Should I revert to FS9?

[ddimm]

I just made the switch back to FS9. I really like FSX and it runs ok on my current system but I felt like I was tweaking more than I was flying. I could not turn on vehicle traffic, Ultimate Traffic2 was at an absolule minimum, and I had no autogen trees. Since my hardware is good but not bleeding edge - I figured I would fire up FS9 again and compare after a year.

With UT, FSG mesh, GE Pro, HD clouds, 100% traffic with all WOAI, ,other misc add-ons, and sliders maxed out - it really looks good and runs smooth as silk. I am still using XP and have no intentions on upgrading a "stable" system.

While it doesn't "look" as good as FSX ( but it gets close with the add-ons) - I feel it flys as well or better for me. I am running FS9 at 5040x1060 with a TH2GO and cranked up the AA on the video card to completely eliminate the shimmering. (Something I could not achieve in FSX on my current hardware)

Nivida BFG 9800 GTX+ 1Gig @5040 x1060 - 3 22” LCD monitors (outside)
Nvidia 8600 GS @ 1024x768 - 18”LCD monitor (gauges)
K9N4 Motherboard with AMD Athlon 5600+
TH2GO Digital edition
Saitek Eclipse Red backlit keyboard


I will still play around with FSX on a single monitior but will use FS9 for my cockpit build. No bash on FSX b/c I do like it - I just finally came to terms with the fact that my current hardware won't run it the way I want to use it.

[ryanf]

An update on my experiences with FSX.....

I never quite got rid of the blurry textures even though I was getting around 40 FPS - with many sliders turned down, AI off, AA off (using nhancer). I was getting lower FPS around airports with complex scenery.

Then, just for comparison, I reinstalled FS9 (plus my FS9 scenery addons) and was simply amazed at the performance. I have pretty much all sliders maxed out, a pretty much solid frame-rate of 60FPS and AI traffic on for the first time ever. It was a completely new FS experience for me. 60FPS gives such a smooth flight sim and with really good scenery also.

I still get some blurries but not much (far less than FSX) and I am hoping these might resolve themselves or at least improve when I overclock my dual core E8400. I was also amazed to see that FS9 does utilise both cores of the CPU - something I had always believed would not work!

My only crib is that I get very jumpy behaviour when trying to tune the baro setting or heading bug using my goflight hardware. I suspect this is because of the high FPS and the hardware is not getting a chance....but I need to investigate more....if anyone has any suggestions here it would be helpful.

So while I will keep plugging away at FSX, I think, due to the far better performance of FS9 on my hardware, I will stick to it for now.