HyperionXL

High end CPU is good. Low end GPU is no good. Go for an Nvidia. AMD suck for FSX. Nvidia 970 is what you want to look at.

500 watts is plenty for an R9 270X.

Any USB powered external harddrive will work for your PC. Western Digital and Seagate are two trusted HD manufacturers to look at. http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Portable-External-STBX1000101/dp/B008R7FC74/ref=sr_du_3_map?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1383410985&sr=1-3 This should work fine

Love AirHauler! Looking forward to AH2 so I can finally get rid of FSPax. Do you plan on any sort of in-flight breakdowns or emergencies? Loved that part of FSPax and its one of the only reasons I keep it today. Nothing like your landing gear failing to lower on your way to approach to wake you up!

FSX won't even load past the rebuilding scenery libraries for me. No crash report, no error logs. It just stops loading with 0 errors with this fix installed.

There is a fix in the avsim files. Search for lights or runway lights.

Well he owns the domain for 7 more years according to who.is, so he still has control of the domain. Best guess is that its just a hosting error.

Haha that's my excuse, too. Def. get the Orbx stuff. It's fantastic and covers a such a large area that you won't run out of places to discover. You might also like Air Hauler and FSPassengers as they add some sense of having a goal and progression to get through. Air Hauler especially. Used the Mooney myself as a starter plane until I could afford the Duke.

Anyone tried this out yet? I'm more or less interested in the planes included and their models, as they were developed by A2A. If they're any good, it'd probably be worth the $50 to get the 3 trainer craft you get. Any opinions on the overall gameplay as well? Been out for a while but haven't read anything on Avsim about it.

The 680 would be faster most likely, but probably not by much. Not sure if it implements the use of SLi or going without it would be better. Going to do a couple flights. Not going to test it, but I use the 690 for other games where it really shines. Not going to run FSXMark11 because it would take days just to set it up. It has provided no significant boost over my previous 580 except one more bump in AA which is hardly noticeable anyways, really.

Eww... Windows Media Player for audio is awful. Poorly written, slow and very heavy in resource use. Up there with iTunes, which can't even play .FLAC files - fail. Use Winamp, or even better Foobar2000 - an extremely light program written specifically for audio.

It's a hobby, and some people like myself like to get invested in their hobby. In comparison to other hobbies many people enjoy, like fixing up old cars and hotrodding, real aviation, etc - dropping a couple thousand a year on FSX isn't that much when you compare them. On top of that, this top of the line hardware allows me to play any other game at its highest fidelity with no problems. So if you really love FSX and want the best out of it, you invest to get the best that you can get. It's all very relative on what you can afford in the end. Thankfully, because I work from my PC, write websites, create videos, and advertise, all my FSX gear is a tax write off. Whoop whoop! lol.

probably a 690 issue then as beta and whql drivers don't keep the clock maxed.

Bahg. I wrote a long reply but for some reason it has disappeared. What this hack does is allow you to lock in your overclock. Meaning it won't use boost and it won't downclock. It stay consistent at what you tell it to. With the beta drivers, I was watching my clocks bounce up and down all over the place while flying, and I could tell when it needed to initiate boost for that extra bit of autogen or clouds popping in is when I would notice stutters and lag. While the call to grab that extra boost from the GPU is only fractions of a second, it translates to stuttering or lag on my end - whatever you want to call it. With my overclock locked with this hack, I have noticed much smoother flights, more consistent FPS, less crashing, and I've been able to bump my AA up a notch with what looks like 0 negative impact so far. Maybe its just a placebo effect, but from my testing I think it is actually working. I've also tested on maxed settings on BF3 and Grand Theft Auto 4 and the effect is much more significant there. No boost lagging, as I'll call it, and extremely smooth gameplay on 64 person matches in BF3.

Sounds nice. I'll just have to figure out how to get it all to Thailand without getting raped by import taxes and shipping probably doubling the cost of it all.

looks good enough. Look for a 1080p resolution (1920 x 1080), low response time to avoid ghosting (2ms is good) and a high black level and you're all good. I love samsungs, but I use 16:10 ratio monitors. Those 120 extra verticle pixels really kill my fps I think, so shoot for 16:9.

Saitek Pro Flight Combar Rudder Pedals. I use the g940 pedals which are nice, heavy, well built and fit nicely on my feet, but looking to get one of these (saitek combat pedals) along with a Warthog HOTAS to replace my g940 setup. The saitek combat pedals look even nicer and every review I read, everyone loves them. I've never user a yoke so I can't help you there, but looks like others have told you enough already.

I use OCZs. They've all lasted me for a couple years and just keep getting faster. My intel SSD died after only a few months of use. Also had a G-skill SSD but I sold it cuz I needed the money. I'm not going to vote because performance is all pretty much very similar once you get in the same price ranges. My FSX has less blurries off an SSD which I found funny, but maybe it was just my setup. Have it on a raptor drive now.

