Hi dear AVSIM Forum,First off I want to thank all of you for your posts and tips and most of all your ability to make one feel understood with this rather geeky hobby. I am an real life aviator (just got my JAR-CPL license with ATPL Theory Credit) and used the Flight Simulator to train some IFR Procedures. Long time ago i Started of with FS2004 and for the last year I've been experimenting with FSX, but came to the conclusion that nothing comes close to FS9.Since I have been off topic, concerning FS2004, I wanted to ask some questions. Maybe first a list of what i have installed so far:- UT Europe- Flight Environment- PMDG 737NG- PMDG 747- Piper Cheyenne- Active Camera- SSTSIM Concorde1. All that runs pretty smooth so far. Yet I am looking for great German Airports, and not the commercial german airports, but freeware. I already got EDDM (Munich) and Duesseldorf (EDDL). I am still looking for EDDT (Tegel), EDDF(Frankfurt), LOWG( Graz), LOWW(Vienna)2. Then is there any freeware out there I am missing out on and that I got to have :-)? Any tips Ideas? Airplanes Scenery? Cloud Textures etc3. I bought SSTSIM Concorde two days ago, yet I deinstalled it pretty fast because there is this anoying issue with the update rate of the virtual cockpit gauges. I have serached the internet up and down. All I fond was a tip to remove the First Officers Panel and FE Panel from the VC but that is just not acceptable. If anyone of you had a solution to this ugly problem I would be jumping the roof (because I would be happy :-)4. Now we have 2009 what FS9.cfg tweaks are really usefull? I already use NHancer and love it! Yet are there any other tweaks you got to try?Thank you guys very much in advance. I love this community. Many happy landingsand greetings from rainy Bavaria / Germany

You being a RL pilot..I would suggest you get TrackIR as I see you use the VC. Nothing adds more realism that actually looking around naturally.

Personally, I'd recommend that any FS9 user (at least any who have an interest in GA planes) get one of the RealAir add-ons - either the SF260 or the Decathlon - as they are imho the best available for the sim. As far as tweaks are concerned, I've done so much of that over the years that its hard for me to remember specifics. One thing I could suggest is that if you have a reasonably powerful system, try running the framerate lock at unlimited instead of setting a lower limit on the framerate. I find on my system that introducing a frame limit actually cuases some stutters while unlimited stays nice and smooth and actually seems to allow quicker texture loading.

Hi dear AVSIM Forum,First off I want to thank all of you for your posts and tips and most of all your ability to make one feel understood with this rather geeky hobby. I am an real life aviator (just got my JAR-CPL license with ATPL Theory Credit) and used the Flight Simulator to train some IFR Procedures. Long time ago i Started of with FS2004 and for the last year I've been experimenting with FSX, but came to the conclusion that nothing comes close to FS9.Since I have been off topic, concerning FS2004, I wanted to ask some questions. Maybe first a list of what i have installed so far:- UT Europe- Flight Environment- PMDG 737NG- PMDG 747- Piper Cheyenne- Active Camera- SSTSIM Concorde1. All that runs pretty smooth so far. Yet I am looking for great German Airports, and not the commercial german airports, but freeware. I already got EDDM (Munich) and Duesseldorf (EDDL). I am still looking for EDDT (Tegel), EDDF(Frankfurt), LOWG( Graz), LOWW(Vienna)2. Then is there any freeware out there I am missing out on and that I got to have :-)? Any tips Ideas? Airplanes Scenery? Cloud Textures etc3. I bought SSTSIM Concorde two days ago, yet I deinstalled it pretty fast because there is this anoying issue with the update rate of the virtual cockpit gauges. I have serached the internet up and down. All I fond was a tip to remove the First Officers Panel and FE Panel from the VC but that is just not acceptable. If anyone of you had a solution to this ugly problem I would be jumping the roof (because I would be happy :-)4. Now we have 2009 what FS9.cfg tweaks are really usefull? I already use NHancer and love it! Yet are there any other tweaks you got to try?Thank you guys very much in advance. I love this community. Many happy landingsand greetings from rainy Bavaria / Germany

Although not freeware- Ultimate Terrain & Ground Environment are musts. They go a long way toward narrowing the scenery gap with FSX. See my comments on this in another post here today- "What do you think are good nightime textures?Alex Reid

Personally, I'd recommend that any FS9 user (at least any who have an interest in GA planes) get one of the RealAir add-ons - either the SF260 or the Decathlon - as they are imho the best available for the sim.

