FSX vs. FS2004 (FS9)

[hawkeyeted]

There is only one thing that is stopping me from upgrading to FSX; the fact that I will not be able to fly the RFP.

I'm sorry folks, the PMDG 747-400F is a dream, but RFP was my First Love. It was the only aircraft accepted when I joined this va some six years ago, and I can't get enough of it. It's a pilots jet. One must be always vigilent to her engines, fuel, and navigation (the primary reason it took three crewmen to fly).

All that said, is FSX really worth the upgrade?

[1691]

For me, the biggest thing was getting used to all the tweaks and how-to's that arent the same as FS9. I upgraded in 2007, and never looked back. You need to make sure you have the hardware to support it though. In addition, a lot of people argue that they can get their FS9 to look and act just like FSX, however the truth of the matter is that today's biggest developers (PMDG, Level-D, etc.) have stated that producing FS9 products are not economically viable anymore. While there may be a heck of a lot more FS9 addons now, in a few years FSX will catch up. Not only does FSX make it easier for developers to make new products, but the level of product is much higher than FS9.

I too miss flying the RFP, but just like FS2002, the 747-200 will soon be a thing of history as well. I am pretty sure that once the 5Y 742's come up on another D check, thats when the retiring might begin.

[hawkeyeted]

Perhaps its a sign.

When I upgrade to a bigger rig, I'll upgrade to FSX, and retire the RFP......in a few years.

[Marko Tesselaar]

You guys make me start to cry
My classic love will never leave me, even if i'm the last fs9 user and i'm part of a virtual historical keep em flying bunch

[nwadc10]

I have both installed. FS9 has remained on my system after I built a new system to handle FSX for the sole purpose of flying RFP and the 727.

While there are aspects of FSX that I can't live without, such as the missions, it's still such a drain on system resources. Any scenery addons go into FS9 because the new system can run a loaded down FS9 very well. I wouldn't add any complex scenery to FSX unless I had no intention of every flying to that place and use it as a place just to look at.

Even complex aircraft addons are borderline in FSX. I am slowly gravitating back to FS9 for the 744. There's practically no difference between FS9 744 and 744X, the main difference is you can get the 748 and LCF addons for FSX version only.

To qualify this, my system is about a year and a half old now. I built it from the ground up and at a moderate price. I didn't go overboard on performance because the price would have shot up quick! With that said, it's pathetic the lack of new technology that DIDN'T go into the programming of FSX. That's my biggest frustration, the hardware has exceeded the ability of FSX to use it. You could spend a lot of money chasing the perfect FSX rig, or you can spend a very reasonable amount of cash on a system that can run FS9 very well and run it well under stress.

Don't get me wrong, FSX is worth it if you have the horsepower to back it up with as it's got a lot of nice little features but most of the features are just that, little. Things like pulling up the menu doesn't pause the sim (unless you press a menu item), exterior AI engine sounds actually sound like a jet instead of a dyson vaccuum cleaner, holding spacebar you can pan around in a few views by moving the mouse around, etc. I'm sure there's more differences in the back end of the programming that we will never know about. However, the areas that are accessible to the public, speaking in terms of SimConnect, there is very, very little more that can be done in FSX than FS9 from an external program.

While I have FSX and enjoy it (not lately, fps down to 6 in default aircraft, unuseable), I'm not one that's completely sold on it. I resent PMDG for totally dumping FS9. I can understand their position that some of the features they want to put in their planes can only be done in FSX (I, personally, question this excuse), but I think FS9 is in much wider use than they claim. PMDG's business practices is for another conversation though lol.

I think that in the future when we look back at FSX, we will view it as another FS2000. We had FS98 which was a great sim. Good performance and was leaps and bounds ahead of FS95/FS5.1 (for those who don't recall, FS95 was basically FS5.1 ported to a Windows platform. FS5.1 was a DOS program). FS2000 came out and it hit computer systems hard. Performance never was very good. The sim did have big improvements over FS98 but it was at the cost of resources. FS2002 arrived and we saw performance return! FS2002 was very similar to FS2000 but the way it should have been for performance. FS2002 was awesome. I logged many hours in that sim. Skipping over FS9 we find ourselves at FSX. Again, performance is gone. The group hinted that FSX was designed for computers of the future. FSX has been out for 3 or 4 years now? That's a decade in technological terms. It's still a dog on most systems. To finish off my theory of FS evolution, if the pattern continues, MS Flight should bring back proper performance using todays technology and still be a little more advanced than FSX is today. When Flight comes out and hopefully it's a true FS I think that's when we will see FSX is just another FS2000, quickly lost in time as the Flight Sim that never was.

