Atomic Systems

Hello all,

First of all, I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I got FSX for christmas and have some questions. We have two computers, one which is 1.6ghz proccesor wise and has a 256mb graphics card, and one which is 2.3ghz and has the next lowest graphics card avalible. My question is this, how should I get the best out of FSX with out spending a great deal of money? For instance, should I improve the graphics card on the 2.3ghz computer, which would mean looking at the motherboard and working out how much it can take, or should I get a new proccesor and motherboard all together? What would be best?

Thanks,
James

From what I've heard it's best to wait until MS Vista comes out and DX 10.

This does mean though that you'll have to buy a DX10 compatible graphics card which at the moment are expensive.

I'm going to wait until around February time to buy myself a high tech PC as hopefully Vista will be out by then and the DX10 graphics cards will hopefully be a little cheaper by then too.

I've been saving up for this new PC now for well over a year so I'm getting rather excited now as the day draws nearer for MS Vista to be released

Kind regards,
-Alex.

Yes but the rub is Vista may not run some older programmes, including those that run happily under XP.

I'm currently struggling with FSX, to be absolutely honest I feel MS have lost the plot a bit with this one in designing a programme that doesn't have a PC or O/S in existence that can run it at it's full potential. Over on the Just Flight FSX forum there's a link to a little utility that benchmarks your PC for certain games. FSX was barely a third of the way between the minimum and recommended, while the same test on FS2004 had the bar off the right hand side of the zone!

If as rumoured MS are contemplating using the FSX engine for other simulation products it needs a large rewrite or optimisation.

And of course the sting in the tail is that due to M$ online authentication of the product, you can't sell it secondhand on Ebay as the serial number is registered to me.

Is this true about the online authentication for FSX?

'Cause when I plan to get my new PC around February time, I don't plan to have it connected to the internet as I will be mainly using it for music production things and I don't want to get a virus or whatever and lose all my work...

Kind regards,
-Alex.

I think you can do it by phone as well, but what's worrying is this rumour that MS only allow you to install it so many times before you need to pay again!

Hi,

Thanks for your replys. I have made a temporary arrangement with computers. I have swaped the faster computer with the slower one, that way I get more out of FSX. I have tested it serveral times and have now got the right settings I beleive, the only thing I don't like is the lack of airport buildings and air traffic with these settings, because it's the only setting I can have without the computer slowing up and going all 'jurky'. So I have decided, and have talked this over with the powers that be, to save some money and put it towards a computer for my birthday that has the right specs for the simulator...

Bigvern: I've never heard that rumour before Also, yes it is true that other older programmes on vista won't work, I have had experiance with the vista demo, eg. midtown madness wouldn't work and to be honest, unless you have a very good system it's quite slow!

Kilkus: If you don't activate it (I have done this once because I couldn't find the box (found now no worries )) then you get twenty minutes of the full game before it cuts out, it's best to do what bigvern says and do it over the phone, you don't have much choice over that.....

Thanks for your adivce,
James

PS...Wow I wrote a lot

Bigvern, can I ask what computer specs you have?

Thanks,
James

Kilkus: 0800 018 8354 is the number to call to activate it

james10 wrote:Bigvern, can I ask what computer specs you have?

Thanks,
James

Pentium 4 2.4Ghz.
1024Mb RAM
Geforce 6600 Gfx (256Mb RAM).

So not top of the range for sure but no slouch either.

james10 wrote:Kilkus: 0800 018 8354 is the number to call to activate it

Thank you very much

kilkus wrote:

james10 wrote:Kilkus: 0800 018 8354 is the number to call to activate it

Thank you very much

No Problem

bigvern wrote:
Pentium 4 2.4Ghz.
1024Mb RAM
Geforce 6600 Gfx (256Mb RAM).

So not top of the range for sure but no slouch either.

Intresting, you have pretty much the same specs as this computer, but you have more ram. Does FSX run good on your computer?

James

No not very well at all.

Flying in a remote area such as Scandinavia with autogen and detail on medium I occasionally get up to my target 20 FPS. Flying into a dense area such as LAX frame rate down to 6 - 7 FPS and that's with most of the airport detail switched off, AI air traffic on about 5% and ground traffic on about 20%.

As I said in my earlier reply this programme really struggles and I'm loathe to part with £700 - £800 on a new PC base unit when, 1. All my other programmes (including FS2004) work fine and 2. Chances are it still won't make much difference.

I see what you mean, I decided to uninstall it and re-install FS2004, because on the slower computer, all the detailed planes that I bought, like the PMDG 737 and 747 wouldn't run very well at all. But on a computer with almost double the speed, as would be expected, they run very well and I completed my best ever ILS landing in Edinburgh from luton last night in the PMDG 737 with no jerks, in the VC So I've uninstalled FSX untill I get that new computer, which everyone in the house really needs.

James

Must admit I installed it on one of our exhibition laptops for the Southend show, and bearing in mind these are really high spec machines (7800 graphics, 2.3ghz centrino cpu, 2gb high speed ram etc) I was expecting somewhat better performance than on my Athlon 3400 desktop with a 5900 graphics card... well, it was better but not *somewhat* better, only marginally.

Autogen is the crippler apparently, plus i've also been told that there's something wrong with the textures that are included and installing a 3rd party texture pack can actually massively improve frame rates. I spoke with JustTrains, who popped over to see us at Warley (they were in the next hall for the flight sim show) and they commented that Microsoft were on the stand opposite them and their sales people were flumoxed as to why the JT stand showed FSX with much better frame rates, and apparently the reason is some texture pack that you can buy from JT.

I also found some tutorial online that shows how to perform some kind of action on all the textures and some people were reporting massive FPS improvements afterwards, some not.

It's quite usable on the laptops, including with the head tracking system, but far from what you might expect and with lots of detail settings turned right down.

That said, you also have to remember that, apparently, what was maximum settings on FS2004 are now close to minimum settings on FSX - so in theory if you have it set to minimum it's closer to what FS2004 would do and by turning the settings up you are actually trying to do a lot more than FS2004 and that's why things get much slower.

Personally I thought it looked pants on minimum settings and 2004 has looked significantly better, but it might be that this applies only to certain things (AutoGen particularly) and not others.

Matt.

Hi Matt,

I've found that after installing all my VFR Scenery add-ons, and airports and misc scenery etc... that on the highest settings on FS9, FSX really does look cr*p. So you know, 3.6ghz hopefully should solve some of the issues, and yes, autogen really does eat up the fps but all I could do even on a 2.6ghz, 256mb graphics card and 512mb ram is put some trees on, have rubbish texture graphics and have a few moving vehicles with 5% AI traffic which you can hardly spot anywhere because there isn't hardly any, waste of time if you dont have anything above a 3ghz pc really. Roll on April

James