WestWind Virtual Airlines

Am thinking of purchasing this since it does work on Windows 10 and is close enough to FSX, or so I am told that it would be easy for me to transition to. Got a notice on my Windows 7 laptop today that I use to fly using FS9 that Windows 7 support will be ending in January 2020 so I do not know what effect that will have on my future flying with this computer. I use my laptop and FS9 because FSX is not reliable enough to do the long flights I like to do on either my laptop or my Windows 10 desktop which includes FSX SE which at times works great and at other times locks up anyway. I am also thinking of purchasing a gaming laptop to fly this program on or maybe even the new 2020 FS that Microsoft is working on. I do not think my GTX970 graphics card will run P3D and am pretty sure it wont run 2020 that well either. I am looking at getting an ASUS gaming laptop thru the exchange system and any suggestions on anything I mentioned here to include the laptop would be appreciated. Hope this finds all of you doing well and that you have a great Thanksgiving week. Thanks and God bless all.

Paul

There's allot to unpack in this. P3D and FSX are similar. The file structures for both FSX and P3D are identical. The SDK, the
part that you need to build scenery, aircraft paints and the like are also identical. This means that you should be able to use
many of your FSX scenery packs and aircraft on P3D. There are some issues, but they are minor and they are also known.

For any computer that you get, make sure that the CPU speed is as high as you can get. P3D still depends on the CPU speed so that
becomes a very important specification that you need. I believe that the P3D was compiled under a 64 bit instead of 32 bit FSX.
this is what will get you around the Out of Memory errors on FSX.

Any computer should have, at least, 16 MB of RAM. That's the optimum. The graphics card GTX-970 should be able to handle the
graphics, but it is older now. Get the fastest CPU you can and if you can get a real good graphics card, that will help!

Yes, the GTX970 card dose work with P3DV4, Myself and Mike Bergman are using that card in our computers. My CPU was an AMD 6300FX 3 cores 6 hyperthreaded running at 3.5 GHz with 16 Gig Ram. P3Dv4 ran ok, I upgraded to AMD Ryzen 2700x 8 cores 16 hyperthreaded and overclockable 3.5 to 4.2, I found 3.9GHz to be the sweet spot with least heating to speed ratio. also upgraded the ram to 32gig and 3500 clock vs old 2800 clock. Still using the GTX970 with 4gig ram.

FSX: Steam to P3DV4 was the first transition into the 64-bit realm, I did have X-plane 10 but it saw very little use. X-Plane 11 was a game-changer I now use both P3Dv4 and X-Plane 11, depending on which airplane I wish to fly

Will the GTX970 support the new Microsoft Flight Simulator? I am betting it won't.

Will the GTX970 support the new Microsoft Flight Simulator? I am betting it won't.

I think its to early to start running out and replacing all our GTX970 Graphics cards. MS2020 is early in the
process, and MS isn't going to put themselves outside, forcing everyone to upgrade computers. That just isn't a
"smart" move on their part. They are going to find the minimum sweat spot.

Updating the architecture to 64 bit and writing it to take advantage of graphics cards instead of the CPU will make the
thing run so much better and will look fantastic even with a GTX970. No doubt that the card is old, so if buying a new
computer, get a newer graphics card if you can. The key, newer graphics card, more expensive. Time and Money can cure any
problem you have.

Paul,

Here's my suggestion - if your Laptop is still running Windows 7, you can certainly upgrade to Windows 10. You won't loose performance. If you search "Free Windows 10 upgrade" online, you should find some links to how to get the free upgrade that Microsoft offered (and didn't really close, but just stopped advertising). The only thing is that you'll need a good chunk of memory available for the upgrade to download into. I don't remember how much, but it says on the Microsoft website.

However, ff you're looking to move to your next system, then move to your next system. I am in the process of doing that myself because my PC is at that point - I've had it 5+ years, I've made some upgrades (like putting a GTX 1080Ti and an SSD in it), but the processor is definitely showing its age so it's time to move to the next one. I'm not doing it for any specific program, it's just that time in the cycle. This new computer will also be my first "clean break" upgrade, something I've needed to do for a long time, and happily coincides with MFS2020 in that they're finally doing the same. So this new computer will have a clean SSD with a brand new Windows 10 install (already sitting on a shelf) and then I will wipe the SSD currently installed on my computer and re-install all my software and programs clean. It'll take some time when it happens (probably next February or March) but it'll finally get rid of some of the "junk" (i.e. stuff dating back to the mid-1990s) that lurks around my computer memory.

2020 is a good year for a "clean break".