No more FS9.... :(

[Lionheart]

Just a year and a half ago, I was still FS9. I didn't think I would ever let go of that jewel. I was having so many issues with FSX that I actually had physical signs of major stress; high rate of blood pressure and heart beats would spike when in the sim, things not working right, pink runways, clouds disappearing on and off, etc, etc, etc... I remember the week I decided 'that's it, I quit FSX development. I cant take it. I am now fully FS9 and I am going to try to build a plane for X-Plane 10.' I was arranging everything and was invited to a conference of XP developers (mostly people from FS going to XP) and was considering this. I heard about Prepar3d from a friend at FB and he suggested I try it. I did, the 30 days only plan, and man, I couldn't believe it. My computer ran 1.2 so dang well, I was just completely amazed. I didn't know about all the other things that FSX had had that I had never seen before. With FSX, none of the cool things were active. I needed it to run above 7FPS, so some things were turned off. In P3D 1.2, I was flying along very smoothly, 15 to 30 FPS with high settings. It was a miracle.

Later, I cancelled all future planes that were to have FS9 models. All became P3D (which work also in FSX).

Then LM came out with the new SDK and offered updates to the SDK which included the newest Max 2014. How can this be??? Developers being helped also???? Super amazing.... Totally amazing...

And now.. . Build 2.0, the infamous V2. Super shadows and shading technologies more advanced. The newest DirectX 11 HDR light technology, mimicking human retinae visualization, (brightness and contrast, darkness focus adjustment time, etc).


Back to the focus of this post... I went to test something, finding parts on my planes in FS9, looking for gauge code, and went to fire up FS9.... FS9 refused to boot up. I stared at the screen. It was dead. Gone. My old friend for well over 10 years.

Rest in peace, FS2004. You will be missed... A little. More like remembered. Well remembered. Golden Wings, Silver Wings, all those hundreds and hundreds of freeware planes, learning to make gauges, painting custom paint schemes, changing the UI. That was a lot of simming and learning... Man...

[Prowler1111]

Rest in peace, FS2004. You will be missed... A little. More like remembered. Well remembered. Golden Wings, Silver Wings, all those hundreds and hundreds of freeware planes, learning to make gauges, painting custom paint schemes, changing the UI. That was a lot of simming and learning... Man...

Don´t mourn for FS9 planes, as long as they are gmax based, you can port them over into P3Dv2.0...VC with shadows, external shadows, and absolutely NONE of the issues found on FS9 to FSX ports. It´s a whole new lease of life for splendid FS9 developments.
FSDS based models, they dont port that well, or not at all (have some that really didn´t went thru that good)

Prowler

[Crusader]

One of the things I miss most is the CalClassics 50-60's era AI Traffic and airports . Love the old Props.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sascha66]

Rest in peace, FS2004. You will be missed... A little. More like remembered. Well remembered. Golden Wings, Silver Wings, all those hundreds and hundreds of freeware planes, learning to make gauges, painting custom paint schemes, changing the UI. That was a lot of simming and learning... Man...

... just because you are abandoning it . There are still some hundred thousands using it.

[Blackbird686]

Well... there are still a lot of us '9er's' out there. Hopefully Lionheart will still host is superb FS9 models for procurement on his website.



BB686

[YoYo]

Prowler

Small OT: Ooo, Hi Prowler, welcome back on SOH :- ))) ?!

[Blaze]

....When a developer of Lionheart's caliber says goodbye to FS9... It's the beginning of the end of days.

Thank you for all you've givin us FS9'ers Lionheart.

Blaze

[luckydog]

I've still go it on the pooter, but.....
I've been looking for disc #4 all day and can't find it.
I think it's buried in the backyard with that T-bone they gave me last Christmas......

[Lionheart]

I've still go it on the pooter, but.....
I've been looking for disc #4 all day and can't find it.
I think it's buried in the backyard with that T-bone they gave me last Christmas......

LOLOL....

(I didn't think of burying my tin FS9 box, for safe keeping of course).



FS9 will take another decade to really slow down. It still has a huge following. FS2002 is still strong in smaller East European countries.

But for me, its gone.

[stansdds]

I still have FS9 on my computer, but it is there for developmental purposes. All of my "flying" is done in FSX and I am currently helping with a project being developed in FS9, but will also be available for FSX. There is still a lot of support for FS9, Carenado recognized the number of FS9 users and is now converting many of their add on aircraft to FS9, so FS9 is not going away anytime soon. P3D seems to be the future for the MS based flight sim series. I really need a new computer for P3D now that P3Dv2 is available, but a new computer is not financially feasible at the moment.