Enough rambling.

[Brogs]

I,m afraid FSX is too much for my System even with 4g memory, so I use FS9 all the time with the odd excursion to FSX as with the new LCF and MD11 , but the perfomance leaves a lot to be desired so until I get a new Rig i,m afraid its FS9 for me !

[mlegein]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oVQ1c2E4r0

[mav214]

Oh my......how far we've come

[hawkeyeted]

subLogic: ATP! My first sim! Holy smokes!

(And, FSX is 2006 vintage? Holy crap where has the time gone?)

[nwadc10]

Well, since we somehow got on this trip down memory lane, how about these?

FS5.0 was my first sim in 1993. I still have the set of disks along with the box I believe. FS5.1 of course was next followed by FS98. I skipped FS2000 because a friend had it while I was in college so I didn't need it plus I saw the poor performance so it wasn't on my wish list. Start back up with FS2002, not sure if I have the box for that anymore but obviously, still the CD's. How many got the special FS2004 anniversary box? The box is made from aluminum and is embossed with the wording and logos (only on the front.)

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Do these count??

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The video Michel posted conveniently ommited these two sims. At their peak, they were serious contenders to the MSFS empire. Unfortunately, the MSFS franchise was too established for Fly! to takeoff, punn intended. People look at XPlane now to compete with MSFS (which the video also left out) but if there was another incarnation of the Fly! series, I would put my money on that. Xplane is cool, but not at all user friendly, Fly! had a much better UI with some of the advances seen in XPlane.

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How about a military sim? MS Combat Flight Sim series is an obvious choice, but what about Falcon 4.0? This is still the premier F-16 advanced fighter sim today and the disc says it's copywritted in 1998! It came with a large, very well written manual that came professionally printed and wire-bound for you! I still have that manual around here somewhere, in near mint condition. This puppy was THICK, it wasn't a cheapo manual!

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And, the best for last. How many of you still have this package in your archives?? PMDG, CS, PSS, and any other aircraft addon company owes a debt of gratitude to this very package. Without this package, FS would be a very different landscape! This addon was leaps and bounds ahead of its time, yet they still made it work way back in FS2000! This is the true grandfather of that LDS767 in your hangar.

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Here are the system requirements from these packages:
Wilco 767 PIC: Windows 95, 98, or Millennium Edtion (LOL..I forgot that even existed!), FS2000 (I could swear this was originally a FS98 addon), Pentium 300 MHz, 64 MB RAM, CD-ROM drive, 238 MB of hard disk space. Recommended: Pentium 450 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 3D video accelerator card.

Fly! II: Windows 98/ME/2000, Pentium II-333 500 MHz recommended, 64 MB physical RAM, 128 MB RAM recommended, 1.2 GB hard disk space, 1.7 GB for full install, 4x CD-ROM, 16MB hardware acceleration, 32 MB recommended with DirectX 8a.

For the rest of the packages, I don't have the stats readily available. For a "quick post", this took a lot of time so research will have to be for another time.

[sberge84]

How vintage!! I started with FS5 as well. Never tried Fly! and didn't have the patience to finish installing XPlane 9. Seriously....60GBs and like 5 or 6 DVDs was it? I got to disc 3 and gave up. Even that took hours to install. I did have XPlane 8 and wasn't too impressed. Most of the options in the GUI were all greek to me anyways. Plus, it looked good on the website, but the actual sim never looked that good for me. MSFS all the way for me. I got FSX and Accel. when it first came out, but I had just joined the military, so I had to wait to get through basic and tech school (roughly 6 months) before I could start to save up to build a PC that would run it LOL! So I held that copy of FSX/Accel. until the summer of 2008 before I could play it!! Been hooked ever since, but have debated sometimes whether or not to go back to FS9. It was so much more stable and here we are 4 years down the road and they're finally building PCs that can run this thing at full settings with somewhat decent framerates. I just ordered a Dell laptop this week that blows my FSX-inspired custom-built PC (from summer '08 mind you) out of the water for half of what I paid to build this thing. Can't wait to run FSX on a laptop, lol!!! Not my first choice, but I have to stay active in the VA during deployments right?

[nwadc10]

How vintage!! I started with FS5 as well. Never tried Fly!

Not my first choice, but I have to stay active in the VA during deployments right?

