miggs

Jim, what about the option of having a friend download the x64 and then you do a clean install? I cannot for the life of me see why this is being made so awkward! At the end of the day, you just need to download or load up a damn pirate copy of Win 7 even if it doesn't work properly - just to convince Win 8 of the 64 bit architecture - I did a fresh install on my machine, admittedly it was win 7 x 64 in the first place but I used the upgrade and burned a fresh DVD and did a complete wipe - partitions the lot were cleared out. I agree about Paul Thurrotts site, there is so much "rumour" and junk going around, it is good to have a decent source. Another I have found over the years to be reliable - Mark Russinovich

I have to say I prefer the FSX!

I have been posting in another thread regarding the benefits or whatever after upgrading (fresh install) to Win 8 Pro - Now I wonder if anyone can give me some advice as to how I need to set up my scenery and add ons. My main sceneries are within the UK, but I do have some Aerosoft stuff that is mainly Germany and France. The rest outside of Europe doesn't really matter at the moment. I have installed the UK Mesh Dreamscapes Pro, and then have installed UTX Europe and GEX Europe v2.0 I know that there is a bit of a debate as to whether you need the the two or not, so if not let me know and I will get rid of the one that I don't need (road/rail VFR placement is more important to me than moving cars and disappearing people at airports) Next I use UK2000 Scenery - I have the UK Airfields series - the 3 sets of DVD's, but haven't installed them yet as I prefer the UK2000 Individual airports - Which look so much better. So now I have installed my favourite UK2000 Airports, I now have Horizon Photo Scenery volumes 1-3 that cover the UK in photo real textures that I want to install - I understand that these will take priority over any other scenery. Now the questions: 1: With the Horizon product do I still need the mesh? 2: Is it pointless to install the UK2000 DVD's for the UK scenery if Horizon is installed - as Horizon photo should if I understand it - overide? 3:Is it still worth keeping UTX and GEX installed as I do use them for Europe but probably again have been overidden by Horizon. 4: Water Effects - I get some rather strange results using the water effects in FSX (Mid 2x etc.) when using Horizon - I get loads of light blue tiles appearing on the coast and on large rivers. I disabled the water effects within FSX and the water looks reasonable, but a lot darker than before and maybe not as realistic (however blue tiles everywhere are hardly the most rrealistic scenery) 5: UK2000 Individual airports seem to work very well with Horizon, the only two I have a problem with are Manchester International and Cardiff...any suggestions? They both seem to DOUBLE INSTALL and then fight with each other, never get the same scenery two times in a row. Thanks guys, as usual, any help is appreciated!

Can I ask you what problems you are having? Mine is as sweet as a nut! Let me know as I have been through to hell and back with FSX and WIN7 and Win 8 has been so much easier. If I can help, I will, as once you get Win 8 running - you won't go back!

Please please just google the 32/64 BIT upgrade - it really isn't rocket science - you can upgrade Win 7 x32 to Win 8 x64 - http://winsupersite....it-64bit-144649 The only "SNAG " if you can call it that - is you won't be able to keep all your x32 junk you previously installed - you need to make a clean sweep, and to be honest, why anyone would want to keep the x32 system these days is a bit confusing...........................................ahhh....................if it isn't broken!! 4GB RAM.........ahhh I see! Also, if you have a friend who doesn't live in the stone age, and has an x64 system - pay him the 39USD to download and burn you a DVD of the x64 image which yo can burn to your PC. I am not sure if this is still around but if you were a slightly dishonest person (and lets face it Microsoft is hardly the blind old lady living on a widows pension) then there was a way to simply "LIE" to Microsoft and tell them you had bought a new PC - you fill in a few "Details" cough cough.....and you can get Win 8 for 14.99 USD! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnul0_l57Zs They are an annoying couple but in 8 minutes they sort 32-64 bit swap - not the best with camersa, not the best with teaching style - but they did it...and if they can do it, then I am sure people who spend hour upon hour simulating flying a real aeroplane within a small box on their desktop are certain to manage!

