Just to show my IFR training configuration using OLD EFIS GAUGES MODULE by MAGENTA.Rogerhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/64918.jpg

Good gosh.....you're a guy who has really gotten serious about sim flight training! That looks great...and fun. I'm fortunate to have access to a Beech 1900 sim that is everything except motion. But I sure would like to be able to do some procedures practice here on the computer with smooth gauge precision. Maybe I should try Xplane. In my real airplane world, I am on the other end of the scale in aircraft ownership with a '46 Aeronca Chief and a '46 Ercoupe. I have posted a desire for GA type gauges on the suggested forum and submitted a similar request to Reality XP for same. Again, their freeware download B737 gauge is excellent. Wish they would do the same (payware would be fine) for the other less complex types of aircraft. Roger

>For serious IFR training I would definitly go with X-Plane anf>forget M$FS which is toy compared too. >As I am building a cockpit I am like an hostage and have to>use that soft (in the while). Magenta Old Efis GC helps a lot>and gives you the feeling you fly in a real plane but PMGC is>slaved to MSFS and stutters are directly bounced to PMGC via>the network. >M$FS is definitly a toy for people who love to see thousand>moving parts, thousand details on the outside of the plane,>fantastic landscapes with almost every details, but from a>pilot point of view it is pure junk, and X-Plane with all its>weak points in matter scenery and controls possibility is much>closer to what you feel when flying a plane. Your plane moves>in a fluid? It is like in the reality. With M$FS you can>design a Gmax Peterbilt Truck put them on the basic air file>of the B 737 and its aircraft.cfg file and the truck will fly.>Non-Sense.As a pilot, I just trust Microsoft's navigation data-base more than X-Planes. X-Plane had a "real" problem in the past with VOR alignment, and still has some problems now, according to different web sites. I also own X-Plane version 7, but don't use it for IFR work. WHY??Because the FS2004 topographical data-base for the mountainous areas of the mountain west are much more comprehensive than X-Planes. Combine that with a more accurate navigation data-base & what do you get? Certainly not the "toy" you refer too! Do refer to up to date approach plates in both cases, though --- if needed for real life practice.>>When designing a plane with plane-maker, if you add a little>bump somewhere on the airframe you will immediatly get the>consequent drag. You fly what you see. That's not the case>with M$FS, and that why together with a serious hardware>X-Plane got an FAA approval for CP and ATP on a full motion>simulator. Even ELITE did not get that yet.Wrong again. It's been proven over & over, that X-Plane won't duplicate a real planes flight dynamics without tweaks. Sometimes, lot's of tweaks. It will just give you a "starting" idea, using plane maker. And most of us know why X-Plane is used with the multi- thousand dollar simulator. No big deal, as the Navy uses a form of MSFS, not to mention the Discovery Channel's Wings, etc.>>I can just wait to see X-Plane getting compatible to Magenta>and having as much connection possibilities as the ones given>by FSUIPC.>Then I will switch in a glimpse to it.I'll still use both, since each has advantages.>L.Adamson

The RealAir Marchetti is another candidate. Very smooth and fits your description of a "complex single".. great airplane BTW.www.realairsimulations.comps I would also highly recommend the Flight1 Meridian (turboprop) with a glass cockpit.

Sorry but I used to be one the most downloaded aircraft designer for X-Plane. Some planes I made are still on the Top ten list of best downloads and they are some years old. They were always a bit trimmed but the basic behavior came from the shape and I cant explain you here in some words the hundreth of hours sprent with that program.I know Planemaker very well. X-Plane is far not the ultimate simulator but the graphic motor I mean the Open Gl is still far beyond the crappy DirectX, and I say it again, you fly what you design and that's NOT THE CASE with F$.I agree with you as regards the radionavigation database and airport database. But in the while Robin Peel has made huge progress.As I said I had unfortunately to go with M$F$ to get my cockpit working. But it is principally due to FSUIPC not invented by M$.Roger

