Fall_guy

Hi Everyone,Been reading up on computer jargon for weeks now so I can go ahead and build a better performing PC for FSX. (I'm a flyer not a geek :He He: ) So from what I have managed to figure out this is what Ive come-up with. Therefore I could do with your advice/guidance on compatability issues before I go ahead and order the items. The rig is purely to run FSX. Case: Lian Li PC-B25FWDProcessor: i7 2600k (1155) Sandybridge (would like to overclock to something around the 4.2G mark)Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 WattMotherboard: ASUS Sabertooth P67 (1155)Heat Sink: Antec 920 HeatsinkMemory: 2x4Gb: Corsair VengenceSDD Drive: 240Gb (Purely for Windows 7 - 64 Bit)SDD: 240Gb (Purely for FSX) + 3rd party additionsGraphic Card: Nvidia GTX590The one thing I'm not to sure about is the Memory (Ram) if anyone could advice on mhz/speed etc Id very much appreciate it. Also I'd prefer to increase this form 4gb to 8 or possible 16 (if you think it will be to any advantage)Thanks Guys for help and adviceRegardsJohnp.s Id just like to say a big thanks to ALL who have posted here, without these forums I would'nt have been able to learn what I have over the last couple of weeks.

It is unlikely to be better for FSX than the current i975x which runs at the same clockspeed. The i980x does have a 50% larger L3 cache which could make it slightly faster, but I doubt it as once you get to about 6-8MB L3 on a modern processor you really don't need more unless you're running a ton of threads. If you're itching to build now, go ahead. Know that NV's next high-end graphics card and Intel's next high-end CPU are just around the corner though...

Hi Guys,Ok ................................ but will this 980x 6 core/12 thread beast be any good for FSX ?Will it be worth waiting for or should I go ahead and build a Rig Now ?Hi Stephen I took a peek at that Lancool case it looks pretty good for the Money.RegardsJohn

Hi GuysHaving read many post regarding FSX, I now have a better understanding of whats required. I'll now have to look at the sums and see what I can afford, bye the way BOTH cases look very nice ............ although a little pricey. I just need a little advice/guidance on a couple of things.A) When they refer to setting up FSX on a dedicated HD (300gb for example) do they mean just FSX, ..................or FSX + ALL the Addons: (Aircraft, Photo Scenery, Airports, RC4 UT2 etc) ?:( Idealy I like to be able to fly FSX using Generation X Photo scenery, LVD 767/PMDG, RC4, UT2 and be able to Fly into Heathrow. To have half of chance of this, would I be better spending the money on: 1) a faster/bigger Graphic Card or 2) a faster processor?C) Would I be better of waiting a month or two till i8 is in the market place ?Many Thanks in AdvanceRegards Johnp.s. I guess when I wrote the last reply I forgot to post/send it...................................................... Doh!

Hi GuysI Posted a Reply Today, but it seems to have vanished!Reagrds John

Thanks Guys, Alain, TechguyI guess its back to the drawing board,.......... Ill probably have a go at building a NEW rig from scratch so Ill have to do alot of research in these Forums and see what hardware others have chosen.As Ive never built my own PC before is there any advice you can give regarding chosing a TOWER chassis. (any sites you can recommend or things the Tower must have onboard, for either compatability or future expansion)Many thanks for your Invaluable Help and taking the time to read and answer our posts.RegardsJohn.P.S. Happy New Year

Hi Guys,Im currently using a Dell XPS 710 (2.66ghz, Duo Core, 850 watt power supply) ................................ and now I'm thinking of Upgrading to run FSX.Will it be possible for me to KEEP my XPS 710 Tower and change my Motherboard to a (ASUS Rampage II Extreme) and my CPU to a (Intel CPU Core i7 975 3.33GHz). I know I'll have to change my Ram and possibly my Graphic card (currently a Nvidia 8800 GTX 750mb) but I was wondering if I could keep all my Drives: (SATA, DVD, CD) etc, my Tower, Power supply etc ................ and Build a NEW rig using my exsisting TOWER.Looking at the overall COST it just appears to be quite alot cheaper rebuilding my existing rig as opposed to upgrading to a pre-built NEW rig.Thanks for HELP and guidance any info much appreciated.John

