My guide to a great FSX experience.

This guide will cover setting up your simulator to have a great FSX experience. We all know how frustrating FSX can be with stability issues and bad fps, especially in populated areas.

Step 1. Patching the FSX.exe file

Although some "experts" will deny the validity of the 4gb patch currently having any positive effect on FSX-SE whatsoever, I highly recommend you download it from...

http://ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

Here is the screenshot of the correct website...



This little tool patches x86 executables in order to let them have 4GB (instead of only 2) of virtual memory on x64 platforms. This tool comes very handy for applications which need a great amount of virtual memory like games, 3D renderization, multimedia etc.

Once it's downloaded, unzip the 4gb_patch.exe to your desktop, open the program, navigate to your steam/steamapps/common/fsx directory, and choose the fsx.exe file to patch.

Once it's successfully patched, you should receive a confirmation...

Step 2. Setting Up NVidia Inspector

For those of you lucky enough to own an NVidia Graphics Card, there is a great program that allows you to force any program to use whatever video settings you wish, rather than to be limited by the selections within the program. This program is called NVidia Inspector. I highly recommend you download and install this program. I also highly recommend you set up your Inspector using the following settings for Microsoft Flight Simulator Steam Edition for the best quality vs speed. You can download the NVidia Inspector from this website...

http://www.guru3d.com/files-get/nvidia-inspector-download,4.html



Once you have downloaded and installed NVidia Inspector, run the program. When Inspector opens, you will notice the crossed wrench and screwdriver button on the right side...



Click the button and it will open the profiler. With the profiler, you can create a video setting profile for any program you wish. When the program is opened, Inspector will automatically force the video settings you applied for that specific program.



At the top left of the profiler, notice the white box with "_GLOBAL_DRIVER_PROFILE (Base Profile)" inside. Click in the box, selecting the entire contents, and type ms. Several different selections will display, including Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Click Microsoft Flight Simulator X. It will now be displayed in the box labeled "Profiles:"

Using the pictures below, set up your Microsoft Flight Simulator X Inspector Profile exactly the same.







NOTE!!! As of 12/28/2015, due to some players having issues with the new Nvidia drivers, please set your Antialiasing - Behavior Flags to NONE, and disable Antialiasing in FSX by unchecking Antialiasing in the display settings!

Once you're done creating the profile, ensure you click the apply button at the top right of the profiler!

Step 3. Editing your FSX.cfg file

Over many, many years, there have been hundreds, maybe even thousands of people that have attempted to tweak their fsx.cfg file to increase the performance of FSX. I have personally studied and tried every tweak written by Bojote, Kosta, and many others. I will always credit these people for their outstanding support to the flight simulation community by their hard work and dedication.

With that being said, I want everyone to know that, despite every config tweak out there, there is no way possible to get perfect frame rates in FSX. At some point, FSX will stutter, slow down, and frustrate you. It's up to you to understand and accept this. Once you do, your experience with FSX will become better. The ultimate goal is to achieve a balance of visuals, fps, and smoothness.

After much trial and error, I'm sure that I have achieved one of the best config files for those of you running an AMD FX-4300 Quad Core or Higher CPU. I highly recommend you try adding these specific tweaks to a FRESH/UNEDITED fsx.cfg file.

To backup your current fsx.cfg file, open windows explorer, highlight the contents in the top left search bar, type %appdata%, and press enter.



On the right side, open the Microsoft folder, then open the FSX folder. Now, locate your fsx.cfg file.



Open your fsx.cfg, and file/save it as fsxoriginal.cfg. Now you have a backup of the file, in case you need to rollback to the original. Another thing you can do, in case fsx fails to start, is to delete your fsx.cfg alltogether. When you start FSX, and FSX cannot find a fsx.cfg file, it will generate a new, fresh fsx.cfg!

Open your fsx.cfg file, and observe the following screenshots. Ensure you copy and paste the following tweaks in their exact locations shown...

[BufferPools]
UsePools=1 // ADDED (DX9 Allocates 8mb for a vertex buffer)
RejectThreshold=262144 // ADDED
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=14 // ADDED (224 @ 8 core cpu or 14 @ 4 or 6 core cpu)

HIGHMEMFIX=1 // ADDED (fixes errors when using a lot of video memory)
ForceWindowedVSync=1 // ADDED (forces vsync in windowed mode)



SmallPartRejectRadius=1.0 // ADDED (increases view distance of multiplayer aircraft)

TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=1200 // ADDED (decreases resources allocated to spawning trees)
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=1200 // ADDED (decreases resources allocated to spawning buildings)



Once you've made the changes and verified it's correct, save this config as fsx.cfg

Step 4. FSX Game Settings

Everyone has their own idea of what the best FSX Settings should be. Of course, these settings are going to be computer specific. Nonetheless, I will show you the settings I use along with the same configurations from this guide.

Notice that the frames are locked at 30. The reason for this is so, during multiplayer, the other players' aircraft do not bounce all over the place due to desync issues...











