Microsoft Flight Simulator

What works

The FSX engine works surprisingly well. Very enjoyable.

What's even better...it's very stable. Under Windows CTD's where very common. A real headache with longer flights. I have to yet to experience these under Linux/Wine.

What's even better than that...the frame rates are perfect. No real drop caused by the Wine layer that would make it less playable.

What does not

The installer. It deserves it's very own investigation. Have focussed on FSX for now.

Main application:

• Instruments are not clickable. I really want to fix this one.
  
• No outside engine sounds.
• The free flight section of the starter window blacks out. Probably because of the 3D rendering of the currently selected aircraft.
• Activation once under wine.
  

Workarounds

What was not tested

• Add-on scenery and / or aircraft.
• Wine 1.6 compiled with all support needed to show aircraft (jpeg support) and to show the HTML pages in the launcher (gecko?)
• Multiplayer

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

INFO AND EXPERIENCES System: Fedora 19 Intel i5 4670 socket 1170 8GB RAM Geforce 770 GTX @ 2GB Graphics driver: Nvidia's official driver on top op xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-* packages. Wine version: 1.5.31 FSX version: FSX DeLuxe with Acceleration pack. Experience: FSX performance at full settings and tested with default installation and default flight with the hang glider and the beech baron: Over terrain: random ~50 fps with testing and loading and reloading scenery, not under ~35 fps, top 80-100 fps. Landed at treetop level at stable 80 fps. Over water: 80-100 fps. No framerate loss when using same resolution as desktop. Started at 1280x720, desktop resolution 2560x1440. Do experience some micro stuttering when new terrain is loaded. Probably need a SSD just for FSX. TIPS Install and use the DxDiag winetrick to for analysing problems. See what DxDiag reports and save the information from DxDiag for further analyzing. FSX QUIRCKS PROBLEM: The video card is not detected by FSX. This problem has two sources. Firstly the dxdiag winetrick is needed so install this. Secondly when an Intel HD video chip is available on the processor this one is listed first by the system. You can check this via the command 'lspci |grep -i VGA'. I had to disable the Intel HD chip to get this working. PROBLEM: The free flight screen is blacked out. Had to blind-click on Fly button. Probably has to do with the 3D rendering of the aircraft. PROBLEM: The information screen in the launcher is empty. Wine needs to be compiled with a tool that serves the rendering of HTML. Not sure which this is. PROBLEM: Checked: The launch after the initial launch of FSX (thus after the config settings are written to disk) FSX wants to make a network connection and crashes with the message "Error: Problem getting network info 0x80040154 (Class not registered)". -The problem is in directplay. Removing the FSX.cfg config file circumvents the problem but resets all settings. -Configuring FSX to start without the launcher circumvents the problem too. PROBLEM: The aircraft selection screen has no aircraft. This is probably due to the Wine version used. Wine 1.5.31 works because it has a component pre-compiled with it. I gather this is support for jpeg images since add-on aircraft aren't shown when the developer omits the preview image. PROBLEM: Well, a feature. Had to completely remap my Sidewinder and CH Products Pro Pedals and remove everything for unused usb input devices. PROBLEM: FSX randomly switches views. Still investigating. Multiple joystick assignments in FSX were prime suspect but couldn't pinpoint this. PROBLEM: When not using a virtual desktop but a smaller resolution the resolution of the screen is made smaller but the original resolution stays the same. Thus creating a zoom function. PROBLEM: At instalment number three the joystick and rudder weren't detected. The wine control joy.cpl command did see them, but they weren't present in dxdiag or FSX. This is due to the fact that the winetrick dinput (directinput) was installed. So skip the direct input (dinput) winetrick! PROBLEM: Radio stack not click-able. This counts for all instruments, also those in the virtual cockpit. INSTALL LOG Preparation Graphic card support On a 64 bit system make sure the 32bit versions of the OpenGL libraries installed. I installed the graphics using the following procedure ( http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2013/fedora-19-nvidia-guide/ ): 1. disable the default nouveau driver by adding 'nouveau' to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file. 2. Update the kernel to the latest version. 3. Add rpm-fusion repositories: yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm 4. Install nVidia proprietary drivers for GeForce 6/7/8/9/200/300/400/500/600/700 series cards: In my case: yum install kmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs reboot 5. Afer this works boot into runlevel 3 and install the official Nvidia driver, make sure the option to install the 32 bit libraries is choosen. Installation 1. Start PlayOnLinux and click on Configure. Create an empty 32bit virtual drive 'FSX'. 