Flight Sim World - Is It Worth Buying? (1 Viewer)

BritishRail60062

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Hello everyone.

Today I got a notification from Steam that Flight Sim World (or FSW) is on a deal for £14.99 on Steam.


Now then. I am tempted to jump in and get the game all ready for when I buy my new gaming laptop as I love aviation as well as railway and driving simulators. However with the poor FPS from TSW. I am a little hesitant in getting it incase this game has the same bugs in terms of low FPS.

Does anyone here already have this game? If so could you please let me know how it runs on your PC? As this will or should give me idea of what to expect from FSW :).

Many thanks and kind regards.
Ash.
 
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I would definitely avoid FSW at all costs... not because it's solely from DTG, but that their customer support is dreadful, and the effort they put into their games is shocking. But I must note, I don't own the game, but coming from the reviews that are featured on Steam, it seems it's just FSX with a graphics pack installed (much like the anticipated Skyrim: Special Edition). I'd definitely recommend either FSX or X-Plane 10 / 11. I've only played 10 and it's a very well made simulator, but not as easy to understand as FSX. X-Plane 11 on the other hand, seems to be a much better creation with tutorials and easy flight planner installed.

Unfortunately, what I would expect from DTG, is that they monopolise THIS game; by adding 'DLC' such as scenery packs and plane packs, in addition as they have done to FSX: Steam Edition.
 

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BritishRail60062

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Hi Bailsbach,

Many thanks for the heads up. I do own FSX:SE and its a good flight simulator but the downside is that the graphics on the sim are a bit old and although it runs real smooth. I would love to see an HD update with higher resolution textures. But its not something that is a deal breaker. I will check out X-Plane 10/11 as this is the first time I have heard of those as I was under the impression it was just an expansion for FSX or something :).

Its a shame that DTG can't get their act together and fix the bugs in their new games before releasing them to the public. Although in terms of TSW, there is a fix on the way apparently ;).
 
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Feb 4, 2017
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I think FSW will probably be okay, but it seems a bit gimmiky at the moment, it'd definitely be a step backwards
You know... I'd go towards P3D... I've currently got FSX SE, and I use it a lot, but P3D offers much better optimisation, and less crashes to desktop, it's 64 bit vs FSX being 32 bit. Plus all aircraft and scenery that are available for FSX are also available for P3D. P3D is the future platform I believe, it's constantly being updated as well, I think the're onto P3D V4 now, bearing in mind P3D v3 only came out a year ago...

If not, then X-Plane, X-plane is incredibly good for older aircraft, for example IXEG 737, or regional aircraft. It's really good for that, but PMDG isn't supporting X-Plane yet, and most developers seem to be orientating around P3D rather than X-Plane.
It depends what you're after bud, if regionals and turboprops is your thing, X-plane is the way to go. Consider it's also got mostly free scenery, and the flying dynamics are more realistic than P3D or FSX.
If however you're after the big tubers then P3D is your best bet, the developers being PMDG, Flight Sim Labs (Amazing A320), but as well as the small little GA bugs, like Carenado... The list is endless for P3D, but like FSX, to make it look good you're going to need a tonne of scenery and weather engines etc.

Unfortunately I've already bought all the stuff for FSX, so when I transition over to P3D (which is getting more and more likely, especially considering how stable it is... And how miffed off I get when I go through all the steps of setting up my B737-800 for a flight, only to have a CTD :mad:) I'll have to buy the p3d version [which if it's an upgrade it isn't full price but still £ :(]
 
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0118999

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DTG FSW is too immature to recommend and it lacks third party developer support. The industry seems to be going towards LM P3Dv4 instead, which benefits from a lot more time and resources being put in to it than FSW. Although beyond shader improvements, it still isn't much of a step up graphically from FSX (which is now 10 years old)!

