Flight Simulator x

[PhilT]

Anyone played the full version yet? Just wondering if it is improved over what we saw in the demo?

[Homer Simpson]

Never tried the demo so don't know if it's different or not but the full version ran and looked like an absolute dog on my system.

The amount I had to turn down in order to get playable framerates made it look worse than FS2004. Even with everything maxed I still wasn't very impressed with how it looked when close to the ground (<2000ft).

Maybe I'm doing something wrong or forgot to tick something obvious, so if anyone has it running great and looking great please let me know.

Load times are still the usual MS Flight Sim pain in the ass..

[Idle Wild]

Yeah I've played it.

I gotta say I was totally impressed, the scenery at KLAX is on par with the payware cloud9 scenery just released for FS9. (I'm exaggerating slightly but it's good considering the default textures etc are much improved).

I'm using an X800XL, and it's useless for playing the game with all settings maxed out and anti-aliasing turned on, I get less than 10fps.

The quality of the craft is pretty impressive, but the textures are not on par with payware craft such as what we were seeing from the likes of PMDG for FS9.

The engine power seems more realistic (perhaps a little too much though) it's quite easy to climb at 30 degrees at 220knts in the default A321 from takeoff, or overspeed. I wasn't able to check the payload though perhaps it's a light load. You can now easily power back to 50% in order to maintain cruising speed (I found this to be impossible in the past though this could be down to my individual set up).

The flight characteristics in general seem much better, the A321 feels heavy at low speeds on approach, if you dip the wing she almost slides out from under you it feels much more realistic.

I did a flight from KSFO south towards KLAX and was very impressed by the scenery, you can see almost every dip and curve in the mountain sides and again the texture quality is first class.

Weather is pretty good too, you can fly into the clouds however Activesky whilst not as pretty is somewhat more accurate, there was still an instance when I was flying through snow and the suddenly I reached an altitude without hitting a cloud layer or any visible reference and the snow just stopped - unimpressed by that.

There's a VC in the A321, with movable dials and knobs, you can use the arrow keys if you're without a top hat to view any point in the cockpit.

No FMC however there is an ND with toggle options for waypoint mode, ils mode, vor mode, no plan mode however although the option is visible. I'm unsure as to whether you can use the FS built in flight planner with the ND.

I don't know if TCAS works with the transponder. Though you can see waypoints and airfields on the ND. There's also a flight director on the PFD.

Very impressive graphical update though, I know I'll be switching as soon as possible (for vatsim I mean). Going back to FS9 is like going back to the stone age -- I need a new graphic card!

One thing really confused me, if I enabled autopilot on the MCP she'd nose up almost vertical for no reason -- must be a bug.

The only other craft I tried was the waterbound craft, can't remember the name, very fun to fly if you land in the water the wing dips down and floats, when you attempt a take off again it's quite hard to pull the wing up with just enough power so you don't go flipping end over end!

[PhilT]

The wife is out shopping and is picking a copy up for me. Will let you know how it runs as soon as she stops spening our money.

[pauln98]

Originally Posted by Idle Wild

Yeah I've played it.

I gotta say I was totally impressed, the scenery at KLAX is on par with the payware cloud9 scenery just released for FS9. (I'm exaggerating slightly but it's good considering the default textures etc are much improved).

I'm using an X800XL, and it's useless for playing the game with all settings maxed out and anti-aliasing turned on, I get less than 10fps.

The quality of the craft is pretty impressive, but the textures are not on par with payware craft such as what we were seeing from the likes of PMDG for FS9.

The engine power seems more realistic (perhaps a little too much though) it's quite easy to climb at 30 degrees at 220knts in the default A321 from takeoff, or overspeed. I wasn't able to check the payload though perhaps it's a light load. You can now easily power back to 50% in order to maintain cruising speed (I found this to be impossible in the past though this could be down to my individual set up).

The flight characteristics in general seem much better, the A321 feels heavy at low speeds on approach, if you dip the wing she almost slides out from under you it feels much more realistic.

I did a flight from KSFO south towards KLAX and was very impressed by the scenery, you can see almost every dip and curve in the mountain sides and again the texture quality is first class.

Weather is pretty good too, you can fly into the clouds however Activesky whilst not as pretty is somewhat more accurate, there was still an instance when I was flying through snow and the suddenly I reached an altitude without hitting a cloud layer or any visible reference and the snow just stopped - unimpressed by that.

There's a VC in the A321, with movable dials and knobs, you can use the arrow keys if you're without a top hat to view any point in the cockpit.

