Any tips for getting the most out of MS Flight Simulator X (FSX) ?

[JoeFX]

I bought a copy of Flight Simulator X Gold Edition at the weekend... figured it would go well with my TrackIR 5 which I'd purchased for ARMA2 (also got DCS Blackshark).

I've been looking around on different shops/sites and there seem to be 100's of different add-on's for it, stuff like Terrain, Scenery, Airport/Airfield Packs, Improved Height Definition, Photo-realistic stuff etc. Most of what I've found costs a fair bit as well (i.e. more than the game itself), and in some instances there are four versions of the same thing (Vol 1 to 4), all costing £24.99 each.

It's hard to know what to get, and it looks all to easy to waste money and buy the wrong thing, so...

Any good tips on what add-on's to get, be them free or otherwise?


Also, what about hardware? At the moment I'm using a nice but cheap Logitech Attack 3 Joystick. Given that it's under £20, I think I might be missing out a bit. I've seen a few videos of the Saitek Pro Flight Yoke, but at £100 I was a bit underwhelmed with what I saw on the videos, I thought it looked a bit cheap and not too realistic. This looks a bit more like it though, especially with me having DCS Blackshark as well - Saitek X52 or Saitek X52 Pro (is the latter worth the extra £26/27 btw?).

... don't think I'm ready for Pedals or Switches yet, so I'll give those a miss for now.

 

[JoeFX]

That's ace, cheers.

The backgrounds on those screen shots look amazing compared to what you get out-of-the-box. Is that all coming from REX, or is that where your photo realistic stuff comes in (i.e. photoreal)?

I'm really new to Flight Sim's, so I think to get started I'm just looking for some better visuals and more true-to-life terrain. I did download a demo of 'GEN X' or something - the demo updated a couple of square miles of terrain near the Lake District somewhere. It looked a lot better than the default, but I don't think it was anything like as good as what you've got in your screenshots there.

I'm not too fussed about new aircraft add-on's at the mo', there seems to be plenty to go with in the Acceleration pack that game with the Gold edition.

I think I'll get a Saitek X52, but I'm still not sure if I should go with the Pro version - do you think it's worth the extra buck? I read that the throttle is a lot more sensitive/accurate on the Pro version, but then being new to it all, I'm not sure I'd notice/appreciate the difference.