Back to FSX

Happy Thanksgiving all.

I've been off of FSX for about three or four years and I've finally built a new PC and it's time to re-install FSX. When I left I was pretty maxed out with Fsgenesis and all of the lighting upgrades, most aircraft add-ons I could find. As most of you flight simmers are aware, it took a good couple of years to get the game where I wanted it. So now I'm starting fresh, just about where I was when I first put the game on my PC many years ago.

I'll be starting with the basic FSX Accel and then start adding from there.

 

I was running the Saitek X52 system but it doesn't seem to like Windows 8.1 so for now I'll be using a newer Saitek Proflight Yoke system.

My PC is built with the AMD FX 6100 six core with 16GB memory and the Radion HD 6900 card. Two Samsung 850 Pro 512 SSD gives me all the speed and space I need.

 

I'm looking for some good advice from the community how to get my PC\FSX back where it belongs.

Any and all advice, comments and help will be greatly appreciated and respected.

Thanks in advance.

Mike, I run Win 8.1 also, so I thought I'd put in a few words here. I run it on a 3.3 GHz i3 processor with 8 GB of RAM, a nVidia GT 640 graphics card and a Thrustmaster HOTAS joystick/throttle combo - not the fastest system in the world, but I have gotten it to run fairly decent. I also have 3 1 TB 5400 rpm hard drives, Windows and all applications except for FSX on C:, photoscenery on E: and FSX and everything else related to it on F:.

 

I'm assuming that you have your Windows on one of the SSDs and will be installing FSX on the other. You start by installing the base FSX (2 DVDs) to the SSD where you want it just call the folder FSX), and at the end of the installation let it take you flying for a minute or so, then shut down FSX. Reboot. Now activate the base FSX, or it will not let you install Acceleration. Reboot again. Install Acceleration, and at the end again fly around for a minute, then shut down FSX. Reboot. Active Acceleration, then reboot again.

 

You should now have FSX, working, now you want to set it up. Go around the screens and adjust things to your liking, in particular I would advise to turn off the ambient music, which seems to make FSX both load and terminate faster.

 

After that, go up to the top of this august forum, where you'll find a "Sticky" with Kosta's tweaking guide - this involves editing the file FSX.CFG. It will be difficult to say which fixes from there you should apply - some will be self evident and others not, but here's where the fun begins....

 

Have fun -

 

Jorgen

Thanks much for the info Jorgen. Actually I have my two SSHD in a Raid 0 setup. You did bring up something I remember from way back. FSX likes to be re-booted every time a change is made.

Also, I'm glad to hear you're running Win 9. I had some concerns with possible compatibility issues.

Thanks much for the advice. I'm sure I'll be asking for much more as I get this beast up and running again.

Thanks Lesh. You answered the one thing I was concerned about. When I dropped off, the community talk was all about how it was the feeling that the flight sim venue had pretty much run it's course and the fear was there would be no further improvements. I'm glad to hear things kept going.

And thanks for the link to Nick's FSX Bible. I'll be reading him and Kosta's guide with much interest. As usual, and really the fun of it, this game takes an incredible amount of patience and the willingness to try something and be ready to turn around do it again if it didn't work out the way you expected.

What's your favorite Terrain Mesh?

Be real careful with tweaking guides, no matter how highly rated or popular. Not every tweak works on every system combination. If you venture there (please don't until you have a LOT of very confident hours getting familiar with FSX) then do the tweaks one at a time,with CFG back ups. The kitchen sink approach is doomsville.

 

-Pv-

Very much agree with you Pv. When I first got on Flight Sim, that was my approach. Do it all and as quickly as I could. That resulted in so many configuration re-builds I can't even remember.

My approach now is do one thing first, try it out and move on if I like it.

After being gone for so long I consider myself a newbie again so it's sound advice.

Two things that I forget to include - I run everything off my desktop, and I run everything as Administrator. This (to me) makes my applications run better in Win 8.

 

Jorgen

Actually I have my two SSHD in a Raid 0 setup.

 

Is there is specific reason for going with RAID 0? It doesn't do much for FSX when using traditional hard drives, and even less so with SSDs. On the other hand it significantly increases the risk of losing all data on both drives.

No particular reason Loki, just the way I've been doing it. And you're absolutely correct. You lose one, you lose it all. In fact that's what happened to my last PC setup. But then, I've had just the one HD go and lost everything. My next step for this PC is to add in another Samsung 512GB, separate, and back FSX up on that.

A backup of FSX is not much use if you lose the OS. Especially with payware addons.

If I had that disk system I would use one SSD as OS disk C:\\, one for fsx (and data), and the third SSD for an Image of C:\\ (imaging software).

 

In case Of a system crash you could use the imaging software's CD to boot the computer (note, not the system. A basic OS would be running from the CD). Then from that situation you could restore the OS drive from the third SSD.

 

As long as your second SSD was not damaged during the crash, you would be back up and running within an hour.

 

All you would need to do is make images of the full first SSD disk regularly.

 

EDIT: actually you wouldn't need an SSD for the Image. A HDD or external HDD would do just as well. Making the image would just take a bit longer.

Excellent advice. I'm still working on building this PC and will leave the two SSHD's in the raid for now but thankfully I have a very large gaming case with plenty of room left to add whatever hardware I want. I like the idea of basically having a (not so hot) standby just in case I crash. I can't even begin to say how much data I've lost over the years due to my lack of planning for the almost inevitable! Thanks for the reminder.