FSX-MS Is is better to switch to FSX SE from FSX Gold Edition

[zap51 3]

Hello!

I am at a crossroads in my flight simulator career.  I have been using FSX Gold Edition.  I would jump to P3Dv4 or X Plane 11, but I need a new desk top to pursue those choices. My Specs:

OS:  Originally Windows 7 (Switched to Windows 10) 64-bit

Processor: Intel Core i7 processor 860 (1st reason I need a new computer)

Graphics:  ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB (2nd reason I need a new computer).

1TB hard drive

8GB DDR3 Memory

I can run FSX and have successful flight and have an immersive experience BUT as you can imagine, I get lousy framerates and the occasional freezeup.

Would it be a wise move to purchase FSX SE?

Would FSX SE run smoother on my system?

 

 

[Reader 2,021]

Hello,

as they are essentially the same thing, I would think it very unlikely that FSX-SE would

give you any worthwhile improvement.

Edited December 30, 2018 by nolonger

[zap51 3]

nolonger, Thanks. 

[CB_Pilot 54]

I moved from FSX Gold to FSX:SE several years ago. My setup is much more stable - I've never had an OOM or CTD since moving to Steam Edition. I've got loads of addons enabled, including scenery, weather engines and TrackIR, and I get a very smooth experience with texture set at 1024 or 2048 and a LOD radius of 6.5 while flying some fairly complex aircraft, e.g. iFly 737.

I can personally recommend moving to FSX:SE - and there's lots of threads on AVSIM from a few years back which said the same thing. It's an improvement over FSX Gold - no doubt about it. It offers me such a good simming experience that I'm not yet interested in moving to any other sim platform. You can usually get FSX:SE in a sale for £5 to £10: it's definitely worth trying at that price.

I run an i7-6700K with an SLI GTX980Ti setup so I do have good hardware but even on my old GT730 I got some good results with FSX:SE - just had to watch my slider settings.

Hope this helps - and good luck with whatever you decide.

[TextRich 88]

Can you increase the RAM to 16 GB?  I've always found 8 GB to be low for a FSX computer (boxed or SE).  Your graphic card is just fine (my GTX 970 has 1 GB too).  RAM and your processor (you want 4 GHz if possible) are the current bottlenecks.  I myself have only used the Steam edition but I am in little hurry to upgrade to Prepar3D v.4.

[Chock 17,769]

5 hours ago, nolonger said:

Hello,

as they are essentially the same thing, I would think it very unlikely that FSX-SE would

give you any worthwhile improvement.

This is not correct, FSX-SE will run much better. So if someone is not going to switch to P3D from FSX, then they should at least switch to FSX-SE, because the Steam Edition of FSX will work better on 64 Bit operating systems and be more stable too. Differences between FSX and FSX-SE include, but are not limited to the following...

General

• Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition is built using the VS2013 compiler for better optimization and performance. (Still makes use of VS2005 libraries for backwards compatibility.)
• Updated splash, launcher and mission preview images for FSX:SE versions.

Multiplayer, Networking and Communications

• Gamespy networking now replaced by new Steam networking.
• Game chat now integrated with Steam chat
• Friends/Banned lists now integrated with Steam.
• Game invites now use Steam.
• Host networking defaults to a single port 6112.
• Host networking uses 27016 for Steam Master Server Browser.
• Host timeout (loss of connection to host) now 35 seconds by default (was 55).
• “Disconnected” message dialog now retained on screen for 4 mins before automatic dismissal (was 30 secs).

Steam Support

• Top Down Camera (camera view select 4) was previously bound to F12 by default which is normally used for Steam’s screenshot feature. Camera View Select 4 now uses Shift+F12 by default to avoid potential clash.

Compatibility with Boxed FSX

• FSX and Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition co-Existence feature allows both versions to be installed on the same machine.

Default System-Setting Alterations

• Increased TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD to 4096 up from 1024
• Changed HIGHMEMFIX=1
• Increased Vertex and Index Buffers and the number of buffers.

