Can my laptop run FSX?

Stupid question- can my laptop run FSX?

Below are its specs, it's a standard off-the-shelf machine which I bought from the local comp shop earlier this year for 300 Brit pounds (460 US dollars) and is great for general surfing, but I'm itching to install FSX on it to see if it can handle it, even with the graphics settings turned right down to ease the workload.

What do you think, shall I give it a go?

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/laptop-spec_zpszfskgdch.jpg~original

Display-

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/lapt-spec-disp_zpsyj0sp325.jpg~original

I don't think so but all you can do is try it and see... Should be interesting...Let us know what happens....

Doug

Well, my 6 year old Dell 1750 does. Dual Core, 2.3GHz, 4GB RAM, Radeon 3560 GFX integral processor. I can't crank all the sliders to the far right, and clouds really slow things a bit, but other than that...

Pat☺

Sound similar spec to my Acer ES1-512 & that runs FSX although sliders about mid way. Came with 8.1 but now runs W10. FS9 not as good as FSX on it though. Think FSX might have been slightly better when running 8.1. No addon scenery might slow things more if you do have some.

Keith

WAIT, IT WORKS!

My 7-year-old FSX Gold disks installed fine and were activated fine, and FSX runs smooth as silk with all graphics settings up around 75%..:)

And there was me thinking that my cheap 300 Brit pounds (460 US dollars) laptop hadn't a chance of running it! (see specs in first post of this thread)

Last year I bought a big super-duper desktop PC (1100 Brit pounds) purely to play FSX and other high-end sims and games, so obviously I needn't have bothered and should have just bought a cheap laptop back then!

Question- why do people ask in this forum for recommendations about what PC to get for FSX? Why don't they just go out and buy a laptop like I did? Or am I missing something?

If it's the small laptop screen that worries them, no problem, just plug it into a separate monitor like I do.

WAIT, IT WORKS!

 

Question- why do people ask in this forum for recommendations about what PC to get for FSX? Why don't they just go out and buy a laptop like I did? Or am I missing something?

If it's the small laptop screen that worries them, no problem, just plug it into a separate monitor like I do.

Actually I wouldn't mind having a laptop that ran FSX well, and was looking around

at the various models. But to run the NGX and any level of scenery, it takes a fairly

stout laptop. I have a old Pentium 1.7 ghz laptop that will run FSX, but only if all the

scenery settings are at the minimums. So looks really bare, but does about 20 fps

like that. So it is flyable even if nothing to look at. The VC does look normal like that.

Any fairly modern puter will run stock FSX OK. If I remember right, I started FSX with

a Celeron at 500 mhz. Which was not enough, and I went to a P4 at 2.4 ghz..

But add the addons, and the picture can change.

Question- why do people ask in this forum for recommendations about what PC to get for FSX? Why don't they just go out and buy a laptop like I did? Or am I missing something?

If it's the small laptop screen that worries them, no problem, just plug it into a separate monitor like I do.

Like has already been said, once you start adding other things into FSX then you'll run into issues. I use a laptop as my FSX machine, and it works ok, but could be better. Also, cooling is a challenge. Can get rather hot.

Thanks guys. luckily the only meaty addon I've got is some southern England photoreal scenery, I'll install it later and (gulp) see what happens..

I've got a few dozen FSX addon aircraft (below) and have copied them into into my laptop installation and they all seem to be working fine so far, the laptop feels cool as a cucumber to the touch, but I'll keep an eye out for smoke and a smell of burning..:)

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-ac1-1.gif

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-ac2-1.gif

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-ac3-1.gif

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-ac4-1.gif

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-ac5.gif

Question- why do people ask in this forum for recommendations about what PC to get for FSX? Why don't they just go out and buy a laptop like I did? Or am I missing something?

Yes, you're missing that there are a whole range of laptops, just as there are a whole range of desktops!

It's the spec of the CPU (especially) plus RAM, Graphics etc that counts.