No FMC however there is an ND with toggle options for waypoint mode, ils mode, vor mode, no plan mode however although the option is visible. I'm unsure as to whether you can use the FS built in flight planner with the ND.

I don't know if TCAS works with the transponder.

Very impressive graphical update though, I know I'll be switching as soon as possible (for vatsim I mean). Going back to FS9 is like going back to the stone age -- I need a new graphic card!

I have a X1900GT and I dont have any FPS issues, this is with Direct10 enabled too. X800XL is very poor now though. Have you thought about upgrading? I found the a380 rather poor. How about you Jim? Jolly Good show!

[PhilT]

Cheers for the review. Do you know if the flight sim 2004 add ons will work with the game? I've got traffic/flight environment from flight1. Or will flight x not need these?

[Arrowhead]

yeah, I picked it up yesterday. it's a great sim, but it just runs like poo poo on my AMD 3700+ and 7900gt. sigh, guess I've got a lot of fiddling to do this weekend in order to find that sweet spot.

but yeah, the potential is there, and the flight models just feel 'right'.

[PhilT]

God - I hate Microsoft. Have the Deluxe DVD edition in front of me. Gets all the way through install and then gives me an error message (1935). Microsoft game on Microsoft o/s. Does your head in.

[Pr()ZaC]

Originally Posted by pauln98

I have a X1900GT and I dont have any FPS issues, this is with Direct10 enabled too. X800XL is very poor now though. Have you thought about upgrading? I found the a380 rather poor. How about you Jim? Jolly Good show!

You must be living in the future...

[Idle Wild]

I dunno about the compatibility thing for add ons between FS9 and FSX, I did hear one instance of someone getting the PSS aircraft to work in FSX simply by copying all the appropriate files over.

I think they'd rather charge you for the new versions though, so I doubt many things will be compatible!

Just regarding my earlier comments on textures, they're fairly good, but some areas are better than others, and if you look closely, they're still fairly blocky! So there's as much a requirement for VFR scenery as ever I think although there's a lot more detail in the shape of the ground/mountains.

[Ninja6.]

Originally Posted by Pr()ZaC

You must be living in the future...

Rumour has it he reached 88mph and dissapeared only leaving two trails of fire

[Radeon_Nut]

Thanks for the review idle. I have an 800XL as well. I might pick it up, but really have no expectations that I will get the goodies until I overhaul this old rig sometime after Vista and the DX10 toys arrive. Rep bumpity bump

[Thr0tt]

Runs like poo here too. If u drop autogen down to none it runs ok but looks crap, u cant win. i hope they fix that, i think its due to the sm2.0 on everything , they should have not done that tbh.

[PhilT]

Finally got it installed after turning off antivirus and antispyware programs that were running in the background.

The FPS were awful to start off with so I'm playing around with the settings. So far it's running best with the FPS slider bar set to unlimited and with AA ticked. Seems that the same pattern is emerging to me: terrain textures look great at anything over 5/6,000 ft. Below that and it looks like a 4 year old designed the game.

Need to play it some more for a proper judgement though...

[pauln98]

Living in the future?

The x1900GT is a directx10 card, Its the only card out of the X19xx series to be fully directX10 ready. The man is my local pc shop told me, which is the main resaon i bought the X1900GT and not a X1600 card. He said I may as well future proof my purchase and pay the extra £70 for the DirectX10 feature.

[Thr0tt]

pauln98, DX10 is not out yet. FSX does not use DX10 yet. Although the card may support DX10 it currently is not available.

So, unless you work for M$ and have a world exclusive DX10 install and the patch for FSX they are working on to bring DX10 capabilities to it then just accept u are not using DX10.

Thx.



Ohh just one thing, 'The man in the shop told me' not a good statement to make in a forum tbh. I think other may agree.

[XxDeadlyxX]

Originally Posted by pauln98

Living in the future?

The x1900GT is a directx10 card, Its the only card out of the X19xx series to be fully directX10 ready. The man is my local pc shop told me, which is the main resaon i bought the X1900GT and not a X1600 card. He said I may as well future proof my purchase and pay the extra £70 for the DirectX10 feature.

You got majorly mis-informed. There is NO ATI/nVidia card currently available that is DX10. First is the 8800 series next month from nvidia.

[Shark]

Originally Posted by pauln98

Living in the future?

