My FSX Experience so far

[Guest vintage_flyboy]

Hi All, Just thought I'd share my experience so far. Im running on: P4 3.0 HT1024MB RamATI x700 256MB300GB SATA 1.5gb 7200rpmNo background appsAfter using every tweak I could find to improve performance, I still got miserable FPS in CYYZ with some pretty low settings. With only 15% airline traffic, no other traffic of any kind, none of the display sliders above 25%, and I still found it difficult to get the FPS to get, let alone stay above 10. This is in any big iron, though there are some improvements with the CRJ, and definate improvements once in the air... . I ended up giving up on FSX for the time being....Until Last night...For a change of pace I thought I'd give it a go again, but I'd do some bush flying. Frightened at first, I figured it would be next to impossible to fly a GA aircraft at 10 frames.... but lo-and behold... I load into a Goose at Ketchican.... and my frame rate was in the mid 50's!!!! wow! so I started increasing the sliders and upping the details until I got a steady 25 FPS. With full GA and Airline traffic and very modest amounts of land and sea traffic... the sim looks GORGEOUS and flies really well. So I have come to the conclusion, that I will shy away from the detailed airports/cities until I can either find a way to minimise the impact, or I get a better system. I'm bush flying for the next year or so I guess, and loving it!Moral of the story: If you are getting poor rates in a detailed airport while flying the big iron, then, at least for a change of pace, fire up a GA flight in a remote location, crank some of the settings, and have at 'er.... you'll be pleasantly surprised.Just thought Id share, your mileage may vary...cheers all, Jamie

[Forkboy2 27]

After several weeks of fiddeling around with FSX, I've finally decided that FSX and FS2004 serve very different purposes for me. Both are much much better than the other depending on what your comparing. So for now, I'm leaving them both on my computer. FS2004 for when I want to do a serious flight in a payware jet airliner, need high frame rates around cities and crisp textures are possible at 400 knots. And FSX for when I want to jump in a slow GA aircraft and fly around looking at all the incredible scenery. Say what you want about FSX, but it definately raises the bar to a whole new level when it comes to visuals. I'm sure eventually I'll be able to dump FS2004 completely but not going to happen anytime soon.Matt

[Guest PaulG52]

Hi guys. I have a similar setup to the original poster..AMD 64 3200 2.0ghz, 1 gig ram, GeForce 6600gt 256mram PCI-E , WinXP Home...First let me say I'm not a veteran flight simmer. I just love the thought of flying and sigh-seeing. I really do prefer the light aircraft probably because of the complexity of heavy Iron and the needed knowledge to fly them as they should be.That being said...Do any of you guys know of a site(s)that would give me a list of small interesting airports to fly out of?IE: Places to use water take-offs and landing...Small strips that really show off the scenery..etc., etc.,...?I'm in Barrie, Ontario Canada. And while I really do believe this is God's Country..I would like to use FS-X as a sort of Travelogue-sim type of software.Thanks.PaulG.

[Guest vintage_flyboy]

I wish I could run both. I have been without FS for a few months, waiting for FSX. When I got the new hard drive, and tried to reinstall FS9 a few months ago, it turns out that my Disk4 is irrepairably damaged (the backing is scratched through to the plastic) and can't reinstall it. :( I couldnt bring myself to go and buy it again, so I waited for FSX to be released. However, I may repurchase FS9 again, if so I can at least do my commercial type flights with decent rates. That and I have countless $$$ invested in payware I can't abandon quite yet....One thing I am really happy about, is that FSX doesnt require the disk in the drive, so no worries on this disk getting damaged.Cheers.

[Guest B52Drivr]

Hello All, Well, I've had FSX for 5 days now, have tinkered, and tweeked and in truth, find it rather delightful. True, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that FS9 does, (my version with all my add on's), however, like FS9, that will come soon enough.When I want to seriously fly, I still rev up FS9, but I've been 'playing with FSX' more and more, learning about the sim, and actually enjoying it.It is obvious that FSX has tremendous potiential down the road and when I upgrade perhaps to a dual core and better graphics card, but it does very well right now on its own, even very smooth at 9 FPS.In FS9 that would be a slide show. I figure with upgrading and such, by spring I should be flying FSX all the time . . . presently my only problem is waiting for someone to tell us what FS9 programs work in FSX and what mods you have to do to make them work.Oh, for those who care, rig is P4 3.2 OC'D TO 3.55, ASUS P4C-800 E DELUX, ATI 9800 PRO oc'd 450 - 399 both with Zallman coolers.Best,Clayhttp://www.dreamfleet2000.com/gfx/images/F...ers/Dopke01.jpgClayton T. Dopke (Clay)Major, USAF (retired)"Drac"

[Forkboy2 27]

>That being said...Do any of you guys know of a site(s)that>would give me a list of small interesting airports to fly out>of?IE: Places to use water take-offs and landing...Small>strips that really show off the scenery..etc., etc.,...?>Thanks.>>PaulG.Try searching AVSIM file library for "Michael Doherty"

[Guest concern]

Hi Jamie,I have a very similar set to you and have had similar experiences. It seems that in some locations, my system is brought to its knees (Innsbruck mission) while in others I experience amazing detail with great framerates.A couple of suggestions: any traffic setting makes a substantial hit on your fps. The impact is that you will get wildly fluctuating framerates, as the CPU is constantly taken away from rendering scenery to managing traffic. Try turning all AI traffic and ground vehicles off, and your framerates will be more consistent.The G1000 is a framerate killer...once again using precious CPU cycles that would otherwise be rendering scenery. Some of the older aircraft with purely analog gauges work well and have far less impact on framerates.Any setting that requires more CPU will substantially impact framerates in a system such as yours. If the setting is one that can be offloaded to the graphics card (resolution, AA, Anisotropic filtering etc), go for it!Graham

[Guest vintage_flyboy]

Thanks for the suggestions, Graham. To be totally honest, I have found the frame rate hit for air traffic to be minimal on my system, in the order of 2-3 FPS difference from none to 100%. For now I have Car and Sea traffic at zero, and in ALL my configuration testings to get optimal frame rates, the one that has the most significant impact is the Dynamic Scenery. From minimal to full there is little noticable impact for Dynamic Scenery at CYYZ, however, setting to None, sends the FPS through the roof, regardless of my other settings. So I am playing around with the idea of moding the defafult scenery textures, and seeing if I can increase performance by shrinking texture sizes and removing shaders etc. If I can limit the impact the detailed airports/cities have I will be quite happy over all.Im at work at the moment, but when I get home Ill post my exact settings for others to compare to if they wish.Cheers,Jamie