Still using FSX: what keeps you coming back to it over MSFS 2020, X-Plane, and P3D?

Yep, I get it. FSX has a few “old friend” qualities that the newer sims still don’t replicate in quite the same way, especially if you’ve got a setup that’s already dialed in and stable.

What keeps a lot of us coming back to FSX

• Predictable performance. Once FSX is tuned for your hardware, it tends to stay tuned. You can load into a busy area, know roughly what FPS and smoothness you’ll get, and not spend the evening chasing the next patch/update side-effect.
• The built-in ATC workflow. It’s basic, but it’s fast to use, it’s always there, and it doesn’t demand an external ecosystem to be “flyable.” For quick hops, it’s hard to beat the convenience.
• Missions, Acceleration, and that whole “game” layer. MSFS has activities now, but FSX missions were a very specific style, and a lot of folks still enjoy that structured “do the thing, get scored, move on” format.
• Mature add-on library. FSX has an absurd back-catalog of aircraft/scenery/tools that still work fine, especially if you’re not trying to reinvent your sim every month.
• Offline and self-contained. No streaming dependency, no worrying about server-side hiccups, and you can keep the whole thing frozen in time if you want.

A practical tip if you want FSX to stay enjoyable in 2024/2025
If FSX is “the one you keep coming back to,” it’s worth keeping a clean backup of your known-good configuration so you can recover quickly if something breaks. At minimum:

• Back up your FSX.cfg after you’re happy with it.
• Keep a copy of your aircraft/scenery installers and notes on install order.
• If you run a lot of add-ons, consider a “stable” install you don’t experiment on, and a separate test install for tinkering.

Also, FSX multiplayer and the general “session flow” can feel snappier simply because the sim is lighter and less complex in the background than MSFS/P3D setups loaded with modern tech.

Curious where you land on this
When you say “smooth ATC use,” do you mean:

• the actual ATC window interaction (fast/menu-driven), or
• fewer stutters while ATC is chattering, or
• you mainly fly IFR and like the default clearances/vectors?

And which FSX version are you on (boxed, Steam Edition), and do you still use the built-in multiplayer, or mostly just single-player with ATC?

Thanks for circling back with the details — that all makes sense, and honestly your “use the sim that fits the mission” approach is exactly how a lot of long-time simmers end up operating.

On your “smooth ATC” comment (boxed FSX + Acceleration)
What you’re describing lines up with two things FSX still does really well:

• ATC interaction speed. The menu-driven flow is quick, predictable, and doesn’t fight you. Even when it’s “wrong,” it’s easy to work with.
• Audio cadence. FSX ATC is primitive, but the pacing tends to feel more natural than some of the newer text-to-speech/voice systems when they get stuttery or over-processed.

And yeah — if you’re flying single-player with default ATC and AI, FSX is still a very “complete” little world without needing a bunch of external moving parts.

FSX missions / SDK (a couple practical tips)
You’re not alone in being “pretty bad at it.” Mission building in FSX has a learning curve, and the tooling is… very 2006.

A couple of things that usually help people stick with it:

• Keep a “clean” FSX install just for mission testing (minimal add-ons, default aircraft/scenery where possible). It saves a ton of time when you’re troubleshooting triggers/objectives.
• When something breaks, only change one thing at a time (one trigger, one object, one goal). Mission logic is easy to knock out with one small dependency mistake.
• Back up the mission folder as you iterate (v1, v2, v3). Rolling back is often faster than hunting the one bad edit.

If you want, tell me what part you get stuck on most (triggers, scenery objects, AI behavior, timing, failures, voice/text, etc.) and I can suggest a workflow.

P3D v4.5 vs “transferring FSX into P3D”
Totally get the wish, but in practice it rarely becomes a true “copy/paste” situation — even where P3D is broadly compatible, the SDK side especially tends to be its own ecosystem and version expectations.

That said, it’s often possible to keep your FSX mission work going in FSX while using P3D for other flying, which is basically what you’re already doing across platforms.

About P3D v5 “stopped working”
Before we guess, I’d want to narrow down what “stopped working” means:

• Does it fail to launch at all (splash screen then exits), or does it launch and crash when loading a flight?
• Any error message text, or an entry in Windows Event Viewer (Application log)?
• Did it stop after a Windows update, driver update, or installing an add-on?

If you can paste the exact faulting module/error from Event Viewer (just the key lines), that usually tells us where to look first.

MSFS streaming dependency / visual oddities
Your point about not wanting a vendor-server dependency is completely fair. Plenty of folks prefer something they can “freeze in time” and know it’ll behave the same next month as it did today.

On the “aircraft stretching” you mentioned in MSFS when viewed through the cockpit window — when you get a chance, can you clarify what you mean there?

• Is it ground aircraft/AI traffic looking elongated?
• Is it aircraft wings/props looking distorted?
• Is it mainly when you pan/track (motion-related), or even when stationary?

That one could be anything from a visual/LOD behavior to a rendering setting effect, but I don’t want to speculate without knowing exactly what you’re seeing.

Quick questions so I can be more specific (only if you want to dig deeper)

• What OS are you on (Win 10 or 11), and roughly what GPU?
• For FSX boxed: are you running it “as Administrator,” and do you have it installed outside Program Files?
• For the P3D v5 issue: can you post the Event Viewer crash details (faulting module + exception code)?