission for the Users group on that folder.

 

3. Many FSX-SE addons from Steam DLC won't be found by programs that have not been updated to work with the DLC structure, and will cause problems, unless the program can be successfully configured to find the Steam DLC items.

 

4. The Steam edition forces elevated permissions when starting up because the ProgramData\FSX folder Users Group does not have Modify permissions for Authenticated Users like FSX Gold does. The permission can be added, and the Steam fsx.exe altered to ignore elevating permissions, so as to work just like FSX Gold when starting up.

 

5. If the Steam edition FSX-SE is started with elevated permissions, then some addons and programs will only work correctly with FSX-SE if they too have elevated permissions to match it. Programs started by FSX-SE with the exe.xml file will start with the permissions of FSX-SE.

 

6. Addons that read and or write to FSX-SE application memory locations and offsets may need to be recompiled to work with those changes after every FSX Steam Edition update. It is best to make sure FSX-SE is run at least once from the Steam menu or Desktop icon before installing addons and programs that rely on FSX-SE properly installed.

7.  If you use Reality XP gauges (that indeed read and or write to FSX application memory locations and offsets), they will not work in FSX-SE.

After reading the post from SteveW I'm not sure if I want to try Steam. It sounds a little intimidating and I,m not a wiz when it comes to files.

If you have a lot of addons that do not have updates for steam edition, then you may run into some bumps in the road or even dead ends. If you install FSX-SE on a fresh system, and install the two legacy simconnect .msi's, most old addons will work as if on FSX. Anything updated since FSX-SE should work without further intervention.

Well that sounds better. Can you explain in more detail how to ; " and install the two legacy simconnect .msi's "

 

If you are feeling adventurous, you might try P3DV3.1 :wink:

 

+1

I saw the price of steam at about $ 5.00 is that right? If so I wonder why?

Once you've installed FSX-SE look in:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\FSX\SDK\Core Utilities Kit\SimConnect SDK\LegacyInterfaces"

 

double-click the .msi files:

..\LegacyInterfaces\FSX-RTM\SimConnect.msi

..\LegacyInterfaces\FSX-SP1\SimConnect.msi