Yes, of course every setting will contribute to consume or save memory. With FSX, using a complex airplane in a very dense (even on default) area like NYC, is quite difficult without tuning the settings.
The things you can do are:
- Use DirectX 10 Preview option, this will save some memory, because DirectX 9 copies part of the VRAM into RAM, wasting more memory the more VRAM is used by the simulator. Direct X doesn't have this duplication, so it might save you a few hundreds MB that might prevent crashes.
- Lower your the Terrain LOD settings, and the Autogen and Scenery Complexity
- Upgrade to the FSX:Steam version, which also use memory a bit more efficiently.
All of these won't solve all your memory problems, they are just tweaks but the main issue is, FSX as a 32 bit application is limited to an absolute maximum of 4GB of RAM ( counting both RAM+VRAM ), regardless how much memory you have in total or if you use a 64 bit OS.
The only real solution to any RAM problems, is to switch to a 64 simulator, that would be either Prepar3d V4 or V5, or the new MSFS 2020.
