A good year for FSX

[OldAirmail]

This past year, FSX, has gone from good to unusable, to very good, to GREAT!

In June I bought the DesktopAviator GPS. Compared to the high cost of the other flight sim GPS out there, this one for $228 is a bargain.

It's made to go in a flight panel, but I don't have the room and money for a dedicated sim pit so I made an enclosure for it.









There's a free program - Enhanced Garmin 500W GPS that works very well with any GPS unit. It's perfect even if all you want is just a better on-screen GPS.

There are lots of features, including the option of having it open up without the Garmin frame.





That was a biggie for me, but sometimes, something small, like FSX HD Moon Texture V3.0 can make a very nice difference.

[OldAirmail]

Another thing that improved my enjoyment of FSX was buying a terrain mesh. It took me a lot of time to decide what I wanted.

There was FSGenesis - World Terrain Mesh for $20.

And then there was FS Global 2010 for $82.

I bought the cheapest thinking that at sometime in the future there would be a newer terrain mesh available.

Well, I'm very glad that I bought FSGenesis - World Terrain Mesh.

The terrain mesh for the US is pretty good, and that of Europe is fairly good. The rest of the world is P%% poor. The FSGenesis - World Terrain Mesh made the rest of the world fairly good too. The difference was quite striking.


This is one of the Canary Islands with the standard FSX mesh.





And these are shots of the same island after FSGenesis.






Yeah. Quite a difference.


I had some concern that FS Global 2010 might be much better, especially with the Orbx system. But FSGenesis is working out just fine.

I will be buying a few Orbx reagons, and they come with their own enhanced mesh.



And that brings up the problem that if you want to buy into the Orbx system you're going to be paying twice for some things.

I have Orbx FTX Global. Fine. A new world wide scenery to lay on top of the mesh and land class.

But if you buy a region also, you've already paid for most of that scenery that's in the region when you bought FTX Global. True, some of that scenery is customized for the region, but not most.


It doesn't bother me at all.

As far as I'm concerned, FTX Global covers the whole world, and helps to make FSX new again. There are other scenery programs out there that do the same, and that's all for the good.

The reason that buying a region doesn't bother me is that when you buy a region, that region contains four things in particular. You get;
Custom scenery
Custom mesh
Custom land class
And Vector specific to that area.

In my book FTX Global is a winner.




I wish that I could say the same about FTX Vector.

In some areas, especially costs and rivers, it does a good job. The low & slow crowd will like it much more than the high flyers. High fliers and mountain fliers may not even notice it.

It is good, under some situations. I'd put a $15 - $25 price tag on it.

[mjrhealth]

Just picked up Global and will do vectors next pay. Anyone who thinks vectors is only worth $25 has no idea about the time effort complexity and costs involved. Its worth every cent. The more people that purchase. the more areas flown the more accurate it will become. Just flew FACT around table mountain. wow is all I can say, FSX looks nothing like waht it did when I first got it. Just need PMDG DC6 than ill be in heaven.

[Fozzer]

Having purchased FSX when it was first released, (the same as FS '98, FS 2000, FS 2002, and FS 2004), its only fairly recently that I have gotten got to really enjoy it, after spending some money on various scenery improvements..."Orbx FTX Global", "Ultimate Terrain USA and Canada and Europe", "REX", my own scenery enhancements using my "Instant Scenery 3", "FS Tramp" GPS/Radar map, and various other Freeware bits and bobs......

...and the final icing on the cake....my brand-spanking-new i7, 8-core, 3.9 GHz, super-dooper, high-speed, gaming tower computer; replacing my old year-2005; "Intel Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz one!

....the "SMOOTHNESS" now is truly wonderful!..... ...!

Paul...having great fun with FSX...every day!.... ...!

...and I still love my trusty copy of FS 2004!.... ...!

[OldAirmail]

Like last years love.

No matter the vow to "always be friends," you'll think less often of her as time goes by.


With a few good add-ons FSX looks better at the end of the year than it did at the start of 2013.

[Bass]

I loved last year
Today, the first in 2014, seems to be a bad start!!

I cant restore, i cant make security backups.. i've been all over in services, sfc scans and you name it!!!!
(Wonder what came on that date. No virus/adware spotted)

I need those "making up" points, and therefor i'm close to a clean install!! Several days of hard work ahead, but thats seems to be the "wonderworld" sometimes

Still searching 2013

[OldAirmail]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Whether the weather




People are probably sick of me harping on the weather.


But WHAT A DIFFERANCE it makes!


I'd wanted the best so I bought REX Essential PLUS with OverDrive.

I'm sure that there are many who like it, but to me it's too massive, slow, and overly complicated. It will give you great clouds though.


And now they've come out with what may be a winner. REX Texture Direct.

REX4 looks to have everything that REX Essential PLUS with OverDrive does, but is reportedly faster.

Unfortunately, REX4 came out too late for me.

If anyone wants to buy me a copy, I'll be more than happy to try it out.

REX Essential PLUS with OverDrive was just too unwieldy for a quick flight in "real weather".



