FSX or FS9? What's the verdict

[Guest cwright]

I agree,autogen isn't always appropriate, particularly at higher altitudes. I would suggest a new feature for the next version of FS: when a specified altitude is exceeded, the autogen should gently fade out.But below 1000 ft I regard autogen as essential. Ironically, the higher resolution in FSX makes it more important, because images of buildings are still sharp and they look completely unnatural when viewed from any oblique angle. In fact they look as if they have been flattened by a huge steamroller! Accurately placed tree and building objects will hide this odd effect.Here are some shots from the Horizon forum. This combination of autogen and high resolution textures is stunning. As I said before, still pictures can't do it justice. You have to see the real thing in action to appreciate its beauty. Also bear in mind that, in most cases, every object represents a real building or tree in the real world....http://www.horizonsimulation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=196Best regards, Chris

[N562Z 4]

Those are great shots, Larry....and they are photoreal to be sure. But I would haved loved to see the FPS in the upper left corner of FSX as a rough comparison to FS9.http://www.my-buddy-icon.com/Icons/objects/red_3d_plane.gifAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD

[N562Z 4]

So daelight says to enjoy FSX, all we have to do is follow the instructions in the post attached to his link: which basically recommends to entirely redo / resize ALL of the textures in FSX using 2 or 3 different software tools. And then, about 50% of the people who tried it are reporting back with various problems including an equivocal change or in one case, a worsening in performance, and distorted textures afterwards. Thanks for sharing that link with us daelight, I appreciate your effort, but really, seriously, you have got to be kidding me (read the linked article). On top of that, what happens if and when a fix is released, it proves ineffective because of all the changes we made in the default program? I remember when the FS9 patch was released, you had to return some things to default settings to get the patch to take, which caused problems for some folks. The big question is why did MS make these scenery textures so large anyway? The answer probably has less to do with flying, really and i suspect a lot more to do with "looks." Rivets, rivets, rivets. I buy changing clouds, autogen, and sctructure textures, but scenery textures? I think I'll pass on that one.http://www.my-buddy-icon.com/Icons/objects/red_3d_plane.gifAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD

[soaring_penguin 428]

nice to see reason came back into this forum, the subject did not turn into a flamewar.In a reponse to the above, there is not really a need to change the texture size, it is enough to decrease the "global texture size" in the settings. When you do this, FSX will read only lower textures into memory. but the disadvantage is that this will decrease all textures quality, including the cockpit. hence why some people prefer to choose to decrease which file size individually.regards, Jan

[Guest Claudius]

Hi all,since im running both FS9 and FSX and use the FS series from "day one" i like to coment on this topic:right now im running FSX at medium settings, thats all my PC can handle. Look at the specs below.Overall im disapointed with FSX. The user interface is awefull, the atc hasnt changed at all (zig-zag / step-climbing) shimmering clouds in mountains, blurries, hardware need.Lets not talk about the hardware need, because on every new game you need higher and better hardware. thats ok for me.overall im sick and tired of doing all the tweaking, updating, patching and reinstalling of addons.i think the comment "if you have a killer pc, FSX will be good" says it the best.i just dont like the "feeling" of FSX. Microsoft needs to start something new from scratch, of course that will never happen.

[MD83 1]

I would be very unhappy if I purchased MS Office and it performed poorly. I shouldn't have to spend hours modifying a commercial product, just to get decent performance. Imagine buying a brand new car, having to spend hours tuning the engine, and the performance isn't all that great afterwards ...

[MD83 1]

>I think I have been on Avsim for 2 years

[LAdamson 240]

>I would be very unhappy if I purchased MS Office and it>performed poorly. I shouldn't have to spend hours modifying a>commercial product, just to get decent performance. Imagine>buying a brand new car, having to spend hours tuning the>engine, and the performance isn't all that great afterwards>...I still, have done no modifications to FSX. None whatsoever! How I still get those 20-25 fps's of smooth running photo-real scenery is beyond me!And at this time, I'm being realistic. I know that I can't load FSX with some complicated frame rate loving airport and aircraft at the same time. Afterall, I can even drag my 40-70 fps FS9 down into the teens with some addon combinations. And what would FS9 do, if it had to display all those high resolution textures too...Trouble is, I like those high res textures. And because of it, I've now purchased additional addons for FS9 to get closer to the "look" that FSX has spoiled me for.L.Adamson

[Dillon 2,197]

"I still, have done no modifications to FSX. None whatsoever! How I still get those 20-25 fps's of smooth running photo-real scenery is beyond me!"This is an easy one, you fly in the woods and stay away from urban areas like NYC.Sure FS9 can be brought to it's knees with add-ons like Simflyer's KDFW and PMDG's 737 in combination. This is just bad programming (at least on Simflyer's part). Some of Shez's work can do the same thing. Yet you have add-on scenery with more detail than Simflyer's KDFW like Cloud9's KLAX and get acceptable framerates with an add-on like PMDG's 737.The whole point with FS9 is you can achieve very good framerates with add-on scenery like FlyTampa's KSAN and Level-D's 767. Your not going to get that in FSX with out the sim looking like pre FS2k2..