[Jon_aus]

With Sascha's amazing textures, FS9 is better then ever! No changing to fsx or p3d for me. Still hard to beat as a flight sim platform.

[AussieMan]

Still have FS9 on my computer but the #4 disc shattered in the CD drive a couple of years ago. Using the alternative to run it but now find it too fiddly to bring up the VC and set it up. Been flying P3D for almost 12 months now and feel there will be no going back. There will Come a time when I will have to reduce the number of FS related CDs (smoe go back as far as FS for Win95) and the decision will have to be made wheter to dump all but the FSX and P3D related discs.

[andersel]

I've put so much (time, effort, Money, etc.) in to FS9 that even w hen & if it does die, and I sincerely doubt that it is going to, that it will come back to life by the sheer force of it's own self-will.

Meanwhile, I have started experimenting with P3D. You can never learn too much, eh?

LA

[Lionheart]

Being a developer, I have to have at least FSX and V2. V1 was basically FSX with enhancements, so I can test V1 aircraft in FSX. But now I am away from FS9. Its a weird feeling. Like losing someone or something. So many years with that platform.


I agree, I think it will be around for a very very very long time. Far longer then MS ever thought it would.


MS needs to realize that sometimes they make a single platform that they could have kept going with, softly improving it, like Prepar3D do with their sim, doing updates. FS9 could have still been going on now. Imagine how lightning fast a new 'today' version of FS9 (FS9 sim code/platform) would be... Probably 200 FPS. Mind you, settings people would put on it, and the new texture sizes would bring it back down again, but it would be fast. They could have kept FS9 going (with its team) and did a second sim (FSX) and kept them both going, instead of killing one and starting the other.


If only MS could learn what people wanted... could listen... Same with GM.. sigh....

[Dev One]

For me I cannot at the moment develop for FSX as I find the load time too great during the testing stages, so I shall stay with FS9, but I am considering X-Plane. P3D, not sure, seems like there are too many bugs still when reading some of the forums.
Keith

[Lionheart]

For me I cannot at the moment develop for FSX as I find the load time too great during the testing stages, so I shall stay with FS9, but I am considering X-Plane. P3D, not sure, seems like there are too many bugs still when reading some of the forums.
Keith

Hey Keith,

I use SSD HD's on my computer and load time with V2 is 10 seconds exactly. Faster then FS9 was, but FS9 was on regular HD's. FSX however would take 4 to 5 min's to boot up, even a second time. I used to get so dang frustrated. I could go out, make tea, come back and sit and it would still be loading.

EDIT: Use Kosta's tutorial to tune your FSX installation. That helped a lot for mine.

On the problems people are having, I don't have hardly any of those. V2 runs at 30 to 85 FPS, it rarely has the black window thing happen, and I haven't loaded it with incompatable addons, so its been nearly perfect for me. Some people however just haven't been able to run it well. Very odd. I think some are using SLI and 3+ screens, using all ORBX and other scenery that might be messing things up, using addons that aren't setup with the V2 SimConnect, etc.

Also, setups on some rigs... :S


We never had that in FS9. But we didn't have SLI, we didn't have triple screens and Matrox, we didn't have ORBX with animated trees and people walking around. We didn't have cars on the highways or 3D actual mist clouds and fog. We didn't have interior shadows, HDR high realism light and shade effects, bloom, etc, etc, etc... :S

[Daube]

Hey Keith,

I use SSD HD's on my computer and load time with V2 is 10 seconds exactly. Faster then FS9 was, but FS9 was on regular HD's. FSX however would take 4 to 5 min's to boot up, even a second time. I used to get so dang frustrated. I could go out, make tea, come back and sit and it would still be loading.

Just a small correction: when installed on SSD, FSX takes approximatively 10 seconds or less to reach the main menu (provided you added the disable_preload tweak in the fsx.cfg). Without SSD, it takes more or less 30 seconds, depending on how many modules are started with the game (EXE.xml and DLL.xml declarations). Then, if you don't have too much big sceneries installed in your scenery library, it takes approximatively 30 seconds to get into the cockpit. On my computer, with OrbX PNW or photoreal sceneries (BlueSky or FranceVFR) with nice mesh, it used to take 70 seconds with regular harddrives, and 40 seconds with a SSD.

I know most people don't care, because FS9 is so cool and FSX is so evil, but things like "FSX takes 5 minutes to load" is vastly exagerated.

Finally, yes P3D *seems* to load faster than FSX, but that's just because you reach the cockpit BEFORE the loading is actually complete. It takes approx 20 seconds to fully load the scenery around you once you reach the cockpit. In general, the complete load time is exactely the same as FSX.