I "Upgraded" my Sim to DirectX 10

Little back story here, and I won't be offended if you just scroll past and look at the pictures. I spent all of my younger years simming in FS9, however in 2012 my computer crashed and I didn't have the funds to replace it with anything decent. I bought a pretty cheap desktop just to pay bills and I forgot about flight sim for a while. Fast forward to 2018 and the itch was back, but I was still stuck with that store bought computer that could barely run FS9, however I did it anyway slowly upgrading my PC as much as it would allow along the way.

 

Finally in 2019, after a GPU, CPU and memory upgrade I decided to make the jump to FSX 13 years after everyone else did. Since then I've been battling the performance issues that have plagued us all, one day thinking I solved my issues and the next day taking off out of a busy airport with single-digit FPS. After lots of frustration with the performance I decided once again to "upgrade", this time by changing to DirectX 10 and installing the DirectX 10 fixer with cloud shadows. It took a few days, but it's finally stable and I'm really impressed with the results! Everything is much more crisp, the shadows in the cockpit and on the ground are awesome, and most importantly my FPS and overall stability has improved significantly.

 

Also of note I purchased Simbitworld's A Pilot's Life over the weekend while it was on sale at Simmarket. I never heard of it before, but I have to say it's really awesome so far. That will explain why I'm flying the Allegiant a320. Sorry for the long post, but here are some shots after the upgrade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doesn't matter the version of FS as long as youn can fly! Your captures look terrific, great job. :)

The shots look great. Never really understood the whole DirectX10 thing.

Thanks, Adam and David!

 

The shots look great. Never really understood the whole DirectX10 thing.

 

David, essentially what DirectX 10 does, aside from providing better visuals, is it takes some of the strain off of the CPU and puts it on the GPU which in turn means the CPU-heavy FSX can become more stable if you have a mid-range or better graphics card. From what I've read FSX was rushed into production, but DirectX 10 was not completely finished being produced at rollout of the game, so they put in a preview mode that had a lot of bugs and planned to fix it later which of course we know didn't happen. A guy named Steve made a fixer that resolved almost all of the problems with DirectX 10 allowing it to be used in FSX. The fixer and the cloud shadows cost less than $20, and was also very easy to install. I followed a how-to guide and had no issues.

Great post and shots! Welcome back!! ;)

 

BTW: The slow FPS you mentioned is the main reason I'm primarily flying P3D Ver 4.5 right now. I have a ton of ORBX scenery and it just tore up my frame speed so badly it was hard to even "fly!" :eek::eek: And I do have what I consider an above average computer set-up.

 

I never understood what DirectX 10 did other than the "preview" that came with FSX. When I tried that it made many or most of my buildings turn black. When I asked about it online, several others commented they had the same issue with DirectX 10 preview and suggested I turn it off. Which I did and the color came back in my scenery but the FPS speed was still way slow. I never tried the actual for sale version of DirectX 10. In fact, I don't recall ever noticing it being advertised. I'm glad it works so well for you!!

 

Like everyone else I'm hugely interested in how 2020 turns out!!!;) But I'll not change much until I see a bunch of positive reviews on 2020 from actual simmers, not just those who are being paid to say nice things.

 

Michael

Looks like my GPU (Nvidia GTX1050 mobile) is low-range then: I have the Fixer. If I use DX10, I get blurries everywhere, while I get none with DX9.

Great post and shots! Welcome back!! ;)

 

BTW: The slow FPS you mentioned is the main reason I'm primarily flying P3D Ver 4.5 right now. I have a ton of ORBX scenery and it just tore up my frame speed so badly it was hard to even "fly!" :eek::eek: And I do have what I consider an above average computer set-up.

 

I never understood what DirectX 10 did other than the "preview" that came with FSX. When I tried that it made many or most of my buildings turn black. When I asked about it online, several others commented they had the same issue with DirectX 10 preview and suggested I turn it off. Which I did and the color came back in my scenery but the FPS speed was still way slow. I never tried the actual for sale version of DirectX 10. In fact, I don't recall ever noticing it being advertised. I'm glad it works so well for you!!

 

Like everyone else I'm hugely interested in how 2020 turns out!!!;) But I'll not change much until I see a bunch of positive reviews on 2020 from actual simmers, not just those who are being paid to say nice things.

 

Michael

 

I had to do a little digging, but once I did I was able to find a lot of info on DirectX 10 that made my decision easier. I'm doing the same as you with FS2020, I think I have my wife on board with me upgrading to be able to run it, but I'm going to wait a bit to see how it performs first,so I'll be in FSX for the forseeable future.

 

Looks like my GPU (Nvidia GTX1050 mobile) is low-range then: I have the Fixer. If I use DX10, I get blurries everywhere, while I get none with DX9.

 

I have a GTX 980 now, but I previously had a GTX 1050 which I thought did pretty well with FSX. If you haven't already, I would do a Google search for the DirectX 10 how-to guide that will walk you through the setup process including necessary tweaks to your FSX config file, as well as nVidia Inspector settings. It only took an hour or so to set up, and a few hours of tweaking settings to get it right, but it was worth the time.

Looks like the upgrade worked well for you Chris. Great shots! :cool: :cool: