I don't know if this counts, but those 3D glasses stories reminded me of the time I made a "looking glass" using one of those 9x11 reading panes, which is really an inexpensive Fresnel lens. I used cut and hot-glued black poster board (the kind with foam sandwiched between cardboard) to fit it to my monitor and hung it on with Velcro. It looked strange but if you kept your head at the proper range, it was quite amazing how things seemed 3D and the screen seemed 3x as big. I eventually gave it up because it hurt my eyes to focus from the distance to the near to see the gauges at the bottom of the "huge" screen. My cat slept in the box after that.

>>The other is Roads and Rivers Europe scenery addon; You get>correctly placed rivers, but next to them are the fs default>ones, so you end up seeing double rivers!>110% ageed about the Roads and Rivers Europe scenery - what an utter pile of... ! We'll I should have been worried when it was so much cheaper than it's competitors for the given coverage.It does exactly what it says but also (as mentioned) does not remove all the underlying FS9 vector data in all areas - ok, there are reasons for this to do wiht copyright of MS original files and with my later experiences I think I understand... However, they also had a couple of landclass files in with the scenery and I had a couple of frustrating days trying to figure out where the out-of-memory errors were coming from!I dumped it and tried to sell it on eBay for practically nothing - cost of the listing and postage - but it didn't sell. Now that tells me something.I got a different product instead - Scandinavian Waters - but this also caused problems! This time the FS9 default stuff was removed but the area where the default was removed was much larger than the scenery itself! I complained and was told that (1) it was because the developer had no permission to modify FS9 default files, only to exclude or replace, and (2) that it was not an issue in FSX - thanks!End result. I dumped that product also and now use Ultimate Terrain Europe. It also has a few areas where the default interferes with the scenery (double coastlines, half-islands etc) but it was still the least troublesome of the three and by this stage I'd researched enough that I was able to make modifications myself to deal with the problems - since I'm not redistributing, I can :)Geoff

After uninstalling Roads and rivers europe, I got UT Europe.I must say I'm very happy with that product. Together with GE Pro, the scenery looks great, and rivers look accurate.Eytan

>If like me you have a SLOB systems flight deck i wonder which out>of the remaining standard joysticks would be considered the best>for simming in the beer laneHeh, heh... :) Yes I am running the SLOB systems flight deck as well, Andy.Some years back I had a Logitech Cordless freedom 2.4 joystick that I rather liked, the only problem with it (other than the short lifespan which is apparently a Logitech trademark) was that it was programmed to "go to sleep" after 3 minutes of inactivity. Now oddly enough, 3 minutes happens to be almost the exact length of time required to fly the final leg of an autopilot controlled approach. Upon arrival over the threshold I'd often find the stick sleeping on the job at the precise moment I started to haul back for the flare. Simply moving the stick would not wake it up, you had to actually click a button. Someone came up with a small application aptly named "Caffeine" that you could run while using the stick to prevent it from going to sleep, but it unfortunately caused some quirky stick behavior occasionaly.The stick had a small, 3-legged footprint on the desk and of course no wires which made it ideal for those of us who choose to ignore the "8 hrs/bottle to throttle" rule, and really, after several beers proper landing technique tends to seem a bit overrated anyway :) .Jim

I just uninstalled all my Ultimate Terrain and couldn't believe the performance improvement on the ground. I had forgotten the 4 or 5 FPS it took, when coupled with my other addons. It's also nice to have the ground populated by a lot of autogen again.I'll probably go back and forth reinstalling UT and then uninstalling it again for quite a while to come -- on approach to JFK from Warsaw it was very strange to see eastern Long Island with square, blocky coastlines! :-eek

>on approach>to JFK from Warsaw it was very strange to see eastern Long>Island with square, blocky coastlines! :-eek This should help with that problem.http://library.avsim.net/search.php?Search...=root&Go=SearchJason

Thanks, Jason! It didn't even occur to me that there might be a free fix for that right here at AVSIM!I really appreciate your extra effort on my behalf. :-beerchug

I'm surprised UT affects your fps so much. It doesnt' affect me at all. And I'm running it with radar contact4 and Active Sky. The only thing is that fs9 takes a longer time to load. That I don't mind.Eytan

At many of my add on airports, with 40% AI, FSPassengers, FSNav, and ActiveSky and Radar Contact running on WideFS I was getting about 10 - 12.5 FPS when on the ground. Uninstalling UT gave me just enough to smooth out those situations.Like I said, I'm sure I'll go back and forth for years. I love how UT makes my FS9 look from FL310 but, on final I prefer the relative abundance of autogen houses and buildings it was suppressing. At least just for today I do. Tomorrow may be different. :-)

In a word... Abacus. 'Nuff said.

Hate to bag a developer, but...Perfect Flight's Fly the MD11. Absolutely horrendous.Cheers, SLuggy

Pretty much anything by Abacus and once Georender abandoned them, pretty much anything by Lago.

Another vote for Captain Sim 757. Very dissapointed with it. Everytime I messed with the fmc, it would ctd. Also, another vote for voicebuddy as well. This was one of my first addons way back, it didn't last long on the hd though.

>>>110% ageed about the Roads and Rivers Europe scenery - what an>utter pile of... ! >>I'm with you there...>>I dumped it and tried to sell it on eBay for practically>nothing - cost of the listing and postage - but it didn't>sell. Now that tells me something.>However, i did manage to off-load my copy on e-bay to some poor unsuspecting soul - think i got about a tenner (

The IRIS Toronado.I must have got 3 fps with that thing, no virtual cockpit (as promised) and an awful panel.That went straight off my hard-drive.