Just shows you how things change (providing you don't fix it if it isn't broken!) We used a shed full of Hewlett Packhard Vectras way back when - they cost 20,000 GBP - a house where I lived could be bought for 15K (about 50K USD at the time) 20 MB Hard drive, 640K O/S with 640KB Ram - they used those huge (WAS IT ISA Slots?) they were the length of the PC - used for HP Basic. 15"Monitor - Green monochrome - the bees knees in their day! Imagine giving one of them to a 12 year old these days? Would you like the HP Vectra Top of the range in its day costing as much as a 3 bedroom house with Windows 3.1 or would you rather have a Galaxy Note 10.1 costing as much as a set of curtains for you three bedroom home? Difficult I know... not an easy choice - the HP Vectra wouldn't exactly fit into a laptop case either! I cannot understand why my son laughs at me playing FSX, I keep threatening to install that bat and ball tennis game we used to have with BBC and Atari.....the ping pong game on a black background!

I still have a set of 3 x 1.44MB floppy disks with Win 3.1 if you are game for a laugh!

Richard, I have over the years tried so many different fixes and fiddles with FSX that it actually hurts my brain to think of them all. One thing I would say, if you have an Nvidia card, just go into the Nvidia desktop and use the settings provided there. Otherwise you will end up having an overclocked computer that is as much use as a brick! Don't bother with Nvidia Inspector, it will give you more grief than watching your children die of terminal cancer! Leave it alone! Just get your machine running stable first with a reasonable overclock, download Bijotes Tweaks - they are not bad, and fiddle with the Nvidia desktop and various settings in FSX, once you start these so called black art tweaks with the Nvidia Inspector - you will end up with a complete and utter mess! By all means go ahead and twiddle with this and tweak that, I guarantee in 1 months time you will be back here asking how to undo the changes! There is nothing in Nvidia inspector that actually warrants the risk to your system stability or your FSX performance that you cannot accomplish from within FSX or from the Nvidia Desktop. Been there and got the T-shirt - MEGA FAIL!

Exactly - You might get NORAD fighters on your starboard bow threatening to shoot you down if you enter controlled airspace - not to mention the responsibility you have for you passengers lives! Perish the thought, and imagine the paperwork from the FAA - you may never fly again! Look on the bright side though, if you did manage to get everyone down in one piece, you may be the next Sully "Sullenberger" of FSX! The Washington Post - "Rabid Rabbi saves entire flight and passengers despite disappearing joystick in Windows 8" The purple heart! JFK Control "Rabid - can you make New Jersey? " Rabid "Negative" JFK Control "Can you turn back?" Rabid "Negative" Rabid "It looks like the Hudson" JFK Control "Say again speedbird?" Rabid "Lost my joystick in Win 8!" JFK Control "Understand - can you see the Hudson? Rabid "We are going down" JFK Control "Can you hit that little button next to the power switch that says RESTART?" Rabid "Can't Do - we are going to be in the Hudson! JFK Tower "Repeat Speedbird confirm you are going into the Hudson river?" Rabid "Hang on a minute, the wife is just bringing me a coffee..." JFK Tower "Rabid can you make a quick reinstall of Widows 7?" Rabid "Negative - we are going down lost both engines and my joystick!" Rabid "Darling, thanks for the coffee, have you seen my Windows 7 installation DVD and the Joystick drivers?" Awards, TV appearances, who knows where it might end! I however would probably reboot and look for some new device drivers - or get a parachute.