Bugs Fixed

• Fix to particle emitter controllers which were not being updated properly.
• Fix to flush all levels of detail in terrain cache.
• Fix to Texture Composition preventing fail and crash.
• Fixed issue where player is able to reserve more slots for friends than maximum players allowed in the game.
• Fixed issue where invalid Briefing Room was presented to player when cancelling session creation.
• Fixed issue where weather text in the multiplayer briefing room is partially cut off.
• Fixed issue where no error message appears when attempting to host a session with the network adapter disabled.
• Fixed issue where there is no error message when attempting to host a session with the network cable unplugged.
• Fixed issue where host player is frozen after a collision occurs in multiplayer.
• Fixed issue where client gets dropped from a multiplayer game after they crash into the host.
• Fixed issue where the Host Options in multiplayer/ Free Flight allow a user to have a maximum of 99 player slots.
• UIAutomationCore.dll work-a-round is now supplied by default with Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition. This fixes a number of crashes relating to UI interaction on 64-bit versions of Windows.
• Fixed issue where the application’s taskbar preview window displays no content on Windows 8 and above
• Prevent default color mode for Windows 7 and above (enable automatic display composition).
• sserife.fon file now automatically supplied and loaded

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

8 hours ago, zap51 said:

I have been using FSX Gold Edition

Actually, there is no such thing in so far as a Version of FSX that you're running.  FSX Gold was a marketing package, inside is FSX Deluxe and FSX Acceleration, only one of which can be installed at a time.  So you've been using either FSX Deluxe or FSX Acceleration, depending on which you decided to install.  Why is this important?  Because if you installed FSX Deluxe, it's possible that you might not have installed Service Pack 1 and 2, and that would also make a difference in performance.

By the way, FSX:SE is actually FSX Acceleration, only with the change/enhancements that Alan was good enough to provide.

8 hours ago, zap51 said:

Would it be a wise move to purchase FSX SE?

Absolutely!  You can often find it on sale for only $5.00 USD

8 hours ago, zap51 said:

Would FSX SE run smoother on my system?

Assuredly!  But how much performance increase might you see?  It depends on your system. Generally speaking, the newer the processor and graphics card the more of a difference you're like to see (at least until you reach the higher end systems - it's a statistics thing).

2 hours ago, Chock said:

This is not correct, FSX-SE will run much better. So if someone is not going to switch to P3D from FSX, then they should at least switch to FSX-SE, because the Steam Edition of FSX will work better on 64 Bit operating systems and be more stable too. Differences between FSX and FSX-SE include, but are not limited to the following...

General

• Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition is built using the VS2013 compiler for better optimization and performance. (Still makes use of VS2005 libraries for backwards compatibility.)
• Updated splash, launcher and mission preview images for FSX:SE versions.

Multiplayer, Networking and Communications

• Gamespy networking now replaced by new Steam networking.
• Game chat now integrated with Steam chat
• Friends/Banned lists now integrated with Steam.
• Game invites now use Steam.
• Host networking defaults to a single port 6112.
• Host networking uses 27016 for Steam Master Server Browser.
• Host timeout (loss of connection to host) now 35 seconds by default (was 55).
• “Disconnected” message dialog now retained on screen for 4 mins before automatic dismissal (was 30 secs).

Steam Support

• Top Down Camera (camera view select 4) was previously bound to F12 by default which is normally used for Steam’s screenshot feature. Camera View Select 4 now uses Shift+F12 by default to avoid potential clash.

Compatibility with Boxed FSX

• FSX and Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition co-Existence feature allows both versions to be installed on the same machine.

Default System-Setting Alterations

• Increased TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD to 4096 up from 1024
• Changed HIGHMEMFIX=1
• Increased Vertex and Index Buffers and the number of buffers.

