Conure

Amazing! Hope it's a worthy replacement for BS.

I am really enjoying it!

True, but these things have a habit of disappearing!

Hey there, Also looking forward to the new fighter. I would love to see X-Plane 10 take over as the new benchmark for civil sims. PMDG + X-Plane 10 would be amazing.

Hi, I meant better looking which you can't really deny when equipped with the addons I've mentioned, though considering they cost considerably more it isn't a particularly fair comparison. Also, the PMDG 737NGX is, in my opinion, as good as DCS A-10 as an aircraft. I have extensive hours on both. I find it difficult to say better (though I dare say it is) because to compare them in complexity isn't fair - one is a brand new jet liner, the other is an old jet with some upgraded avionics. Both great sims, though. Also have to mention that the NGX acts within 5% of all boeing expected numbers, and when flown side by side with full motion simulators it's (almost) identical in behaviour - Unfortunately I do believe DCS A-10 has a real competitor for "best flight model". Granted, DCS has better optimisation, but then I prefer civilian sims over military, so it's obvious which I'd use for flying!

I think there is a lot of mileage left in FSX. I've got it with the PMDG 737NGX, REX, GEX, UTX, Mega airport Heathrow, World of AI and Shade and it looks amazing. 10x better than DCS A-10 (sorry, but it's true!) and it runs fine. I get about 45fps in the air (with the NGX) and about 25fps at highly complex airports with a lot of traffic. With aircraft such as the Carenado stuff which are also great, it's more like 40fps on the ground at complex airports and 60fps in the air. Also, 25fps on the ground is absolutely fine in the NGX. If you're willing to drop the sliders a bit (traffic from say, 40% to 20%), you're looking at 30fps which is a very smooth experience. Bearing in mind my airports are full of real life liveries and non stop radio traffic contact, it's a very good experience. Performance is fine with the right system, I have by no means a high end system and I love it. From my experience the 737NGX is the most realistic flight simulation available.

Looking forward to this one - Here's hoping they finish it :)

You just install them, then run REX and then you can choose a profile. You say you installed ground terrain, do you mean ground environment x or ultimate terrain x? They do very different things, though Ultimate terrain X will be much less noticeable initially. I've spent a lot of time configuring FSX and have probably managed to double or triple my FPS through various configs. Please keep in mind that if you're having problems running default aircraft with default scenery, you will lose significant FPS when (if) you decide to fly a realistic jetliner like the PMDG stuff. Optimisation is absolutely essential. I notice that you have REX, so I'd recommend going over to their website and downloading the overdrive package, it's huge but worth every mb! Anyway, first off I'd say install all of your addons (restarting your system between each install) followed by a defrag. If you don't have a payware defragger then install auslogics which is an excellent freeware alternative, and tell it run a "defrag and optimise" - this WILL take quite a while as youve just installed about 40gbs worth of stuff. World of AI is also very good and managed to triple the amount of obvious traffic with no FPS decrease. Takes a while (about 2 hours) to install every single airline, but very much worth it, and you can't argue with the price. As others have said, run the auto config tool (venetubo) and that'll give you a nice boost. For big FPS boosts turn off road traffic, particularly if you're running it via ground environment x (could be ultimate terrain x, I forget which handles that!) Also, my advice is to turn off civilian traffic and ships. I've spent a lot of time at major airports and it's reasonably rare to see a little Cessna amid all those Airbus' and Boeings. At least for me, it doesn't ruin the airport experience to not see them. If you're flying from smaller fields then sure, turn it on. Make sure you disable DX10 preview (it's a joke), and also make sure that bloom is off, as others have mentioned. In my opinion it doesn't look realistic, and it certainly isn't worth the 12 or so FPS drop it causes. Scenery sliders you can pretty much max out as they have little effect on fps in my experience, however autogen density does! I keep mine at dense for a nice mixture of a fair bit of scenery, but not so much so that it cripples my system. FSX can be absolutely beautiful when correctly configured so I would suggest you do spend some time setting it up - it's absolutely worth it. I've learnt more about aviation over the past month with the PMDG 737NGX than I have in years from any other sims, simply because it's all there. SIDS, STARS, Airways...I didn't know they existed! Couple it with VATSIM and you have the most realistic flight simulator available, short of going for a full motion simulator at a major airline. I persevered for a few days and got FSX looking better than this (because the screen captures are low quality) at a consistent 22+fps on the ground at complex airports, and abouut 50fps in the air. This is with the PMDG 737NGX. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=78790 Good luck

Pff, nothing primary school about the 737NGX! It's at least as complex as DCS A-10. That's not attack on DCS A-10 by any means, my understanding is that they're both modelled beautifully, just it seems to be that effectively flying the 737NGX requires a lot more knowledge!

has anybody played this? Been on it for maybe 5 hours this eve...AMAZING! Would love to hear thoughts/opinions

Can't wait for that - PMDG haven't added multiplayer in cockpit yet, apparently it's coming soon...Very cool :D

I have a feeling trying to act with live ATC whilst working out what's going on in the NG cockpit is some very intensive workload! One thing at a time, I guess.

