Difficulty getting back into FS, initial setup questions

Hi everyone,

 

Let me start with a couple quick notes.

1. I am a veteran user of FS2004 from years past and not a total newbie to the simming world, but things get busy and outdated and I've been out of the simming world for probably 8 or more years. After a yearning to get back into it, I decided to go for it and I've upgraded to FSX: SE (my first endeavor into FSX). I am absolutely delighted to find that a flight sim community still exists after MS decided to drop the program. I was worried I'd be stuck going it alone.

 

2. I realize that every forum has rules regarding posts and questions, and that a lot of you after so many years are probably tired of answering the same questions over and over again, and for that I apologize, but I will make note that I did my due diligence and did a fair amount of research before deciding to post here. That being said, I will say that there is sooooo much information out there that it takes forever to sort through it all and there is information that contradicts other info, and it's always difficult to find info that relates to each specific problem. I have found the noted "FS bible" by Nick something or other and looked through that but I found it incredibly difficult to get through all the dragged out explanations and comments regarding "if you don't like it than TS for you" etc...

 

Now, onto my questions and I want to thank you in advance for any help you all can give me.

 

I purchased FSX on steam yesterday (Feb 10, 2017) and installed it. I purchased the package that came with REX 4 Texture Direct. I installed FSX and went through the initial setup stuff regarding setting graphical preferences in the sim, sliders, etc. I have made no changes within my AMD GPU settings. I have a relatively new PC build, especially considering the age of FSX. Quad core 4.2GHz AMD processor, AMD R7 370 GPU 4GB GDDR5, 16GB RAM, etc on Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

 

Question 1.

When flying, ground textures seem like they only have a somewhat crisp appearance at short range. It seems like they are not drawing properly or have a limited draw distance. I'm hoping the below photo will explain. Other users' videos and screenshots reflect a much different appearance, and while I understand that most of them (and me too in the future) use payware items to improve the look of the world, I don't believe that even default textures should render in this manner.

 

Question 2.

There didn't seem to really be any install process with regards to REX 4 Texture Direct after buying it. I just kind of ended up with a desktop icon for it. I loaded it up and added to my theme the textures and settings I wanted, and I did point the program to my FSX root directory which for me is E:\steamapps\common\FSX. The theme was saved and supposedly installed to FSX as per the message that appeared instantly after pressing the "install" button, but I don't feel like anything changed in FSX after doing so; and the install process seemed too instantaneous (no progress bar for the new texture set, etc.). I feel like my runway/taxiway textures are all still FSX default as well as the cloud textures. I have attached an image of the clouds I'm seeing, as some of you may be able to tell at a glance that, "no those are REX textures" or "Those are definitely FSX default textures". I do know that I could certainly use some more knowledge on how to use REX but for a basic texture set change it seems pretty rudimentary to walk through and do it. I'm just not convinced that anything actually happened.

 

Those are my two most pressing concerns at the moment as I work to build a visually appealing, immersive FS environment for myself. Your insight would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Rgo welcome back to flight simming, it's a great hobby.

I am guessing, as you didn't mention it, that your sliders are to the left in the scenery section, Your autogen looks like it is on minimum settings, and i guess that that is also the reason for your lack of crispness. You might want to slide them all to max, and see how it effects your performance and then gradually reduce them until you are happy with the set up.

I don't have REX texture direct, i am using the REX essential plus and am still very happy with it. You are correct that the screen shot shows default FSX textures. Check your uninstall list in control panel, and see if REX has actually installed. T he texture install should take a couple of minutes, maybe less, but as i say, i'm not familiar with this version of REX. You might want to contact REX support on their forum.

Good luck.

Don't know if this will help. https://fsxinsider.com/using-rex-texture-direct-4-steam-edition/

Thanks for the replies.

In response to ntai, yes my in-game settings sliders are all maxed out. I've done a large amount of messing around with settings both in fsx and in my AMD Radeon Settings as well as did some more internet digging and I've learned a few things which I need more time to mess with.

I'm happy to report that I believe REX 4 Texture Direct is now working so that seems to be one problem solved.

 

A follow-up question I do have though is this:

My steam edition of FSX is installed into my E drive E:\PC Gaming\steamapps\common\FSX

I noticed that my fsx.cfg file is located on my C drive at C:\users\ryan\appdata\roaming\microsoft\fsx

Is it common for this to happen?

 

Thanks for the help to this point, I will post a resolution to the Level of Detail (LOD) issue when I find it so that others may benefit from this thread in the future.

I don't want to say that that is always where you will find the CFG file, as one of the more savvy computer users might pull me up, but in the ten years of owning FSX i have never heard of it to being anywhere else. In fact, it used to be a common question as people couldn't find their CFG file until they had clicked 'show hidden files and folders'