Bugs Fixed

• Fix to particle emitter controllers which were not being updated properly.
• Fix to flush all levels of detail in terrain cache.
• Fix to Texture Composition preventing fail and crash.
• Fixed issue where player is able to reserve more slots for friends than maximum players allowed in the game.
• Fixed issue where invalid Briefing Room was presented to player when cancelling session creation.
• Fixed issue where weather text in the multiplayer briefing room is partially cut off.
• Fixed issue where no error message appears when attempting to host a session with the network adapter disabled.
• Fixed issue where there is no error message when attempting to host a session with the network cable unplugged.
• Fixed issue where host player is frozen after a collision occurs in multiplayer.
• Fixed issue where client gets dropped from a multiplayer game after they crash into the host.
• Fixed issue where the Host Options in multiplayer/ Free Flight allow a user to have a maximum of 99 player slots.
• UIAutomationCore.dll work-a-round is now supplied by default with Microsoft Flight Simulator X: Steam Edition. This fixes a number of crashes relating to UI interaction on 64-bit versions of Windows.
• Fixed issue where the application’s taskbar preview window displays no content on Windows 8 and above
• Prevent default color mode for Windows 7 and above (enable automatic display composition).
• sserife.fon file now automatically supplied and loaded

 

Perfect Alan!

Though some people might not understand all of the above... some of these fixes made a significant different in stability and overall performance. 

 

[zap51 3]

So, in FSX Gold, if you install discs 1 & 2 that's Deluxe.  The Acceleration is on separate (disc 3) disc.  You can install from disc 1 & 2 or the Acceleration?

Also, what about my payware & freeware (both scenery and aircraft) from FSX, will work in FSX SE no problem right?

Edited December 31, 2018 by zap51

[Chock 17,769]

You can install any of your exisiting FSX stuff in FSX-SE and you don't really need to worry about anything else if you have FSX-SE, since the Steam version essentially includes all of the add-ons that were part of any other versions of FSX or were add-on disks for it.

[Reader 2,021]

Quote

Perfect Alan!

 

Edited December 31, 2018 by nolonger

[airernie 263]

8 hours ago, zap51 said:

So, in FSX Gold, if you install discs 1 & 2 that's Deluxe.  The Acceleration is on separate (disc 3) disc.  You can install from disc 1 & 2 or the Acceleration?

Also, what about my payware & freeware (both scenery and aircraft) from FSX, will work in FSX SE no problem right?

Nope.  You still need to install Deluxe first.  Acceleration just gives you some additional aircraft and fixes.  See Wikipedia for a description of features.

After installing Deluxe you then make a decision to install SP1 & SP2, or Acceleration, which contains the fixes from SP1 & SP2.    Some people go for Acceleration.  Me I went with SP1 & SP2 because I didn't care about the additional features of Acceleration.

FSX:SE is Deluxe with Acceleration,so you get the fixes plus additional aircraft.

'No problem' is not completely true because some software may or may not work, but it's such a small number that it's considered irrelevant. 

For me that includes Flight 1's SoundStream, which allows you to hear the aircraft when FSX doesn't have the focus in Windowed environments. 

 

 

[Reader 2,021]

Hello zap51,

is a new PC an option for you?

[stans 703]

Unfortunately, your computer is really at the bottom of the specs to run FSX.  I'm sure the Steam Edition will run a little better and be more stable, but a 2.8 GHz CPU is quite slow for the CPU hungry flight simulator.

[zap51 3]

Nolonger, 

Unfortunately a new PC is not an option at this time.  I just bought a car in full and need to wait.  You guys are right, my system is not optimum and to really enjoy the effects of FS I need a high end system.  Is there a new version of FSX SE or can I download any version?

[TextRich 88]

12 minutes ago, zap51 said:

Is there a new version of FSX SE or can I download any version?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/314160/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_X_Steam_Edition/

FSX:SE hasn't been updated by Dovetail Games in four years.  If they ever update it again your Steam will automatically update the version you have purchased.