Switching from Mac to Windows

[Nano]

Hello,

 

As XP10 gets better and better, I believe it may be time to upgrade from my 2009 iMac i7 with its 512 MB video card.  I'm in the initial planning stages of switching over to a dedicated Windows PC explicitly for XP.   I have a couple of questions for the community experts who may be familiar with the process.  

 

I'm pretty experienced with XP since V8 and am a real world professional pilot.  Here are a couple of my concerns with regards to the switch;

 

1)  Can I simply move over my Custom Scenery folder?  I have over 280 GB of scenery downloads and would rather not go through that process again.  Especially the simheaven photoscenery tiles that took considerable time to download.  Well worth it if I may say so.

 

2)  Can I simply install the bare minimums of the main program and copy in the rest of the XP folders; i.e. Aircraft, Global Scenery, Resourses, etc.   I understand that some plugins will need to be redownloaded as there are different version for each operating system (XSB, XFMC, IVAP, SkyMaxxPro)

 

3)  From my research on the subject it seems that a high end i5 cpu is all that is needed to get the most out of XP since there is no use of hyper threading.  If there is strong disagreement, I'd appreciate your thoughts.  Also, I'll be using 16 GB of RAM and most likely at GTX 7 series graphics card with 3GB VRAM.

 

With the addition of tools like World2XPlane, it's inevitable that I'll have to make the switch to continue enjoying XP.  Any thoughts would be appreciated.  

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

Nano

[captainamerican]

I upgraded my computer and wanted to switch to windows but didn't go through with it because of the massive amount of addons I have. Instead I took my same mac (2008 Mac Pro) and upgraded with a new Videocard, RAM, and Memory for about $400 all together. Every now and then I purchase something extra for it and continuously upgrade it. I would advise to get a External HD witch 1tb for about $50 and move your x-plane aircraft and scenery there, and get a computer that you can continently upgrade instead of buying a new one (the problem with macs) xD 

[rleendertz]

Hello there, completely right, move the folders over and your done. Problem only with payware airplanes and plugin that need activation, and anything that modifies internal file such as lights.txt etc.

I also recommend an external hard drive, I use it as a backup install, which I update weekly since I'm constantly adding sceneries

[Nano]

A question I have about the external drive recommendation.  Do you run your sceneries from the external, or is it just a backup?  I have a Time Machine backup of my entire system, so I do have a complete backup of the XP folder.

[starflight]

Personally I'd never run XP, especially sceneries, off an external drive. Load times would be much longer, since even over USB3 it won't come close to the data read rate of an internal hard drive, never mind an internal SSD.

[ointment]

I've flown X-Plane from an external drive for years and have never had any problems.  I currently fly on a MacBook Pro Retina with a LaCie 500gb 7200rpm hard drive and I don't see any performance issues at all.  No stutters.  No slow loads.  However, I do think an external SSD is a better way to go.

[captainamerican]

Macs run X-Plane well because X-Plane is developed on them. That is one of the reasons I chose a mac for my flight simulation experience. 

[Nano]

Macs run X-Plane well because X-Plane is developed on them. That is one of the reasons I chose a mac for my flight simulation experience. 

I agree XP does run well on my iMac.   However, even the highest end iMac graphics card pales in comparison to what you can put in a PC as far as performance goes.  The latest videos using W2XP scenery builds are incredible and unfortunately appear unreachable with an iMac.    Maybe I'm missing something.  

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRWqQB15SN4

[Jose Almeida]

Hi,

 

I run x-plane on a Mac Book Pro, mid 2012, with 16 GB of ram and I can tell you the current beta 0.4 of world2xplane sceneries can take more than 10 minutes to load in countries with dense osm data, see this thread: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=77085. I believe it would be completely impossible to keep these sceneries in an external drive and I am really considering upgrading to an internal SSD; it would have to be 750 GB or more and that costs money, though.

 

José

[Nano]

Thanks for the input Jose.  Although I'm impressed by the W2XP sceneries with OSM data, for me it is the simheaven photo scenery tiles that really add to the immersion of XP.  And although I don't understand why, I can run Extreme Resolution at 60 fps when flying over these tiles.  Of course I have all trees, objects and roads turned off and I don't think it detracts from the overall realism of the flight as you can clearly see everything on the ground.  

 

The only problem is that with objects turned off, I get no airport sceneries.  Wish there was a way to get just the airport objects.

[gthomas]

Hi,

 

I run x-plane on a Mac Book Pro, mid 2012, with 16 GB of ram and I can tell you the current beta 0.4 of world2xplane sceneries can take more than 10 minutes to load in countries with dense osm data, see this thread: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=77085. I believe it would be completely impossible to keep these sceneries in an external drive and I am really considering upgrading to an internal SSD; it would have to be 750 GB or more and that costs money, though.

 

José

Mid 2012 MBP has a thunderbolt port. A properly executed TB drive will be about the same speed as your internal. I don't think the drive is your bottleneck. How much VRAM does your graphics card have? 51GB (big problem) or 1GB (a little better.)

[Jose Almeida]

gthomas,

 

My computer has an i7 2.6 GHz processor, 16 GB ram and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650 video card with 1 MB video memory. My problems really arise only when I fly into an area covered by w2xpl of high osm density; flying over Germany, approaching Frankfurt, my sim stops for over 10 minutes while it loads the scenery. I have HD Mesh V2 but that does not cause noticeable delays.

 

José

[Nano]

I did quite a bit of testing on my iMac today and I'm hoping someone can explain this scenario for me.  

 

As I mentioned, I mostly enjoy flying over southern Europe using simheavens Z17 photo scenery.  When flying with objects set to "default" and trees and roads set to "none", I'm get 50-60 fps in "extreme resolution".   However, if an area of non photo scenery enters the screen, the fps drops to mid single digits.   That's a significant drop and I usual have to change the view to keep from getting a slide show.  What is causing this behavior?  There are no objects being drawn as there are no objects in that area.  The parts that are not Z17 are HD Mesh V2, but I don't think that should be the cause.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Thanks.

[Jose Almeida]

Nano,

 

The latest ZL17 from simheaven incorporate HD Mesh V2, so no I don't think that could be the cause. I use photosceneries for my country, Protugal, where I do a lot of VFR flying, and I have HD Mesh wherever it is available; for both Portugal and Spain I also have w2xpl enabled. My texture deffinition is extreme, such as yours, and most other settings are about half way; I use SkyMaxx Pro, also with settings about half way. Depending on the cloud cover I can get between 23 and 60 fps flying in my country and about the same in most of Spain but if I go to European countries with a lot of mountains my fps drops, due to HD Mesh, I believe; also, as I said before, If I enable w2xpl in central Europe I must be prepared for some loading delays, even if the fps drop is not severe. Flying VFR I can usually stand the loading delays because there aren't many scenery loads during one flight, but for IFR it's absolutely unbearable