Am I FSX Ready?

[speedbird591]

OK. I'm running out of reasons not to buy FSX. Thanks to the lovely Dan, some of my favourite aircraft will now work OK (allegedly). I've tried the demo, which I like, and it runs pretty good on my laptop. Now 'Game' have reduced the price to £29.99 for both the deluxe and standard edition. So that makes it just under 50 squids for FSX deluxe plus Acceleration - which sounds pretty reasonable.

But first I need some technical advice from you FSX gurus. I will still want to run FS9 (for 9 Dragons, the Comet, 1-11 and Trident) on the same computer. I have a laptop with one hard drive but two partitions and I also have an external hard drive.

Q1. Is it practicable to run both sims from the same machine? FS9 will be most important - so no compromises on that!
Q2. If I load Acceleration do I also need to install both service packs?
Q3. If so, what order do I load the SPs and Acceleration?

Ian

[DanKH]

No problems in running both. some have issues when un-installing but why should you do that? ;-)

If you get FSX:A then just pop that one in. It will take you through the whole way (SP1 and SP2 are both included on the DVD) so don't worry about the order.

I've got a trick or two when and if you decide to go FSX too, hove to isolate varios aircraft from the default, adding AI etc. etc.

Not many Add-ons needed when you you go FSX... some but not many.

Don't hesitate to ask.

ATB

The "lovely" Dan Tell my wife that! HELP

[speedbird591]

I've got a trick or two when and if you decide to go FSX too, hove to isolate varios aircraft from the default, adding AI etc. etc.

Not many Add-ons needed when you you go FSX... some but not many

Oh, WHAT????


Just wanna fly aeroplanes, here ...

Ian :-(

[DanKH]

OK, then NO ai apart from the default? ;-)

It is absolutely flyable right out of the box... so just go ahead.

[SkippyBing]

Not sure if this has been posted elsewhere, but although 9 Dragons doesn't seem to work in FSX (land textures on the water, water on the land etc.) you can reactivate Kai Tak here http://www.swiremariners.com/cxhkg.html. There's also an AI file to get them to use it, certainly more interesting then using Chek Lap Kok!

[speedbird591]

Sorry to have ignored your replies, gentlemen. Had to go to work and just got back. Skippy - thanks for the tip about re-activating Kai Tak in FSX, but 9 Dragons is so good and brings back so many memories that I'd keep FS9 just for that and would use Chek Lap Kok in FSX. I use World of AI traffic and it is all succesfully diverted from VHHH to VHHX.

Dan - only joking about the add-ons. Of course I shall want your advice if I decide to get FSX Will my World of AI traffic work in FSX? because I've got quite a lot of it and it's rather good.

If I do buy it I think I'll try it on the external HD first just to see how it performs - and then we'll know if anyody else asks.

Thanks for the advice so far. I'll decide tomorrow. Possibly...

Ian

[DanKH]

Yes WoAI works quite well. converted to FSX or not. only difference is that non-converted files (FS9'ers) will eliminate the "other" traffic such as boats, cars etc. etc. while the converted ones (FSX'ers) will let boats and cars and animals for that sake travel freely around still ;-)

I'll explain it more thoroughly if you want, if not, I wont ;-)

[speedbird591]

OK. I decided. I decided NOT to buy FSX. But then I went into Game and it was on the shelf with Acceleration at the online price - so I bought it :roll:

After that it all went downhill, I'm afraid. I spent two hours installing, 30 mins trying to fly it and 30 mins uninstalling. It was a disaster, with frame rates of 5 to 10 even on very low display settings. I won't go into all the things that were wrong because I'm going to be positive about it. I'm not disappointed because I knew it was going to be secondary to FS9 anyway. But I'm determined to TRY and get it working respectably but I think it might be a long-term project...

Perhaps you guys can help me on this thread. If I post what I'm doing you can all chip in with advice, abuse, insults and merriment. Lots of fun for all!

Let's start with why I thought I could run it. Even though I have a laptop it is reasonably well specified and it runs FS9 superbly. I've tried the FSX demo and got fantastic frame rates so it's quite capable. Here are the specs: Intel T7300 Santa Rosa Core 2 Duo at 2.00 GHz. 2Gb RAM. NVidia 256Mb 8600M GT. Vista Home Premium gives it an experience rating of 4.6 (5.1 for gaming). It comfortably exceeds the published minimums for FSX and Acceleration. FSX requires a rating of 3.6 and Acceleration requires 4.0.

I installed FSX on to my single hard drive on the same partition as FS9. The one without the operating system. I did a quick 'flight' to allow it to register, then I shut down FSX, installed Acceleration and rebooted the laptop. I spent some time adjusting the settings but couldn't get acceptable graphics or performance so decided to take it off and try again another time

So there it rests for the time being. When I can face starting over, I thought I might try it on the other partition and this time install the service packs into FSX before installing Acceleration to see if that improves it. Any other ideas?

And Tony Madge - I know you told me so! I even went to the phone box on Beachy Head to see if you'd left a phone number to call for people who were about to take the leap so you could talk them out of it! But what the hell, it'll be a bit of fun trying to get it going, in between flying VC10s into Kai Tak. And if we fail to get it running then I'll put it in the drawer until the winter when the 'building a super desktop with advice from CB' project is due to start and see if it runs on that.

Ian

[TSR2]

if you have acceleration you don't install the service packs!!!!

Why did you uninstall it? was it affecting anything else? You should have left it their and saught some help / advice first. ;-)

[speedbird591]

if you have acceleration you don't install the service packs!!!!

Ben - I didn't install the service packs!!!! The install wasn't successful, so I'm suggesting a different approach for a clean install. There's not much point in doing it exactly the same next time.

Why did you uninstall it? was it affecting anything else? You should have left it their and saught some help / advice first. ;-)

Was it affecting anything else? Yes. My sanity
Why did I uninstall it? I had tried a lot of different settings, none of which seemed to make much difference. So I figure the problem is more fundamental than tweaking. I'd rather start again from scratch - after seeking help/advice first.

If it was a desktop, I'd be looking at updated graphics card drivers, but NVidia don't update laptop drivers - they refer you to the manufacturer (who also doesn't update drivers ). I've found a site that offers modded driver INF files for laptops that allows you to install the generic forceware driver. Have you any experience of that? I figure it might be worth a try as I can always roll back to the old driver if I need to. But as the FSX demo worked well, I would have thought that there would not be a driver problem.

Ian