The 'Official' Screenshot & Tips thread 4 FSX enthusiasts & flight simmers.

!bluetonic! · 19 Dec 2016 at 20:23

I'm using both sims about the same.

FlyInside is fantastic in XP but I don't know how I'd fly on Vatsim, as you can't see charts or comms windows.

Have you managed P3D/FSX, Rift and Vatsim yet?

picnic · 20 Dec 2016 at 15:28

I've not used it on Vatsim but I have the Bristol Flight Sim Groups GA flights on a Tuesday night. I can drag Plan-G and TS in to the game with FlyInside and once vpilot is connected I never need it again. We have a radio tuner for TS3 as well so in theory I don't need the TS3 window in the Rift.

hamesy · 10 Jan 2017 at 21:39

I picked up the Steam version the other day after I lost my original disks. Also picked up REX 4 Texture Direct add-on at the same time.

Any recommendations on add-ons that will make it look any better, such as ground textures and autogen?

I've got everything turned up and it's a little disappointing.

Early morning flight so probably looks a little dark.

Charlatan · 10 Jan 2017 at 22:12

Orbx is what you want, but it ain't cheap

redline · 11 Jan 2017 at 14:12

Yep, Orbx is the way to go for great scenery, But as Charlatan said it can be expensive... having said that you can get a single region which will give a vast area to fly over at reasonable cost, and you can build from there.

These are all over Orbx FTX regions, from various places around the world.

These are all using Prepar3D, but the scenery is the same in FSX... just some of the lighting and weather effects will be missing.

hamesy · 11 Jan 2017 at 16:49

So I picked up FTX Global BASE Pack earlier, I can see a slight difference but it's still poor. Graphics are still blurry as hell with everything turned up

For instance:

A: The road is not smooth and blurry
B: That ground texture looks poor
C: The draw distance isn't the best and appears to be grayed out/blurry.

I don't remember FSX looking like this.

redline · 11 Jan 2017 at 17:28

That does look very poor, with even the near terrain looking like its not fully resolved. What is your performance like?... and what is your PC spec?...

Turning everthing up to max can make things worse if your system is strugging to keep up, and that can apply to pretty decent PC's.

Try locking to 30fps and also zoom out the view... FSX never looks great when zooming in on an area.

Vtec9k · 11 Jan 2017 at 18:27

Yea that's not right, should be much sharper.

Check the orbx manual for optimal settings.

hamesy · 11 Jan 2017 at 19:13

Ok, lowering the settings seems to have helped. Still seeing the odd blurry texture, but overall a lot better. The only thing that's annoying now is the draw distance, any tips?

With everything turned up, I was getting around 30-40fps, lowering the settings gives me between 20-35fps. I've got a i5-2300, 8GB RAM and a GTX 660.

Cavallino · 11 Jan 2017 at 19:14

Is that FSX vanilla hamsey?

redline · 11 Jan 2017 at 19:29

hamesy said:
Ok, lowering the settings seems to have helped. Still seeing the odd blurry texture, but overall a lot better. The only thing that's annoying now is the draw distance, any tips?

With everything turned up, I was getting around 30-40fps, lowering the settings gives me between 20-35fps. I've got a i5-2300, 8GB RAM and a GTX 660.

With your set-up you will deffo have to compromise here and there.

For one turn off 'Light Bloom' as that is a real killer... use reshade or enb instead, although neither come performance free.

Also turn off 'Ground Scenery Shadows' these are buggy and another fps killer.... you still get terrain shading with this off.

Keep 'Autogen' at Very Dense or Dense.

Keep 'Traffic' quite low... 25% or below.... no more than 10% for cars.

Avoid HD cloud textures... stick to 1024.

There are some tweaks that really help frame rates such as bufferpools/Poolsize and maybe worth researching... values are system dependant.

I don't have FSX installed anymore, but it is very possible to run well on your PC and look very good... it will take a bit of balancing and a little tweaking.

.

hamesy · 18 Jan 2017 at 17:57

Right running and looking a lot better now. Cheers chaps. Any suggestions for freeware GA aircraft? Currently flying around in the default Cessna 172

SuperOwl86 · 17 Apr 2017 at 09:12

Going to get myself FSX:SE Anyone able to recommend anything else I should get with it for a newbie?

Devrij · 17 Apr 2017 at 09:15

SuperOwl86 said:
Going to get myself FSX:SE Anyone able to recommend anything else I should get with it for a newbie?

Rex weather is well worth it imo

TNA · 17 Apr 2017 at 10:47

Anyone making the move over to X Plane 11?

SuperOwl86 · 17 Apr 2017 at 11:21

I tried the demo but couldn't use it. Was standing at the gate and watched a plane land and it was constantly stuttering. Maybe its time I upgraded something.

Devrij · 17 Apr 2017 at 18:09

TNA said:
Anyone making the move over to X Plane 11?

I've been debating it. It looks great, but I don't know much about xplane vs FSX. I see they have a fly inside version for it so am tempted to give it a go for some VR flight simming (FSX is never gonna run great in VR)

Gixer · 19 Apr 2017 at 18:37

I thought I read that Prepar3d was going to go 64bit at some point in the near future but looking at their site see no mention of this. I'll probably hold out for that to happen though.

SuperOwl86 · 19 Apr 2017 at 21:52

Gixer said:
I thought I read that Prepar3d was going to go 64bit at some point in the near future but looking at their site see no mention of this. I'll probably hold out for that to happen though.

From watching streams on Twitch that has been mentioned and should be out some point this year.

Gixer · 20 Apr 2017 at 07:28

I'll continue to wait then as as you can also see by my sig my system is a little old now, at least the CPU is. It only just cuts the mustard with FSX. I'd like to change to a 34" widescreen monitor but I think my PC would implode if I tried running it at the res required on those.

I'm also waiting for the release of Condor V2, which is a gliding simulator. Anyone who is keen on flying gliders, for me this is the must have sim (I have Condor V1).