1.1 Set Wine version 1.5.31 (this one has all needed tools precompiled) 2. Configure Wine 2.1 Windows version: Windows XP 2.2 Select the Grahics tab and check "Emulate a virtual desktop". Use 1280x720. What's best suitable for the system. This can be deactivated after testing. 3. Install the following Winetricks 3.1 Microsoft Core Fonts, DirectX9, DxDiag (this prevents the message that the video card is too old for FSX), d3dx9, msxml4 (FSX uses XML files - Note: FSX will still complain about msxml not being installed, install it from the installation CD - msxml.msi.), vcrun2005 (FSX uses the Visual C++ runtime libraries 2005), 3.2 Set the following Display options: GLSL Support: enabled Direct Draw Renderer: opengl Video Memory size: [select the available video memory for your card] Offscreen rendering mode: fbo Render target mode lock: readdraw Multisampling: enabled Strict draw ordering: default 4. Install FSX 4.1 FSX's installation is useless. Install via a 3D hardware accelaration enabled VirtualBox with XP 4.1.1 Install Windows XP onto the VirtualBox image. 4.1.2 Enable 2D and 3D accelaration in the settings. 4.1.3 Install VirtualBox Guest Additions (it contains the 3D driver) and choose to install Direct3D. http://www.howtogeek.com/124479/how-to-enable-3d-acceleration-and-use-windows-aero-in-virtualbox/ Note: I had to restart Windows XP in safe mode. The best method is by the config utility method. Click Start / Run and enter "msconfig" in the box and click Ok. When the system config utility apears, select the Boot.INI tab. Check the /SAFEBOOT option. Click Ok. When you restart Windows XP your in safe mode. When finished reverse these steps to get the normal boot mode back. 4.1.4 Install FSX onto the Windows XP virtual machine. 4.1.5 Create a shared folder. Select your home directory as target and mount it via Tools / Map network drive in windows explorer. 4.1.6 Copy the entire installation folder to your virtual drive. Place it in: drive_c/Program Files/Mirosoft Games/Flight Simulator X/ 4.1.7 Start the registry editor in Windows XP (Start / Run / regedit.exe) and find the following keys: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Games] [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\microsoft games] Export these keys to a file and place them in the FSX install directory in the virtual drive. 4.1.8 Close the virtualbox Windows instance. 4.2 Open ~/PlayOnLinux's virtual drives/FSX/system.reg in a text editor and open the exported HLM key next to it. Use the search function to look for a spot that is alphabetically correct. Not sure if it's neccesary but let's not create bugs. Place the content of the exported regedit file in the system.reg file and rewrite it in it's format. Rewrite the SetupPath to resemble the virtual drive's installation directory. It should look like this (hashed the product keys as they belong to my bought version): [Software\\Microsoft\\microsoft games] [Software\\Microsoft\\microsoft games\\flight simulator] [Software\\Microsoft\\microsoft games\\flight simulator\\10.0] "LangID"=dword:00000409 "CDPath"="D:\\" "SetupPath"="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Games\\Flight Simulator X\\" "PID"="#####-###-#######-#####" "CurrentXPackProductCode"="{########-####-####-####-############}" Do the same for the HCU exported key. And mind the AppPath key. [Software\\Microsoft\\Microsoft Games] [Software\\Microsoft\\Microsoft Games\\Flight Simulator] "SimConnect_Port_IPv4"="0" [Software\\Microsoft\\Microsoft Games\\Flight Simulator\\10.0] "FIRSTRUN"=dword:00000001 "MicrosoftAppDataComponent"=dword:00000001 "FsxCfgExtraCache"=dword:00000001 "FsxStandardXmlExtraCache"=dword:00000001 "AppPath"="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Games\\Flight Simulator X\\" 4.3 I Couldn't get my previously activated copy past activation. So I had to patch it... 4.4 That's should conclude the installation of FSX. 5. Make a shortcut for the new virtual drive. QUICK REFERENCE FOR MESSAGES ENCOUNTERED Message (POL): No 32bit OpenGL libraries found. Resolution: Install the 32bit versions of the OpenGL libraries of your video card. See 'graphic card support'. Message (Wine): Error: Problem getting network info, result code = 0x80040154 (Class not registered) And FSX crashes. This is because after the initial launch where all config data is writen to disk, FSX wants to make a network connection causing this error. It can be avoided by removing the settings directory. Best to save a settings file from the FSX settings dialog to save some time. A better solution is to configure FSX not to start with the Starter screen. That way this error is bypassed. Message (FSX): This graphics card does not meet minimum requirements for shader support.This product requires a geForce3/Radeon8500 class or better graphics card. FSX will now exit. Resolution: Install DxDiag winetrick. FSX uses DxDiag to determine the type of video card. If the problem persists, disable the Intel HD video chip in the bios. Message (Wine): err:wincodecs:JpegDecoder_CreateInstance Trying to load JPEG picture, but JPEG support is not compiled in. Resolution: Wine version. Needs a version with this capability compiled. Message (Wine): err:winediag:SECUR32_initNTLMSP ntlm_auth was not found or is outdated. Resolution: ntlm_auth is part of winbind which is part of samba. This is as far as I've gotten at this point. TFK