Is Microsoft Flight Simulator X good and realistic enough?

FSX including FSX Steam version.

Re: Is Microsoft Flight Simulator X good and realistic enoug

Postby pete » Wed May 05, 2021 3:39 am

Hello Ricer. Any connection with Angus? He seems to use P3D but is having problems. He's asking in the p3d forum, from the same location/building ;)

P3D academic version is $60 and is a fine simulator. I would highly recommend it
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. – Leonardo da Vinci
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Re: Is Microsoft Flight Simulator X good and realistic enoug

Postby Daube » Wed May 05, 2021 7:30 am

RicerDalemon wrote:I've always wanted to try a flight sim, but have only played a tiny little bit of some MS Flight Sim (2004 or 2002) back in the day and just wanted to come back to the long-abandoned aspiration of mine. I've already bought a Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick and stuff, and have the Steam edition of MS Flight Simulator X.

I've seen a lot of people online, saying that it's pretty shitty now (the MS Flight X) and I should better get P3D, but it's 200 bucks, not really suitable for my student pocket, lol.

So am I good with the FSX:SE? Is it a good all-rounder, realistic enough to learn how to pilot a small plane in the simplest terms possible?


Your FSX Steam will be a good start. You can still investigate about P3D *later*, after you get more comfortable with the FSX environment.
It has only a few problems:
1- The default planes are quite bad for the realism. Flight model and instruments are very limited, many things are just bad or even missing. So you'll want to use some alternative addon planes, freeware or payware.
2- The default landscapes are ugly, especially by today's standards. This is also valid for P3D (even in its latest version), so you might want to install some alternative addon sceneries, freeware or payware.
3- When adding several addons in FSX Steam, you increast the memory consumption as well as the CPU load. This will result in bad performance as well as crashes to desktop due to memory (RAM) shortage pretty fast, because FSX is still a 32 bits application so it can only use 4 GB of RAM at maximum, no matter how much you have in your computer.

P3D is a 64 bits apps and uses the CPU and GPU power a little bit better. You'll still run into terrible performance problems, but at least the memory shortages are less likely to occur.
Additionnaly, P3D comes with improvements to the graphical engine of FSX, including better lighting/shadows, so the same scenery addons will look much better in P3D than in FSX.
Finally, most (all) of the recent addons released to the market are made for P3D. Almost nobody develops anything for FSX anymore, because it is outdated.

So my recommendation would be as follows:
- start with your FSX.
- use only freeware addons, DO NOT spend any money on FSX addons, because some or most of them will not be compatible with P3D, and you would have to buy them again later for P3D
- you can switch to P3D later, after you got comfortable with FSX (P3D is FSX with many enhancements)
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Re: Is Microsoft Flight Simulator X good and realistic enoug

Postby papituwall » Thu May 06, 2021 1:37 am

Previously It will be good to know your PC specs.
Daube's is right, and FSX is the less expensive, but depending on your PC you can have other simulators.
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