Addons

[jackpilot]

Not starting a real debate on that subject but with so many posts reporting compatibility problems I was wondering about the real purpose of all those very sophisticated programs.

I may be wrong or biased but this is how I see it:

The most important part of my Sim is what's inside the cockpit. A fairly 90%accurate airliner front office with all knobs, dials, screens, bells and whistles operating properly, from the rudder pedals to the aft overhead.
Achieving that is already a tremedous task involving zillion hours of fine tuning, based on a PC friendly, stable and well debugged platform, ie: FS9.
The benefit of that approach is that when you fire up the Sim,...it works, flight after flight, and the odd malfunction is usually one of the well known troubles and fixed in no time.
Next and only next, comes the environment.
For me, FS9 scenery is good enough for "Airline" use, as the idea of the whole exercise  is to take off from one runway , fly a route and hit the GS and Loc of the arrival runway until visual contact. Anything showing outside in between has no real benefit besides eye candy.
Of course I flew Mau's Sim , I was thrilled by the visual, and will do my best to build the same one, but it is not a priority.
Weather:
I usually download real weather with FS  and it works for me as it provides unexpected conditions and has near zero  impact on the sim performance.
Next, and actually more important than weather is ATC.
The top setting  is live ATC like Vatsim and that also has no impact on the Sim.
Last item on the list :
Populating the airspace and departures/arrivals. I use World of AI, Free, no impact on frames and nice schedules.

Some will rightfully disagree, especially those with "ixx overclocked beasts" but when a Sim is basically finished, the utmost pleasure is flying it, not fixing constant hickups or wondering (not if but) when the darn thing will freeze....
Keeping it simple and concentrating on the flight essentials is a way to avoid that.
Again just my humble 2¢, writing this while my coffee is getting cold!

[Joe Lavery]

In some respects I agree Jack, but because I review lots of scenery, I get to see some spectacular products that certainly elevate the departures and arrival stage of the flight.

Some of the default scenery (particularly in the UK) are nothing more than grey boxes and don't help a great deal to improve the realism of the world outside the cockpit. Whereas the latest products from companies like Aerosoft give the impression of arriving at the real airport.

I suppose it's really what you want from your sim, and in that way I guess we're all different. As you said Jack just my 2p worth 

Joe.

[jackpilot]

To get it straight, I agree with you about the airports, as long that they do not tax the fluidity.
Nothing like arriving at a gate with guidance or pushback in front of a realistic background.
Great pleasure garanteed.
Considering that most FS airports are sad desertic places, any improvement is an inexpensive thrill.
I was more referring to things that are useless at cruise level and all these softs which tax the CPUs and can create havoc.

A while ago, with my previous sim, I used to dial in the worst weather FS can throw, (snow blizzard, wind shear, crosswind of course, ridiculous RVR ) under lets say 10 000 ft.
Garanteed when you leave the blue and plunge into that you never ever look outside and fight with your instruments until Bitchy Betty announces "One Thousand". Then only you look ahead a split second every 10 to check for the Rabbit!! No need for any  addon to sweat on the yoke!

[dharrison]

Jack,

Having an FS9 machine myself I can certainly understand where you come from. That said, having flown in the PNW on Scotts sim with the ORBIX scenery installed I can say that even at FL280 it looks quite amazing to have good quality land class below you. I think it is particularly true when flying in mountainous areas where the scenery is only 10000ft below you.

Really was quite a treat to fly into some smaller canadian airports ala westjet and see some really great arrival scenery and weather with ASX.

Don

[jackpilot]

Agreed Don. Not questionning the visual thrill.
Just the priority of these eye candies  when the reliability of the main functions of a sim are at play.
I'll try to phrase it differently:
The best  systhetic image through the window is and will always be a synthetic thing, conversly a smooth working cockpit combined with  pro hardware environment will bring basically the same satisfaction as a real flight.
Both are illusions agreed, but for a pilot at heart the second primes over the first
(Unless you can get both , of course!  )
Again ..my 2Euros! and the pleasure of exchanging ideas

[dharrison]

Jack,

No doubt true and I agree 100%. I have seen both and I am amazed!

Don

[Drewsta]

Hi Jack, I was wondering you say you get no frame rate hits when you use squawkbox and online weather or world of ai? You must have a second computer running correct?

