FSX, differences?

[fliger747]

Time to start a discussion on the difference you folks are finding between FS9 and FSX flight dynamics. I have only worked with the various beta's and demo's so far, but some of you now have the retail product in hand.

Looking forward to having some test instrumentation again, hard to believe how necessary it is!

I think we can make some good fliers, but it is different than FS9. Tools such as Jerry's Air Wrench still seem to work, just the values produced do not appear to be quantative. It is almost as if the value for the air density (or something) was changed.

Thoughts and discussion welcome. T.

[sparks]

I'm just not that excited with FSX. My impression is that it's mainly a cosmetic upgrade of the scenery. The flight dynamics weren't supposed to change - much.

My experience with the FSX beta was not pleasant. It took forever to load, ran like a slide show, and crashed my system to the BIOS. Nothing else has ever crashed WinXP Pro that badly.

After this experience, I decided to wait until I have the RTM release before I spend any significant amount of time on FSX. I downloaded the 8+ Gbyte RTM iso files the other night, but I won't have the time to install it until next week.

[fliger747]

Jerry:

I certainly understand! For me beta one would do nothing without crashing, beta two would not install and three was pretty good. I imagine it will be a bit before I get the RTM version as I am travelling pretty constantly. Fiddle farting around with a new Corsair project in both FS9 and FSX has been interesting when it comes to comparison. The FS9 plane will fly fine as is, but the performance and handeling are quite a bit different and certainy not to any specs. Somewhat similar to the changes between CFS2 and FS9 in scale.

It's been a bit of a seat of the pants deal without the usual instrumentation installed for quantification. Trying AirWrench out works OK, except that it does not produce the quantative results it is calibrated for in FS9 etc. But using it to bend to fit....paint to match does work through iteration (not what you had in mind I expect).

I will agree that MS probably spent more effort on Scenery upgrade, effects and other visual stuff. I think the addon community will be able to do a lot with this eventually, and I think the flight dynamics will be able to produce a fairly decent flight sim experience.

Remains to be seen how the frame rate issues work out in urban areas, but I am only interested in those to the degree they start affecting the controlability of the flight experience.

I hope this is a winner....

Best regards: Tom