Tom Wright

I have to wholeheartedly disagree with you there. This is one of my all time favourite add ons. I don't think the VC looks that dated. True, not all the instruments and gauges have 3D needles and reflective glass, but to be honest while they look fantastic, aircraft with those slow my system to a crawl. The texturing is still pretty good in my opinion. I think it more than makes up for it in systems immersion and flight modelling, I used to watch the ITVV Concorde DVD whilst flying this add on and it is absolutely spot on in that department.

Another vote for PFPX here. Not had it that long but once you get to grips with it it makes flight planning really easy. Grab it along with TOPCAT and it takes care of all your performance calculations too, fuel to load, correct speeds, correct engine derate parameters, everything in one. Obviously for this to be 100% accurate you need a weather program as well like ASN.

Without doubt, UK2000 for both of those airports.

You can purchase the DX10 Fixer from Steve's website: https://stevesfsxanalysis.wordpress.com/how-to-purchase/

Hi Justin, I am running Windows 10 64 bit, and am quite happy with it. I don't see any reason not to upgrade to the latest OS, especially since from Windows 7 it is a free upgrade. To my knowledge FSX-SE is fully compatible, and I am even running FSX-MS the original version on it and that is perfectly fine too. Sorry, no the DX10 Fixer is not included with FSX-SE. It is a separate product, however I highly recommend it. It will fix all the issues which are apparent in the DX10 Preview mode built into FSX, and give you cockpit shadows which look in my eyes as good as P3D.

Biggest difference (in my opinion) is price! Both platforms are stable. FSX-SE has had a recompile and several bug fixes from the original version. Many have reported better performance and better memory management as well. However ultimately it is the same product as FSX-MS. Other than bug fixes, no new features are going to be added. Most add ons for original FSX work, and most developers provide a dual installer at no additional cost to get older add ons working - almost all new add ons come with dual installers anyway. P3D on the other hand is evolving all the time; it already has built in HDR lighting, utilizes DX11, has better multi-core and multi-GPU support and better memory management to name just a few big new features. It is working its way to becoming a 64 bit product, however it isn't yet. Again, most FSX add ons work, however a few developers provide P3D versions of add ons as a separate product, meaning you have to purchase again. Other developers provide dual installers, like with the Steam edition of FSX. As to which P3D license, both give you access to the same product and features, however the Academic license includes a watermark in the top right hand corner of the screen which is always visible. Have a read of the licensing page on the P3D website to decide which version you qualify for. Personally, I would go with FSX-SE. It's cheaper (significantly), and at the moment particularly with the DX10 fixer installed and DX10 mode enabled, I don't see any draw for me to spend loads of money and switch to P3D. Maybe when we know more about Dovetail's new Flight Simulator later in the year (or next, who knows!) then I might try and decide which route to take. For now, FSX does all I want a flight sim to do, and I have too much money and time invested in it to start again with a new sim. Until such time as a major add on comes out which is for P3D only, which so far to my knowledge there aren't any, then I don't see a need to switch.

It depends on the length of the runway, and other variables like speed, landing weight etc. I think TOPCAT/PFPX calculates and gives you an autobrake setting if I remember rightly. I usually use 2, or 3 if the runway is short and/or I'm particularly heavy.

In both those videos they're using some kind of HDR filter like ENB or SweetFX. It will make the colours look significantly different, sometimes darker or more 'glowy' for want of a better word, depending on the filter settings. Also look into Shade. I know ENB isn't compatible with DX10 though. Not sure about SweetFX. Shade is fine. You could also switch on Bloom. In DX10, this doesn't come at anywhere near the performance penalty as with DX9. You also need to add ForceVCShadowMap=1 into the Display section of your cfg file, this will enable the DX10 cockpit shadows which are enhanced by the Fixer. You can also turn on Aircraft self shadow. The manually specified Pool size you've set in the Bufferpools section can be removed as this is cancelled out by the usepools=0. In terms of scenery I'd consider either some Orbx regions or some good photo scenery if you want it to look really accurate. Global is great for what it does but at the end of the day it's just a texture enhancement really, it's still not going to give you 100% accurate scenery, and it would be unfair to expect that from a product that gives worldwide coverage.

You could get a debit card? I dont think theres any age registriction on posessing a debit card, unlike a credit card. I got my first debit card with my bank account when I was 16. Whilst not the same as a credit card, that still allowed me to purchase things online, and use it to set up a PayPal. Even with Steam I think you need a payment card registered anyway? You can also buy PMDG products in boxed format.

One thing I had to do (many thanks to the poster on here who gave the advise) when installing from box is pull out your ethernet cable or disconnect from the WiFi before starting the install, otherwise it will fail as it will try to connect to the old servers to download some files rather than get them off the disc.