It was really p**sing me off when I put FSX into windowed mode and was tracking what my GPUs were doing while flying through crazy weather and cities. I found half the time it would fall back to its underpowered idle'd clock speeds. Sometimes it would boost up to half of what I set my overclock to. Now, Nvidia cards do this to keep temps low and reduce power consumption while not under stress. Well, FSX should be putting stress on our video cards, but I guess either, its not enough for the drivers to care or its just not functioning properly. I needed a fix. I found this: http://www.overclock.net/t/1267918/guide-nvidia-inspector-gtx670-680-disable-boost-fixed-clock-speed-undervolting What this allows me to do is set my overclock and set it permanently with no drop in clock or power consumption or boosts or any of that other funny stuff your GPU is doing. Summary: It keeps your clock stable at the settings you want it at. Since doing this mod, I've noticed more consistent frame rates on FSX and less stuttering. Is it a game changer? I doubt it, but it does seem to stop that boosting and step-downs which I think were a major issue behind the reasons for my microstutters and hiccups that would come along every so often. If you can figure out the instructions, give it a shot. Since I am using a 690 there were 690 .bat settings on the page made by someone else that I used and work wonderfully. Each GPU is different so each of your settings and .bats (if that is the way you're going to run it) will be different. I'll try to write a tutorial later when I understand more, but if someone else wants to come in and write it, be my guest. I'd like to do a more in-depth post on it at simterminal.com. Cheers and enjoy! Overclock and use this information at your own caution. I'm not responsible for those that don't understand it and blow their GPU up!

Temps have nothing to do with the overclock you put on them. It's the volts that heat everything up. So if you get a great chip that overclocks with a low voltage you'll be fine on temps, but that'd be more like a 1:10/20 shot. Some people say if you de-lid the CPU and reapply some nice thermal paste you can lower temps on the Ivy Bridge chips, its real hit or miss, though. Your best option is watercooling, or an H100 with a quad fan push-pull setup on the radiator (I'm cooling my radiator with 4 corsair high performance high CFM fans). Also not sure if a 5ghz clock on a S bridge vs. a 5ghz on an i bridge will show a major difference. If someone can send me proof I'd like to see that, as it would persuade me to buy one as well. If it isn't giving you better performance, than a 2xxxk cpu would do fine with more supported mobos and options for you to choose from. RAM, not super important, atleast not as much as people think it is. 6 - 8gb of any high performance ram over 1600ghz really won't make a difference in fps. Maybe in stutters though. Hard to say. Some people say you would be better going off with the 580. I went from the 580 to the 690 and found no real difference in FPS. I think I should be able to bump up. A GTX680 4GB FTW edition might be your best option because of the additional v ram. The 680 only has 2gb. The 580 has 3gb.

The wing cam looks excellent! Can't wait to try it out!

I'm pretty sure it covers most of Oceania up to Malaysia and Indonesia. (Why they couldn't just extend the textures out to Vietnam, Thailand and Laos is beyond me). Travelling through them all in person, the landscaping is all very similar.

If you want to save money, buy used parts except for the CPU. Make sure the parts all still have valid warranties. That should save you 20 - 50% on each part and if something breaks you'll still be okay. Memory doesn't increase performance, at least not significantly. I've gone from 1600 ghz to 2133 ghz and have seen litle to no difference in fsx. Go with 1600 ghz timings and you'll be good. Your CPU overclock will make a difference, the best chips for overclocks are the 2500k/2600k due to their ability to handle a larger heatload compared to the 3xxx chips. I've got my 2600k stable at 1.5v, 5 ghz. Some people would say thats high, but intel says its within their limits and its been run like this for nearly a year now. The 2500k can get similar results. Used 480s are going for cheap. See if you can find one if you can't find a used 570/560 for cheap. Make sure its an nvidia gpu. ATIs crawl/lag when it sees clouds. My ati GPU couldn't handle flying through stormy weather in a desert with 0 autogen and half cloud density sliders. It also couldn't manage vsync. Don't go cheap on a PSU. If your PSU falls apart or is rated too low, it won't be able to fuel a stable overclock. Manage your sliders, set traffic low, and you'll be fine with a lower spec'd PC. You don't need the best PC in the world if you are okay with lowered settings and lower resolutions. Don't let the nay-sayers discourage you.

You're right. I was thinking of FSScene. But it looks like junk. I use WWW for places GEX isn't around for, which is mostly parts of Asia. They do have parts of SE Asia covered now... but still not Thailand where I live now. Arg. They just touch the border with their latest release.

No. They are all for specific areas which you can see on their coverage map. There is FSGlobal and WWW that covers the whole world, but they aren't very good from what I've seen.