If you want to improve the appearance of FSX/P3D, your money would be better spent on a scenery texture upgrade such as FTX/Orbx Global Base, which just so happens to be on sale at 48% off for another 7 days or so. Another addon to consider is Real Environment Xtreme 4 Texture Direct (REX4TD) which is for environmental textures such as clouds, runways, water, taxiways, sky etc. These packs provide textures in excess of 1024*1024 but you need to tweak the FSX.cfg to see the enhanced resolution.

Remember that many FSX quality addons are not available through Steam so you need to read up elsewhere to see what's decent.

Xplane is a completely different simulator and arguably better than FSX, it certainly looks better out-of-the-box and has lots of free addons. Downside is there's a lot less choice of high-fidelity aircraft and the weather simulation is both poor and bad looking.

NB: These are my personal opinions as a flight simmer of over a decade, and do NOT represent a product endorsement by Fellowsfilm

Some other FSX addons you can consider: FreeMeshX (land elevation data, so mountains and hills), as the name implies this one is freeware :) For further scenery realism there's FTX Vector (adds more roads, railways corrects coastlines) and FTX OpenLC (this is split by subcontinent regions and dictates where towns, fields, forests, golf courses etc appear) but these two addons are more subtle than the stuff I detailed above, so don't buy these immediately. Beyond global scenery enhacements there's highly localised detail scenery such as airports but these can be heavy on your computer; popular ones are UK2000 VFR+Xtreme and Aerosoft MegaAirport. There's quite a few weather engines out there, FSXWX is nice a freebie one, if you fly a lot then consider buying ActiveSky 2016.

What about aircraft? the piston props included with FSX aren't too bad, anything else is severely lacking in systems fidelity. If you want to go up a level of detail then A2A is superb for small stuff, if you just want to mess around and don't care about systems detail/realism there's Carenado, Alabeo, Aerosoft and some nice indie freeware. For turboprop airliners there's only really the Majestic Q400. For big jets PMDG is the Boeing king but they cost a small mortgage, for Airbus you have Aerosoft and FSL (all other Airbuses are essentially terrible and to be avoided). Note that some of these products do NOT support P3Dv4 x64 yet or charge to move your purchase from FSX to P3D, so check before buying!
 
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BritishRail60062

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Hi guys,

Thanks again for all that info and suggestions. I will certainly take a look at P3D as to be honest, I would love to have a go in one of those high resolution Boeing 777-300ER's and perhaps do a flight from London Heathrow to Tokyo Haneda. I would like to use an airline like ANA or Japan Airlines for the simulator as in truth. The B773 is one of my favourite aircrafts around with the 787 in second place ;).

As for the scenics and add-ons. I think its best for me to go for the simulator first such as P3D which I do like the look of as well and the larger planes inspire me more than the smaller ones. But sometimes I do like to have a go in the small cessna planes as a change and to keep me from getting bored. As for the add-ons for scenics and stuff. I am willing to buy those for the real life buildings as seen at the actual airports to make the experience more immersive ;). Also I will be going to make some "let's play" videos once I am able to fly competently and the gaming laptop I am looking at using will be the ASUS ROG G752VS with the Nvidia GTX1070 graphics.
 

0118999

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PMDG is the king of Boeing on FSX, their 777 is the benchmark. Unfortunately for P3D it costs over £100! Also note it is a "study sim", you won't be able to just jump in and fly it. You'll need to spend time going through the tutorial supplied with it so you understand how everything works, although the 777 is very automated so it's easier than it might be.

As regards the Boeing 787, QualityWings are presently working on one and it's shaping up to be pretty good. Also much more affordable than PMDG stuff.
 

BritishRail60062

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To be honest. The PDMG range is bit like Marks & Spencer or Harrods as their plane models are upmarkets when compared to the likes of JustFlight and even DTG for that matter. Thanks for the advice about P3D. Personally I don't mind completing a few tutorials before getting started but I think I should along with the B777 as its more of a semi-automatic aircraft anyway once its got going. Also I am a big fan of ANA, Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Japan Airlines. So I don't mind saving up to buy the add-on as I will be using it in future videos on my channel as I do plan to do more video games and simulators as well as real transport :).
 

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