FSX or FS2004? Which is better??

[J.Lauer]

Hello all!

I have been playing the Flight Sim series since '98. I did play FS2004 but I purchased it late, probably a few weeks before FSX was released. When FSX was released I immediately switched over to that. I would just like to know what you guys think about both sims? Which is better? It seems to me that Project Airbus supports FS2004 more than FSX. What's missing in FSX that FS2004 has (vice versa). Thank's for taking your time to read and answer!

John

[A321flyer]

I have seen this question many many times being asked before, its just a repetitive question. Therefore, I will try to answer yours in a way that makes sense.

FS9: a majority of us

FSX: people that have intel i7 cpu's

[ChainChomp2]

I don't have an Intel i7 CPU (just a laptop) and I still use FSX 'just because' it's the only flight sim I've used after moving from Microsoft's Train sim which dates back 9 or so years ago.

A lot of people will say "well, it depends"

If you want max frames and have a slow/fast computer than go FS9. There are still a number of developing groups making aircraft for this including Pairbus and Skyspirit (breakoff from FSPro[?]) and really in general you'll find older and more experienced simmers, and there are many ways to upgrade the visual appearance in FS9 to get close to FSX.

If frames won't bother you too much and you won't mind a...younger community then go FSX. Likewise, different freeware/payware groups and developing for FS9 and different free/payware groups are developing for both FS9 and FSX (hint) and different free/payware groups are developing only for FSX or moving toward it, as lots of newcomers mostly want the latest sim especially with all the stronger computers coming out now. Drawback is the numerous problems you will find at first but there are always people to help (in the right places), but many people who use FS9 will look down on you (in some cases stereotypically).

Heck, I'm only 16 but not all the "young 'uns" and "FSX noobs" and "kids with big pcs" a lot of the people in the FS community see us as are bad eggs by heart. I know I'm speaking as someone who uses FSX but ultimately it comes down to your own situation with hardware/patience.

Of course, MS Flight doesn't seem that far away but still needs more information before I can think of switching over to that but also since I've only been simming on FSX (or any FS for that matter) for just over a year.


A lot of people will probably find problems with my post but the people that would help most are people who have extensively used both instead of one-sided information from either, but hopefully there is something worthwhile to you in my post !

[J.Lauer]

I don't have an Intel i7 CPU (just a laptop) and I still use FSX 'just because' it's the only flight sim I've used after moving from Microsoft's Train sim which dates back 9 or so years ago.

A lot of people will say "well, it depends"

If you want max frames and have a slow/fast computer than go FS9. There are still a number of developing groups making aircraft for this including Pairbus and Skyspirit (breakoff from FSPro[?]) and really in general you'll find older and more experienced simmers, and there are many ways to upgrade the visual appearance in FS9 to get close to FSX.

If frames won't bother you too much and you won't mind a...younger community then go FSX. Likewise, different freeware/payware groups and developing for FS9 and different free/payware groups are developing for both FS9 and FSX (hint) and different free/payware groups are developing only for FSX or moving toward it, as lots of newcomers mostly want the latest sim especially with all the stronger computers coming out now. Drawback is the numerous problems you will find at first but there are always people to help (in the right places), but many people who use FS9 will look down on you (in some cases stereotypically).

Heck, I'm only 16 but not all the "young 'uns" and "FSX noobs" and "kids with big pcs" a lot of the people in the FS community see us as are bad eggs by heart. I know I'm speaking as someone who uses FSX but ultimately it comes down to your own situation with hardware/patience.

Of course, MS Flight doesn't seem that far away but still needs more information before I can think of switching over to that but also since I've only been simming on FSX (or any FS for that matter) for just over a year.


A lot of people will probably find problems with my post but the people that would help most are people who have extensively used both instead of one-sided information from either, but hopefully there is something worthwhile to you in my post !

Thanks for the insight! I am the same age as you but I have been simming since i was like 8. Never was that good though. I managed to find my old FS9 CD and installed it and noticed that there was quite a difference. I don't know of any good visual enhancing program but I do run a pretty good setup. Max frames on FSX are around 65 but FS9 exceeds that - but that's only cause it's plain. I think that I'll work on FS9 and see if I can graphically enhance it, because I do plan on filming various videos and taking scenic screenshots.

I have noticed how large the FS9 community is. I can easily sense that FS9 is far more supported than FSX.

Also, could you list me some good graphic enhancing programs for FS9? Thanks.

