Getting up Steam

[avallillo]

There are some enthusiastic accolades about FSX Steam Edition showing up in various parts of the FSX-verse these days, and the enticing aspect of this is that some allude to improvements in frame rates and stability. I have become intrigued about the prospect of adding the Vaporous edition to my overcrowded computer hangar!

 

Having learned the hard way, by dint of experience with Win8, to check things out with the pros who know ahead of time, I therefore turn to the Flightsim.com community for some advice and counsel:

 

- Is FSX Steam edition noticeably improved in terms of frame rates and stability, when running on a mid level system like mine (I7-3770 and GT620 Video)

 

- Can Steam be installed along with the regular edition in its own set of folders, essentially becoming just another sim on the computer, or is it necessary to either overwrite or delete the original FSX?

 

- Will the LDS 767 and the Quality Wings 757 work with Steam? How about the Milviz T-38? I have heard that some of the add-ons install OK and some do not.

 

- Any other comments and suggestions that you may have short of the obvious one of buying a new computer, which is not in the cards at the moment since I have yet to hit any major lottery!

 

Thanks!

 

Tony Vallillo

[iainso]

On my Lenovo w540 (i7, NVidia cuadro) I saw a frame rate improvement of around 10%.

 

It can be installed alongside original FSX, by default it goes in a 'steam' folder. I would recommend however installing Steam and FSX:SE outside the /Program Files folders, to avoid the Windows User Account control warnings.

 

I don't know about the add-ons you mention.

 

Currently I think you need a live internet connection to start FSX:SE, but apparently the beta release they have out now does not require this.

[alverthein]

avallillo, hi and I have fsx, fsx-se and Prepar3d on my E drive with no obvious problems...so far...I do not know how to load Level D 767 on Steam ..when I tried it did not upload...I am not a techie...I just purchased Prepar3d last week and it is fantastic in my opinion...for $59.95. I only fly now the PMDG 777 and NGX anyway....with ORBX Global..the frames are great as well on my system....FS Recorder does not work for me on Prepar3d and the default instant replay does not show the reversers or the speedbrakes/spoilers deploy on replay in Steam and P3D in my experience...My FSX still runs good with a freeze now and then which I can live with....so that is all I know...Happy Landings to you...al v

[MBKHOU]

I have both FSX Gold and Steam.. To tell the truth, I don't really see much difference

between the two. But many report better VAS management using SE..

Some report better frame rates from SE, but they seem about the same here.

I now have the 737NGX on both which is good. But I find myself still using FSX Gold

most of the time. For one, I use FSrecorder a lot, and also I had issues trying to run

ASN beta SP2 on SE.. So I'll wait till they get a stable version out for SE before messing

with it too much more. For the cheap price I paid for SE, I felt it was worth buying to

tinker with. But if one has a good running box FSX, there may not be too much reason to

switch. I'll never totally dump FSX Gold, and will always keep both on the puter..

Ditto if I later add P3D. I'll still keep all three going. I have multiple drives and plenty

of room.. I have three installs of FSX Gold alone on this box, in case one goes kaput.

[avallillo]

Thank you all for the information. Acting upon this advice and other info I got by roaming the net, I went ahead and sprung for the Steam Edition (for the staggering sum of $4.95!!....they must have been looking to sell this to a lot of airline pilots, since the price point was carefully calculated to appeal to the natural penury of the species!)

 

It did indeed install without difficulty into its own convoluted series of directories (there's a clue as to my age and computer longevity! How long has it been since we used that term? Old dogs, you know.....), and I did indeed keep it out of the x-86 area, as we have all learned by now to do with everything.

 

I was delighted to discover that, on my pedestrian system (I-7 and GT 620) I could set almost all of the sliders pretty far over to the right and still get frame rates above 30 all the time, with the basic installation. Very smooth and very impressive, at least to me (having become used to flying with frame rates down in the silent movie era range for a long time now in FSX, and actually getting pretty proficient at it too!)

 

I did, eventually, get the A2A C182 to successfully load into the Steam version. Apparently some people have had success with the QW 757 as well, but I was not able to get that one to load, since at no point in the install sequence was there the opportunity to steer the installation to the Steam folders. It must be that in order to get the QW to install in Steam, Steam might have to be the only iteration of FSX on the computer, which is not the case with me.

 

I will try to load the LDS 767 into it later, when I find the keys (I have yet to come up with a way to keep serial numbers and key codes in a way that I can find them again years later!). Other than that, I think I'll keep Steam clean. It runs very well, albeit only when connected to the internet which is not a problem for me since the computer is always on and online, ready and waiting to catch any an all viruses and malware roaming around out there! I wonder if perhaps my next computer should live its life offline, serving only as a flight simulator and never ever exposed to the real world, a sort of cybernetic bubble boy!

 

At any rate, I am more than happy about Steam, particularly at the price! And X-Plane, thanks entirely to the efforts of third party developers, is also getting better every day. In the immortal words of Yakov Smirnoff, "Flight Simulation...vot a hobby!"

[dnpaul]

I tricked the QW757 installer to install into FSX-Steam by temporarily moving my FSX-Boxed main folder out of its location, then pulling the FSX-Steam main folder to that location. Then run the installer, put the Steam version back where it goes, put the FSX-Boxed main folder back where it goes.

 

Then you need to download and install the FSDT Addon Manager, and it will fix a gauge issue with the 757 in STeam, and voila! I am flying the QW757 in Steam.

[Egsjr1956]

I hope this helps. Flight1 has a registry repair tool that's available. It changes the registry for the programs to be directed to steam. I fly the QW757 in Steam. I installed it with no problem. This tool helps.

[dnpaul]

I hope this helps. Flight1 has a registry repair tool that's available. It changes the registry for the programs to be directed to steam. I fly the QW757 in Steam. I installed it with no problem. This tool helps.

 

Could you possibly provide a link to the tool? I went to Flight1 and searched for "registry repair tool" and didn't find it.

[Egsjr1956]

http://www.flight1.com/view.asp?page=library. Here the link that I copied. The tool is about halfway down the page amongst other fixes.