David25210

8 minutes ago, MAD1 said:

G'day boys. am 'back in the saddle again'. Installed FS2002 on an old laptop Compaq Presario with Win Vista Home Edition on it. Amazed, it all just worked, great smooth frame rates. Just did my second flight from the default Meigs Field, Chicago.

Congrats and welcome back! FS2002 rocks.

24 minutes ago, darrenvox said:

 

took this a few years ago at KPSP while heading to MMMX

 

 

Wish I could find a nice KPSP for fs9, stuck with stock version.. for fsx the orbx version is great though, very accurate and well modeled scenery 

Just now, Airbasil_1 said:

Saratoga County, Regional Airport (5B2)

Thx! Looks great!!

19 hours ago, Airbasil_1 said:

You may recon' the field... 

What airfield is that, please?

16 hours ago, beroun said:

The things one can do in FS9, almost unlimited. Took Transamerica DC-8 to London City airport. Never happened in reality but my FS9 with over 600 aircraft and add-on scenery can provide just about anything. Any aircraft, any airport, any weather. A real joy! Tribute to FS9!!

Really nice! Great clouds and overall atmosphere… BTW what DC-8 is that?

1 hour ago, David25210 said:

Thanks. Yesterday I purchased a boxed Justflight 777Pro version on eBay, it’s a PSS… I tried to buy the download at blackboxsimulation however they set PayPal as the only payment option, and it’s not working at PayPal, blackboxsimulation SSL certificate is invalid, maybe thats the reason, I exchanged mails with their support and waiting if they’ll figure it out. Either way, have boxed JF777 coming in mail someday next week… also got JF 757 Captain box… if blackboxsimulation fixes the purchasing, I’ll maybe get the PSS757 too..it’s affordable. Have their Airbus already from the past, both for fs2002 and fs2004, however that one isn’t too great. I assume 777 and 757 are better..

 

I also installed two free 777s, however I’m not too happy with either due to simple panels. Deeknow above recommended the payware panels in a replay above too, I’m undecided yet.

…an update. Blackboxsimulation fixed their site payments, just grabbed 757…. Will install and test once I get to it…

4 hours ago, lmhariano said:

Yes, very worth do get it. I'm sure it's the best 777 panel you can get for FS9. Merge it with the Posky/Skyspirit models and you'll get the best of both worlds.

 

For the 757, well, there's a close match: the Blackbox/PSS for also €10, or the QW for $15.

Thanks. Yesterday I purchased a boxed Justflight 777Pro version on eBay, it’s a PSS… I tried to buy the download at blackboxsimulation however they set PayPal as the only payment option, and it’s not working at PayPal, blackboxsimulation SSL certificate is invalid, maybe thats the reason, I exchanged mails with their support and waiting if they’ll figure it out. Either way, have boxed JF777 coming in mail someday next week… also got JF 757 Captain box… if blackboxsimulation fixes the purchasing, I’ll maybe get the PSS757 too..it’s affordable. Have their Airbus already from the past, both for fs2002 and fs2004, however that one isn’t too great. I assume 777 and 757 are better..

I also installed two free 777s, however I’m not too happy with either due to simple panels. Deeknow above recommended the payware panels in a replay above too, I’m undecided yet.

54 minutes ago, deeknow said:

Can recommend the PSS 777, used that a lot in FSX in the past. If you go the freeware route take a look at the following gauges, they aren't free but add a lot more realism to the FMC/ND/PFD etc and you can use them w pretty much any aircraft, all the way thru to P3D http://www.isgsim.com/

Thanks! They look good.

1 hour ago, ScottishMike said:

You are spoilt for choice, just did a search here using "Boeing 777" and got over 3900 results.

It depends what you are looking for: 777-200 or 777-300? or any particular livery? General Electric engines or Rolls Royce? Etc.

Try playing around with the search facility (right hand corner at the top of the home page).

When you enter your search term a drop down menu appears, from it select files.

You may find it simpler to download a complete aircraft rather than a re-paint (texture only).

Any problems search here for answers already posted or ask.

Good luck searching.

Thanks, I’ll definitely want a complete package with good sharp 2D panels, sounds and working FMC, and would add desired liveries later on if I’m happy with plane. I’ll do a search..

