veemaniq

Thank you, JonathanC, btacon and abrams_tank. I appreciate your prompt response and I will go with Xbox. Need to get back in sim and will have to figure out few things 🙂 Happy flying everyone! veemaniq

Hi Simmers, I have not been on flight sim for a while. Can someone help me understand the difference in buying from Steam vs Xbox. Also, I plan to use my PC and do not have Xbox or any other console. Is it not possible to download the sim and manage/tweak stuff anymore? Or is it all pre-configured into (Low, Med, High & Ultra) settings only? How about managing addon from ORBX, REX Studios, A2A or PMDG etc? Thanks for your help in advance. veemaniq

Thanks everyone for your responses and questions. Sorry for the delay in getting back. I'll try to answer your questions....... I upgraded to Win10 on July 29th to take advantage of the free upgrade and check it out since I have 30 days to revert back to Win8.1. Not too worried about Microsoft 'spying' as I use this computer for FSX and gaming So far I have been pleased with the new OS. Even in FSX my performance issue is pertaining to the significant drop in FPS otherwise I think Win10 for me is far more stable when it comes to smooth working of various add-ons, controls etc. I also notice a much better scenery quality less of flickering fences and building....even though I felt I had already resolved those with various tweaks including the use of Steve's DX10 Fixer, nvidiainspecter etc....they now appear relatively sharper. I also feel that I see a marked difference in terrain & shader quality as well....not sure if these are configured better in Win10, I'll let experts weigh in on that. Thus except for the FPS issue that I have mentioned I am happy with Win10. Having said that I am wondering if there is a issue with resource allocation or rather full use of all available resources in Win10 for a sim like FSX, which obviously is from a different era in technology. Also it is very much possible that this issue is specific to my build. I understand that FSX, calculates and fills scenery on a as required basis (as pointed out correctly by 'magnetite') but this was also the case in Win8.1, thus that should not be a factor. In terms of toning down of various parameters in cfg file, reducing TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD, LOD_RADIUS, blocking AffinityMask, Poolsize, MultiSamplesPerPixel etc., I have already done these adjustments and experimented. One thing I would like to add is that the drop in FPS is most pronounced when I am flying the only payware I have, that is, Piper - PA23 Alebo Aztec F250 by Carenado. In other stock aircrafts it is not as bad, thus the decline in performance does not appear to be linear. One final point, while in Win8.1, I was getting 22 FPS in KSEA region and some drop in FPS to maybe 17, when I approached downtown scenery while flying Carenado Piper, with other stock aircraft the same figures were 27 and 23 respectively. I'll continue to investigate this further and keep experimenting, if I learn something I'll promptly post here. So stay tuned! Again, thanks for your inputs and questions and feel free to ask any other questions you may have or suggestions you would like me to try. Cheers! veemaniq Btw, I forgot to mention that I have provided Windows Defender exclusions to all *.exe files that I use for FSX.

Hi fellow simmers and FSX gurus, I recently upgraded to Windows 10 Pro from Windows 8.1 Pro. The upgrade went smoothly, except for few glitches relating to regenerating XML.dll and FSX.cfg files (thanks to the inputs I got here and other forums). FSX is up and running with all my add-ons (ORBX, REX, Aircrafts, EZDOK, etc.). I only had to reinstall nvidiainspector and fsrecorder. So happy with the smooth upgrade process. However, I notice that the FSX performance (in terms of FPS) degrades with time in each session of FSX. For example, I start out with 18-20 FPS at KSEA and after 5-8 minutes or so the FPS drops to as low as 1-3 FPS when I am flying the PA23 Alebo Aztec F250 by Carenado. When flying the default Beech Baron 58, I start out with 20-22 FPS and that drops to 8-10 FPS over time. The performance continues to be lower even when I move into low autogen areas. When I restart FSX it again starts with relatively higher FPS and starts declining with time. I started monitoring my CPU, GPU and memory usage and it seems like FSX is not using all available resources even in highly resource demanding areas such as KSEA or KTPA add-on FlyTampa Tampa Rebooted; like my max CPU usage stays at 49% (i7-4770k overclocked to 4.3 ghz), max GPU usage at 47% (EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB GDDR5), max memory usage 33% (Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 2133 MHz, occupying slots 1 & 3). Additionally, in the FSX startup window, the 'Home' and 'Learning Center' tabs are blank. All other tabs, including the 'Free Flight' tab, thankfully works. If anyone faced similar issues and found a fix, please share. I have pasted below some sections of my FSX.cfg which used to run fine in Windows 8.1 Pro. Thanks in advance and as always, greatly appreciate your inputs. Happy Flying! veemaniq **************************************************************************** FSX.cfg: [JOBSCHEDULER] AffinityMask=84 [bUFFERPOOLS] Poolsize=0 [GRAPHICS] HIGHMEMFIX=1 SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED_10=1693458432 SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED=1693458432 D3D10=1 TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096 NUM_LIGHTS=8 AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1 AIRCRAFT_REFLECTIONS=1 COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1 LANDING_LIGHTS=1 AC_SELF_SHADOW=1 EFFECTS_QUALITY=2 GROUND_SHADOWS=0 TEXTURE_QUALITY=3 IMAGE_QUALITY=0 See_Self=1 Text_Scroll=0 MultiSamplesPerPixel=8 MultiSampleQuality=8 [sCENERY] LENSFLARE=1 DAWN_DUSK_SMOOTHING=1 IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=5 [TERRAIN] LOD_RADIUS=6.500000 MESH_COMPLEXITY=100 MESH_RESOLUTION=25 TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=29 AUTOGEN_DENSITY=4 DETAIL_TEXTURE=1 WATER_EFFECTS=7 [sTARTUP] DEMO=0 SHOW_OPENING_SCREEN=1 STARTUP_DEMO= LoadWindow=1

@WR269, thanks for your prompt response....much appreciated!

Hi Sim Gurus, What are the key differences between REX and FTX Global? Why I notice folks having both? Doesn't REX improve your terrain, textures, cloud rendering etc., then what additional improvement FTX Global provides? In addition to that one has FTX vectors, FTX regional etc. Pardon my ignorance and thanks in advance for your input. If this has already been discussed please point me to the right link. Take care and happy flying!