The x1900GT is a directx10 card, Its the only card out of the X19xx series to be fully directX10 ready. The man is my local pc shop told me, which is the main resaon i bought the X1900GT and not a X1600 card. He said I may as well future proof my purchase and pay the extra £70 for the DirectX10 feature.

your card is "compatible" with DX10...it doesn't fully support it yet

[markabuckley]

I noticed a HUGE frame rate increase by disabling VSync.

I think the problem with Vsync in this game is the game "trying to fix" the frame rate, that coupled with the Vsync by its nature causes severe problems.

Mark.

[metroidfox]

Originally Posted by thr0ttl3

pauln98, DX10 is not out yet. FSX does not use DX10 yet. Although the card may support DX10 it currently is not available.

So, unless you work for M$ and have a world exclusive DX10 install and the patch for FSX they are working on to bring DX10 capabilities to it then just accept u are not using DX10.

Thx.



Ohh just one thing, 'The man in the shop told me' not a good statement to make in a forum tbh. I think other may agree.

Actually, you are incorrect, the new Vista betas have the Dx10 API already, it is just the hardware which is not out.

[Thr0tt]

Originally Posted by metroidfox

Actually, you are incorrect, the new Vista betas have the Dx10 API already, it is just the hardware which is not out.

Nnnnnoooooooooooo, damn I'm wrong. I can't take it anymore. Thanks for pointing out my complete incompetance, I apologise on behalf of anyone that knows me.

[metroidfox]

Originally Posted by thr0ttl3

Nnnnnoooooooooooo, damn I'm wrong. I can't take it anymore. Thanks for pointing out my complete incompetance, I apologise on behalf of anyone that knows me.

[Cynicalking]

Originally Posted by pauln98

Living in the future?

The x1900GT is a directx10 card, Its the only card out of the X19xx series to be fully directX10 ready. The man is my local pc shop told me, which is the main resaon i bought the X1900GT and not a X1600 card. He said I may as well future proof my purchase and pay the extra £70 for the DirectX10 feature.

Dude, that guy owned you. It's really lame how shop employees lie to people to make money.

[sama98b]

It runs like crap on my new system too. Ultra high settings +af +aa +some settings maxed. Getting 2-20 fps at the most :P

Well this final version is like a beta test too.

Dual core not supported until vista+64bit+dx10 comes.
So 1 core is just doing nothing for the game.
They are wasting some cpu/gpu time for something since they don't realy heat up.

[Turnbull2000]

Sounds like autogen completely kills performance on even the fastest machines. The only reason I'd consider buying FSX is for the upcoming VFR hi-res photoscenery.

(Goddamnit PhilT, our defence is f**king ****)

[PhilT]

(Goddamnit PhilT, our defence is f**king ****)

Couldn't agree more mate. Bramble is a disaster.

[markabuckley]

can anyone get AA to work in the game ? I set it in CCC but I'm sure in game its not on.

Mark.

[Idle Wild]

Have you tried simply setting it in game? There's an option for Anti-aliasing under Settings > Display you know.

Oddly enough there's no aliasing depth level option, but I presume this could be modified via one of the configs?

I seem to get best frame results with Display settings set to medium - High, then changing AA to on, Filtering to Ansiotropic, and the FPS slider to unlimited, then maxing everything else out to ultra in the other tabs.

[PhilT]

I try changing the settings and everything just seems to revert back to default when I do this.

What screen resolution are you guys using?

[Gizmo]

I just posted this over at WSGF but i'll post it here also if noone minds?

Seems that MS forgot to add the widescreen option to the menu's for Flight Sim X but left the option in the hidden FSX.cfg file Tut Tut very lazy....


Firstly you need to have show hidden files and folders set to on(you can change this back after the edit if you like)

Windows XP

* Click Start.
* Open My Computer.
* Select the Tools menu and click Folder Options.
* Select the View Tab.
* Under the Hidden files and folders heading select Show hidden files and folders.
* Uncheck the Hide protected operating system files (recommended) option.
* Click Yes to confirm.
* Click OK.


Now locate the file

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Microsoft\FSX\FSX.cfg

(replace USERNAME is whatever your XP login is)

open FSX.cfg with a txt editor(i used wordpad) and under the [Display] section locate the line

WideViewAspect=False

Edit this line to read

WideViewAspect=True

Now save the file and fire up FSX and Enjoy +Hoz widescreen flight sim goodness(although the nav hud is still seems a little stretched)

Here are some comparison shots (resized from 1680x1050)

WideViewAspect=False



WideViewAspect=True



Hope this helps

Enjoy
Gizmo