Either way, you’re here now so keep reading.
The fact is, right now Microsoft Flight is great for a laugh and burn around with your mates, but once the novelty passes it’s a shallow attempt at simulation. (Which is why you’re here right?) Fortunately, Microsoft’s predecessor, FSX is still kicking along strong. Even with its flaws - I challenge you to find a better simulator out there which mixes hardcore simulation aspects with just the right levels of accessibility.
Admittedly - out of the box, one may fail to see its strengths straight away, and thus FSX could suffer the same fate as Flight. I hope to remedy that and therefor hope this guide stimulates your sense of curiosity enough to pick it up and give it a real whirl.
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This guide will be set out in 4 sections.
- +Initial Setup and Graphics Tweaking
+Extending FSX for enthusiasts
+Going hardcore
+General hints and tips
Initial Setup
FSX is 6 years old. Thus to get the best out of the game on modern hardware a number of tips and tweaks are recommended. Below is a step by step guide on how to get the best performance out of the vanilla sim.
FSX comes in a number of ‘editions’, but IMO the best one to purchase Gold Edition. It includes the base game plus the Acceleration expansion pack.
Because it will end up being a fairly large install I recommend finding a hard copy. Ebay is good for this. A good deal I found was here
1)Go ahead and install the base game. I recommended you don’t install it to the default program files directory as sometimes Windows has a sad when you start installing add-ons to Program Files Subfolders. Something like C:/FSX is fine. Even better, if you have a hard drive which doesn’t have the windows install on it, put it on that.
2)Obtain SP1 from here and install it next (You will not need SP2, as you are installing Acceleration instead)
3)Now go ahead and install Acceleration. Once it’s installed, go to the base folder right click, and untick any read-onlyness to files in subfolders. This is important
4)I’m going to assume you have some type of joystick or controller, plug it in and make sure the drivers are all up to date and the device is calibrated.
5)Now that the base game is installed, run the game for the first time. Just to make sure everything is working and any config files get written. Once it’s booted, choose free flight, select any general aviation plane you like, and an airport surrounded by a capital city. Click FLY NOW! and wait for it to load.
6)Unless you’re unlucky, FSX will have detected your controller and assigned the throttle correctly. Tap the trigger to release the parking brakes and slam it into 100% throttle. The plane will inevitable take off and you’ll be in the sky. Now that you’re in the air, look around (usually mapped to the hat switch if you have one)
7)Now take note of two things. A) Press SHIFT +Z until your FPS comes up in red top right. What do you get on average? B) How does it look? Underwhelming? Don’t worry we’ll go through graphics in a little while.
If you experience any issues with black boxes on distant textures, click here to apply the scenery patch.
Graphics Tweaking
As I said earlier, FSX is aging and doesn’t use modern hardware as efficiently as it could. Setting it up correctly can be a bit of a balancing act between candeh and performance. I’ll take you through now how to go about doing this.
Unlike a lot of games, you don’t require extraordinarily high FPS to enjoy the sim. As long as it stays above 15-20, when you’re in the most densely populated areas, I’d call that a win. If you’re hitting these numbers in cities at low altitude, you’ll easily get 40-60 when higher.
Customizing your FSX.cfg file: You will want to do a fair bit of tweaking here.
1)Most of it will be done automatically. Go here
2)Upload your CFG file to them and answer the questions about our system (If your using WIN7 your FSX.cfg will be in C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX)
3)You don’t want V-sync, and select the normal option.
4)They will then process your CFG and spit you out a new one. Overwrite your existing one with the new one you just downloaded.
5)Now go to your new file, and open it up with notepad, you will need to make a few other tweaks. Change the following lines under their respective headings to these values. If you don’t see the line – add it. As this point it’s probably wise to make backup of this file incase any of these tweaks have a negative impact for you
- Code: Select all
[BufferPools]
PoolSize=500
UsePools=1
[Graphics]
HIGHMEMFIX=1
[Main]
DisablePreload=1
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=14 (if you have a quadcore processor like an i5 or i7, otherwise leave this)
[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=2000
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=1700
[Display]
WideViewAspect=True (if you have a widescreen monitor, or 2, or 3)
[Scenery]
SmallPartRejectRadius=2
6)Save the file and exit.