So I looked for something better. There was one program, OpusFSX Live Weather, that kept coming up in my searches.

It was supposed to have the best weather engine around. But there were 2 major problems. One - it had no clouds of it's own. Two - it was reported to have serious conflicts with TrackIR.

Over and over I read how people raved about using REX clouds with the Opus weather engine.


OK, I do have REX with it's clouds, but there was still the TrackIR problem.

Nope. Not anymore. Opus works just fine with TrackIR.


And I do have to say that the Opus weather engine is great. There's a sub program called "Spy". Its' main use is probably for troubleshooting Opus, but it does give you an idea of what's going on in the background.

I once watched it collect the weather from 14 sources. If you have a flight plane, it'll gather & update the weather along your entire route.

So far I've found NOTHING on the debit side. It's fast, looks great (using the REX clouds), and is probably as accurate as possible.



If you don't want to buy REX for the clouds though, there are freeware sources of great clouds. One such is Oscar-Clouds for FX9 & FSX.




In so far as I'm concerned, OpusFSX Live Weather, is the winner.




But there is one more thing about Opus that I now find indispensable. It's still in beta, but it has brought new life to the Buttkicker.

Opus will inject user selectable frequencies into the ButtKicker based on FSX events such as landing gear up/down, flaps, bumps on the ground as you taxi, and more.





And if you have Accu-Feel, you'll be in heaven. With Accu-Feel you can make selections that will enhance both the audio output through regular speakers, and therefore the ButtKicker effects.





FSX keeps getting better and better!

[OldAirmail]

I loved last year
Today, the first in 2014, seems to be a bad start!!

I cant restore, i cant make security backups.. i've been all over in services, sfc scans and you name it!!!!
(Wonder what came on that date. No virus/adware spotted)

I need those "making up" points, and therefor i'm close to a clean install!! Several days of hard work ahead, but thats seems to be the "wonderworld" sometimes

Still searching 2013

That seems to be the Windows saga.

You know the story - What doesn't kills you makes you stronger.

Just a week ago I was getting my system in order.
There's always something!

[Bass]

I know, but why the hell is "something" always showing up, when things are working perfect!?

[OldAirmail]

Just picked up Global and will do vectors next pay. Anyone who thinks vectors is only worth $25 has no idea about the time effort complexity and costs involved. Its worth every cent. The more people that purchase. the more areas flown the more accurate it will become. Just flew FACT around table mountain. wow is all I can say, FSX looks nothing like waht it did when I first got it. Just need PMDG DC6 than ill be in heaven.

Sorry, mjrhealth. I totally missed your post.


The price tag that I mentioned reflects how I value it. For me it wasn't worth $60. I do not get that much enjoyment from it.

You sparked my attention though. I had just assumed that a high flyer would find less to like about Vector. Actually, the higher you go the better it looks. Conversely, the lower you fly, the less attractive it is.







Lower down, where I like to fly, it has some problems. BTW - these are not uncommon.







With time, I'm sure a lot of these errors will be fixed. But for someone who likes to spend most of my time below 5,000 feet, this isn't pretty.

[mjrhealth]

You sparked my attention though. I had just assumed that a high flyer would find less to like about Vector. Actually, the higher you go the better it looks. Conversely, the lower you fly, the less attractive it is.

All good, 90% of my time is at or below 5000. I dont expect vector to be perfect, thats impossible,but than I dont look that hard, i just enjoy the improvement. besides there is a lot of that in the default, which will take individual fixes, God know how much work involved. I also have ASN and loving it, used freeware weather engine previousy but this is so good.

[OldAirmail]

Have you tried Orbx - FTX: Australia SP4?

It's all 4 Orbx Australia regions for AUD$26.85. But I think that it ends this week.

Like I said above, when you buy an Orbx region, You get;
Custom scenery
Custom mesh
Custom land class
And Vector specific to that area.

[OldAirmail]

Speaking of Australia.

There's a group down there that are hosting some SPECTACULAR scenery!

World Of Simulations!

NO,NOT THE BUSSES!

I'm talking about the OZX Grand Canyon, and OZx Death Valley Plus HolgerMesh

This stuff is fantastic! Don't hesitate to give it a try. Although it's "photo real" this is far better than I would EVER believe!

So I'll just have to show you some pictures, right?



Well, I started up FSX and went to take a few pictures, starting with OZx Death Valley .

I already have the OZX Grand Canyon pictures.


TWO HOURS LATER...


I used to think that a trip to Death Valley would be ABSOLUTELY STUPID. I guess that I had better change my mind now.

I'll do the post on OZX Grand Canyon in the next post.

Lots of pictures, but I can't help myself!
























I'm wordless to describe the guys who did this scenery .....

Amazing is too small of a word.

[Brett_Henderson]

The best bang for the FSX buck in 2013, and to date:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YQjabJiFt4

I could fill a forum talking about this model

[OldAirmail]

That looks fantastic.

The better the quality, the finer the detail, the more immersive the flights.

2013 was indeed, a great year for FSX.