Is it not possible to right click and run in Win 7 compatibility mode? As I said, the 15x (or more) installs were entirely due to software provided by ASUS - nothing to do with FSX itself - The major problem I had was after doing a clean install of Win7 then installing the ASUS provided software and then FSX - I ran into major problems. I then try and uninstall ASUS software, but really, it never actually goes away, there is always some of their ###### still running somewhere in the bowels of the machine. The only way to remedy this is another Win 7 fresh install. After the fresh install, you always end up needing some driver or some piece of software - in many instances, I needed some Intel drivers, after I install them, I then find out they are Intel drivers provided by and fiddled with by ASUS!!!! so the problem starts over again. With Win8 - I didn't need to install ASUS rubbish - it installed everything virtually on its own. It is rockstable! I haven't had a crash or BSOD since installing it! I believe Microsoft were allowing you to download a trial version free??? It is worth a look! I used to be a Windows XP die hard until Win 7 came out, after installing Win 7 I would never go back to XP - however, to me Win 7 has run its course and the new Win 8 is a big step in the right direction. You cannot crash this system! as the poster says, it is ROCK SOLID STABLE! OK, I maybe mislead some people by accident if I gave the impression that you got better frame rates (which I actually believe I do) after installing Win 8 with FSX - The major benefits are the speed in which the system loads, the speed that FSX loads, the way the graphics drivers and system drivers are loaded when you install the Win 8 OS. As an example - Fresh install of Win 7 ultimate, you end up with a VGA graphics driver for your video card - you can then either go and search for a compatible driver say from Nvidia - maybe 160MB download and then install just to get your screen up and running. Then if like me you have an ACER 2251W second monitor - go looking for a driver for that and see where you get! I loaded Win 8 - it had already installed the latest Nvidia Driver for my main monitor, installed the Dell Drivers, and had even installed all the drivers for My Acer which whilst being connected to my Nvidia 460 - wasn't even switched on. For 39.99 it is a bargain! My Windows 3.1 wasn't broken! Neither was Win 95, nor was Win 98 - nor Win XP, nor Win 7 - but sometimes you just have to try something a bit different - Personally, I liked DOS 1.0 - it was great in 1976, but things change! If everyone has this attitude, why bother buying a new processor or graphics card? "My 15" Hewlett Packhard Green Screen CRT Monitor looks just fine!!! It's not broken - why should I replace it? - I am perfectly happy with my BBC Micro running programs from an audio cassette, whilst I concur that it is somewhat limited - why fix what isn't broken? And for all those new technology idiots out there buying into any new fad that comes along - Bugger That! I am perfectly happy with my 640K processor and 16KB of RAM! In fact I still cherish my Hewlett Packhard 20MB Hard Disk that costs as much as a new house - It isn't broken so I won't change it - as long as I remember to park the heads with Dpark before I switch off - don't you just hate that grinding noise? whatever that could be? I wish too that I had kept my BBC Micr Audio Cassette software for my original Flight Simulator Software - AVIATOR - go and check that one out on Google - it too wasn't broken!

You answered the question "DO A SEARCH FOR FSX" I think what the problem is here is that people are not searching for FSX and are coming upon what they may believe is a real video of a real plane! If you are not into Flight Sims then it could be like doing a search for "Large Dogs" and ending up with a Scoobye Doo cartoon! Glad to hear your posts are popular, I don't doubt it and I myself have found some excellent Youtube videos of Sims - what I meant was, for say every ten people that come upon a sim video, maybe 60% come across it by accident by following the suggested links on the right hand side - and most of these people are not intentionally looking for videos of people flying "pretend" aeroplanes! The reason you probably have good hits and a good response is maybe due to the fact that you clearly label your videos as to what they are - If I want to see FSX videos, I make sure I type FSX in the search. I don't type in Boeing 747 and then expect to get 100 hits on someone flying a computer generated toy! I would be looking for things related to a 747 - and not someone simming a 12 hour flight across the Atlantic in neverland. However, should I type in "FSX - Boeing 747 -" then I would expect the results to be a little different and if I was subjected to a 15 hour video viewed from the wing of a CGI aeroplane, then that is entirely my fault. Yes, again another good reason - we all might be into Flight Sims, but not everyone has the same taste in music - just leave the aircraft noise! There is nothing worse than sitting through 15 minutes of Enya while trying to watch what is going on in the video - believe me - I hit the END button (and those damn Beat Box soundtracks really don't get me playing a video for more than 2 seconds)!

