by dilbert » Tue Jun 21, 2016 7:30 pm
I think you're making a mistake trying to use a legacy 2.1 version. The flightgear community has done outstanding work and made great improvements since 2.1.2. One of my older machines is an AMD-4-5000 1.8 MHz machine with 4 meg of ram using Win 8. I reinstalled 2016.2.1, and while it loads a little slower than my newer machines, the f14 flies ok with the possible exception of an occasional brief frame freeze in the highest scenery density areas, so I recommend 2016.2.1 using the default scenery plus selecting "automatic scenery downloading" (terra sync) under "settings" for everywhere else. Vista At Home should handle 4 meg of ram in 32 bit and 8 meg in 64 bit. You really do need at least 4 MEG of RAM. First, I strongly recommend unpinning any app you don't really need from the start menu, if you haven't already done so, as you can manually select it if you really want to use it. On the machine mentioned above, half the ram was being consumed by Windows and apps pre-pinned to the start menu right out of the box. I also note there are a number of desktop Intel I3 machines available with 4 to 8 meg ram and windows 7 or higher certified or refurbished on the internet in $150 range. Most of these machines won't accommodate a video card because of power supply and case length, but the on board graphics, while not super spiffy, are adequate (they don't look half bad on my old Intel Celeron laptop), and with adequate ram (4 meg minimum 8 meg plenty) 2016.2.1 will run on even the least fast (2x3.4 ghz) I3 just fine, if you are examining other options and on a tight budget.
Good luck and happy flying.
P.S. If you decide to install a newer version clean out every vestige of the old version.This will include:
1. run the uninstall routine in the flightgear folder.
2. in C go to users\"your computer's name" [as you assigned it during original start up]\app data\roaming\and delete the flightgear.org file. (this prevents obsolete startup information from interfering with the new program)
3. in C run search for $FG, which will turn up a bunch of obsolete leftover files, including old error reports, fgruns, etc.
Delete all of them. The newer versions are better about not leaving so much junk on your hard drive, but if you've
been running a 2.1 version you probably have a fair number to remove.
Checked my wife's laptop, which runs on Vista and confirmed that in C it has both "program files" for 64 bit programs and "program files (86)" for 32 bit programs, so from an operating system standpoint it should run 2016.2.1 OK. Would point out that in 32 bit you're only using 1/2 of your 2X processor; and I suspect that doubling the processing capacity by running in 64 bit, you would more than make up for the processing toll of any Flight Gear Modifications and improvements since 2.1. Regarding 2.1 cleanout, Couldn't confirm what the path would be to flightgear.org in Vista as don't have Flightgear installed on that machine; so if it's different in Vista than what I mentioned above you might have to run "search" to find it.