John

[Brett-Hill]

The new CPU's don't do much for FSX...
FSX Requires the old way of a fast CPU , i.e. Raw Speed . This is because FSX does not support Hyperthreading , Multicores or sli configurations. I myself have an intel i5 750, and I havn't seen a major improvement over my previous Core 2 Duo until I started to do major overclocking from 2.66Ghz to 3.91Ghz.

I have been with Flight Sim since they bought out FS2002, and have been with it ever since. the improvement for me from FS2002 to FS2004 wasn't that great for me. However the move to FSX from FS2004 was quite a large leap in the right direction. The way I see it now is that FS2004 had Bugs like Bad High Altitude Horizons and sticky movement on the ground or water, then there was the big Bug of the lack of a decent Nvidia driver for the 8800GTX which would support FS2004 (I thought this was an nvidia problem until I realised it was only people in fs9 experiencing it). And Moveing on to FSX, They had managed to fix all the problem above however in doing so they also created other bugs like Gamespy Connectivity, Bad performace issues on most PC's and ofcourse the complete disaster to implement DX10.

Whether you are part of the FS9 or FSX community it doesn't matter, some could argue that the people who say "fsx noobs" and "kids" are just being kids themselves. We are in the sim we are in because of our hardware or which bugs we can put up with most. I do not beleive that there is more noobs or kids in fsx than fs9, I beleive the numbers are fairly even in both worlds. I myself am 20 and I am in a VA which contains some people aged up to 50 and one person about a couple of years younger than me.

If anyone does decide to venture into FSX there is a forum thread here that will make sure your fsx is installed in the correct order: http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041.html

Brett

[Srilanka]

Strange...

I have a Dell Inspiron N4010

Intel i5 ( 2.4Ghz - Turbo boost up to 2.6Ghz )
Ram - 2GB
ATI Radeon HD 5470 - 1.7GB

-I hit 30FPS easily on fsx, I ran FS2004 on the same pc got FPS of 60, But the FS2004 textures are bad,FSX works good for me!

[iheart707]

The new CPU's don't do much for FSX...
FSX Requires the old way of a fast CPU , i.e. Raw Speed . This is because FSX does not support Hyperthreading , Multicores or sli configurations. I myself have an intel i5 750, and I havn't seen a major improvement over my previous Core 2 Duo until I started to do major overclocking from 2.66Ghz to 3.91Ghz.

I don't think you have your facts straight on some things. The issue with FSX not using all of the cores was resolved with Service Pack 1 and 2. Those updates also allowed FSX to use the hyper threading technology found in Intel motherboards. Try turning it off, and I'm sure you'll see a difference. Remember that Flight Sim is not the only thing running on the PC as well. Other background services could benefit thus reducing the impact on your overall frame rate.

http://software.intel.com/en-us/article ... threading/

As you said, with Flight Sim X, there is no difference whether or not you use an SLI configuration or not. I personally view it as a tremendous disadvantage to those who do have the ability to run in that configuration.

[Brett-Hill]

The new CPU's don't do much for FSX...
FSX Requires the old way of a fast CPU , i.e. Raw Speed . This is because FSX does not support Hyperthreading , Multicores or sli configurations. I myself have an intel i5 750, and I havn't seen a major improvement over my previous Core 2 Duo until I started to do major overclocking from 2.66Ghz to 3.91Ghz.

I don't think you have your facts straight on some things. The issue with FSX not using all of the cores was resolved with Service Pack 1 and 2. Those updates also allowed FSX to use the hyper threading technology found in Intel motherboards. Try turning it off, and I'm sure you'll see a difference. Remember that Flight Sim is not the only thing running on the PC as well. Other background services could benefit thus reducing the impact on your overall frame rate.

http://software.intel.com/en-us/article ... threading/

As you said, with Flight Sim X, there is no difference whether or not you use an SLI configuration or not. I personally view it as a tremendous disadvantage to those who do have the ability to run in that configuration.

Well My experience tells me that its right. Apart from which Hyperthreading is not Utilized even under FSX SP2 nor is a part of the i5 range of chips (only i7's). The only thing it improved was the support for daul cores quad cores still do not benefit FSX over the Daul core. Your link refers to some interesting info however Hyperthreading is completely different to Multi threading. Hyper threading means 2 threads per core... therefore in a quad core you have 8 threads. If you have a daul core machine without hyperthreading then it will still have 1 thread per core and that would mean a total of 2 threads which could also be known as Multi Threads.

[Tom Clayton]

...and there are many ways to upgrade the visual appearance in FS9 to get close to FSX.

That's funny! In FSX, summertime in North Carolina looks more like the Gobi Desert! If I flew "X" I'd be spending my time trying to get it to look more like FS9.