[N562Z 4]

Have any of you had the chance to fly any of AeroSim's work? Their add-on heavy jets with virtual cockpits and the many amazing highly-detailed Japanese airports for FS9? These planes are a pure joy to fly. A bit simplistic, and not the most detailed VC you'll ever fly, but you can tweak the sensitivities of FS if you want for that and the performance is nothing short of spectacular. How many of us can say that about the other recently-released popular payware heavies we probably have sitting in our hangars? The trade off is the highest level of eye candy for smooth performance and a tremendously enjoyable flightsim experience, especially with the Matrox 3-screen setup. It's different for all of us, I know, what each of us find compelling about flightsim, but my point is that code-wise, programming-wise, it can be done. Why it couldn't, wouldn't be done with FSX I haven't a clue. I have an opinion (keeping it to myself), but don't we all. I never, in the 5 versions of flightsim I have owned over the years, felt the way I do this time about going from an old version to a newer one: It just won't fly unless you jump through hoops to make it work. If it had been this way with the the other versions, I would have dumped it long ago. Still, I'm willing to tweak it and see if it can find a nitch in my daily flight-sim activies.Peaceful Regards,http://www.my-buddy-icon.com/Icons/objects/red_3d_plane.gifAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD

[Dillon 2,197]

Alex you are very correct about Aerosim's efforts. It's becoming a trend for some like myself to prefer the simpler models (that are visually decent) over the more complex resource hogs. Overland's A320's are another gem in this class.L.Adamson why don't you post some of your flights on 'You Tube' so we all can see this great performance your getting with no tweaks? I'd be interested myself to see your sim do the impossible in areas so many others have trouble. For every nay sayer you could do better in 'showing' what your getting on your rig versus talking about it and posting static screenshots...

[Geofa 108]

Doesn't look like the woods to me....First 2 are Detroit and last two Chicago using mytraffic, realair 260, and fsx real weather downloads today for 1/22 4pm est. Yes big cities take the fps down from my usual 25-35 elsewhere-but I can live with the above. Add the new fsx Megascenery which takes no hit on performance and the scenery is jaw dropping.No software tweaks-I did turn my video latency up to the max in my bios and use the ngo video drivers on my 3 year old pIV 3.2 mgz, 3 gig ram, and 7600 gs nvidia card-first time I haven't run out to get a new rig to run a new version of fs.I love the moving traffic below and all the smoke coming off the buildings in Chicago-very nice! I also love all the new improvements in the Real Air 260 which are incredible. I had a payware Detroit scenery for fs9 that looked no better than above (it did have pink runways-yuck!)-but I had to remove it as I was only getting 6-9 fps on this same system in fs9 -of course the fsx version came with dtw built in. Anyway-I am having a blast-and that's what its all about.Enjoy whatever sim turns you on! Have fun!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/165667.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/165668.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/165669.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/165670.jpg

[Guest]

Ok can you post again showing the average fps - thanks. If you don't know how to display it, read this:http://jonpatch.wordpress.com/2006/10/22/n...-test-with-fsx/

[N562Z 4]

And Geof perhaps once more with the same setting, same scenery, same time of day / season / weather, except this time in the default 737NG or A320. Not everyone here flies GA as much as you do.http://www.my-buddy-icon.com/Icons/objects/red_3d_plane.gifAlex ChristoffN562ZBaltimore, MD

[LAdamson 240]

>L.Adamson why don't you post some of your flights on 'You>Tube' so we all can see this great performance your getting>with no tweaks? I'd be interested myself to see your sim do>the impossible in areas so many others have trouble. For>every nay sayer you could do better in 'showing' what your>getting on your rig versus talking about it and posting static>screenshots... Here is the deal. I'm not enough of a flight sim fanatic or computer fanatic to go to the trouble of learning to make video's, let alone posting one on You tube.Secondly, I do very little flying in the woods. The majority is around mountain terrain combined with cities. This includes areas such as Salt Lake City, the Los Angeles area, and even Honolulu Hawaii. My preference in flight simming, is higher performance GA, or a few biz jets. Airliner's tend to bore me! My favorite simulated GA airplane of all time, is the RealAir Marchetti SF260, thanks to it's excellent flight dynamics and simulated feel. I'm using it in both FS9 & FSX. I've also flown the real Marchetti, but prefer the Van's RV's, as they're even more "fighter like" in feel. And yes, a whole lot of retired airline captains, as well as current and retired military, fly RV's!Fourth --- For the many default areas that I fly in, which are areas where some special made scenery does not exist, I prefer FSX. It just has a cleaner & sharper look thanks to high resolution textures. And I do fly these areas around a smooth 25 fps. I don't need to prove that to anybody! Just to myself. If it was slow and choppy, I simply wouldn't do it! The default SLC valley, and the photo-real addon Hawaiian scenery look exceptional in FSX! As I've now picked up a few more FS9 payware aircraft, I do end up flying them around SLC in FS9, but it now looks disappointing. Even with addons such as GE Pro. I'll usually just switch back to FSX and the "new" SF260.Fifth --- As far as I'm concerned, my most incredible tooling around the local airport scenario is with FS9 and FlightScenery's Flightzone 02 Portland scenery. It's incredible! I wish all 25,000+ airports were created this way! If they were, I could easily stick with just FS9, but they aren't!So.........in the meantime, I'll just use both FSX & FS9, until something better comes along.L.Adamson