Ahh.... that would depend on the Motherboard to a large degree - Do you have the ASUS P8Z77V- Deluxe? with its two Lan Controllers that constantly fight with each other for ultimate supremacy? then into the pot throw in throw in wireless controller and the Bluetooth controller with your two aerials - then the Microsoft Virtual WiFi driver...believe me, this excess makes a great deal of difference - Once installed (all of them running at the same time) then please tell me you actually managed to get an internet connection and within ASUS Suite 2.001 you were able to get Network Icontrol to actually "DISCOVER" let alone work, with your motherboard - Then, when it doesn't work, pleas can you let me know if you manage to get a) a date from Cherie Xie from ASUS Customer Support or B) An answer from Cherie Xie from Asus customer support that fixes your problem without Cherie Xie from Asus customer support asking you to re install Windows 7 for the 20th time? If you look at the post, it was issues with ASUS Software, nothing to do with RAM or anything else. However, even on a basic setup of Win 7 x 64 compared to Win 8 X64 Pro, there is one hell of a difference. (It is a 3770K too - please remember that in future posts - 3770's are for poor people that don't have the spare cash to buy a K) (It also uses an Intel liquid overpriced cooler too - that only rich people can afford - it has nice blue LED's that also make FSX run twice the speed of anyone elses, and if you think I am lying, I can simply upgrade to another set of LED's and double my processor speed - besides, once I get my overclock up and running, we don't need any central heating in the entire street as my computer provides enough warmth for the entire community! I perceived that my win 7 booted up and loaded FSX in 90 seconds on a good day, then for some reason I perceived it did the same in 15 seconds in Win 8 - maybe it is my perception? And just one more thing - I have been running FSX under loads of operating systems, and as far as I am aware in most forums that discuss FSX - we would never class it in the same breath as "GAMING" I suggest you wash your mouth out with some carbolic soap! I had to downgrade my CPU from 12GHz - I was using Urine as a cooler, but found that FSX just couldn't keep up with the speed. Besides, My dad is going to come round to your house and floor you dad in half an hour.......(Well he would if he wasn't dead) But seriously, give win 8 a try, I am sure you will see a difference!

Just having FSX in the title won't save you! There are a lot of THICK people that surf on Youtube - I mean just take a look at some of the rubbish they upload! Better to make your channel private and then post links into forums where people care about the hobby rather than in a public forum where you are forced to deal with I.Q's ranging from 0-75! Good luck - I enjoy a lot of these videos - I understand the work that goes into creating one ( I have tried in the past and it involves a lot of work to get it as well done as you have done) But honestly, I have tried asking opinions of people that are not into our hobby, and at best, they think we are completely mad! (I suppose it takes a certain type of person to appreciate that what you are doing is virtually flying a real aircraft and not some plonker playing a game - If I have FSX running when my 12 year old comes home from school - he takes one look laughs at me - just before he switches on his PS3 and Battlefield - and says "See you are playing SHITESIMULATOR AGAIN DAD - YOU SAD GIT" - so we are obviously a marginalised community! It is a standing joke in our house that if he wants to bring his mates around to play on the PS3 I always make sure I threaten him that I will drag them all off to watch me take off from Luton airport in a 737.............you can hear them crying!

Fowl "Chicken / poultry or game birds" - Can you translate Fowl Language? Actually, my mother in law is looking for someone who is fluent in Fowl language, as she really needs to coax three chickens into a small bamboo pen tonight for an early sale at tomorrows market. Thanks in advance! Appreciate quick reply as it is dark now and getting on for 9.30pm - (Bangkok time) she tried to sell two this morning but they must have understood what was going on and all of the chickens went into hiding - she needs to be up at 5am, so if you are able to record me an MP3 of Fowl language that translates to "Here chickky chickky chikky....get into the nice bamboo cage for Grandma " it will be well appreciated! (phonetics would do at a push!)

Another benefit to Win 8 is if you have a child in the age range of 8-14, it is amazing what they will find out just leaving them to it! Most of the problems I had finding how to open this , how to close that, where this was and where that was was solved in 10 seconds by my 12 year old son, who is an avid PS3 gamer and understands these new Smart Phones and Touch Pads! - SMART PHONES - THICK DADS!

