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FSX with my iMac

Muncher

Muncher

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 19, 2007
1,465
0
California
I just loaded FSX on my iMac today, set the settings to medium high, screen rez to 1680x1050, and let me tell you, it was smooth...

Do any of you guys have it? What are your results with flight simulator games on your macs?
 
I'm running it under Vista via Bootcamp on a 17" MacBook Pro and it's pretty good. I get a slight pause sometimes during really hard turns in bad weather, but that's about it.

Flight Simulator 2004 is smooth as silk with all settings maxed out, as is X-Plane 9 under OSX :)

Cheers,

Mark
 
Hi Muncher,

Glad to hear it! I am looking at getting one of the 24" iMacs in the new year and running flight sims is the main (leisure) thing I'm looking forward to!

What sort of frame rates are you getting?
 
I'm not entirely sure, but it isn't a slideshow or anything, so I'd guess around 20-25+ fps. The 2600xt really surprised me - my last computer had a 7600GT, and it lagged horribly, so my expectations weren't very high.
 
I wonder if my 24" will be slower than yours due to the system having to populate a larger screen..hmmmm.
 
Hi Muncher,

You can check the frame rate by holding down the Shift key and pressing Z twice.

Cheers,

Mark
 
FSX on a MacBook

Hi there,

I have one of the 2.2Ghz MacBooks (the black one) with the Santa Rosa chipset. Is anyone currently running FSX on one? I've installed Vista and have been experimenting with the graphics settings, but can't seem to settle on the optimum detail vs. speed.

If you're using a setup such as this, please could you let me know what detail settings you find work well for you?

Thanks!
 
john.smith.05 said:
Hi there,

I have one of the 2.2Ghz MacBooks (the black one) with the Santa Rosa chipset. Is anyone currently running FSX on one? I've installed Vista and have been experimenting with the graphics settings, but can't seem to settle on the optimum detail vs. speed.

If you're using a setup such as this, please could you let me know what detail settings you find work well for you?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

What kind of graphics card does the MacBook have? I'm running it on a MacBook Pro with the nVidia 8600 with some success.

Cheers and Happy New Year!

Mark
 
It's got the Intel GMA X3100, which shares the main memory. I imagine that that's the major bottleneck in the setup...
 
I have a MBP 2.4 which I run Flight Simulator X on. I am very pleased with the frame rates I get. It is about 20 with the all the settings on High except traffic which is set to 0. The machine does heat up a bit on long sessions. the GPU runes into the 80C's. What temps & frame rates are you folks getting with the 24" iMacs?
 
I would love to hear from someone actually running FSX on the top-end imac. I have heard it will run FS9 like a dream.

The flight sim forums are populated mostly by PC users who all have an opinion on the imac and FSX but they haven't got one....
 
I'm running FSX under XP (bootcamp) and it seems to run fine. I haven't had time to play it very much but I've got most of the settings set as high as they'll go and it seems pretty smooth to me (though I've got nothing to compare it too!).

I've got a 24" 2.8 iMac - given all the complaints about the iMac graphics cards I wasn't expecting much from FSX but I was nicely surprised.

Chris
 
Muncher said:
I just loaded FSX on my iMac today, set the
What are your results with flight simulator games on your macs?
Click to expand...

For one soild year I used X-Plane (8.20-8.50) on my iBook G4. I had to lower the settings for it to be useable, in addition to doubling the RAM. After considering that, it ran great. It's also a fabulous flight simulator-- intensive, though. Once had a flight from Mumbai, India to Chicago, IL nonstop for 16 hours--the fan was running for 90% of that time.

I would recommend X-Plane over FSX and day...but that's just me :D.

Regards,
JDR
 
I am lucky enough to have x-plane 8.x and Flight Simulator X. They are both good products. X-plane has a better flight model, but I prefer Flight Simulator X as my all around choice. Both have pretty hefty hardware requirements and generate lost of heat.
 
Thanks Chris, that's encouraging. Have you had much time to use it since your earlier post?

I am about to get a new imac and wonder what settings you are using?

