continue with fsx or move on

[Ryan McLeod 1177597]

hey guys i know this has probably been discussed many many times. i have searched the forums and the web with not much info i figured i would ask the community. I currently have fsx with a few 3rd party payware addons i have no issues other then airports out of date but i update them through avsim and a few pay wares as i go. my question is before i keep going and buying more payware, if i think about pulling the plug on fsx s because there is no more development for it. will the 3rd party software eventually just stop in fsx, i am at a point right now where if i switch to something else i only have a handful of payware stuff i have purchased such as pmdg ngx, active sky, rex, and some airports. and if i do need to pull the plug which direction should i go xplane or p3d? looks like p3d has more addons then xplane but looks like xplane may be a step up in the flight models? what are your thoughts? keep going with fsx or will it eventually come to an end. also what current fsx products will i be able to carry with me if any? or will i have to re purchase most my stuff? anyways sorry for the huge story and run on sentences any help would be appreciated.

Edited May 7, 2017 at 08:26 PM by Guest

[Sean Harrison]

Dove Tail Games have also announced that their Flight Sim World will be released this month on steam.

 

The screen shots look absolutely amazing, however I can't see what the compatibility is going to be like with add ons.

[Trent Hopkinson]

"no more development for it"?

 

Future releases are likely to include Qualitywings 787, FSDT Louisville, ActiveSky whatever 2017/2018's release will be called. Majestic Software DH8C Q300, Probably half a dozen Carenardo addons, PMDG 747-8.

Here in Australia there's new scenery being developed for YPPH Perth, YMAY Albury, YBSU Sunshine Coast (already available in 0.8 beta on the Vatpac website), and new freeware addon scenery being released daily which you can find at http://www.freewarescenery.com/fsx/whatsnew.html

 

and payware at http://www.flightsim-scenery.com/fsx/whatsnew.html

 

Development hasn't even slowed down, nevermind stopped.

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

yea im not sure you've got the facts correct. who fed you this idea that there will be no more development? or are you mixing that up with updates to the sim itself by microsoft, in which case no, microsoft wont be updating it any further. Development for the sim itself isnt ending anytime soon, if someone told you that, id stop believing everything some folks tend to say, especially some who seem to have misguided agendas running around the community

[Nick Warren]

Obviously 3rd party development for FSX is still at a high level. What I find however to be the progression and the problem, is that developers are now creating products of such high complexity and quality, that the sim platform can no longer keep up. For instance, I am on a clean install of FSX:SE on a second drive. All I have installed is three A2A GA aircraft, ORBX/FTX regions and airports for the west coast, and a handful of other quality airport sceneries for the west coast. Honestly, I cannot fly much longer than an hour or two without exceeding VAS and getting OOM crashes. I have a relatively high end machine, yet the software in it's present 32bit configuration is just too little for what is being developed nowadays. I tune my sliders appropriately, but you can only do so much without sacrificing quality. Quite frankly, with my machine, I shouldn't have to turn down sliders at all, and flying in default scenery I don't, and will go 150-200fps with no OOM. This is the crux right now in my opinion. It looks like there are some new 64bit platforms arising between Aerofly and Dovetail. They both look very promising. Honestly, I would wait for those offerings, rather than putting yourself in another 32bit conundrum. I just hope that one of their considerations in working with the 3rd party developers is that reverse compatibility with their products is included.

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

trick is, dont overload your sim. there are addons that love to eat up that virtual memory for no other reason then just being loaded in the sim, even if you are nowhere near it, its still taking a chunk.

 

cant say i have many OOM's myself, but i do know which addons i have that will more then likely cause one when used together, IE the Drzewiecki NY scenery tends to not play nice.

 

the more addons you have with HD texturing, the more itll hit, you can actually watch how much is being eaten with some of the VAS monitors like the one from project fly which is free. my FSX is already at 3gb just after startup! that leaves me with roughly 1gb to play with. at the end of a long haul or short haul, often doesnt matter, im right around 3.5 to 3.8, unless i fly into heavy scenery in which case its going to jump to 3.9 and the alarm from the VAS monitor will start going off as well as the one from FSUIPC letting you know you need to finish your flight quick or get away from the area you are flying before it kills the sim, which normally the minute i do get away from those heavy areas itll go back down to around 3.7 - 3.8, enough to finish the flight, or if youve hit the breaking point there is just no saving it and itll be on a death spiral to OOM land

 

another more common mistake, dont over tweak the tweaking! cannot stress this enough. many of the people who have OOM's are doing it to themselves by just overdoing it. tweaking is ok (not in the real world ) but dont overdo it. itll hurt you, not work for you. remember all PC's are different, just cause Johny has amazing graphics and performance cause he tweaked his, doesnt mean you can follow his exact steps. not going to work out well for you and youll be left wondering why hes enjoying his sim and you are pulling your hair out even trying to finish a flight. same goes for any game/sim (whatever you want to call it) including Xplane. yes xPlane is completely crashable just like the Titanic. just going to take an iceberg to do it, but there be iceberg in them waters!

[Nick Warren]

I appreciate what you are saying Ernesto, but really it just is what it is. I have not heavily tweaked my fsx.cfg by any means. I still run an LOD RADIUS of 4.5, reduced my AI traffic to pretty much nil sans some boat traffic, dropped down some of the autogen, and really that is all. I don't tweak with Bufferpools, Affinity Masks, etc. I do fly in complex scenery areas, and I do fly with quality aircraft. ORBX is beautiful, but it is the beast. Despite that fact, I cap my textures at 2048mb, and remove a lot of the eye candy from the configurations. Current development is development for the future, not for the stagnant. If people haven't dealt with OOM's they are part of a shrinking minority. Generally, first jump in the aircraft on the ground, I'm already at 2.3-2.5gb VAS. That doesn't leave a tremendous amount for growth over the duration of a longer flight with consistent scenery rendering. So, short of going the DX10 route to possibly preserve a few ticks of VAS, I am really at what I can do. It's just something I accept for now unfortunately.

 

Edit: For whatever reason, this discussion prompted me to dust off my copy of Steve's DX10 Fixer and give DX10 a run. It will take some flying, but we'll see what happens.