Simviation Forums

Hi to all,

I would like to purchase Microsoft Flight Simulator X. My computer is running on XP. Will FSX run fine on XP? I also have a computer that runs on Windows 7 Pro. I have also heard of the Steam edition, but I am not sure if I need that or not. I am mostly interested in flying the old military jet fighters from the 1950s - 1980s period.

There are a lot of aircraft that can be purchased for FSX at FS Pilot Shop:

https://www.fspilotshop.com/razbam-102- ... ml?ref=372

If anyone could help me get started with FSX I would appreciate it greatly.

Thank you,

Six

FSX is a good place to start but why buy when you can download thousands of free aircraft here. These are quality aircraft and in some cases the are of better quality i.e. Milton Shoups planes are better than a lot of planes you have to pay for. Now this is just my opinion and I am not an expert but we have alot of experts that can offer there opinions as well. But free is hard to beat!!! Roy

Steam is the way to go if FSX is your thing as it has ironed out many of the wrinkles Microsoft failed to sort out before cancelling the project. Also an original copy of FSX will be hard to track down, but Steam often have really great sales for OLD software. Bear in mind there are 2 versions of the MS FSX on disc, get the GOLD version.

Consider Prepared (P3D) The current version will run much of what can run with FSX but not all as it is 64bit. But They will sell you an earlier rendition which will. P3D is more stable, the latest version being 64 bit will not run out of memory which was a failing and great frustration of FSX.

Also X Plane is another consideration which is gaining a foothold.

Before promoting X-Plane & P3D, that will mot work on older 'basic' PC's, it MUST be established what specs the PC is!
Before getting all excited, maybe the OP's PC will not be able to handle the high loads that X-Plane & P3D need.

Well said zswobbie1!

If the PC have Win XP or 7, is not enough info., maybe are not suitable for X-Plane or P3DV4.

FSX-SE is good but if the PC are low spec. don't forget FS9 as starter simulator.

Hi Six, Just wanted to say that FSX-SE is a better version than the original. Just gonna advise you to start slow on adding new aircraft to fly, it will become a habit real fast. I've been doing this since 1998. First CFS2, MS2002, 2004 and then FSX. There have been times that my wife would have left me, , except she could not bring herself to leave a crazy man to fend for himself (ha ha). Down thru the years I've shelled out, forked over, thrown away lots of money on payware addons (no ha ha) that have both delighted and disappointed me, so go slow, ask around about new aircraft and scenery, and be prepared to have the absolute time of your life. So say goodbye to sanity and hello to madness. We are always looking for another brother or sister to share the blame.

Good onya mate....A Hobbit

Hi everyone,

If the sim runs slow on my XP or Windows 7 Pro computer, I wouldn't mind turning down the graphics to get the sim to run faster. What I'm mainly interested in is the flight modeling of the aircraft. I would like to seriously study the flight performance of the old jet fighters.

For example, one of the the old fighter jets I would be very interested in flying is the F-101 Voodoo. Now, this fighter has a t-tail. It's elevator is high on the vertical stabilizer. Because of this design, the aircraft suffered from pitch-up. Here's a link to an old film titled "The Word on Pitch-Up:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wog3RRUySes

I would like to find a good F-101 sim aircraft to fly to experience what it was like for a pilot to fly the F-101. I would like to experience what pitch-up is like also, and how to recover from it. But how do I know what F-101 to fly? Sure, the 3-D model and texture might look fantastic and extremely accurate. Even the cockpit might be modelled very accurately. But how is someone to know if the flight modeling is accurate? Is the fuel consumption rate accurate at different altitudes? Is sustained turn performance accurate? Is MCrit accurate? Is AOA at different airspeeds and weights accurate? If the flight model is not accurate, then you're really not flying the F-101. Your flying an aircraft that looks like the F-101, but is not really the F-101.

Thank you very much for replying to my post, and for your help,

Six

Flight characteristics are entirely determined by the creator of the model. Basically you just have to find your aircraft and search commentary of others as to its realistic flight performance. If you become very familiar with FSX directory and its individual files you can also tweek some flight parameters of the aircraft you are interested in ( but that requires you knowing what the better characteristics would be). ...and thats really only an option after you have familiarized yourself with others aspects of the sim. Take above advice re searching for free aircraft... a lot of extremely good totally free aircraft are available for fsx.
Re your PC, FSX likes to soak up every bit of performance that your PC has... keep your scenery/aircraft options sliders to the left to begin with and slowly experiment and see how far you can take them to the right without getting the jitters etc..
Its all just experimentation with whatever hardware and system you have.. nothing can be broken unless you get frustrated and chuck something at the hardware.

One other thing if you buy d/l from Steam their downloads wont work with other sim like FSX, P3d and etc!!!

FSX Steam is by far the best way to go as you do not ever have to worry about CD'S or DVD'S
but as others have stated you need to know what kind of system you are currently running .
FSX is both a CPU and GPU hog and some payware aircraft you have to have a graphic card with 4GB of ram and these cards are not cheap.
As you can see by my signature i have a descent system but could use a better graphic card as mine only has 2 gigs ram
The problem is in order to support a better video card you might have to update your power supply and of course your mother board has to support the correct slot that you will need.
So if you are running a system that is more than ten years old chances are you will have to update your entire system
You will want a 64 bit operating system so if your current OS is not 64 Bit I would suggest you update to windows 10 64 bit if your current mother board will support it.
I updated my system about 4 years ago at a cost of around $800 to $900
If you are thinking about updating I advise to stay away from store bought systems and build your system yourself. It is not as hard as it sounds
the bad thing about store bought system you do not have a valid copy of Windows and you are stuck with having to do a system restore if something goes wrong
If you build your system you will have to buy a copy of windows that you will own.

Freeware aircraft and sceneries work fine.



I use fs2004 and think is is much better.

https://fs2004screenshotssweden.blogspot.com/

Just do things bit by bit. Try small addons and learn bit by bit. It's quite straight forward and if you need any help there are plenty of folk here to help out.

What you don't want to do is get complex from the outset as that can put people off.

If you give your PC basic specs (processor/RAM/graphics card) it may help but most basic PC's (provided they are not toooo old) will run FSX quite easily on basic settings and if you have any problem with framerates, FS2004 is still alive and in great health with 10's 1000's great free addons to play around with.

NO matter if you have WIN XP ,WIN 7 , WIN 10 one thing they forgot to mention is that MICROSFT is fixing to quit updating WIN 7 next year . Me myself
I have a custom machine and run FS9, FSX on the same unit. But something
you need to know I'm running WIN7 PRO and I'm having a H$%% of a time with
FSX I had to reinstall it3 times and I had to get a special program to get it out of my
machine and it went back in but there are aircraft and missions. AND certain
aircraft from certain vendors don't show up. I got a PA31T CHEYENNE FROM
CARRANDO when I installed it she didn't show up and I was ''HEART BROKEN''
REGARDS
R.D.WYLIE


P.S.HELICOPTERS DON'T FLY WELL DUE TO DYNAMICS!!!!