Agreed, I have both of them and they are the best GA planes I have.You could also consider getting FSgenesis, which is great mesh for most of the world. And I don't know if you mentioned it, but if you don't have it, get ActiveSky 6.5 or ActiveSky Advanced, Best RW weather out there.

Thank you all for your answers,I have read tons about TrackIR and I am thinking of getting it.I will have a look at those GA Planes. My gf has girlsnight out so there is plenty of time to fly :-)Is FS Genisis better than UT?RegardsTom

Thank you all for your answers,I have read tons about TrackIR and I am thinking of getting it.I will have a look at those GA Planes. My gf has girlsnight out so there is plenty of time to fly :-)Is FS Genisis better than UT?RegardsTom

Trackir 5 is the greatest thing I've bought since my rudder pedals and Saitek X52. The immersion is incredible, though the learning curve for some is tough, and if you get motion sickness I would suggest Dramamine before each flight. :(

Is FS Genisis better than UT?

They're not the same thing actually, FSGenesis is terrain mesh or the "humps and bumps" that the textures are draped over. A grid of elevation points that define your mountains and valleys at a much higher resolution than default. Mesh is a must-have in my opinion, if you want to see what it does there is a bunch of freeware 70m (medium resolution) mesh for europe available at Simviation that you can try out, or for the US you can find a complete set of freeware FSGenesis 38m packages over at the flightsim.com file library. FSGenesis payware mesh is mostly 38m with a lot of the anomalies fixed and comes with lesser resolution "buffer" meshes that eliminate texture tearing which appears as stray blue slivers on the distant landscape. I don't know about Europe but with the North America package there are also some ultra high resolution 9.6m meshes included for some special areas such as Yosemite, Hawaii, The Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, etc. A bargain really, the North America package gets you something like 12.5 GB of data delivered on 3 DVDs for around $30 USD.UT is vector data that correctly places roads, rivers, and water bodies.Jim

One of my all time favourite FS freeware projects, the PT TU154M http://www.fs-proteam.com/products.html?op...pw_patt=catalog Takes some study to get it flying well, but really satisfying.

well the Tupolev is a great addon yet not my kind of plane :-)Another question I can't find no answer to. Is there a way to make 2D clouds really looking overcast wenn setting overcast? I mean without that patchy look to it?Tom

Hi Tom,You can find an excellent LOWG freeware scenery here:http://www.fsterminal.at/site/index.php?site=lowg

WOAI has got to be up there too. :( :(

WOAI has got to be up there too. :( :(

Already installed :-) Awesome software, really adds realsim to the AI Traffic! A must have, but thanx for the tip

Hi Tom,You can find an excellent LOWG freeware scenery here:http://www.fsterminal.at/site/index.php?site=lowg

Thank yo sooooo much! Awesome! exactly what i was looking for!

Thank yo sooooo much! Awesome! exactly what i was looking for!

My pleasure! There are many good freeware sceneries, just tell us what you have in mind. Oh, unfortunately, nothing good for EDDT. Maybe someone here knows a good freeware Tegel scenery?For a free EDDF, I can only suggest ameddf11.zip and it's improved afcad2 file ameddfai.zip which you can find on the flightsim library. This is only a slight improvement over the default EDDF, nothing fancy.Also, I would highly recommend Afcad 2.21 with which you can edit airport layouts to your liking, control runway usage and do other neat stuff.Happy landings

Basicly any european international airport would be great. Since i have ultimate terrain europe I mostly fly in europe.Plus I know alot of the navaids, SIDs and STARS from my flight training :-)Another big question of mine is how can I make overcast really look like overcast? I currently use 2D clouds because I haven't found any good looking yet fps friendly 3D clouds. But everytime is set the weather to be a typical rainy overcast day, i see blue sky and utterly ugly 2D clouds. Is there maybe a better texture for the 2D clouds?Thank you so much for your great tips!TomPS: Toulouse Blagnac would be a great airport which I can't find anywhere