Most of it I would say is Win 8 - I have had to reinstall Win 7 x 64 at least 15 times in the past two weeks due to crap from ASUS Suite, so my recent experience is like for like. Win 7 with ASUS Suite - Forget FSX - I am talking load times in some cases of in excess of 5 minutes - which I must admit is down to ASUS and not FSX (mainly conflicts with NICs.) However, even after a fresh install of just the basic OS then a basic install of FSX you will se a huge difference (huge - I mean at least 30%) If I was you (no I don't work for Microsoft) and to be truthfull, have never personally paid for an operating system in my life (They have all been paid for by the company I work for) Win 8 is the very first one I have actually shelled out cash for - and it is worth every cent! At 39.99 you cannot go wrong, simply burn it to an ISO on a DVD and install it as and when you want. There are a few things that at first appear to be a major PITA - i.e. the missing start menu, but after you play around with this for a few days, you will never go back! I found that it behaves basically like two separate systems, you have the START/Apps Page, which works in a world of its own, totally alien to Win 7 - but after a while it is quite nice - you don't need touch or gestures, but they may make it easier - you can do everything using the mouse and keyboard. Once you pass the start menu and apps tiles, it is very similar to Win 7 only better at most things, again, the only downside I can fault it with is a lack of the start menu - you sometimes get confused as to how to find a program if you don't have a shortcut on your desktop etc. However there are a few apps out there that create a retro start menu for you if you want to download them. The reason I liked it was that I bought a new SSD and wanted to minimize the junk I had on that drive - I basically only wanted to run the OS from C and as much else from any other spinner drive. Win 7 let me get a basic install that added up to about 15GB after moving page files and disabling system restore etc. Win 8 gets you down to about 8GB - and it is about 20-30% faster on boot and shutdown compared to win 7 (win 8 shutdown for me takes less than 5 seconds!!!) Have a read on the internet - if you are not too long in the tooth you will pick it up in no time - being an old fart who grew up with DOS 1.0 then windows 3.1 - 98, etc...it is a bit of a learning curve....the only "Gestures" I know tend to be offensive! Seriously, it is a bargain! Good luck. I personally would never do an upgrade install as all you are doing is taking your old ###### with you - (Actually - I am lying - I have tried in the past with Win 7 and Win 8 - and in the end - the only way it works to me is a fresh install - I have managed to get Win 7 "working" after upgrading, but I always had this horrible doubt in the back of my mind that the upgrade was crap and was not working as well as a fresh install - and in most cases it is a compromise -) a fresh install is the only way to go! The Admin rights thing is no worse (in fact I think it is at least more consistent that Win7) You can drop the UAC which makes it easier, but in Win 8 I found that in most cases the Admin Rights are not as big as an issue as in Win 7, which seemed to chop and change depending upon wind direction. Sometimes you needed it sometimes you didn't and a lot of this seemed to vary on the weather depending what day it was when you installed it! I used the same disk for my Win 7 installs from day one, sometimes I had Admin rights sometimes I didn't! In some of the past 15 installs of win 7 I was unable to even overwrite a Notepad file without first opening Notepad using the damn command prompt as an administrator -and every install I have ever done has been exactly the same! Joysticks and controllers have been no problem at all for me in a fresh install (logitech force 3d pro - Sony DV - Firewire ports etc all loaded up without any additional drivers) The only issue I had was trying to do an upgrade install and Win 8 would not recognize some Intel Win 8 drivers for some reason - if you go with the fresh install - not an issue. As I said in a reply earlier - the Start Menu is a bit of a concern, but once you get used to using the top left corner of the screen and the context menus on the right hand side, then the bottom left screen -it is really quite nice. Again, there are apps you can download free that will give you the old Win 7 interface. I however have decided to struggle on and try to use the new interface as I want to add as little clutter as possible to the original OS. If you spend a bit of time setting it up, you can run about 75% of everything you use (Not FSX Etc.) but e mail, browsing, notes apps etc. all from the ugly start screen without even having to get into the win7 style os and desktop - you can get rid of that crap tower lock screen and customize this until your heart is content. I am an avid "fiddler" I cannot leave an operating system alone, this thing is MAJOR fiddling in the making - I am a little apprehensive at the moment though as it is so new to me - but once you dare step into the world of Group Policies etc............hold me back!

