Avantime

MSFS Specific comparison between the 12900K and 5800X3D - about 10 FPS gain at 4K Ultra settings: MSFS VR Review. Big performance gain with complex scenery versus the 5800X, especially on the ground where CPU gets hit the hardest:

Availability of the 12900KS has been quite good actually, so I expect the same for the 5800X3D. Just 8 cores, no overclock on a dead-end AM4 platform will turn off a lot of high-end enthusiasts and new builds. Also note the French review has X-Plane 11 benchmarks for the 5800X3D, which to put it politely isn't very good vs. the 12900K.

See this post. Use open climb. http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/313102-vx-vy-a320.html#post3905993

I've experimented with the ENB stuff and I can confirm it does work with Spotlights & the A320. I originally thought it doesn't work because of this forum post, and I already have the latest version of Reshade (It hasn't been updated since April). The CTDs didn't come from the Reshade DLLs, but from the Mastereffect shader suite. My method is: 1) Get the latest version of Reshade (the main download button, Reshade+Framework) from http://reshade.me/ and chuck the contents of the zip file into FSX's root directory. 2) Rename Reshade32.dll to D3D9.DLL for DX9 Users, and DXGI.DLL for DX10 users. 3) Get the latest version of Mastereffect Reborn from http://reshade.me/forum/shader-presentation/161-mastereffect-reborn-official-thread 4) Copy the contents of the Mastereffect zip to the FSX root folder, replacing Reshade.fx 5) Find a good Mastereffect preset from https://sfx.thelazy.net/games/game/136/ 6) Rename the downloaded preset file to MasterEffect.h and replace the one in FSX's root folder. I haven't tested SweetFX yet, I'll do that later and report.

Just a heads up for any potential buyers of the FSLabs A320, on both FSX and P3D. The FSLabs A320 does NOT work with the current ENB mods, like SweetFX and Reshade. The A320 requires another FSLabs addon called Spotlights, and Spotlights will cause CTDs if SweetFX/Reshade is installed, as those ENB mods alter both D3D9.dll and DXGI.dll within your FSX root directory. Given how Spotlights work in the sim I have very little confidence that this problem is fixable, and this includes P3D.

I can't speak for Emirates but some airlines have non-standard configurations with regards to altitude alert. For example the IXEG 737 altitude alert does not sound if the autopilot is on, and that's confirmed by the devs as the correct (Lufthansa IIRC) configuration.

OK I pulled the trigger and brought it, and after the first flight my impressions are it's OK for $45. Some FMC functions, like PROG, FIX, HOLD, procedure turns and TOC estimates are not there, but the stuff that is in there are of decent quality. VNAV descent path feels a bit suspect, but TOD is around the right place. Weather radar is a bit wonky but they're expanding it in a later patch, along with TCAS. Feature wise it's also a bit less than IXEG. It doesn't have a load manager, aircraft manager, checklists or custom failures. And it's single FMC operation. Systems wise it fell short of IXEG or the Leonardo Maddog, but at $45 it's not bad at all. $60 would be a bit more difficult to justify. Finally if you like eye candy, the exterior model is perhaps the best I've seen in X-plane. I would say it slightly exceeds Captainsim, if you're from FSX. Edit: Just to add a little extra - The aircraft feels quite unstable when hand flown, when compared to the IXEG or any complex FSX airliners. It has that yo-yo effect which makes it difficult to trim and fly with precision.

The IXEG 737 has a separate graphical display of the autothrottle commanded TLA compared to the hardware controller TLA, it's very neat and it's something PMDG should think about including in all of their aircraft, not just the DC-6. For FSX it can be done as a semi-transparent pop-up gauge. Here's a screenshot:

The org store is having a 4th of July sale, and the Rotatesim MD-80 is now $45. Since this is the first time I've seen this go on special, I'm just wondering what's the progress on patches given the criticism from Froogle's video from a while ago. System wise how do you compare it with the IXEG 737, and the Leonardo Maddog? Also is it polished or buggy?

These days no simmer should run a 32-Bit OS. Even FS9 users should run Windows XP x64. As for sims, only X-Plane 10 is a 64-bit application. P3D likely won't be for a while, but when they do make the transition it will break most addons.