[FLIGHTCOMPANY]

I have a pretty decent computer...
Intel i7 950 3.06
12GB Ram
Radeon 6870 Crossfire

But still doesn't handle FSX the way I wanted to. I love FS2004! It is stable, FPS friendly, and the graphics are not that bad! Too bad developers do not think so and switch their development plans to FSX only because "the FS2004 market is dying." (YEAH RIGHT!)

[Brett-Hill]

...and there are many ways to upgrade the visual appearance in FS9 to get close to FSX.

That's funny! In FSX, summertime in North Carolina looks more like the Gobi Desert! If I flew "X" I'd be spending my time trying to get it to look more like FS9.

There are some freeware textures which fix that and winter textures for europe and US, its on simviation

[Tom Clayton]

I have a pretty decent computer...
Intel i7 950 3.06
12GB Ram
Radeon 6870 Crossfire

But still doesn't handle FSX the way I wanted to. I love FS2004! It is stable, FPS friendly, and the graphics are not that bad! Too bad developers do not think so and switch their development plans to FSX only because "the FS2004 market is dying." (YEAH RIGHT!)

What most people don't realize is that for the past five years, 95% or more of the new FS package purchases have been FSX. Most of those have been purchased by younger people with more disposable income or children with access to daddy's credit cards. Those are now the people that are buying the vast majority of payware addons. It costs time (money) to downgrade the poly count, re-tag the animations, and recompile a model with the FS9 SDK. They simply won't do this if they don't think that they can make a profit from that investment in time and money.

There are some freeware textures which fix that and winter textures for europe and US, its on simviation

That would just be the start of what would likely take two full days to "fix" on a program that was simply released to early. Yes, I know that FS9 has a service pack to upgrade to 9.1 that fixed a few bugs. What MS program doesn't lately...? But two service packs and another upgrade that has to be purchased? And then there's that whole online activation issue. Most serious gamers reformat on a fairly regular basis. After a few activations, you end up having to call some toll-free phone number so you can play Twenty Questions with some dude with a beard named Peggy.

The only non-MS sanctioned thing I've done to my FS9 installation is to toss in a cracked 9.1 exe so that I can run without the #4 CD in the tray - and no, I won't share it unless I actually know you. I've also made a few minor tweaks to the fs9.cfg to allow sharper mesh rendering and a couple of other things. Time invested in these mods is about 10 minutes as opposed to a day or more to get less performance out of FSX. Yes, there's a lot of new whiz-bang stuff in FSX that looks pretty, but the question is "Does it really enhance my experience flying from W88 to KAVL in a light piston twin at 15,000'?" I'm betting it won't.

[Brett-Hill]

the simple matter is... It will, if you have the money for the best CPU, GPU and Memory. I have recenlty upgraded to my i7 2600k and overclocked it to 4.6 ghz, 8gb ram and Im totally happy with my fsx straight off the install. I tried to do some fsx.cfg changes but I have decided it runs its sweetest with the default one! It just proves everyone has a different experience

[Tom Clayton]

...if you have the money for the best CPU, GPU and Memory.

I don't, and neither do any of my friends with one exception - and he's a self-made entrepreneur with no interest in gaming of any sort. The rest of us that have to work for a living don't tend to have the lastest and greatest machine every six months...

[Brett-Hill]

75% of the people I know who have Flight Simulator X can afford £900 for a PC every 2/3 years which is all you need if you want to see the most major improvement to fsx we have ever seen. With the introduction to these sandybridge Intel processors we can finally run with our sliders up to ateast 'Very Dense' for just a small price tag in comparison to the older 1366 socket processors. Ofcourse everyones budget on this hobby is different and that is why some people choose to stick with FS9. This is why I argue that it is not the case of one is better than the other... its just what best suits you...

[AA_380]

I like FS9 better, simply because the PC I have isn't strong enough to run FSX. I think It's a matter of how fast your computer is.

[Tom Clayton]

75% of the people I know who have Flight Simulator X can afford £900 for a PC every 2/3 years which is all you need if you want to see the most major improvement to fsx we have ever seen. With the introduction to these sandybridge Intel processors we can finally run with our sliders up to ateast 'Very Dense' for just a small price tag in comparison to the older 1366 socket processors. Ofcourse everyones budget on this hobby is different and that is why some people choose to stick with FS9. This is why I argue that it is not the case of one is better than the other... its just what best suits you...

I'll go with that. Having been on unemployment for several months, I'm having to make do with what I have. My last graphics card released a little of its special smoke and I was lucky to have a friend with a card just sitting on a shelf that he mailed to me at no charge.One of these days, I'd like to get a custom built uber-comp, but that's a LONG way off...