My FSX Initial Impression

Got it successfully installed and activated yesterday.
My system:

AMD X2 4400+ dual core
MSI K8N Neo4 Plus socket 939 mb
Saphire Radeon X850XT PCIe 256 mb vid card
2 gb Corsiar XMS LL PC3500 ram ( matched 1gb sticks )
Creative XFi soundcard
Hotas - Thrustmaster Cougar modded with the U2 NXT gimball mod and hall
sensors, w/ Elite Pedals.



One thing I noticed, after installing I checked my defrag with Diskeeper 10,
and it was heavily fragmented after the install, so ran it through a good
defrag first. This took a few minutes, but have to think it could only help.

Intitial load time of the sim, was pretty long the first time I launched it,
afterwards though, it seems to launch much better.

Finally got my TIR3 Pro with Vector working properly with it, by
uninstalling the software, and installing the new beta software. It is
pretty funky in 2d, but works smoothly in 3d, which is what I prefer
anyways. In exterior view, it only seems to work in one axis, horizontal, up
and down and rotation sideways does not seem to work.

I noticed in the readme, that it mentioned the global setting may be set low
if you have an amd processor, mine was pretty low so I changed the global
setting to medium, set my resolution to 1280x1024x32, and target frame rate
to unlimited.

At first, my framerates were pretty low, dipping down in the low teens,
while using the " transitioning to jets" training mission. I remembered
reading about autogen here, so I went in and set it to "none". This helped
greatly, in the same mission now, framerates were in the 60's sitting on
the taxiway, then were in the 40's mainly during flight, dipping down into
the 20's at times, but that was low as they dipped. Pretty fluid.

Now, I never have spent a great deal of time with FS before, I did have FS9
and had gone through some of the lessons, but never really made it through.
It is my hope, this time, to get much more involved with FS, and right now,
it appears FSX will be ok for me, realizing of course, there will probably
be flights that my framerate will be much lower.
I hope to make it through all the lessons, and learn about flying jets,
navigating, etc.

I probably won't be able to spend a great deal of time with it until
December, am moving next weekend, then the following weekend getting
married. I am off the week of Thanksgiving, then the after Dec 14th I am off
for the rest of the year, so plan on spending a lot of time with it then.
Undoubtedly, y'all will see more from me, probably asking stupid questions
...




--
Don Burnette

Got it successfully installed and activated yesterday.
My system:

AMD X2 4400+ dual core
MSI K8N Neo4 Plus socket 939 mb
Saphire Radeon X850XT PCIe 256 mb vid card
2 gb Corsiar XMS LL PC3500 ram ( matched 1gb sticks )
Creative XFi soundcard
Hotas - Thrustmaster Cougar modded with the U2 NXT gimball mod and hall
sensors, w/ Elite Pedals.



One thing I noticed, after installing I checked my defrag with Diskeeper 10,
and it was heavily fragmented after the install, so ran it through a good
defrag first. This took a few minutes, but have to think it could only help.

Intitial load time of the sim, was pretty long the first time I launched it,
afterwards though, it seems to launch much better.

Finally got my TIR3 Pro with Vector working properly with it, by
uninstalling the software, and installing the new beta software. It is
pretty funky in 2d, but works smoothly in 3d, which is what I prefer
anyways. In exterior view, it only seems to work in one axis, horizontal, up
and down and rotation sideways does not seem to work.

I noticed in the readme, that it mentioned the global setting may be set low
if you have an amd processor, mine was pretty low so I changed the global
setting to medium, set my resolution to 1280x1024x32, and target frame rate
to unlimited.

At first, my framerates were pretty low, dipping down in the low teens,
while using the " transitioning to jets" training mission. I remembered
reading about autogen here, so I went in and set it to "none". This helped
greatly, in the same mission now, framerates were in the 60's sitting on
the taxiway, then were in the 40's mainly during flight, dipping down into
the 20's at times, but that was low as they dipped. Pretty fluid.

Now, I never have spent a great deal of time with FS before, I did have FS9
and had gone through some of the lessons, but never really made it through.
It is my hope, this time, to get much more involved with FS, and right now,
it appears FSX will be ok for me, realizing of course, there will probably
be flights that my framerate will be much lower.
I hope to make it through all the lessons, and learn about flying jets,
navigating, etc.

I probably won't be able to spend a great deal of time with it until
December, am moving next weekend, then the following weekend getting
married. I am off the week of Thanksgiving, then the after Dec 14th I am off
for the rest of the year, so plan on spending a lot of time with it then.
Undoubtedly, y'all will see more from me, probably asking stupid questions
...




--
Don Burnette