Roger,Go with G.A. IFR panel by Project Magenta. That's the TOP!Roger

Just to provide perspective to readers, I must say that I disagree with all of your comments below. As I've said elsewhere, I really want to like X-Plane but man if there's a toy simulator, X-Plane is it. Austin focuses on all of these weird eye-candy/obscure features when he could be doing things like making the ability to create a realistic panel easier (e.g. custom gauges), making the helicopters fly like they ought to, etc. Instead, we get a drive-in movie scenery feature starring Austin on the big screen! From a "feel of flying" standpoint, I much prefer FS2004 to X-Plane in both the fixed and rotary wing arenas. Recently, I've come to the conclusion that X-Plane's Blade Element Theory approach to flight modeling is flawed. I've been flying it since version 3.6 (I try every new major release, but always end up going back to FS). I keep expecting it to improve in "feel", but it hasn't and in particular the helicopter flight models are just plain whacky.FS is certainly not perfect but its expandable architecture and incredible freeware/payware support network makes it the only choice for me. And in many cases, superior flight model programming by people like Rob Young can vastly improve the flying characteristics over the default aircraft.As I said above, I'm posting this as perspective, not because I'm trying to change your mind or anything. We can agree to disagree 8^) . This is the beauty of having competitive products.Dave Blevins>For serious IFR training I would definitly go with X-Plane anf>forget M$FS which is toy compared too. =>fantastic landscapes with almost every details, but from a>pilot point of view it is pure junk, and X-Plane with all its>weak points in matter scenery and controls possibility is much>closer to what you feel when flying a plane. Your plane moves>in a fluid? It is like in the reality.>>Anyway, I am IR rated and making training just on one screen>gives you very habits. You need at least two screen, one>simulating the instruments and placed as they are in a plane,>and the outside view also in an adequate position. So you must>move you head and not just your eyes. With a cockpit you keep>sharp on basic instrument scanning>while sitting in front of a screen you just get bad habits.>Believe I am in the simulation since the 80th, after I got my>licenses.>>Roger Wielgus

I can understand that you do not like X-plane. I agree with you when you say that recently Austin focused too much on eye candies and obscure features. That's true and I wrote several mails to Austin in that matter some years ago. But the communication between an old fashionned 50 years experienced man and a young 25 years old guy convinced that he knows everything about aviation" was not easy. But quite frankly, please you cant compare what you are feeling with X-plane to what you are feeling with M$F$. Both graphic machines are not the same, OpenGl is from far a better graphical interface than Direct X. I have a relative good Computer with 1024 Meg ram and a 2 Gig PRocessor and 9600XT video card and even when I get 80 fps, the motion is not fluid, it is full of microstuttering, which are probably not felt by 80% of user, but X-plane runs as fluid as the air is. You cant argument against that. Now as I said I also have too much critics to make against X-plane, but if I could link my Project MAgenta Cockpit with X-plane and if there would be an equivalent of Fsuipc and all its features, I would not hesitate on moment and threw MSFS away from my computer. And you also disagree with that: >>Anyway, I am IR rated and making training just on one screen>gives you very bad habits. You need at least two screen, one>simulating the instruments and placed as they are in a plane,>and the outside view also in an adequate position. So you must>move you head and not just your eyes. With a cockpit you keep>sharp on basic instrument scanning>while sitting in front of a screen you just get bad habits.How can you disagree with that or then you have never flown a real plane under instrument condition. That advice to somebody willing to make serious IFR training is beyond the competion between X-Plane and M$F$. Strange.Roger

I agree with SHORTY!If you want to mess about with 100% accurate plates then FS is ideal. However, if you want to give yourself a chance at your next IR revalidation then FS OK as a warm-up exercise if it is your only choice. What do you guys mean when you say "IFR"? JAA IFR just means navigating with sole reference to the instruments (yes I know you can be cleared VFR in the final stages of an approach on an IFR flight plan.) It does not matter a jot how accuratley placed or how realistic the location and frequency the nav aids are, just that you can hand fly your departure, enroute, diversion and approach (as prescribed on the flight flight plan) within the required tolerances using NDB, VOR, DME and ILS. X-plane does on the whole more realistically simulate the behaviour of the instruments and hence the demands placed on the pilot.