So, it's not just a case of buying "a laptop".

Scatterbrain,

I suggest you look into one of those laptop coolers. It fits under the laptop and has fans. I have a friend who has the fastest laptop I've seen and it never gets warm when sitting on the cooler. But you can feel the heat when it is sitting by itself.

A cooler should reduce the "smoke" chances.

Thanks guys, I waltzed in the local computer shop last year and said "Build me a good PC that can play all the high-end flight sims and strategy games out there", and they built me a big desktop PC for 1100 Brit pounds (1600 US dollars).

It plays them fine, but so does my new 300 Bp's laptop, so obviously i should have bought a laptop last year and saved myself 800 Bp, but I didn't think laptops had the horsepower so I'm annoyed with myself AND with the shop for not telling me!

Rupert thanks for suggesting cooling fans but regrettably the whirring would get on my nerves and I'd have to have a cup of hot sweet tea and go for a lie down.

So I think my best bet for the time being is to keep feeling the laptop with my fingers for signs of overheating, and if I'm in another room, keeping an ear out for the smoke alarm going off, in which cases I'll rush out to buy a cooler.

I say it will run because I also have a HP250 running Win8.1-64bit that I installed FSX on. I must warn you though that FSX is a 32bit gane and my experience on my laptop is very distasteful due to chronic crashing of FSX. I recently made a post on it and will see if I can copy and paste it here so you understand the complications of running FSX on any 64bit version of Windows.

Sent from my Samsung GT-I8262 using Tapatalk.

That may be true with default FSX with no addons. If you start adding scenery or aircraft is when you will see a problem.

Exactly what happened to me; that was when my FSX started crashing repeatedly on launch. I later learned that it was due to FSX being a 32bit game being run in the 64bit environment of Win8.1 that I have on my HP250 laptop.

Sent from my Samsung GT-I8262 using Tapatalk.

I'm back again.

At the "Flightsim.com" forum, I posted the thread "FSX Keeps Crashing on my Win8.1-64bit..." something like that:

After the motherboard of my aged HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop gave up the ghost, I was forced to get a laptop with Windows 8.1. I had no idea that FSX waa a 32bit app and that running it in a 64bit would result in problems for FSX.

It doesn't. The problem is Windows 8, not 64 bit. FSX has been running on countless Win7 64bit installations for years now, but there are a lot of threads about the problems FSX has with Win8 around.

The uiautomationcore fix is not a "64bit-disguise" of any kind - copying it just fixes the fact that FSX cannot/is not allowed to find and use this library on Win8 systems. It needs it for the menu and window system in the sim (ui... = User Interface...).

Without knowing the contents of your event log a few things come to mind:

- Laptop means specialized GPU, so it could be a GPU driver or DirectX problem or both

- Same goes for the sound hardware

- GPUs on laptops are known to be weak, if FSX is running but is unstable it could be an overload situation

- Laptops have issues with heat - check that your machine is not running hot when you sim

- If FSX does not work at all, you could be looking at the classic UAC problem: turn UAC off and reinstall FSX to check if it improves things

- Finally you can have issues with the installed C++ library (maybe related to the UAC).

Sent from my Samsung GT-I8262 using Tapatalk.

Pardon my sloppy handling of copy-and-paste from another forum, I'm still trying to get a hang of tapatalk's interface and behaviour.

Sent from my Samsung GT-I8262 using Tapatalk.

....thanks for suggesting cooling fans but regrettably the whirring would get on my nerves and I'd have to have a cup of hot sweet tea and go for a lie down...................

Firstly, most modern coolers are very quiet - I have one by Akasa that runs very quietly and is very effective in keeping my laptop cool. Indeed, the cooler's fan makes less noise than that fitted to my desktop rig.

Second, remember the following guideline before buying. Your laptop will either blow out air OR draw in air via its fitted cooling fan. Therefore it is essential that you buy the right type to suit your laptop.