I quite like the ides of the autogen stuff and 'realism' features of FSX.
 
iMac 2.4 24" w/2 gigs Ram

I run FSX thru bootcamp (vista). With the settings at med to med-high, 1920 fullscreen, high traffic level, I average around 25fps and much higher when at altitude over mountains or ocean. Looks absolutely amazing. Only shows any stuttering when over large cities but its alot less than my pc stuttered. If I lowered the traffic settings I could probably raise the graphics a little higher but I like the realism of busy skies.

I am coming from (Nov, 07) a PC that was a Athlon 62x2 3200, 2 gigs Ram, Ati 1950 pro with 256 and this iMac blows it out of the water.

I currently try to find time for;
FSX
BF vietnam
Med Total War 2
Silent Hunter 3

All run much much better than my pc ever did.

p.s. Forgot to mention I did install new drivers for the 2600 Pro and it made a nice difference. Crysis demo runs very well.
 
Cudadown said:
iMac 2.4 24" w/2 gigs Ram

I run FSX thru bootcamp (vista). With the settings at med to med-high, 1920 fullscreen, high traffic level, I average around 25fps and much higher when at altitude over mountains or ocean. Looks absolutely amazing. Only shows any stuttering when over large cities but its alot less than my pc stuttered. If I lowered the traffic settings I could probably raise the graphics a little higher but I like the realism of busy skies.

I.
Click to expand...

Thats great to here I am hoping to pick one up in a few weeks if things go right with the job. Are there any heat issues on long flights. I run now on a MBP SR and the thing really heats up after 15min. If it's not too much trouble could you post your CPU & GPU temperatures.
 
Il-2 1946

Hi there, was wondering whether anyone has played IL-2 1946 on a 24" iMac? I was trying to play it on Windows XP with BootCamp (MacOS X), however, when I turned on "advanced" graphics settings (reflective water, maximum ground detail) an annoying stutter developed. The frame rates are still acceptable, however, the experience is anything but smooth. I am using standard Apple drivers and have been unable to update them (hoping Apple will do this soon). Also, the computer's temperature climbs rapidly (to temperatures above 65C). What are other peoples experiences with this exceptional piece of software?
 
Thunderbird8 said:
Thanks Chris, that's encouraging. Have you had much time to use it since your earlier post?

I am about to get a new imac and wonder what settings you are using?

I quite like the ides of the autogen stuff and 'realism' features of FSX.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not much free time for playing games recently (new baby, summer holidays, new job, yada yada).

I cranked up just about all the settings as fair as they would go (except maybe weather and traffic) - will check tonight if I get a chance as I may have then adjusted them back one notch on the settings.

My iMac did seem to run a bit hotter (just to the touch, wasn't monitoring the temperature or anything) and the fans were running a bit more than usual but nothing to get me worried.

I did install updated graphics drivers from the ATI website and couldn't really notice any difference (I'm no expert as you're probably gathering). I've got 2gb of RAM as well which might help things along.

I say go for it, even if it doesn't meet your expectations fully for FSX you'll still have a fantastic machine.
 
Thanks again - wow this is exciting. I was going to wait for the next update to see (on the off-chance) if Apple would update the imac graphics but maybe now I won't...
 
I would post my temps for you but I dont have any temp checking software for windows. I do not believe they get too hot though. I have a habit of reaching up there every now and then. I dont remember it being much warmer then normal.

I will try and get a prog for monitoring temps in windows and post them maybe tomorrow. Today I'm trying to dip my feet into Final Cut Express :eek:.
 
Hey. I'm thinking of getting a hi-res 17" MBP, and this is one of the games I would like to play on it.

Does anyone know how the new MBPs perform with FSX?

What settings do you have to kill to get an acceptable level of performance (around 20-25fps)?

Also, if the native 1920x1200 resolution is too much to drive, how does it scale down to lesser non-native resolutions?

How does it fare with the add-ons and the texture/environment/city packs that I assume are available for it?

Is it better to run under Vista or XP?

Thanks :)
 
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