FSX-MS Which Add-ons should I get to "Pro-A-Fi" my FSX

[ols500 43]

Hi I'm getting a new PC, and looking for some good add-ons. I am not expecting to have my scenery sliders on max (50% for each), and want to run traffic on 40%. 

My new specs:

==============================================================================

Processor: Intel Core i5-8600K 3.6GHz (4.30GHz Turbo) Hex Core Coffee Lake Processor

Graphics Card: GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5

Memory: 1x8GB DDR4 (3000MHz)

Storage: 250GB SSD + 2TB WD Blue SATA III Hard drive

Motherboard: Z370 Intel Chipset ATX Motherboard

Power Supply: 600W 80+ PSU

Case: Aerocool AERO 800 Windowed gaming case

DVD Drive: Not included (See Also Purchase Section)

Operating System: Windows 10 Home Pre-Installed

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What kind of Add-ons could I get (for display)

At the moment I'm thinking of these:

• Orbx Global
• Orbx Vector
• Orbx Trees
• Ultimate Traffic Live
• FSXWX (weather program)

Are any of these a bad ideas?

For the Aircraft:

• PMDG 777 & 747
• Aersoft Airbus
• Quality wings 757 & Avro 146
• Captain sim 737-200

My display settings for new PC:

[Jim Young 2,356]

If you have UTLive the sliders in the UTL program are what you use so you can completely turn off airline traffic density and general aviation.  Airport vehicle density should be at medium or low.  Land and sea traffic at 10%.

The AVSIM FSX Configuration Guide provides the best settings (unless you like the jaggies).   Just skip the settings for AI.  Your system should handle them.  You will have low FPS occasionally depending on what you are running but most of the time above 30.  The only thing you have to worry about is running out of virtual address space (VAS) as Microsoft only gives you 4GB's with a 64-bit version of Windows 10.  That runs out pretty fast with 32-bit simulators if you are not careful.  More information in the AVSIM Guide.

I would purchase all of the FSDT airports and Drzewiecki Design (DD) for Seattle and other areas in his collection that you feel you will be flying to and around.  GEX and Ultimate Terrain X for FSX is cheaper than Orbx Global/Vector and better for FSX (IMHO).  Both products do the same.

The PMDG 777 and 747 for FSX requires a lot of resources.  Flights less than two hours and you should be okay.  Otherwise, you may run out of VAS and the sim will crash.

 

 

[nuNce 2]

I think you could go with far better settings than those you have posted, but I would add at least another 8GB to your PC if you can.

AS for the addongs I would definitely buy GSX (was on discount a few days ago, don't know if it is still on sale) and you will probabily need Steve's DX10 Fixer.

Have you thought about getting P3Dv4? Since you still have to buy those addons it would be the perfect moment to make the switch.

[ols500 43]

Hi, thank you for the responses, I do have GSX which is amazing, I was just looking for some display add-ons to make it look nice. 

1 hour ago, Jim Young said:

The PMDG 777 and 747 for FSX requires a lot of resources.  Flights less than two hours and you should be okay.  Otherwise, you may run out of VAS and the sim will crash.

I have the PMDG 777 on my Laptop (i3 @2.10, 8GB RAM) and I do flights up to 11 hours and it's never crashed. So getting a better PC, will make it crash?

 

Also I already use GEX & UTX and they don't give the "Wow! This is actually England" appearance to the sim, unlike the videos I have seen on Youtube from Orbx.

 

And Finally, I would love to use my UK2000 EGLL a lot more, as I only get 8FPS there with the aerosft airbus, which makes it horrible to fly too! With this new PC would I expect 20+ fps at Heathrow with Traffic in the Aerosoft Airbus?

Plus, I will take a good look at that guide on Avism!

 

-Ollie

[Jim Young 2,356]

1 hour ago, ols500 said:

I have the PMDG 777 on my Laptop (i3 @2.10, 8GB RAM) and I do flights up to 11 hours and it's never crashed. So getting a better PC, will make it crash?

If you kept your settings at the settings you showed in your OP and you use mostly default airports/scenery, then you should have no problems.  It is when you add addons and raise your settings (because they have a lot of eye-candy), when you will see crashes due to a lack of VAS.  If you ever get a chance to visit our CTD Forum (and I hope you don't ever have to go there), there are many cases where members have flown 10-12 hours and, on descent or while on the final approach, FSX crashes. 

1 hour ago, ols500 said:

 

Also I already use GEX & UTX and they don't give the "Wow! This is actually England" appearance to the sim, unlike the videos I have seen on Youtube from Orbx

I thought maybe you wanted some suggestions or comments on what you were planning on using with your new system.  I had no idea you had GEX/UTX already and you were disappointed in them.  You asked for some good addons and, since GEX/UTX was originally made for FSX, I thought I could save you some money. 

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

6 hours ago, ols500 said:

FSXWX

For weather, I’d get AS2016. If your going to be flying PMDG planes you’ll need AS2016 for the radar to work. Plus it’s a great weather engine.

[ols500 43]

Sorry to Jim Young, If you thought I sounded rude, I was just trying to say that GEX+UTX doesn't personally work for me, as it does for you 

 

But yes I will be running addon airports (FSDT,UK2000) with Aerosoft + PMDG with my standard settings, however I will need to tinker around with Orbx to get it right for my PC

For anyone who is running Orbx Global+vector+Trees and has an i5 8600 (or similar):

Can you tell me your scenery settings, to balance performance and display?