Anyone on here finding the same as me? Windows 8 is something a bit special? I have run FSX over the years using a few iterations of Win 7, everything from Home Basic to Ultimate, all on x 64 based system, varying results with FSX on these different line ups - Ultimate x64 worked the best when it was running nicely, but if something was not quite right, it was the ginger haired stepchild from hell! I actually stopped running FSX recently on Win 7 due to it getting upset with some of my add ons (anyone care to comment on this as it would be helpful before I go full hog installing everything again on FSX under Win 8 - My problems started after installing UTX Europe, GEX Europe 2.0, Dreamscapes UK Mesh, then adding on the UK2000 scenery for the UK volumes 1,2 and 3 along with a load of UK2000 individual airfields (I did disable them in the VFR scenery as advised - but still loads of hangs and crashes) I also have Aerosoft VFR Germany installed - I think this is probably too much for FSX, if anyone can suggest what I should install it would be appreciated. My current idea is to install the Dreamscapes UK Mesh, then UTX Europe, then GEX Europe, then individual UK2000 Airfields rather than the entire VFR package, then I want to add on the Horizon VFR UK photo scenery......will this work or is it another recipe for disaster?) Anyway, back to Win 8, I upgraded to Pro for the 39.99 USD and unplugged all drives apart from my SSD (Intel 240GB 520) fresh install of Win 8 and it runs really nice. Reconnected my other drives one at a time so as to get the drive letters I wanted rather than what Windows fancied. Fresh install of FSX on my SATA 1TB - SATA 6.0 GB/s D drive, Acceleration, and Dreamscapes UK Mesh. UTX Europe and GEX Europe, nothing else in the way of scenery just yet. All config settings in FSX are full to the right apart from lens bloom, aircraft casts shadows on itself, water is at medium 2x, traffic is at 25% and autogen is at one notch to the left of fully right, frame rates unlimited.....da dee da dee da...there does not seem to be a need to use an external frame limiter as it is running nicely and smoothly at about 56FPS (Nvidia GTX 460 OC - 1GB Then installed PMDG 737NGX, the only aircraft add on I love, but will be adding the PMDG 747 soon. Everything is running like a dream! FSX is loading in about 15 seconds rather than 90, frame rates are smoother than they have ever been - unlimited settings with no external limiter - Bijotes tweaks are loaded for the config file. My processor is the 3770K at 4.3GHz. with 32GB Ram running at 1648MHz. on the ASUS P8Z77V-De luxe. (This Asus board is nice as long as you keep well away from ASUS suite software - I honestly believe that that was where I was getting a lot of problems on FSX with win7 - I had a few issues with this software (ASUS) Now I have only loaded relevant drivers rather than the entire suite and things are running a treat. For 39.99 USD, Win 8 is an offer that really is too good to be missed, you can download it and burn it as an ISO to a DVD and install at leisure once you are happy with updates etc. I also bought a second copy for my son, and we did the "ÜPGRADE" install rather than a clean install, and his machine is also running better than it ever did with Win 7 x64! There were no issues at all installing FSX or acceleration or any of the above software - I have heard a few reports regarding FSPUIC, I haven't had a need to run that yet so cannot tell at the moment. Any feedback or suggestions as how to go with my proposed add ons would be greatly appreciated.

Lets be honest, unless you are flight simmer fan, it is hardly surprising that anyone watching a video of someone flying a "pretend" aircraft and making a video about it is sure to get negative responses. Youtube is not the place for simmer videos is it? I mean, if you were to go onto Youtube and search out some video clips that you wanted to watch about something like a Ford AC Cobra and how it handles, and you ended up watching some 14 year old running an upload of him tearing around Liberty City using Grand Theft Auto - you too would be a little disappointed no?