Polls on FSX

[PaulGR 168]

3 hours ago, Captain Kevin said:

In that case, you must be either really lucky, or you don't fly extremely long flights to begin with. I've done live streams where I'll fly for 5.5 hours, three or four flights, and the last one is what kills me on VAS.

My longest is 14h without issues. All I do is fly cargo. Usually RJAA - Rest of the world.
But I only use freeware airports, and ORBX. No heavy scenery. Textures optimized to max 2048, as many as possible converted to DXT5. My vas is always under 3.7 and that's with about 50 AI birds in the area.
I do have a issue with VAS when flying to/from Newfoundland but I never figured that one why as there are no cities in the region when FSX crashes or anything like that.

It might not look spectacular but enough for me:

 

[downscc 1,327]

18 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Motherboard, CPU, RAM (always recommend this combo upgrade, not just one element of it)
GPU (at some other time frame)

I am evaluating  this option now, just replacing mobo, cpu, ram and video cards.  Reuse two year old case, Intel 850 NVMe boot drive, liquid cooler, power supply etc.  Does Windows 10 belch or make funny noises when it wakes up and finds a new CPU and memory increase from 16 to 32 GB? My Windows 10 is the full retail version on a stick, not OEM.  I assume it adopts but I'd love to close that assumption. Thanks Rob in advance.

EDIT:  Poked around on google and was led to this helpful Microsoft support article, looks like they have made it easy: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530/windows-10-reactivating-after-hardware-change

[PaulGR 168]

25 minutes ago, downscc said:

I am evaluating  this option now, just replacing mobo, cpu, ram and video cards.  Reuse two year old case, Intel 850 NVMe boot drive, liquid cooler, power supply etc.  Does Windows 10 belch or make funny noises when it wakes up and finds a new CPU and memory increase from 16 to 32 GB? My Windows 10 is the full retail version on a stick, not OEM.  I assume it adopts but I'd love to close that assumption. Thanks Rob in advance.

EDIT:  Poked around on google and was led to this helpful Microsoft support article, looks like they have made it easy: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/20530/windows-10-reactivating-after-hardware-change

Which cooler you have? 8700K can get REALLY hot. Hot like 4790K is a car heater set on cold while 8700K is like Sun's core. 

[downscc 1,327]

2 hours ago, PaulGR said:

Which cooler you have? 8700K can get REALLY hot. Hot like 4790K is a car heater set on cold while 8700K is like Sun's core. 

I have the Corsair H115 280mm dual fan mounted in the top of a Corsair 450D case.  This cooler is rated among the best among closed loop coolers.  I've read about the 8700K heat but that is only when pushing the OC envelope.  Since P3D doesn't take advantage of virtual cores I'll probably run the 8700K with HT off which really helps with the heat.  This cooler allows me to run my 6700K at 4.7GHz with HT off and temps in the low 70s C.

[whiskey151 21]

On Fri Feb 09 2018 at 10:31 AM, DaveCT2003 said:

One could talk about this until the cows come home, but in the end it's just a personal decision.

There are still people using FS2004, so if a particular sim does what you need then there is little reason to change. But as time marches on we'll see things in P3DV4 and V5 that you (or a developer) can't do with FSX.

If someone is flying payware airliners with payware airports, then for all intents and purposes you'll avoid the OOM issue with a 64-bit flight sim and you'll find both increased performance and better graphics due to DirectX 11 (P3DV5 should have DirectX 12, providing significantly better graphics.

FSX certainly isn't dead, but I can tell you from the developer side of things that more and more developers are dropping development of FSX in favor or P3D.  Until a few months ago I had FSX:SE, P3DV3 and P3DV4 installed so I could test products for the older flight sims, but I finally decided to remove them as I was rarefy booting them up.

There is certainly a cost to upgrade to many P3D aircraft, but with a few exceptions the scenery updates have been without cost.

As I opened with, this is merely a personal decision, and only you know if the benefits are worth the change.

Best wishes.

 

 

 

Spot on my friend. I am with FSX and am developing addons for it as well. I have the perfect sim in my opinion and as long as I can create realistic content for it on my own steam, I see no reason to change. I personally have everything I need.

[Captain_Al 66]

23 hours ago, PATCO LCH said:

You know you can go ahead and install ORBYX cross platform with Orbyx Central3. AS2016 can be had for a modest uograde price.

I did not know about the ORBYX cross platform, thanks a bunch Vic.

I did today purchase the Active Sky 2016 for Prepar3D V4 for the upgrade price, well worth the $20

[Patco Lch 1,462]

41 minutes ago, Captain_Al said:

I did not know about the ORBYX cross platform, thanks a bunch Vic.

I did today purchase the Active Sky 2016 for Prepar3D V4 for the upgrade price, well worth the $20

That's great! I found a lot of scenery developers will go right in such as Flighbeam, FSDT , and Latin VFR to name some. I use OPUS just for camera and it works fine without purchasing an upgrade. I managed to install other payware as well as freeware by placing them in there own folders in the P3DV4 add-on file and connecting them through the scenery library. Also the freeware Manfred Jan C47 runs great in P3DV4. If you don't have that plane I highly recommend it! I have as much fun with that bird as most payware I've bought! 