I recall one of the things about Fly! that they advertised was that when you flip any switch, the logic sent that imaginary electrical current through the CB's then to the component. That's right, CB's could be tripped in that sim rendering a component inop! Another neat thing was that the top-down overhead map view was overlayed on top of actual FAA VFR sectional charts. The hawker was awesome in the game, had to follow the checklist word for word to get the airplane up and running. FSX hasn't even caught up to a lot of what's in that nearly 10 year old game. But, MSFS is the tried and true sim which has myself as a loyal customer.

I'm sure you are joking a bit about staying current during deployments, but in case you aren't aware I'd like to point out our Extended LOA (ELOA) program. The idea came about when another of our service members had a delema about staying current in the VA and deployed. The last thing I think any of us wants is to "punish", although quite trivial in the grand scheme of life, those who serve our countries by limiting them to the normal LOA rules. So, the ELOA was created with the military in mind. The ELOA is valid for up to 6 consequetive months which of course relieves you from VA "duty".

[sberge84]

How vintage!! I started with FS5 as well. Never tried Fly!

Not my first choice, but I have to stay active in the VA during deployments right?

I recall one of the things about Fly! that they advertised was that when you flip any switch, the logic sent that imaginary electrical current through the CB's then to the component. That's right, CB's could be tripped in that sim rendering a component inop! Another neat thing was that the top-down overhead map view was overlayed on top of actual FAA VFR sectional charts. The hawker was awesome in the game, had to follow the checklist word for word to get the airplane up and running. FSX hasn't even caught up to a lot of what's in that nearly 10 year old game. But, MSFS is the tried and true sim which has myself as a loyal customer.

I'm sure you are joking a bit about staying current during deployments, but in case you aren't aware I'd like to point out our Extended LOA (ELOA) program. The idea came about when another of our service members had a delema about staying current in the VA and deployed. The last thing I think any of us wants is to "punish", although quite trivial in the grand scheme of life, those who serve our countries by limiting them to the normal LOA rules. So, the ELOA was created with the military in mind. The ELOA is valid for up to 6 consequetive months which of course relieves you from VA "duty".

I understand the ELOA situation, but where I'm going in the next few months will have internet!! I actually bought the laptop so I could webcam with my family since I'll be missing ALL of their birthdays next year . On the other hand, I shouldn't have to worry about using any LOA with GCVA, as I should be able to easily submit at least one PIREP per month. Unfortunately, we never REALLY know how long we're going to be gone. This one is scheduled for only 3 months, but could easily turn into 5 or longer with this "new" jet that I work on and all. Regardless, I'll have a powerful enough laptop to run FSX better than what my current PC does (which isn't too bad itself) and I'll be able to email my RM as well as you, lol, if need be. I'm hoping that the internet isn't too slow (I highly doubt it will be in the land of the "Rising Sun" ) so submitting PIREPS shouldn't be an issue, lol. If they are, I'll just type 'em all up in notepad and email a dozen or so PIREPs that need to be manually entered when I get back, haha, just kidding.

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 15R with an Intel i5-450m CPU 2.4GHz w/ "TurboBoost" up to 2.66Ghz, 6GB DDR3 Ram, ATI Mobility Radeon HD5470 1GB DDR3 graphics card and a 640GB HHD for starters. Should be more than adequate for decent "FSXing" I customized it through Dell's website and picked it up for less a thousand bucks shipped to Alaska!!

[mav214]

Aaaahhhhhh, I loved the Airport Tycoon games. I never played 2, but I have 1 and 3. Such a great game, but unfortunately full of bugs, so they never reached their full potential. Falcon4.0 was awesome as well....I still have my "Binder" copy of it in the basement. In fact, I just installed Falcon4: Allied Force last week. But after looking at the graphics, I was so disappointed in how it looked that that one is in permanent retirement. FSX simply looks WAY better. Falcon4 could also have been soooo much better if it didn't have all the problems with internet play. I could talk about all of the Jane's titles as well.....but those weren't really simulators....except for F/A-18 Hornet. I flew with the VF-214th for years, and flew Fighters Anthology with them all the time.....never had more fun on the net

[John Khan]

Ted

Something that has worked well for me is having the second hard drive, and having only FSX on it. The HD is a Velociraptor - only 75 gigs which is plenty. They spin at around 10,000 rpm instead of around 5 to 6000 rpm of an ordinary HD.

I have all the Op. system, Programs and FS9 on the origional C drive, even the ones for FS, as the registry will find them there when necessary, and FSX itself only on the second HD.

That said you do have to have a fairly hefty Processor to run it and yes I think it is worth it.

John