I started flying flight sims when the first one was released for a PC back in the mid 80's. At that point I had a private Pilot's license for about 20 years, and around 600 hours under my belt, but really couldn't afford to fly enough to stay safe due to the ever increasing expense. I progressed through all of the MSFS versions and when FSX came out, I just became tired of all the tweaking, crashing, fixing, etc that seemed to be required in order  to fly a flight from takeoff to landing consistently. I stopped simming for awhile until Flight came out, and while I liked the flight dynamics of flight more than MSFS at the time, it soon lost support when MS dropped it, so I quit flying again. Late last spring I saw a video on Youtube of an A2A C-172 flying on P3D which looked very realistic, and decided to get Version 2.5 and a couple of A2A aircraft and quickly became a flight sim addict again. Lost my medical years ago for flying the real thing, but I find I enjoy simming as much as flying the real thing now, especially when factoring in the difference in cost. $100 + an hour for a 172 is unaffordable for me since I retired. I had a chance prior to retirement of being able to fly Commercial Flightsims at Airline Training centers and Military Flight sims, as part of my job with a high tech company. This is what made me realize that simming could be just as challenging as flying the real thing, and could even allow me to try and fly an aircraft that I could never fly in real life. 

 

Anyway, after getting 2.5,  I then moved to  version 3,3.1 and now 3.2 and fly for a VA at the rate of about 12 + flights a week. I have a middle of the road, almost 4 year old Dell desktop with an i5 and a Nvidia GTX 750 TI GPU and according to my VA's FPS counter which logs each flight, I average from around 27-32FPS on my entire flight. I fly mostly the PMDG 737, with ASN, soft clouds, EzDok, Pro ATC X, GSX, UTX Europe, Canada, and USA, and FSUIPC, all running at the same time. While all this is going on, I often  open up my Chrome Browser and look up approach plates, and sometimes I even check out the forums while I am flying. Can't even imagine trying something like that on MSFS where if you even looked at the PC the wrong way during a flight, it would CTD. With  all these things running, P3D version 3.2 is the most stable program that I have ever run on a PC. I had some crashing issues for a short time  which turned out to be a My Traffic Military planes issue, which I quickly solved. Since then, not one hiccup out of P3D. In my wildest dreams, I had never imagined that one day, I could fly a home  flight sim  almost anywhere, with all these add ons running, and not have one negative  issue. My biggest problem now, is trying to keep from wanting to fly 24/7.   :smile:  

This is one of the best posts I've read in a while.  :smile:

 

What is amazing to me is that I can simulate transition training in not 1, but 2 sims. Thanks to a fully loaded FSX and now XP 10.

 

Stability for me has come as a result of experience and better hardware.

 

I'm extremely grateful for what is on the horizon and to all the great developers that kept FSX alive and fresh.

 

Thank you for sharing your enthusiasm and good fortune with P3D v3.

Great post Bob. From one retiree to another, one former pilot to another, I can appreciate all of it. I have so much fun simming these days as trying to keep up with the commitments real life flying demanded was too much.

 

Onward,

 

Greg 

Well, I'm a little frustrated with P3D 3.2!

I like racing in Rf2, but I like flying in P3D.

 

After 2 straight weeks of doing nothing but flying with P3D, last night I took the time to change out my flying gear with the racing peripheries. Ran different cars and tracks for about 1 1/2 hours. Got up this morning and I'm already wanting to go back to flying...... drat this P3D version 3.2!, it always makes me do what I don't wanna do! 

Right on Bob!

 

I never took a break but rather have stayed the course.  I too have quite tired of continual updates but it has resulted in a great sim experience. 

 

I have an old Gateway i7-920 and am a day away from buying a new rig, higher end system and I will be adding P3D to my already empowered FSX.  I am really looking forward to the new system and the capability of flying something other then GA aircraft.  I am however not looking forward to the days of software reinstall....lol.

 

cheers.

version 3.2 is the most stable program that I have ever run on a PC

 

Confused Bob didn't you not to long ago say P3D 3 .2 was crap and you didnt want any part of it - then I remember asking you to hang in there - glad it worked out for you  :wink:

I have to start a special board dedicated to Bob's famous quotes :-)

Don't know if you guys heard this but a senior pilot for United here in Houston was busted. He had one of the largest brothels Houston

had ever seen. Guess he used his travelling to look for more clients and employees. He will surely be doing only flight simulation from now

on from his prison cell.

 

Bob

Great to read your story Bob, I think there are many of us who agree with you wholeheartedly.  Thanks for your positive thread.

Confused Bob didn't you not to long ago say P3D 3 .2 was crap and you didnt want any part of it - then I remember asking you to hang in there - glad it worked out for you  :wink:

 

That was when I made an error in checking that the Add on manager from FSDT was up to date, and you kept insisting that I had to Uninstall P3D to fix it , which I didn't.  :wink:

That's the fun part of posting on the internet - once you do, it's there FOREVER! Through the years I have experienced foot in mouth syndrome on more than one occasion.

 

 

Vic

Enjoy your flightsim Bob

1st Flysimguy:  Gateway PC's -  that sure brings back memories - too bad they went under 'cause they made pretty decent computers back then - and they had the absolute best logo on their packing cartons - cowhide!

 

I myself started with MS FS1 and bought every version after that except FS95 (a turkey).  But I stopped at FSX when I realized my PC would not run it back in '06.  So I finally got a high-end  gaming rig last November and installed Steam.  That renewed my enthusiasm  for flight simming all over again - been D/L dozens of FSX freeware offerings, and spent a small fortune on payware (just bought the Labs Concorde - just had to have it).  

 

FSX-SE runs great for me: really good FPS with very few stutters.  Not willing to switch to P3D any time soon - but, I never say never. 

Bob

 

Enjoy.......

I worked with Gateway 2000 (as they were known then in the 90's) as tech support.PC's were quite pricey then too. £1000 for a 223Mhz with 8 or 16 Mb of RAM.

Installing Windows 95 was fun using mscdex to install the CDRom drive letter (if you had a cdrom that is!).