1 hour ago, Jim Young said:

raise your settings (because they have a lot of eye-candy)

I don't think I will raise my settings as I know CTD will happen, hopefully my settings at the moment (will need to set auto gen to "Extremely dense" for Orbx to run) shouldn't be a VAS problem...right? And I don't run my TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD at 2048/4096 so I should be good.

 

And for

59 minutes ago, cmpbellsjc said:

For weather, I’d get AS2016. If your going to be flying PMDG planes you’ll need AS2016 for the radar to work. Plus it’s a great weather engine.

I looked this up and WOW it looks good, but Im worried it might contribute to high VAS/Low vps in bad weather. Because I fly in the UK a lot, the weather is crap so the visibility being low, makes my frames drop. Will this be the case with the New PC, or not?

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

1 hour ago, ols500 said:

And for

I looked this up and WOW it looks good, but Im worried it might contribute to high VAS/Low vps in bad weather. Because I fly in the UK a lot, the weather is crap so the visibility being low, makes my frames drop. Will this be the case with the New PC, or not?

I fly in the UK and don’t have an issue with it contributing to high VAS provided you do the following.

1. I set the cloud draw max to 125 miles

2. I also have ASCA which is linked to AS2016 and use all cloud textures set to DXT 512 x 512 resolution.

3. I limit cloud layers to 4 layers.

Doing the following and using PMDG planes, addon airports, etc, never had a CTD or OOM crash.

Remember, updating your rig will only provide better FPS, but won’t limit VAS or OOM issues as FSX is still 32 bit. For that concern you need to watch your settings.

[ols500 43]

Thank you, cmpbellsjc that was very useful, and im guessing ASCA is active sky art?

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

8 hours ago, ols500 said:

im guessing ASCA is active sky art?

Yes, your guess is correct. Inside ASCA, you get to choose what resolution textures it will use for the clouds. I’ve always preferred the DXT 512 size, not only for performance but also because they are not as “sharp” looking as 2048 or 4096 clouds.

[ols500 43]

Ok thank you!

[scianoir 610]

18 hours ago, Jim Young said:

GEX and Ultimate Terrain X for FSX is cheaper than Orbx Global/Vector and better for FSX (IMHO).  Both products do the same.

I would agree that the GEX/UTX combination is a very reasonable alternative to going with the Orbx products. Not only does it work out cheaper than Orbx but it has less of an impact on VAS usage which is an important consideration in FSX. Certainly you would have a better chance of flying the PMDG 777 into Southern California without encountering an OOM using GEX/UTX scenery than if you were using Orbx Global / Vector / SoCal scenery. Yes, visually the Orbx scenery will have a small edge in terms of perhaps being closer to reality but unless you are very familiar with a region this may not be a huge consideration. 

I previously used GEX/UTX before Orbx came on the scene but uninstalled GEX when I started adding Orbx products simply because you couldn't use GEX with Orbx Global but UTX remains on my system. I use SimStarterNG to create multiple scenery sets (scenery cfgs) for different flying scenarios and some of these only use UTX which reduces the scenery related VAS footprint allowing me to use the more resource intensive aircraft addons such as PMDG in areas where OOMs would otherwise be a significant risk.

The bottom line is that FSX will run very well with resource intensive aircraft addons if you have no additional scenery installed. However the moment you start installing addon scenery (not to mention the great weather addons like Rex/AS16 and traffic addons such as UTL), successfully running FSX with its 4GB VAS threshold becomes very much an ungoing balancing act!

Bill

 

[ols500 43]

As motioned earlier, I do use UTX + GEX but it doesn't give that WOW factor that orbx's videos show. I have tried Orbx on my laptop, but it just won't run well, so I thought getting a "beefy" PC it would run with my PMDG and Aerosoft, in areas such as Heathrow. And Orbx does state that "you loose 0 FPS" so I got excited! At the minute I am going to continue using FSXWX for my weather, and see how VAS goes. I would love to do flights in and out of Heathrow in the PMDG 777, to places in the states without crashing, please tell me if that is possible.

 

Thank you,

-Ollie

[scianoir 610]

The issue Ollie isn't so much FPS but rather the VAS impact of the combination of (for example) a PMDG 777, UKXtreme or Aerosoft Heathrow and Orbx FTX England (+/- any weather or traffic addons) and perhaps another major addon airport if you are flying to the USA. A "beefy" PC will run all of these with improved FPS but the 4GB VAS threshold unfortunately remains the same and is always lurking in the background! As I live in the UK, I have everything Orbx installed for these islands and fly a lot here, but  flights involving a large airport like Heathrow requires a bit of careful preflight planning in terms of what is active in FSX and where your sliders are positioned if you are to avoid that dreaded OOM gong on approach! 

Bill

Edited April 14, 2018 by scianoir

[ols500 43]

Ok I understand Bill, thank you for your time and all of your responses, I will be sure to turn down my settings (especially Traffic!) to keep VAS low-ish.

 

Now, here is a question that might get out of hand, any tweaks you guys recommend? (I have already read through the Avsim guide )

 

 

-Ollie