Diff. between flight simulator x normal and deluxe

well, that is my question

 

i would go for FS9.. FSX is pretty much junk.

... but if you want to know.. deluxe has 10 more high detail cities, and some more high detail airports, nearly 20 more missions, the ability to play online, and about 5 more planes

 

FS9 is great because it runs very well on older hardware. FSX is good, but it is way too resource hungry. The missions do make it fun, but I haven't played much because of its high system requirments and all the graphics you have to turn off to make it run, FS9 looks much better. So I wouldn't call FSX junk, just not optimized.

 

The only difference between the Normal and the Deluxe version is that you have more airplanes in the Deluxe version. which planes you can see at the Flight Simulator X site.

 

Fsx has been greatly optimized since it came out. A 20% gain in performance with service pack 1 for fsx. In SP2 another 20% performance gain including the previous 20% gain. So in reality, it has double it's performance since it came out. I have a old inspiron 9300 with a geforce 6800 which is similar in performance to 8400m gt. I have the settings to around medium. There are a lot of settings to tweak with. I took me around a month to know how much each one of the dozens of settings impacted my performance. My cpu is weak so much of the performance lose for me is my cpu. As far as textures go, i can have those all on high. I would recommend fsx easily to anyone who has a 8600m gt, should slice through it like butter.

The difference between the deluxe and the normal version is 2 or 3 plances, and a few more missions with those particular planes, whoop. I have the acceleration pack and i would spend the extra money on that instead. who does not like traveling mach 2? the only problem with my machine is that textures won't load fast enough when traveling that fast so it looks really blocky and horribly non-textured. You should be fine i think.

 

Post in flightsim thread! Let's not fill the forum with the same questions in tons of threads

Link in sig!

 

Bah! Stupid 80 page threads. They need more sub categories on these forums. Trying to find something in those threads is painful and time consuming.

Ok, just 9 pages, but still, my point ...

 

well, preformance for me doesnt really matter, lol (see rig below)

 

FSX is still pretty expensive, but its pretty good. i can turn it all the way up on my 8800gt, so you should be able to do the same. it looks bloody awesome. and make sure you have a joystick.

 

oh..... joystick.... i never thought about that.... bloody hell! how much will one of those buggers set me back?

 

about $100 in australia, so probably $50 or so. i'm not sure what to get these days as mine is about 4 years old.........

 

well, i just found one in my basement, but it is really old and attaches with a com port, idk if i have one... this is bloody insane, $50 for the game and $50 for the joystick! is it possible to play with a mouse and KB or not?

 

it is possible, and fairly enjoyable......but nothing beats a joystick, $50 well spent.

 

ok, ill have to decide what my wallet wants to do, lol

 

Whatever joystick you get, make sure it has rudder and throttle controls.
It doesn't have to be that expensive(specially if it's only for fs9 or fsx), I got a Saitek ST290 for just $19.99, but it does the job.

 

well, i found my old joystick, it isa com part, or serial, i dont remember the difrence.... so im screwed, lol

 

It's actually very doable and enjoyable to use keyboard to control the plane, that's exactly what I did for FS2002, prior when I had a joystick. Just have to tweak the keyboard sensibility to make the plane control responsible. Make sure you have a keyboard that has the numerical keypad.

As for your old joy stick, doesn't matter if it has serial or com, your computer probably doesn't have those ports, way too old...
Some of the non-force feedback joysticks are quite cheap actually, you just have to search around, eBay, Amazon, etc etc... probably gonna cost from $20 - $50.
http://www.amazon.com/Saitek-ST290-...8?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1202249870&sr=8-8
I actually use this one, it's cheap and really nice, great value for the price. Though I'm in the market for a force feedback one...

However, if you just don't have the money for a joystick, then you can still use your Mouse act as joystick. It's one of the features in FSX, prior to FSX, you have to download a separate program that designed to do the same thing, anyways, it's quite nice too.

Bottom line, if you are really into flight simulator, then having a joystick does indeed make a lot more sense. It makes your overall sim experience very realistic and enjoyable.