Regards, 

Vic G.

[787WannabePilot 12]

On 2/8/2018 at 3:09 PM, scandinavian13 said:

What kinks?

It's not an upgrade. It's the commercial/training/edu platform of FSX.

FSX was the entertainment platform, and remained FSX/FSX:SE after being licensed
ESP was the parallel commercial/training/edu platform, and was rebranded as P3D after being licensed

Call it what you want.  It is an 'upgrade' and its not cheap.

[Brian_A_Neuman 198]

I may have missed something in the threads. I think there is a major point that needs to be said and I will say it. There is no shame in using whatever platform you want to use. People who shame you for flying what you want to fly should really be ashamed of themselves as it is a personal decision that all of us make.

 

This being said, there are alot of new addons being released for the 64bit platforms (All of them) that would not be practical of possible on the 32 bit platforms. Simply put, if you want to go to the new features you will need to upgrade. This eye candy will bring 32bit to its knees and it will be just a horrid experience. Everyone needs to take a step back and think about what you are asking, and also think about your response....that would make it more productive then the circular arguments. If I want to fly my MD-11 I will reinstall FSX, but for everything else, P3D has it covered. So my MD-11 has been sadly sent to the proverbial boneyard permanently.

FSX is still alive and well, I see it (I do fly P3D so I am not asking for FSX stuff) but like all things that get outdated, you need to decide if you want to keep the old car running or trade it in for a new one...thats a personal decision...period.

[Scott434 12]

Simply stay with whatever flight sim you are happy with it is nothing but a personal choice. How many of you are still with sublogic and Apple II?

I was totally happy to stay with Win7x64bit and FSXx32bit ... but ... putting lipstick on a 32bit flight sim ... well you know the rest ...

My personal choice after my last system build (2013), was to limit expenditures on FSX and wait until a viable and supported 64bit flight sim surfaced. I have been watching P3D v1,2,3 over the years and simply said no. A 64bit flight sim is a game changer. I wait at least on revision cycle before I purchase most software. I purchased and P3D 4.1 after a little soak time and recently rebuilt my flight sim platform around Win10x64 and P3D v4.1.

You CAN have both concurrently. Either on the same hard drive or ... In my case I installed Win10 in a dual boot config. I simply boot into Win7 and use FSX or I choose Win10 and use P3Dv4.1

I have P3Dv4.1 with Orbx global, North America and SAK, PANC Pro for P3Dv4, Active Sky v4, utLive, chase plane and of course PMDG products. I only install products that are v4 ready.

I have never has a crash, never a chime for low VAS (no monitoring required), never an OOM. I fly and do not tweak and do not worry about ending a flight with a CTD. No Nvidia Inspector, no 3rd party tweakers and on and on. The cockpit sun/shadows are very impressive and immersive, the visuals are excellent. Things run very smooth despite my 25-30 fps with all of the above software piled on (my hardware is getting old but with modest settings and the gtx780 runs absolutely brilliant for my own personal needs). Orbx scenery is totally impressive, the clouds and weather with Active Sky are phenomenal (again my own personal opinion) not to mention the working Wx combination with PMDG.

It appears to me that many many developers are going the P3Dv4 route. PMDG already mentioned that some features on the upcoming -8 will be P3Dv4 only. Since I fly mostly PMDG and PMDG is developing for P3Dv4 then not much choice and the writing is on the wall it seems.

Since I installed P3Dv4.1, I have never gone back to fly in FSX once, in spite of the effort I put into the dual boot thing! After a little time and expense, I now have a flight sim platform with some headroom for the foreseeable short term and goodies like rain and EFB on the upcoming -8.

<RANT ON>

I must admit, there is one thing that needs to be mentioned. It is so brain dead and so ridiculous, it deserves an immediately firing of the people responsible ... Ok I'm over reacting (maybe ) ... Why would LM not have fixed the more than silly looking AI aircraft large and disproportionate nav and strobe lighting after so many releases. There is a 3rd party fix out there but it should be a no-brainer to correct in the core product without resorting to hacking in a fix!

Also, we need a scenery config tool for v4 such as the one described in the PMDG introduction docs. One will surface sooner rather than later hopefully! 64bit means more can be loaded and therefore my load times are are longer than I like.

<RANT OFF>

Conclusion?

Overall, it was worth the time and small expense (relatively). IMHO, it is a much better looking, rock solid stable platform. It runs extremely smooth, the GPU enhancements such as cockpit shadows, clouds, water, fog, hue, night lighting  are super great. It has never crashed on me to date and I now have a sim platform that can absorb the goodies to come from PMDG and other devs. If you change over, you will not be disappointed!

Good times for us old dogs that cut our teeth on subLogic and Apple II. (Go ahead you young folks, look it up on youTube and see how far we have come!!)

Cheers, Scott

[scandinavian13 5,192]

On 2/9/2018 at 8:53 PM, Captain_Al said:

ORBYX

orbx

I know people pronounce it like "orbyx," but if you're looking for sim scenery and are wondering why you're on a site for cell phone accessories...

[Captain_Al 66]

I thought that was spelled wrong...ORBX is better I think...