Hey Bengo, Hope all is good for you and the 74th Looks very interesting...Bet it takes a while to learn all those ATC communications though lol

Cool, thanks :)

Hi mate, You can indeed - if you hold down the caps lock (or is it tab? I've forgotten!) all your key presses will enter on the FMC. Much easier :) As for how it is, well...All I've done is the very basic tutorial flight (which, btw, is a 100+ page tutorial and involves about 20-30 mins on the ground, this is with a jet which is fully started up and ready to go....If you want to follow realistic procedures I can't really see this thing being ready to go in less than 45 mins). Anyway, as for how it flies, it's incredible. It adds a whole load of new sound effects, chatter etc. the FMC makes the CDU on the A10c look quite simple (perhaps it won't when I've got my head around it, though). Flight model feels very good, though of course I've never flown a 737 so I'm hardly qualified to say how accurate it is...That said, there are a fair few 737 and general airline pilots on AVSIM who testify to it. One very impressive thing is to watch the wings flex in turbulence...Looks incredibly realistic. If you're into highly realistic civilian flying I believe the 737ngx is the perfect thing to get into...Though the learning curve is vertical, PMDG have supplied a huge amount of resources to get you going.... Couple it with VATSIM and you've pretty much got a professional level simulator on your computer.

Last couple And that's the last of them! Hope you enjoy :)

More pics

*****Updated screenshots: Please note if you have a PC similar/better than mine it will look as good/better than this at good FPS! If you need help I can explain how to make it smoother**** Completely recommend the NGX, it comes with a tutorial which has you flying within an hour or so. I've learnt a hell of a lot about aviation from this thing....If you want to learn about real civil aviation, this must be the place to start.

Yeah it's incredible - The only thing I miss is when you push buttons on the FMC tey don't move like on DCS...Other than that it's amazing. From what I read in the manual, it only uses FSX for visuals, the entire FM and all systems are run externally to FSX. When you load this bird the sim spends 20 seconds "initialising systems". Amazing though.

Okay, so.. Three days of tweaking including but not limited to: Overclocking my CPU (first time OCer! got my Core I5 760 to 3.5ghz on a small aftermarket fan and never breaks 70 under load, very happy :) ) - FPS increase is HUGE. Tweaking a CFG file endlessly Reading forum post after forum post 2 hours downloading every AI package for world of AI then installing... Spending hours installing addons Spending too much money Spending too much time defragging.... However, it was all worth it. I have 4000 pages of manuals to work through, and the end result is great...(UTX, GEX,REX, PMDG 737NGX, UK2000 Gatwick/Heathrow and WorldofAI The end result (please note that a lot of quality is lost in this image) *Will add a few more screenshots to thread soon*

thanks for the advice guys :) tbh I am happy with performance as it is atm. Getting 25fps with rex/utx/gex and using ngx..Looks great and feels smooth. Just didn't wanna find out I'd done something wrong and were rapidly killing my cpu! Seems stable though...

P.s I am absolutely staggered by this aircraft. The attention to detail is second to none. I do not believe there is a sim on the market that offers this level of detail. about 4000 pages of manual. Incredible, worth every penny...

I'm going to do that MTF - For now, just upping the multiplier a bit for a few hundred mhz won't damage my CPU will it? in normal use it never goes above 64oC but i dont understand much of the goings on under the hood!

Wow, changed the multiplier from 133 to 153....about a 400mhz increase...FPS up by ten...Only using a small fan and its hitting 65oC now so better keep it around here...Still, that was nice and easy :)

Could anybody give me a hand with OCing my cpu? The game runs well but I#d like to try it...I don't have a stock cooler on my CPU but it's not great either. But it never goes above 62oC so I presume I can squeeze a few more mhz out before it's too hot! Is there a simple way to get a bit more performance without spending a long time learning about memory clocks and voltages, or do I need to go the "whole hog" so to speak?