If you would like an explanation of what any of the tweaks do, let me know and I can go through it with you
7)Go to the FSX.exe in your main install directory. Right click, properties, Compatibility, check run this program as an administrator.
8)The last tweak we need to do outside of the game itself is to download the FPS limiter. Get it here
The theory – to overcome any lack of V-sync issues, we need to limit the FPS. The one in FSX is dodgey so we use an external one to boost performance. Unzip this file and run FPS_Limiter_GUI. Load your fsx.exe and select 60fps. It should look something like this.
9)Click create bat, and you will get a batch file output named ‘fsx.exe.limited’ – This will be the exe we will start FSX with from now on.
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In game graphics options
Here is where we play the balancing game. I’ll post up what I use, and what sliders have big/small impacts. Have a play around for yourself and come up with something you like. Note I’m using add-on high res textures, so my rig has slightly lower settings to obtain good performance.
1)Start FSX using the batch file. Click settings, Customize Display.
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- +Pick the resolution you wish to run at, make sure its 32bit
+Target frame rate – unlimited (we are using the external one)
+Filtering – always Anisotrpoic
+Anti-aliasing - up to you, FSX uses AAX8 by default.
+Crank global texture res – it has only minimal impact on performance for its visual gain
+Make sure DirectX10 is off. It was only a preview, the implementation sucks, and can cause glitches galore
+Always leave advanced animations on
+I personally think lens flare sucks, but if you like it go ahead
+Light bloom is nice, but a bit of a fps killer. See how you go.
2)Flip to the Aircraft tab - Put global settings to ultra high. The only option you may want to think about changing is ‘Aircraft casts shadows on the ground’
3) Scenery
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- +Terrain and Water don’t have much of an impact, max out LOD and much complexity. Don’t crank water effect past High 2.X because you can’t tell the difference (IMO)
+Scenery complexity can be set to Dense or Extremely dense, see how your rig goes.
+Autogen density is where it’s at, and will impact your FPS big time. The ORBX guys recommend different settings depending on where you fly.
- Large cities – Normal to Dense (Dense if you have a faster PC, Very Dense if it’s an uber one)
Rural areas – Dense to Very Dense. (Extremely Dense if you have a faster PC)
Wilderness or heavily forested areas – Dense to Very Dense
+Make sure ground scenery shadows is off, your computer will grind with it on, and many scenery add on packs employ their own shadowing.
4) Traffic
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- +If you plan to play multi player, I’d leave aviation traffic off. Otherwise you may well confuse AI aircraft with real players. If not, I wouldn’t go past about 30%.
+Set land and sea traffic how you like, but cranking these sliders can impact performance.
5) Weather
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- +Weather settings are really up to your preference. I like clouds so I keep the draw distance up and the density to maximum. Bear in mind that when your up in the air, frame rates are generally better so its safe to crank a bit.
+70-80 mi draw distance is generally about as high as you would notice, higher would be silly.
+I like maximum cloud density, but anything from medium up would be acceptable.
+Lastly, and this is another personal preference - I keep turbulence and thermal effects on the aircraft off. The reason being is that turbulence is poorly simulated and can actually have weird results when combining it with add-on aircraft. For instance the Cessna 152 I bought from Carenado would randomly laterally rotate 30 degrees left then right when hitting turbulence. For ages I thought my joystick was giving up but then read about the poor quality turbulence when installing my 737 from PMDG. Many add-on planes come with their own turbulence coding. Therefor I would only keep this option on if you do not wish to go down that route.
6)Once you've made all the tweaks go for a fly and have some fun. Keep an eye on your fps with SHIFT+Z and have a play around with the sliders if somethings not right.
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If you have any questions or wanna fly/ contact me, please do, details in the sig.Other sections to come soon!