1 minute ago, ScottishMike said:

Any particular reason you want Payware?

Both the Project Opensky and SkySpirit are pretty good models, they both look good and fly well.

sometimes the freeware packages gave me too much headaches due to missing this or that (bad experience for instance with some dc3/rd4 , maam or what was it, tons of work and at the  end had to uninstall and manually seek and remove installed unneeded conflicting files , however I surely don’t mind freeware, can you drop link to a good one? Some sites are better than others, thanks. Maybe here at Flightsim are some available?

...here are a few of my recent ones. I use FS2000, FS2002, FS2004 (and FSX). You guys are right, FS2004 may be the best one out of them, but they are great all...

Hello,

I’m looking for a decent FS2004 777 payware, I don’t see too many choices, and wonder if Blackbox/PSS 777 Professional is worth to get for €10 ? 
 

Also, 777 for FS2002/2000?
 

Thanks.

1 hour ago, SCM0616 said:

I've only dealt with some terrain anomalies around KSEA created by the particular combination of the two commercial sceneries and mesh that I use. Since you had FZ's KPDX, I thought you might also have FT's KSEA and maybe I could help with ironing out some of the issues involved with those.

 

Yeah, dealing with an airports plateau is another fish, though. The only sollutions I've found was one suggestion of creating sloped flattens with SBuilder , and there is a commercial product, Pilot's FS2004 AFM (airport flattening meshes) that supposively does this for ALL airports in the sim.  That looks interesting but I haven't purchased it because I could not find any feedback about how well it really works. If it does what it designed to do, it seems worthwhile.  But I still see terrain anomalies having to be dealt with.  Wondering if anybody out there has has any experience with AFM or has gone the SBuilder route?
 

Steve,

the flattening for KSEA I do with the software you mentioned, the Pilot’s AFM tool for FS2004. Im not applying FSGlobal terrain mesh though because I remember it was creating even worse mess all over the sim, and AFM gives mixed result success, sometimes OK, sometimes not. The nightmare was for instance KCOS, due to nearby 5CO airport or what’s the name of it the scenery is better without mesh at the end  . I may look at SBuilder. 
 

What sucks is that while FZ 02 KPDX looks great, I can’t believe that the scenery author overlooked the impact on KSEA + UT USA, because those are in FS9 world really the most popular and commonly used. Stock KSEA is default flight and great as unified test benchmark, and UT USA is as far as I think also commonly widespread. The FZ02-UTUSA patch does job fine around KPDX, but the FZ 02 scenery reaches to KSEA unfortunately…. Oh well.

I don’t have FlyTampa KSEA, although I’m considering to get it. I do have their Vienna and it’s excellent, but maybe too demanding for slower machines…assume KSEA would be similar.

8 hours ago, SCM0616 said:

I am using both FT's KSEA and  FZ's KPDX.  I did not have any problems with KSEA's elevation but had several issues with the terrain around the airport. 

These issues were basically to the south and southeast of the AP's boundary with some horrific large and deep terrain depressions.  I was able to

correct these with a couple of flattens using ADE9. 

 

What type of elevation problems are you experiencing the the airport, and which scenery are you using?

 

Steve

 

 

Hello Steve,

thx for reply.

On laptop that I test this on, in this area I have UT USA v.1.3 as the only scenery add-on,  and now trying add FZ 02 Portland. No mesh installed /such as FSGlobal or FS Terrain/, or anything else. KSEA is stock. Have just a few airports in other unrelated areas that don't conflict at all.

Here are sample shots with descriptions. I cant get rid of either sunk lakes, or holes in the terrain by the KSEA, or KSEA on small plateau. On the other hand, KPDX seems flawless terrain wise...

How yours looks like?

David

Hello,

anyone around using this excellent scenery still? 

Flight Zone 02: Portland FS2004

Its an excellent scenery however it has issues with Ultimate Terrain USA, and particularly KSEA airport elevation and its surrounding. I had Flight Zone 02: Portland installed many years ago, and remembered that it had these issues, anyway I decided to give it another try, and yes, the conflicts between UT USA exist. Even with the FZ02-UTUSA.exe patch applied. It removes double coastlines at KSEA, however airport elevation is screwed up.