Are you using DX10 mode with the Fixer or DX9? DX10 is supposed to be slightly better in terms of VAS usage.

I'd like to know this too as I'm thinking of getting PFPX. At the moment I've been using Flightaware to get real routes to fly, but this only provides US routes, which isn't much good as most of my flying is within Europe! Does PFPX actually generate routes for you (ie you give it the origin and destination and it gives you a route and all the airways and intersections)? Or is it just a planner that you still need to give it this information?

I have a ton of add on airports, and I've never had an OOM. I don't monitor VAS, I think if I started doing that I would be so paranoid I wouldn't get any enjoyment out of flying, I'm bad enough with frame rates! From the reading I have done on the subject, a common denominator for those with VAS problems seems to be those using FTX Vector. That isn't to dissuade anybody from using the product, however certain settings in Vector seem to use quite a lot of VAS. That said, unless you're frequently suffering OOMs don't get paranoid watching the VAS numbers, just fly and enjoy!

You can image, it's something we do all the time where I work. It shouldn't cause too many problems. Do not just copy and paste directories though, this will not work. The best thing to do is to reinstall from scratch though I'm afraid.

FSX is a much more powerful sim than FS9. Heathrow is probably the most demanding airport in FSX and London is one of the most demanding areas. Your fps there I would expect would be the lowest you're ever going to see them. Reduce your autogen to sparse, reduce water to Low 1x, turn cars and boats off and turn off Bloom and Shadows. These are the biggest fps killers. See what fps you get and then start moving the autogen up, then the water but personally I don't set it higher than Low 2x anyway.

How do people find performance at Heathrow V3? The attention to detail is fab but it took a lot of tuning in my setup to get it to play nice with my complex aircraft and ASN weather!

I asked this very same question a few weeks back, and then went ahead and bought it. Haven't looked back since. It's probably one of the best FS add ons I've ever purchased. REX is fantastic for textures, but ASN blows it out of the water for weather depiction. Gone are the unrealistic high altitude wind shifts, gone are the unrealistic visibility layers - ever had that where as soon as you climb through a certain altitude the visibility all of a sudden clears and you can see as far as the horizon?! ASN very accurately simulates full IMC conditions. It is THE weather product to own for FSX/P3D, period!

You shouldn't need the HIGHMEMFIX=1 entry if using FSX Steam Edition. My understanding is that Dovetail have now encorporated this fix when they recompiled it. The fix is only for FSX SP2/Acceleration.

I do have admiration and respect for X-Plane. It's a very good sim in its own right. For me, I've found it actually requires an even more powerful PC than FSX, particularly in the graphics card. My GTX560Ti with its measly 1GB VRAM just doesn't cut it. Maybe I would use it more if I could get better performance out of it. My observation is, while it is smoother (generally) than FSX, it is significantly worse when the fps get low. 20fps for me in FSX is still reasonably smooth. In X-Plane it's almost unusable. I have mixed feelings about the flight model too. All aircraft I have tried, default, freeware and payware, have all felt too light to me. I have flown light aircraft for real, and never come across anything so twitchy as I've found in X-Plane, it feels to me like they're made from paper! FSX took a whole new level of realism when I added ActiveSky Next. The turbulence effects on the flight model induced by that, feel pretty spot on. I haven't seen anything like this in X-Plane.

Uninstalling and then reinstall it all on the new drive. Probably not what you want to hear I'm afraid but it's the safest and most reliable way, and you'll benefit from a fresh installation.

17-20 in the NGX VC at an addon airport sounds about right to me! Only way to increase that is to reduce the level of detail somewhere, either by using lower resolution textures or lower the scenery complexity.

My understanding is that Global is not considered a replacement for UTX. They do different things. Global replaces Textures. UTX upgrades Vector data, like roads, rivers, coastlines and railway lines etc. Therefore the FTX equivalent to UTX would be Vector. UTX and Global would compliment each other, you wouldn't need to get rid of it altogether.

Hmm, it is strange. I have had this happen a few times and there is usually a reason for it. Has Windows Update run and installed any updates recently? Has your graphics driver been updated?

I had this, but found if you increase the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT value it can improve things. I did have it set to 400 with no ill effects, and this restored almost instant load times. I now have it set to 120, textures are sometimes a little laggy on view changes buy only by a second or two. Default I believe is 40. This must be combined with an internally locked frame rate or it will be ignored.

Is it possible Windows was running background tasks, as you say it had been on all day? Too late now to be sure but I'd be interested to check the Task Manager for other processes running if this happens again?