The remaining settings, such as sound, general, realism, etc. are all up to the user!

My Results

The screenshots below are the results with my current setup, addons, and the configurations from this guide...

AMD FX-8350 4.2GHZ CPU, GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-USB3 Motherboard, NVidia GTX 750ti 2gb GPU, 16gb Corsair Vengeance RAM, WD Blue 1TB 7200rpm HDD, 120gb Samsung SSD (OS Only)

EZDOK, ORBX Global, Vector, HD Trees, and Open LC North America, REX Essentials w/Overdrive, PrecipitFX, A2A Accu-Feel, A2A Lights Redux, Shade, and GSX.



























I really hope this guide assists anyone wanting to make their FSX run smoother and look outstanding!

[7heAngryVe7eran]

Special thank you and firm handshakes to everyone in the community that commented and gave my guide a positive rating making it 5 stars. I really appreciate it.

[7heAngryVe7eran]

@Flowriders Glad you enjoy it. The B-25 was my favorite aircraft to mod and required the most work. I spent months on that thing to get the P3D conversion exactly how I wanted it. However, I don't do much modding anymore. I just need to wait for more of my favorite aircraft to come to MSFS. Anyway, if you, or anyone else need help with something sim related, don't hesitate to reach out to me.

[Carbon Spur]

TruNorthSim This is really funny running into you on the Steam platform. I am a fan of your work. I have downloaded your aircraft from Simviation many times before. How cool. Thanks for all of the quality freeware. The evolution of FS is amazing to say the least, and how cool to be a part of this wonderful process. Cheers my friend!

[7heAngryVe7eran]

@Flowriders That's great that you have a long history playing flight simulator. Check out Simviation for all your addons. I've done flight sim modding over the years and posted a few addons there. Search for TruNorthSim on Simviation to view what I've uploaded. I have 1 product available on SimMarket called 2AR5 Ashmore Field as well. Also check out my Facebook @TruNorthSim. I run a virtual airline called TruNorthAir on FSAirlines.net too.

[Carbon Spur]

FS has a long history indeed! I'm so old I started out on Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer on an old Apple-2. The many goods outweigh the cons for sure. I used to own all of the late 90s flight yokes/rudder pedals/throttle controls back in FS's hay-day. I'm just now getting a grasp of the addon aircraft files and how they work coding wise. My favorite version is a Century of Flight as I still own the 4 CD Rom disc set in classic metal collectors box even though it doesn't work on anything past the nightmare we all know as Windows Vista LOL. One day I wish to remaster the Century of Flight aircraft collection to work on the newer versions. A strange thing I noticed is that there are a lot of Cessna 152's but zero Cessna 150s available as addon aircraft for FS. I find this strange as 7 horsepower is the only difference between these 2 types of trainers which would make it super easy to come up with a good version of the C-150. I hope to see this a reality one day!

[7heAngryVe7eran]

@Flowriders FSX is very old software and is no longer supported. I'm not sure if you've read any forums or watched videos on it's history. IMO Lockheed Martin Prepar3D v4 was the best 'updated' version of FSX and is still worth having if you own a lot of add-on products. I personally own thousands of dollars of add-ons, and I've only recently deleted P3Dv4 completely from my SSD. I never purchased Prepar3D v5, because some of my add-ons would no longer work. MSFS2020 is now my primary simulator for many reasons. However, there's nothing wrong with FSX or P3D as long as you know what the sim is and isn't capable of and learn all the workarounds that will give you a good experience. I had loads of fun with both of these programs. I hope you find a solution to your mouse yoke issue.

[Carbon Spur]

I would love to fly my slow Cessna's and other training aircraft around with the mouse as yoke. This to me provides extremely accurate yoke execution movements at least in single engine aircraft that doesn't require super fast applications as with jets. There is a downloadable program that allows the mouse as yoke, but again the Steam developers/coders by taking on the namesake of Flight Simulator should already have, or should think about doing soon, put this software into the game files solving this problem altogether instead of leaving us all wondering why it used to work and most important why do the commands for this function exist if it wasn't meant to be in the long run?

[7heAngryVe7eran]

@Flowriders I haven't played FSX in a very long time, and I never used the mouse as a yoke. I suggest you use a joystick or yoke setup. If you have a usb xbox controller laying around, I think it would be much better than using a mouse. Most serious simmers frown upon the very thought of that, but I used one years before I finally bought a yoke and throttle setup. To each their own. Maybe there's a youtube video out there that can answer your questions about using a mouse as a yoke.

[Carbon Spur]

Why are there commands and settings in FSX for using the mouse as yoke if none of it works? All of the early 90s versions of Flight Simulator could be used with mouse as yoke and I simply don't understand why the older versions support this function perfectly and the newer ones require some kind of downloadable "virtual Controller" just to run the mouse as yoke.

[Amaury Chihuahua]

thanks u