I don't feel like start trying again all the possible combinations of layering, flattening etc.. someone maybe figured this out already? Anyone could help? Thanks..

Amazing screenshots, congratulations, and thanks for sharing them! Very inspiring, while reassuring us that FS2004 is far from being forgotten sim…

On 1/30/2023 at 12:45 PM, djtnm said:

I have a regular laptop, hp620, although it supports graphics on high, I always value decent frames. I put it on medium, I click extend textures, textures and lights at dusk, I don't know why I feel satisfied with the graphics like that, is it just me?
I think I value imagination more than graphics on high, even when I put autogen on maximum, I had a drop in framerates in which I prefer to keep my frames high. When I put it on the dense or normal setting (which I use), Complexity Dense (I use it that way too) it's light and very good.I like the 2002, I'm satisfied, I have along with that I have addons bought cheap on ebay FStraffic 2002 from just flight, abacus Airbus fleet and the A380. The frames are wonders this way.

“I value imagination more than graphics…. I like the 2002, …it’s light and very good…” . These words precisely describe what I feel too. Very lightweight sim that has minimal hardware requirements and never crashes…

FS2002 has off course some drawbacks, but it’s fun. More flying, and generally less fooling with settings. It just works.

2 hours ago, Airbasil_1 said:

Just as a little comparison: This is how it looks in FS2004... 
Same Routing: KCOS - KDEN, Same Aircraft, same Weather condition

Very nice!
But now I’ll have to take the identical flight in 767PIC and on FS2000 for comparison…

On 4/6/2023 at 10:37 AM, lastivka said:

For those that are interested, here are links for downloading the original Wilco programs:

Airport 2000 Volume 1:

https://archive.org/details/airport-2000-volume-1

Airport 2000 Volume 2:

https://archive.org/details/airport-2000-volume-2

Airport 2000 Volume 3:

https://archive.org/details/airport-2000-volume-3

Fantastic, thanks! Downloading right now. I bought recently two of these airport volumes on eBay, however don't have access to them right now, staying temporarily at different location. However, since I do have several old laptops here, I loaded old flight sims as FS2002 , and even FS2000. On 12 years old i3 -M370 dual core 2.4GHz laptop with ATI/AMD Mobility Radeon 5000 HD graphics and 8GB RAM I get fun flying old Wilco 767 PIC in FS2000, and with those adventures and failures etc... Its fun! As long as the old laptops have separate mobile graphics chip it works fine. Ill post pics from some flight and airports. FS2002 works great too, except the damn gauges flicker with external AA applied.. still trying to figure out the cause and solution.

24 minutes ago, loki said:

 

As Jim touched on, a number of the changes to the Steam Edition are under the hood, meaning there is no way you can apply them to the boxed version. I've copied a link to the Steam Edition release notes for reference. Note the first point regarding recompiling the sim with a more modern compiler in particular.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20141219113120/http://steamcommunity.com/app/314160/discussions/1/626329820729615790/

 

For tweaks, as they are very system and user dependent, you should start with the settings in the sim and then work through one of the FSX setup guides. Make sure to try each tweak individually though to see if they actually make a difference for your system and use case. Someone flying PMDG airliners is going to need different settings and tweaks than someone flying around the bush somewhere, for example.

 

https://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/fsx-software-and-hardware-guide/

 

And with the laptops, have the fans and heat sink (dust blocking airflow etc) been cleaned recently? Laptops aren't the greatest when it comes to cooling.

Loki, thanks for that Steam Edition changelog link. That explains why FSX-SE runs bit better then FSX itself... Im going through Kostas once again while getting the FSX run reasonably well even on such an old hardware... My main problem isnt the performance, its the laptops cooling fan noise and heat. I keep blowing the fan and inlets with compressed air to keep airflow, even lifting it up a bit off surface..

