Hi all!I hope you're enjoying the beginning of the new year. I'm a simmer going back to the Commodore 64, but new to XPlane. I'm really enjoying it, even though there is indeed a learning curve for those used to FSX.I finally got my hat switch working perfect, thanks to many of you, and I apreciate your help! I'm now panning and zooming with ease.I had a couple of questions, and I am sorry if these have been addressed:1 - Cloud shadows - I have a pretty good rig with good video card, and the sim is running smooth for me with mid-to-high settings. I though am not seeing cloud shadows. I've played around with the weather, time of day, and cloud setups, with no avail. Is there a certain setting which has to be toggled for cloud shadows to appear?2 - AI - Is there a way to turn off the AI planes?3 - ATC - Do you have to file a flight plan in order to use ATC features? I am following ATC through clearance, ground, tower, etc and am always being told I am off course. This could be because I am not entering anything in the "Route" box when filing a flight plan. Any tips on this?4 - HDR - What are your thoughts, visually, in enabeling HDR? Are you seeing a big difference in visuals?5 - Aiport lighting - I had asked this before, but would love input from real world pilots. Is the blue taxi lighting much too bright in this sim? I personally don't know, but it seems strange to see bright blue lighting from so far out, even at a small airstrip. Is it true to life in your opinion?Night flying is really fantastic in this sim. Flying in northern Wisconsin, can't differentiate the ground from the sky, limited to no ground lighting - making an approach into a small field surrounded by trees is a wow for me...watching the landing light illuminating the trees below on final...pretty cool. And then a laugh when deer run accros the runway.There seems to be lots of bickering about which sim is better. Personally, I like them all, and for different reasons. With XPlane it seems like the potential is limitless! I do have to say though, I will be buying that Aerofly5...wow. Again though, that would be simply for the enjoyment of visuals and eye candy. We're now so spoiled with sims. Remember the clouds in FS a few years back which were blocks stacked on one another? LOL - or was that ATC? Anyways, thanks for your help...much appreciated.BobOOPS - "ATP" not, ATC in that last paragraph...Bob

Hi Bob,Welcome aboard! I'll try and comment quickly on some of your points and let others make precisions on the ones that got away.1. What setting are you using in-game for shadows? This will make a difference.2. Yes there is, there is a setting that when set to 1 will effectively remove all AI traffic. I'm not at the game computer right now, so the exact setting escapes me.4. Unless you fly exclusively at night, leave HDR off. For the moment the benefits afforded by HDR are outweighed by the loss of FPS.5. I and others agree the lighting is too strong. I hope Laminar is listening and corrects this.As for your comment on the bickering of which simulator is better, your evaluation is spot on. XPX is just getting started and will prove to be amazing in the near future. Meanwhile, other valid sims are available among which AeroflyFS shows promise.

Mike.Thanks much! I have my shadows set to (settings/rendering options/shadow detail) set to global, melt your CPU. Is there another area for shadows? Thanks again!Bob

Bob, that's the highest setting you can use. I'm stumped, you should definitely be getting cloud shadows.

Bob I seem to get the best shadows using just static, or overlay. In the past, I tried the global shadows and never got anything good, overlay looked pretty good to me, but static does too. I'm not much of a fiend for shadows :( so I leave mine on static.

Thanks for the help Mike and Donald - I am stumped. I flew up to about 15k above KDBQ, and circled while looking at the ground...and played around with cloud/time settings, Donald's advice regarding going to overlay, etc with no avail. No ground shadows for clouds. Strange, because everything is looking so good and pretty fluent at high settings. I have textures set high, cloud slider at around 45%, lots of items, roads, cars. Also, at the high shadow setting I DO indeed get great shadows in the cockpit that move with the time of day, but absolutely no ground shadows from clouds. I'll keep playing...thanks!Bob

Hey Bob!Do you mind posting an explanation of how you got your hat switch programmed and configured? Please! I've been struggling with the since XPX was released and still can't quite get it right.Thanks a bunch!Sincerely,Dennis David Mullert

Hello David,I'm not Bob, but if I can jump in here, In version 10, program your hat switch to pan by going way over to the right of the button screen, and using the General commands. General command pan right, General command pan left. I put the forward position into the View:3D cockpit command look. That way you don't have to worry about the quarter positions on a 8 way hat switch, although you can program those for Glance left and Glance right. I don't bother with those as it is hard to hit those positions. By the way the General command: pan fast work the best for me.I'm, assuming you know how to set the basic buttons.

Edited January 7, 201214 yr by wb5okj

You must have a fast machine if you can run decent frame rates with global shadows cranked to "melt your GPU". I use Overlay. The Global settings in bright sunlight will give all sorts of defined shadows moving through the cockpit and across instruments but so far they don't look great and like I said my frame rates bottom out at 19. I like to set up flights with some clouds in the morning or evening and HDR does a lot to improve the scene. I either turn the HDR antialiasing off or at the lowest setting. I tried 4x once and again fps = 19.I am using an ATI HD6950 graphics card with 2 gig of VRAM in a Dell XPS 8300 with a first gen i7 2600 processor (4 cores).

Hi all - I am now noticing I have no shadows at all, outside of the cockpit...trees, etc do not give off shadows. SO, I may need to do some digging to see why this is happening. I was indeed getting shadows immediately after installing the sim, but strangely enough, no shadows now. Stumped.Dennis - I had the same challenge as you...fixing it breathed new life into the sim for me! Here's how my buttons are set (I have the Saitek X45 with two hat switches):Under "Buttons Basic" - Main hat switch - Up = General Command, Tilt up fast; Same for all other directions. I like to zoom in at the cockpit instruments, so my second hat is set up for "General Command, Zoom In (and out) Fast).Hit shift-9 in the cockpit to take you to the mode where you can pan around using the hat. Not sure if this is what you were looking for, but it works well for me!Bob

Thank You guys for your input on the hat. Thanks to your input I got the thing properly configured now. I wonder why Laminar had to make this one harder than it should be!!!!!!Thanks again!Dennis D. Mullert