RC4 does not assign active runways to AI nor control them in that sense. The only control of AI is to freeze them when you are landing about three miles from touchdown to prevent ground AI runway encroachment. It can enroute divert AI from your path as well. RC4 reads AI action (if present) in assigning the active runway for your aircraft,It takes a while for FS weather to stabilize after loading a scenario. Since AI starts before weather writes are completed you can have "left over" AI departures and arrivals that don't respond correctly to winds after a couple of minutes. If you have an an add-on weather program that has a refresh AI function, use that a minute or so after after weather writes are complete. If you have a fully registered FSUIPC3 for FS9 there is a refresh AI (toggle AI) function but I'm not sure if FSUIPC4 for FSX allows that. If not, advance the time in FS about two minutes to refresh AI so they follow the then established weather.I can't answer for UT2 regarding any possible departure/arrival AI control since I do not have it nor FSX.

I was departing KCLT, number 4 in line and it looked like a jousting match with AI taking off from both ends of the same runway... any one else seen this?

John; If you build a new PC, you're going to want to have a 64-bit OS. So let me suggest this...first try upgrading to a 64-bit OS on your current PC. Assuming your 8800GTX has 768 MB of VRAM on it, moving to a 64-bit OS will have the same effect as putting close to another GB of RAM in your PC, because the hardware address mapping scheme in all versions of 32-bit Windows results in reserving nearly a gig of the 4GB of available RAM address space for your video card, making that amount of your 4GB of RAM unusable by the system. As your system is configured now, around a fourth of your RAM sits useless, eating up power but blocked from access by any program. If you can backup your current hard drive, or remove it and attach another clean drive, you can get a free copy of 64-bit Windows 7 RC1, build FS on that platform, and test to see how much difference a 64-bit OS makes. At the very least, you will have slain the dreaded OOM monster for good. RegardsBob ScottColonel, USAF (ret)ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-VColorado Springs, CO

Hi John,Look at my boxes below. My FSX rig always gets the newest parts and then I take the second generation parts and upgrade my FSX Client rig or another family member's PC. My FSX Server rig does one job and one job only, FSX and games. My FSX client rig is my genral-use PC for everything from burning CD's and DVD's to personal financing, e-mail, etc... You can easily run HiFi's ASA/ASX/AS on the client and connect over the simconnect-client software that is included on the FSX Deluxe DVD. This simconnect pipe is new with FSX. Previous versions of FS used Pete Dowson's network utility called WideFS/WideClient which is installed with his FSUIPC utility but activated through a seperatly purchased key. All the other utilities on my FSX client, such Radar Contact, FS Flight Keeper, TopCat, and FS Commander require this older WideFS connection. So I run both Simconnect and WideFS on my FSX client box to accomidate both old and new FS utilities.My point is, yes, it's very easy to network utilities on remote boxes to offload the CPU cycles from the FSX rig. You can't offload scenery or AI for example to a remote box however. You can use a second instance of FSX on multiple PCs and connect them together using a network program called WideView to run multi-screen elaborate home-cockpits, but each FS instance requires the exact same load of software and multiple licenses of each add-on.So, put your money in the game PC, then use your next-best parts for a Simconnect/WideFS client to help even more.Hope this helps...

I have Active Sky Advanced and run it on a laptop networked with my FSX desktop. Instructions are included with ASA. However, I don't find that ASA causes a big hit to FSX performance and suspect that settings within Active Sky may have more impact such as reducing the maximum number of cloud layers, etc.

People have spent a lot of money trying to get FS to run. I suppose if you go to a high end i7 and a monster GPU, you could start to get what you want. Too rich for my blood in this life time. I've never done it, but you can network computers (with a router) and share the load. Hopefuly someone will come along to tell you how it works.Bob

Hi Everyone, Im currently using a Dell XPS 710 (CoreTM2 CPU 6700 @ 2.66ghz, 4GB Ram, Nvidia 8800GTX) running Vista 32bit and FSXI use LVD767 or PMDG747, Ultimate Traffic 2, RC4, Graphics X, TrackIR, AES2, and FSX Ultimate Sounds as well as ALL the payware airport scenery EGLL, EGKK, EDFF, KJFK, KORD etc.Everything runs fine for me and Im very happy with my set-up.......................................However as soon as I run Active Sky or Generation X things start to slowdown abit with the occational cough and stutter.So is it possible that I could purchase a lower spec PC, install Active Sky and Generation X (Or any of the above for that matter) and link this upto FSX somehow and run it alongside my XPS.orif this can't be done Would it be better to buy a NEW High spec PC, and if so do you think it would run ALL the above.I hope you can understand what I'm getting at, as I'm not the most knowledgeable PC person in the world. :( thanks in advance for any guidance or suggestionsJohn

