SFX Acceleration-Should I Buy?-Should I Upgrade XP

[Flight Ace]

SFX Acceleration-Should I Buy?-Should I Upgrade XP DX9 to Vista DX10?


There have been many posts dealing with how good or bad the FSX Acceleration package has performed. I presently am running Windows XP with DX9 and have no issues with FSX. Before I upgrade to Vista with DX10 and purchase the FSX Acceleration package I decided to conduct some factual research to determine what I could expect from the upgrade. Specifically to find answers to the following questions.

1. What are the features and fixes offered in the FSX Acceleration package for XP FSX-DX9 and Vista FSX-DX10 ?, and

2. What are the expected performance gains for each?

In answer to question 1, the specific features for each are as follows. In addition there are 3 new aircraft, 30 plus missions, new sim features such as a functional carrier, sling loads and hoists for the helo, and multi player racing.

[garymbuska]

Well I am not going to get it at this point and time I am happy with DX9 and XP. I am like you when the next series of FS come out I might upgrade then but for now I do not plan on it. 8-)

[Daube]

Flight Ace, allow me to give you a very simple advise: just wait until the SP2 is out, and install it on your FSX. See how it performs, and then decide if you really need to upgrade your PC or not. In this way you'll be able to make a decision without spending a single cent

The Acceleration content, appart from the SP2 functionnalities, seems to be really great. The planes are really good quality, so are the missions. But before spending money on it, it would be wise to wait and see how your config behaves with SP2

Concerning the drop of frames on Vista and DX10, I could see that through some users experiences around various forums, and most of the times it is due to the video drivers, which are quite bad at the moment. It's better to see what will happen with the next video drivers versions before making any judgement.

PS: sorry I just saw your question 2. On some forums, users have reported a good improvement in the quickness of the scenery loading time and autogen appearance, and it seems that the situation is quite good for the blurries as well, although I cannot really confirm that last point for now, since most user are spending their time complaining about the lack of FPS increase instead of focusing on the visual quality :/

Sometimes when you read the forums, you get the feeling that some user would prefer flying 60 FPS over blurry textures than 20 FPS over neat terrain...

[Wii]

I looked at the requirements for it and my computer only meets one  :-? the 2.0Ghz requirement. I have 2.8Ghz but not NEARLY enough for everything else. Ohwell, I don't really want it anyways

[yancovitch]

out of curiousity, i reinstalled fsx on my old, or should i say ancient, p4-3ghz-gforce7950 computer on xp, and it seemed that when i installed sx acceleration, i got better performance. each time i turned on the sim, i gained a little speed. :...leveled off around 10-12 fps. at med. settings......

[Flight Ace]

When consideribg the updates included in SP2 for FSX DX9, I would expect some small increase in frame rates. I wonder how many others experienced the same results?

[Gypsy_Baron]

When consideribg the updates included in SP2 for FSX DX9, I would expect some small increase in frame rates. I wonder how many others experienced the same results?

I saw no improvement in frame rates but did experience my FIRST "out of memory" error while
running FSX after installing SP2.

I have 2GB of memory now and have a eVGA 8800GTS 640MB video card. Video memory usage
is around 400MB max.

The only things I see in SP2 that cause me to not uninstall it and revert back to SP1 are the
contrails are now visable from below ( i have nice, long, 50 mile contrails...a modified fx file )
and the integrated arrestor/catapult/ifols systems on the carriers.

Other than that, SP2 "broke" alot of my favorite FS9 import aircraft.  They have textures
in the VC athe become "reflective" when ANY light is activated on the aircraft.
For some models, this effect causes minimal impact on the flyability of the plane but
on others, it makes then unflyable unless you do not turn on any light.
The opague prop issue is easily corrected but the reflective VC texture problem can't
be corrected by anyone but the original modeler as it has to do with the way these
textures are defined in the model itself

   Paul