Currently XP10 is still very user unfriendly and needs a lot of work, but I think it has fantastic potential going forward - much better than P3D especially if you like to fly heavy metal. I suggest everyone who's interested to have a look at the X-Plane presentation video at the recent Flightsimcon event. IMO They're moving in the correct direction in terms of development and XP11 will be spectacular, and I'm glad that the likes of PMDG are on board. Advantages: - Native 64-bit. No more VAS issues. If P3D (inevitably) goes 64-bit it will break most existing addons. - Very GPU dependent. This is fantastic as graphics card performance increases by around 30% with each new generation. Imagine every year or two you get a significant boost in performance. - Continuously updated - and new features and content are added for free. XP 10.50 will be a significant upgrade - Complex aircraft like the PMDG and IXEG flies surprisingly well, XP10 is a very good platform for complex aircraft. - Tons of freeware addon scenery, and high quality freeware scenery is easy to create with WED and common scenery libraries. - Night lighting is miles ahead of FSX and P3D. Street lights look great from the air, and airport lighting (and aircraft/vehicle lighting) reflects off the surface of the aircraft. - Clouds can look quite nice, but like FSX/P3D it needs addons like SkyMaxx to bring out its full potential. REX could work some magic there. - You can buy XP10 off Steam. You can't with P3D. Steam is the dominant marketplace for PC gaming. Disadvantages: - Currently the menus and UI are horrid, for an FSX user it takes about 2-3 weeks to get the hang of it and find out which essential addons (XPUIPC, Python, FlywithLUA etc) you need. Once you do it's no different from FSX/P3D, apart from a few inconveniences. XP11 will greatly improve the UI experience. XP 10.50 will include scroll wheel support for turning knobs. - Real world weather is not exactly usable out of the box. NOAA plugin is a bit meh, but FSGRW works for XP10. I would like REX/HiFi to have a look at XP10. - Landclass variety is worse, but with HD Mesh V3 + OpenStreetMap data it really shines. - No landmarks out of the box. - Graphics look incredibly dull with very poor shaders. You need RealTerraHaze and a good preset to make it work, and even that is worse than FSX/P3D. XP10 needs a good ENB mod and iCEnhancer-style shader mods. - VRAM is the primary limiting factor, but the current Nvidia 10XX series have 8GBs of VRAM, which is more than enough. Future cards may have 16GBs of VRAM. - Water textures and blending are very poor. The 10 year old FSX manages to look better than XP10. - Some of the more basic aircraft flies a bit odd, due to how XP10 calculates flight dynamics. - Default ATC is broken. Don't use it. - AI traffic is also broken, but JARDesign's X-Life seems to be turning into the Ultimate Traffic of XP10. IIRC XP 10.50 will include some sort of smart AI aircraft simulation. - Addons are pricier compared to FSX/P3D. You pay more and you get less. - Time Compression is not as useful, as it can be as slow as 1.5x. 3x is about the maximum. I wouldn't recommend increasing Groundspeed instead as time-based calculations go out the window. I can definitely imagine how XP10/XP11 can become the successor to FSX, rather than P3D. This is especially true for flying airliners into crowded airports where framerates, VAS and VRAM become important issues. A 30% increase in graphics performance with every hardware generation is incredibly important.

FlyinsideFSX runs like a sandbox window for FSX. You start FlyinsideFSX and it seems to load FSX inside of itself, and this messes up DRM in areas like Hardware ID etc. This seems like the only way all non-native VR 'mods' work.

That's good news!

Many thanks Cameron for the information, I've recently migrated to XP10 and I love how the sim is so much more GPU bound compared to FSX/P3D, since graphics cards improve substantially in performance with every generation. I'm hitting the VRAM boundary with my 4GB 980 so an upgrade to a 8GB 1080 would be great, but I'm waiting for prices to stabilize first. One of the great things with the 1080 is support for VR. I have a Rift CV1 and I hope the X-Plane team will someday include native support for VR (Someone asked about VR during the FlightsimCon presentation, but the video got cut off). I understand that FlyinsideFSX will release an XP10 VR addon, but I've tried it with FSX and it didn't work out - FlyinsideFSX interferes with the DRM on practically all my payware addons and I think it will happen again with XP10, with stuff like Gizmo and SASL etc.

I just got an Oculus Rift CV1 today and to be honest, asynchronous timewarp does kinda work in VR - but not on the mirror image on the monitor. With FlyinsideFSX I get relatively good fps, not 90fps but more like 40fps. I can peek through the Rift's nose gap and see the monitor, and the mirror image on the monitor gets like 1 fps. This makes me think it's only for VR, because if it had worked in a normal monitor-driven game we would've already seen developers adopting this technology in shooters and other PC games. Positional tracking is a bit weird making it near impossible to poke around, although I think it's a software issue. As for VR in FSX, it's completely unworkable if you fly complex payware aircraft. FlyinsideFSX acts like an FSX loader like that Shade payware addon, and it will break the DRM in virtually all payware aircraft, as well as stuff like couatl in FSDT/Flightbeam scenery. Getting those addons to work is simply impossible. Secondly the pixel density of the CV1 (search Google images to see what it looks like) is still not good enough to read a lot of the smaller texts in FMC/MFD/small gauges, making the aircraft inoperable - that is if you can get the aircraft to load correctly in the first place. Thirdly the Rift shuts down when you take it off in order to conserve energy, sometimes causing FlyinsideFSX to glitch or FSX to CTD. This means you couldn't take the headset off. The only way I can see VR being good is if you use a fresh copy of of FSX/P3D, fly simple GA aircraft, and fly short flights. IIRC that's how Froogle demonstrated it. For me VR is not fit for purpose for the type of flying I do, with PMDG and other complex airliners.