only the 1 and 2 keys? kind of odd, don't you think. i could understand if no keys worked. but just those two. sounds like something else is intercepting them.if you right mouse click any .exe, any shortcut on your machine, you can assign a shortcut key to it. so if i used notepad a lot, i could assign ctrl-alt-1 to it. then whenever i wanted to start notepad, no matter where i was, i might be in the middle of typing a response into a forum in IE (:-)), i can hit ctrl-alt-1 and notepad will launchwhat other add ons do you have?try reassigning them to ctrl-alt-1 and ctrl-alt-2. does that work?make a log, i'll take a look at a couple of other things.jd

Thanks for your prompt reply jd. I discovered the solution to the problem about 15 minutes ago but could not find a "DELETE" option on my previous post. I had seen that a lot of people had problems with the first three keys 1, 2, 3... But when I discovered that every other key worked except for 1, and 2 i realized (and felt a like a total moron) that I have special windows hot keys to pre assigned to them. And this whole time I was going through other add-ons and it was windows itself grabbing my key strokes.Thanks again four your response and sorry for wasting your time!! ))) Good product by the way :)

check for updates was removed, since it never worked right.number groupings depend on whether you are within faa jurisdiction, or outside. each does it a little different.jd

Hi Guys,Newbie question. ..............When entering my Aircrafts ID (American 11 52) ............ RC4 still announces the aircraft as ' American one,one,five,two' even though Ive inserted a SPACE between 11 and 52.I was expecting the Call to be : American 'Eleven, FiftyTwo'Am I doing something Wrong or have I miss interpreted the PDF manual.Finally I can't seem to find the check for update button on the RC4 initial window (before starting FSX or whilst FSX is running FSX)Many thanks for your Help and guidanceregardsJohnrunning: Vista32, FSX, RC4, TrafficX, LevelD

Hi Guys,I asked this question a while back and got no responce. My local airport is set in a rather wet area of the country so the lights are ON most of the time due to low visability.Its such a shame FSX can't simulate this.Kind Regards

Hi Everyone,Well Ive had NO problems up to now, I simple assigned the: Button A) - ATC windowButton :( - ATC Menu No1. in listButton C) - ATC Menu No2. in listThese were asigned via the SST software which came with the Yolk (very simple to use)So now when Im flying I can Open/Close the ATC window with a click of a button and Select No1. and No2. in the ATC menu list. This is so, much better now especially when Flying as I can repeat ATC instructions with the click of a button.Many Thanks for All your Input and HelpKind regardsJohnp.s. bye the way the Yolk in question is Saitek

Me to Jim,I think if you try to Assign via FSX settings its not possible, but from what John is saying it may well be possible via the Yolks/Joystick software. Ill see if I can assign it through my Yolks software.Many ThanksJohn

Hi Jim,Ive just got back in and replied to your post, just as you posted again.Ill check out the controls/button assignments and report backRegards John

Thanks guys,Thats a shame..........I was kinda hopin it may have been possible.Thanks for the responce though......appreciate it.Regards John

Hi GuysWhen viewed in the ATC window, ATC gives an instruction (ie turn right HDG230) and you then choose from several options usually:1) turn right HDG2302) Say againMy question is this..........is there anyway to programme/set a button on the Yolk/Joystick which will select no.1, so that you can respond to the ATC instruction by just pressing a button.Obviously I would only require this for No1 as this is the selection which basically repeats ATC's instruction.Hope you can understand what I mean.....Any Info or ideas will be much appreciactedMany thanks John

Hi Jim,Initially I had it set at 3 miles (No lights though) so I then tried 2 miles Visability (but still no lights).I'll drop to 1 mile and have a play around and see if I can get them to come on.Ill let you know how I get on.Thanks for the reply JimJohn

Hi there,Does anbody happen to know if you can activate Taxiway/Runway lighting during the daytime.I've recently changed weather conditions to heavy rain, low clouds and overcast along with low visability, but although the scene looks very realistic theres no sign of any Taxiway/Runway lighting.Should'nt there be ........under such low visability conditions?Any ideas or guidanceMany thanks in advanceJohn