However, made a small progress; with jobscheduler and affinity mask set to run on only 1 core as the poster above had in his FSX.cfg (2 core CPU with HT=cores 0,1,2,3) I managed to get the CPU load at around 27-30%, which seems to keep the cooling fan spin fairly quietly. Ill keep experimenting, but will install FSX-SE in coexistence mode on this laptop too, I have it on other rigs this way and no problem, keeping eye not to mix them up, and so far so good, for months, with many add ons installed in both sims. 

Pic how it looks like now, off course at 1366x768 desktop and FSX windowed at 960x720 its limited, but at my current location I have to live with what I have right now.... at KSEA and stock DC-3, autogen on normal, water on low 1x, etc but is smooth and usable..

1 hour ago, f16jockey_2 said:

The attachment contains the replier's fsx.cfg.
This file has hardware specific sections, and can simply not be transferred from one computer to another as a whole.

Same goes for tweaks: what works on one pc, may not on another.

Be careful.

 

Wim

Thanks for pointing it out, yes, Im just looking for the tweak lines, the whole fsx.cfg replacement wouldnt do any good...

3 hours ago, raf12022 said:

For what it's worth, I'm also using an i3 processor and FSX. To improve frame-rates significantly I reduced cars, airport vehicles to zero. Some of them will still show up, like re-fueling and tugs etc. Then I reduced shipping down to five per cent using the slider. On top of that I tweaked the entire FSX scenery configuration file found in the AppData folder under Roaming. I'm enclosing a copy of my configuration for you to use. Just make up a copy of your original one in case you want to revert back.

Basically I added a Memory fix onto it to reduce resources that your computer draws on, in other words, a Memory Maximum. It cuts out tearing and should give you 27FPM which is very reasonable. I have another tweak should you require it. Anyway, just replace the file I'm giving you for your original.

fsx.zip 17.05 kB · 3 downloads

Thank you, just inspecting your fsx.cfg, and  looking for tweaks you used. BTW, which generation is your i3? Im now tuning on aged i3-370M. Have another laptop with i3 (10th generation) , that one handles fsx easily, but still lots of fan noise, however that one uses integrated UHD graphics. But can run FSX-SE cranked very high. didnt try with FSX SP2/Acc...

2 hours ago, JSkorna said:

The code fixes are internal. All your tweaking isn't going to change much. Go back to SE and put up with those issues or stick with FSX and put up with a different set of issues.

Thanks. I think you’re right here, I loaded Fsx-se alongside the Fsx , in the exact same flights with identical settings the fsxse runs cpu at about half usage compared to fsx acceleration . Also, no artifacts or tearing. 
 

This is really problem for me only on weak hardware as old laptop, on powerful well ventilated desktop I can happily run both versions together because the higher cpu load of Fsx isn’t such an issue. But fans on old laptops react to increased cpu load with high noise and that’s what I’m trying to avoid. Well, apparently Fsx-se is a winner here…

t

Hello, 

I’ve been lately running FSX-SE on several old laptops (such as 2nd gen core i3 with 8GB RAM and 1GB Radeon 5000 series), and because fsx-se annoyances such required steam initial launch, also invalid security certificate issue, certain add-ons install quirks etc, I decided to install FSX Gold instead after wiping FSX-SE properly from all directories. Upon launching, I see that basic-tuned FSX (highmemfix, texturemaxload) to put it on par with FSX-SE, FSX  puts higher CPU load then FSX-SE… over 50% (FSX) vs around 30% (FSX-SE); that makes difference in fan noise on old laptop which is too much annoyance.. also there is more tearing and black texture load occasional flicker in FSX while FSX SE doesn’t seem to suffer from this… 

Anyway, can someone suggest what exactly steam/dovetail did to Fsx code that it runs actually better? And whether I can offset this somehow in Fsx.cfg settings?

I’ve been tweaking Fsx since the release , so I am generally familiar with many useful and not so useful tweaks, however I don’t see any of those implemented in fsx-se.cfg and it still runs this better? 
 

just a thought… thx in advance…

Photoscenery doesn't have any autogen, so what you see is normal. The buildings and trees are placed in FSX according to terrain textures and/or landclass. Photo scenery doesn't have those textures so no autogen... As for the airports, I think that you should see buildings etc because airports are usually excluded from photoscenery coverage, or at least its runways, taxiways etc... Someone corrects me if Im wrong.