Drew

[jackpilot]

No online weather.
I download real weather (FS option) and loads it for my situation flight. ie: no updating once loaded. Not the latest tech but suits me.
World of AI on FS computer. No FPS hit.
Vatsim has next to no hit (Using FS9 on a reasonnably strong PC)
My network is 6 PCs with PM now , SimA soon.
JP

[XOrionFE]

I am really spoiled now with ORBX scenery.  So much so much so that I ordered the northern and central Rockies to go along with the PNW and Pacific Fjords I had. I also have Australia.   Combined with ASE, UTX, and REX it is phenomenal and I must say the weather is an absolute treat.  frame rates are fine on mine except when in the high res Orbx airports.

Scott

[hexpope]

ATI Eyefinity for three monitor setup.
Main 30" monitor running FS9 windowed mode and stretched to size (No cockpit textures of course)
2 x 17" TFT screens for Avionics from PM @ 1280x1024
Backround processes: PMsystems, PMsounds, Vatsim (FSINN and the rest), XPAX (Going to move over to FSPassengerss soon), CDU, MCP, VatSpy, SIOC,

Simulator version  and addons

FS9, Eiresim EICK, EIDW, EINN, UK2000 EGLL, EGCC, EGKK, Aerosoft EHAM, EDFF, LOWI
REX Overdrive
Latest FSUIPC
POSKY B772 (Modded with my own work)

System
AMD AM3 1075T Hex Core @ 3.6ghz
RAM: 4 Gig @ 1600mhz with low latency timings (Windows XP)
AMD 5800 HD Graphics hardware
1KW PSU
Motherboard : Gigabyte 880GM UD2H micro atx (Cheap little beast of a board TBH)

[smg id=193]

[smg id=193]

[smg id=194]

[smg id=195]


I also use the AMD graphics profiler to externally control MIPMAP Detail, Anisotropic Filtering, Anti-Aliasing (Set to Box, 4x as I don't see any difference between 8x samples in FS9) the rest are all set to 16x and quality)

I do not find any massive tax on my system thank god I still have some head room left, and I get FS9 to run on core 5 & 6 regarding Afinity, FPS 50 - 60 (limited to 60) @ Addon airports with VATSIM Traffic and heavy clouds depending on METAR. All my Avionics run extremely smooth from PM and that encludes response time for when I push buttons or turn rotarys encoders etc. No IO Lag.

Every time I fire up the sim and all the other stuff, it runs right out of the box.

When I was running FSX with the exact same addons, well I just had problem after problem, no smooth Avionics (Choppy here and there, hardware IO LAG) FSX crashes, Addons really taxed my machine down to about 16FPS in an Airport with no traffic only VATSIM models and heavy clouds, and half the settings of FS9 settings. Constant Tweaking FSX.cfg, ATI shader model FIX, etc etc, the list goes on.

There comes a point where you have enough, and just want to fecking fly the damn sim without hassles. Well it works for me, and im really satisfied with my results. I still see FSX cripple even the most expensive machines out there, and thats only with FSX running on the damn machine. 2007 I think is when FSX came out. It's now nearly 2012.

Well there's my rant regarding the sim and addons.

[Tom_G_2010]

Jack,  For those who fly big iron like yourself and many others here I can see your point.  For those of us who fly low and slow the out the window view has to be a bit more of a priority.  It's hard to manage a realistic VFR flight without the V.  Using the generic color blobs that FS9 or FSX calls scenery isn't very thrilling and detracts from the illusion of flight completely.

Having said all that I do agree that smooth fluid performance and 100% function in the cockpit is more important, but for GA flight the out the window view is not far behind that in priority.

[jackpilot]

Absolutely 100% OK plus the fact that cruising at some 110knt is easier on the scenery fluidity than usual airliners ground speed on approach and TO. (though actually not much different with a high perf twin! lol)

[Joe Lavery]

I've recently reviewed a number of the latest ORBX airports, mainly backwoods locations like KORS, (ORCAS island) and Fall City. They are absolutely amazing, realistic grass alongside the runway, superb architecturally accurate buildings and almost perfect ground textures. Naturaly they are more suited to the GA community, so I review them on a different setup. It's a little difficult lading a 737 on a grass strip...
Granted you need a powerful machine to run these but I think most of us have that anyway.
Regarding performance if you pop over to Aerosoft and download their optimisation pdf written by Mathijs Kok, you'll find it will improve your frame rates dramatically, it's free and what have you got to lose. 

http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/30796-why-i-get-50-fps-in-fsx-and-you-might-not/

The pdf is at the bottom of the page called "settings.pdf"

Incidentally I have no ties to either Aerosoft or ORBX, just trying to pass on some hopefully useful info. 

Joe.