I recently reinstalled FSX-SE after an absence of about a year. When I was using it a year ago, I purchased several products that promised various improvements to the FSX experience. Some were not SE compatible and some I installed but was never sure if they made things better, worse or just did nothing. I have downloaded the latest versions of them and am considering reinstalling them but would appreciate feedback from any users. Steam users only please as want to be sure they aren't going to screw up my installation and in this case what works in the boxed version may not work with Steam. The products are:

SimPhysics X

FSPS FS Booster

FSPS Fiber Accelerator

Frictionality x

I'm sure there will be pros and cons and I realize it's probably subjective, but some info from current users would help me decide which, if any, to install

Thanks

Ian

Hi Ian,

That's a very good question but I just realised that you wanted feedback from Steam users only so I can't be of much help as I just run plain old FSX. However the question you raise is a very valid one and one which has started me thinking again as I have been using the FSPS Mulitcore Next booster with FSX until fairly recently. However when I installed SIMstarter NG recently I didn't bother setting it up to start the FSPS Booster and to be honest I haven't really noticed any great difference in performance without the booster.  Your thread however has prompted me to see if I can identify any definite benefit from the Multicore Next booster so I will run some tests later today on a standardised FSX scenario that I usually use for testing new addon aircraft. I do however sometimes wonder whether these enhancers just produce a sort of placebo effect!

Sorry I can't help you with Steam though.

Cheers,

Bill

Hi Bill

Thanks for the feedback. I should have phrased what I said in a clearer way. I definitely welcome information from FSX users but would especially value Steam user's experience so I know it's compatible before I mess around with it. And in your case, I respect your judgement very much so I thank you and will be interested in hearing the results of your experiment

Cheers mate

Ian

I sometimes use FSX Booster Live with FSX-SE and it does indeed work, as in yes, you do see frame rates improve with it if you crank it up. I tend to use it as an 'emergency button', i.e. if I get an OOM warning tone -  I'll crank it up a bit to stop FS from crashing out. Note that this is the more recent (i.e. currently available) product, FSX Booster Live, not the older version of the product.

I used Fiber Accelerator for a while on my old system with FSX:MS and it did make a difference when frame rates were very low. I would say that it gave about 5-10 FPS which was enough to make the sim usable when things were very demanding. Unlike some who tried it, I didn't notice any reduction in graphics quality when it kicked in. I would say that if you have an old, lower spec system and you've tried everything else, it's worth a try to make things playable. However, if you have a reasonably modern system with a recent graphics card it probably won't make much of a difference.

I did my little experiment using FSPS Multicore Environment Next with FSX and the results were interesting. I used my standard new aircraft test flight scenario using the default Baron from Shannon Airport and disabled Active Sky Next, just flying the test scenario (essentially a long circuit) with all weather cleared. Six flights were flown - two using the standard FSX setup, two using Multicore Environment Next to start FSX and two using SIMstarter NG (which also allows selection of the cores on which FSX runs) to start FSX. My frame rates are always set to unlimited and I recorded the mean FPS with the aircraft stopped on the ground at the end of the runway and also at a specific point in the air during the flight.

Standard FSX start:  Mean FPS  ground 40/39 - air 56/57

Multicore next start:  Mean FPS  ground 33/35 - air 58/61

SIMstarter NG start:  Mean FPS  ground 44/44 - air 59/62

I think the most reliable readings are probably the ones with the aircraft stopped on the runway as it is more difficult to control variables which might affect the FPS while in flight, but it is interesting that the FSPS Multicore Next Booster produced the lowest FPS on the ground and the best were those achieved using SIMstarterNG. The results in the air were all very similar and all flights were smooth, but then my FSX setup generally runs smoothly unless heavy VAS demands suddenly arise. 

The overall result seems to suggest that using the FSPS performance booster doesn't really add anything to the in-flight performance at least from a frame rate viewpoint in FSX, which had always been my impression. I know this was not a very scientific experiment, but at least it seems to answer a question I had been wondering about for some time. I should point out that I do not as a rule monitor FPS when using FSX because it doesn't matter to me what the frame rates are if FSX is running smoothly. However I do tend to keep an eye on VAS usage as that is more likely to be a source of problems for me than frame rates.

I hope someone can give you the information you need to decide whether to use your FSPS products in Steam!

Cheers,

Bill

I used FSX-Fiber Accelerator for a long time and wouldn't fly with out it until I did some thing interesting recently. I uninstalled my heavy drag airports,especially the Couti powered ones and what a difference to my over all sim experience!They're is no silver bullet. Simming is like life itself, all about trade offs and balances. Those airports are the only problematic places and a  few seconds of eye candy is not worth all the hassle.

1 hour ago, PATCO LCH said:

They're is no silver bullet. Simming is like life itself, all about trade offs and balances.

I agree!

I spent too much time in my FS9 days searching for the silver bullet and trying tweak after tweak (half of which probably interacted with something else which I didn't even know about!) and various performance enhancing addons when I really would have been better spending the time just enjoying flying. With FSX I have never added any tweaks apart from the recommended highmemfix and FSPS Multicore Next but undoubtedly the biggest factor affecting performance as you say are the resource intensive addons. I have found SIMstarterNG a great benefit from this viewpoint as you can easily activate and deactivate scenery addons without unininstalling them and produce scenery sets to suit the type of flying you are doing.

Bill

Thank you all very much for the excellent feedback. I think I'm going to go with the old adage about leaving sleeping dogs alone. I get an occasional stuttering but it's rare and most of the time I am extremely happy with peformance. I may give the Frictionality program a try as I read some pretty positive reviews - not a performance enhancer but apparently adds some elements of realism to the sim

Cheers

Ian