The beauty of FS2004 (Part Two)

[EHM-1465 Dominic]

THREAD CONTINUED - SORRY FOR THE INTERRUPTION 

Details

"Flight attendants, take your seats please for landing!" On the glideslope with the landmarks of the Runcorn bridge and Fiddlers Ferry power station behind us...

Details

"Two hundred! One hundred!" We're past decision height now and continuing to land on runway 27...

Details

A silky smooth touchdown, engage reverse thrust and check the spoilers have deployed... "Welcome to Liverpool ladies and gentlemen!"

Details

It's only a short taxi to the stand at EGGP. This scenery is very realistic to the real airport, except I don't remember seeing a Search & Rescue helicopter there when I visited 

Details

Engine shutdown checklist please! As the flight attendants prepare to open the doors, we get a fine view across to the old Liverpool Speke airport, now a very nice hotel that is really worth visiting for those interested in aviation history

Details

The end of another day for our EuroHolidays 757 and another load of happy passengers are about to disembark. "Thank you for flying with EuroHolidays, part of the EuroHarmony Group. We look forward to welcoming you on board again soon (assuming that the credit crunch doesn't force you to fly with those cheapskates in the 737's over to our right!!)"

Please post feedback and suggestions plus your views on the quality of scenery available for FS9 vs FSX... I hope you all enjoyed the flight 

[EHM-2387 Eric-Jan]

Excellent report, Dominic!

As an FSX-only pilot, I should of cause say your pictures look crappy, but they don't. I like 'em!
FSX default scenery cannot match your quality. Well, not on my machine anyway! I need to keep the sliders to the left, to maintain an acceptable frame rate. That is all going to change soon (end of the year, from the looks of things) as I am saving up for an i7/HD4750 system. But for now, I am stuck with low-settings FSX. I am not going to try to get used to the slightly different key mapping of FS9 for those couple of months... For some reason REX does not have much of an influence on my frame rates, so I got that installed, along with Mega Airport Lisbon. Only: that one eats frames like there's no tomorrow! With the F1 ATR on Lisbon, I get as low as 4 fps . Default aircraft or the PMDG DHC6 Twin Otter are OK with 10+ fps (that's the "playable" limit in FSX as far as I'm concerned).

Once fully dressed up with tons of addons, both FS9 and FSX have the ability to look stunning. There are more addons for FS9 available, but also needed. On the other hand: FSX draws way more from your resources, but can do with less addons.

I think at this point in time, it's about a tie between FS9 and FSX. As more and more people get heavier machines on (under) their desk, and more addons become available for FSX, I think the scale will tip in favour of FSX. But how long that will take ...


But that's just one man's opinion...


Eric-Jan

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Dom,

Excellent work as per... Won't affect this post, but I've tweaked up the maximum size of the preview images to 1024x1024 (so, full-size basically Unfortunately, images per post isn't changeable (least ways, I can't find it) so that'll have to wait. I'd have only set it to 12 maximum any way...

Eric,

As an FSX dedicated pilot, I'm becoming increasingly surprised at just how much "prettiness" modest setups are able to cope with. My setup is relatively modest (Q6600, 4GB, GeForce 8800 GTS), but since installing the Acceleration pack, I get decent frame rates in the UK with the full Generation X visual scenery installed (over 9GB), and the excellent VFR airfields part 1 by Gary at UK2000. Sure, I haven't yet maxed everything, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the developers catch up with the FSX-lag that took hold between FSX Gold and SP1 (and then struck again after the release of SP2 changed it all again)

[EHM-2387 Eric-Jan]

Sorry Dom, but I feel the urge to go off topic for a second to respond to Murray's response:

[off-topic]
To put things into perspective, my specs:
P4, 3.2 MHz
2048 MB DDRII
ATI X700 256 MB
ATI P5Q Premium motherboard
~350GB HDD space in total, of which only some 5 GB free (I need to clean up again)

Twas a super duper system at the timme I bought it
Only that was a couple of years ago ...
[/off-topic]


FSX indeed gives remarkable results, even with a bare installation (no add-ons). Especially clouds and water are a huge improvement to FS9. So, top-notch specs are not required per sé. Also, FSX looks smoother at low frame rates than FS9, so it doesn't require 40 fps to be flyable. I accept 10fps as well enough, and I have set my max. fps to 20.
With the PMDG Twotter, and the freeware Himalayas addon scenery, I fly at about 20 fps in my Indian High Mountains Pilot Skills Tour (See IVAO forum / pictures). So even my low specs allow for some (well programmed ) add-on aircraft and scenery.


All that beiing said; it does help to have more heavy spex. Especially if you want to have high autogen density, or lots of AI (or online-) traffic. And the situation remains: given one spec, FS9 will outperform FSX in fps, but needs more add-ons to get to the same visual quality (which in turn "cost" fps).

All in all quite a lengthy debate to end up where I started; Imho it is a tie between FS9 and FSX at this moment.

Happy reading; I now leave the stage to others...

Eric-Jan

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Sorry Dom, but I feel the urge to go off topic for a second to respond to Murray's response...

No argument there E-J. If I could have been bothered to reinstall my FS9 from my old HD, I've no doubt I could max everything and it'd get 40+fps...

but...

I paid a good amount of money for my new gaming rig, specifically to have it running FSX, and I'm happy enough with it for that (except when FSX crashes because I restart IVAP on my Netbook...)

[EHM-2155 Mariano]

Good idea there Dominic!
As a 2004 user myself, I'll help you out on this little quest of showing off what it can do
As soon as my pics are approved ^^

Edit:
And here they are

Details

Details

This one has been up there for a bit now but I think it came out crisp and neat...

Details

Will be flying more soon so I'll take more...
Long live FS9  

[EHM-1001 Robert]

Beautiful images there from both sources !!! I love the 757 from every angle. It is a pity that the production was stopped for this fantastic little bird.

[offtopic]
Murray, what planes do you run ? Do you use PMDG 737 for example ? If I remember well, you are a big 737 fan and flying a lot online (no AI).

I realized that the PMDG 747 for instance can eat half of the processors resources on my 8 years old rust-"rig" (see my specs in the sig) together with Cloud9 Amsterdam scenery and tons of AI the PMDG 747 cockpit systems can kick a nice 20 fps down to 8-10 which is almost uncontrollable on FS2004...
[/offtopic]

[EHM-0654 Murray]

[offtopic]Murray, what planes do you run ?[/offtopic]

[offtopic]Well, while I await a good B738 model, I'm mostly "stuck" flying small payware props (MAAM DC-3, and the FSD Cessna 337 and Pilatus Porter) and my new favourite "personal jet"... the FSD Northrop YF23 (I fly it exclusively in black)

In fact, other than the USAP event, I'm not flying all that much at present; I'm trying to spend more time ATCing on IVAO to pay things back (just waiting to be told by my C1 instructor that I can enrol in the C2 course...)[/offtopic]

@Mariano: Love the final one of those three... You've an eye for a photo by the looks of it...

[EHM-1465 Dominic]

Mariano,

Thanks for joining in

It does show how much detail there can be in addon sceneries for FS9 and that's what I still love about the old version - the sheer number of free sceneries and other addons to enhance your flying.

Great pictures - looking forward to more!

[EHM-2589 David]

Details

It's works thanks a lot Murray you're our best président