>man and a young 25 years old guy convinced that he knows >everything about aviation" was not easy. He definitely has his own priorities. For instance, he basically blew me off when I requested that he fix his PFC hardware support so that I could use my PFC avionics panel and my CH Pro Throttle simultaneously. This really irked me, but I worked around it using keystroke generation via CH's CHCtlMgr. Not optimal (the throttle movement is jerky), but it sorta works.>But quite frankly, please you cant compare what you are>feeling with X-plane to what you are feeling with M$F$. BothLike I said, I'm not trying to change your mind. I get the sense you're trying to change mine though.>graphic machines are not the same, OpenGl is from far a better>graphical interface than Direct X. I have a relative good>Computer with 1024 Meg ram and a 2 Gig PRocessor and 9600XT>video card and even when I get 80 fps, the motion is not>fluid, it is full of microstuttering, which are probably not>felt by 80% of user, but X-plane runs as fluid as the air is.>You cant argument against that. No, I can't. This is my biggest problem with FS (I'm not convinced it's an OpenGL vs. DX issue though - there are many DX games that are liquid-smooth). But, with judicial tweaks of the various options (a never-ending task it seems!) FS can be made to be reasonably smooth most of the time. Heavy wx does bog it down though.For instrument practice I set the wx viz down to about 1/2 mile and 500 foot ceiling, and turn off clouds. That does the job for me. When I use downloaded wx it can be a lot more unpredictable. I guess you could say that I have learned to live with FS's extremely average framerate performance because of all of its other advantages.>And you also disagree with that:> >>Anyway, I am IR rated and making training just on one>screen>>gives you very bad habits. You need at least two screen, one>>simulating the instruments and placed as they are in a>plane,>>and the outside view also in an adequate position. So you>must>>move you head and not just your eyes. With a cockpit you>keep>>sharp on basic instrument scanning>>while sitting in front of a screen you just get bad habits.I am using two monitors with FS; one on top to display the front view and one under that for the panel/GPS/etc. Of course I can't do that with X-Plane. I'm not sure what point you're making here, since X-P can't do it.>How can you disagree with that or then you have never flown a>real plane under instrument condition. That advice to somebody>willing to make serious IFR training is beyond the competion>between X-Plane and M$F$. We're going around in circles here but I am a rated private pilot in airplanes and helicopters and have an IR for airplanes. I find FS to be very valuable in practicing instrument flying with the setup I have (stick/throttle/pedals + PFC avionics panel + a lot of GoFlight stuff), where I can go through the motions/procedures/switchology of pre-taxi, departure, en-route, arrival, and the approach. You find X-Plane to be valuable for part or all of that - hey I'm jiggy with it. Whatever gets the job done for us...I'm very happy with what I have and it sounds like you'll be very happy too if you could get PM to work with XP. I wish you luck in that, really. FWIW I'll continue to evaluate X-Plane from time to time (just this week I got some of my GoFlight stuff to work with it), but I'm not expecting any miracles anytime soon in terms of the shortcomings that it has for my needs.Dave Blevins

>It does not matter a jot how accuratley placed or how realistic the>location and frequency the nav aids are, just that you can>hand fly your departure, enroute, diversion and approach (as>prescribed on the flight flight plan) within the required>tolerances using NDB, VOR, DME and ILS.I am almost at a loss for words in response to this assertion. I can fly any departure/enroute/approach sequence in my area of the US in FS2004 using Jepp plates, go out and do the same thing in real life, and I'll find a 90% or higher correspondence in the experience. That is very valuable to me - I want to be able to practice a particular approach with as much fidelity as possible before going out and putting my life in the line in the real soup. Granted, there are differences in the (very predictable/repetitive) FS2004 ATC - real life is much (much!) more unpredictable. Also, FS2004's database is now a couple years? old, and I'm starting to find that some frequencies (typically, ATIS/ASOS/AWOS) don't match up anymore between it and current plates/charts.---This isn't really getting us (or at least, me) anywhere - now we're doing the "my sim is better than your sim" for about the 1000th time on Avsim, so I'd like to go back and suggest a solution to the original poster: You said you want a reasonably simple plane/setup to practice IFR work on... Here's the recipe: Take FS2004, add Rob Young's tweaked Cessna 172SP airfile to it, and purchase PM's GA IFR panel. Buy either a PCI graphics card or a "dual head" graphics card that has native OpenGL support (e.g. I'm using an NVidia 5700 Ultra-based card by eVGA), and find a second monitor. Run the FS2004 forward view graphics on one display and the PM IFR panel on the other. Set FS's weather down to medium-low viz/ceiling and turn down the cloud settings . Since FS won't be drawing the panel, the front view framerate should be quite smooth on a reasonably fast system (I'm running a P4 2.4C-based PC). Actually, you might be able to do this on a single display, since you don't really need a big out-the-window display... I'll have to try it. (I think I've done this before with the PM IFR panel.)Or, you could buy X-Plane 8^) . Really, its gauges out of the box are very smooth on an average PC/graphics card, and it might indeed be the best bang-for-buck solution. As I said in a post above, it doesn't Feel Like Flying to me but that may not be a big deal if you're just looking for "raw IFR practice".Oh, one other possibility - the Elite stuff has come down to the point where the basic SEL version is pretty affordable. Elite sells on EBay all the time - e.g.: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...54&category=186I don't have any personal experience with the Elite software though.Let us know how you get on with this - I'd be curious to know what you end up using.Dave Blevins

I agree completely Dave-and I just bought xplane (again) a few weeks ago. I thought that there might be some potential (again) and wanted to practice multiengine flying with it along with smooth gauges. The smooth gauges it has-unfortunately in just about every other area Ms blows it away imho to the point that it has already ended up collecting hard drive dust on my machine. I think it is worth getting because as of now it is the only competition for msfs-and I think competition is good. http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Forgive me if it seems that I am talking at you. It is difficult to write without trying to sound all superior and lofty in forums (well it is for me!).I think you are talking about practising SOPs. FS is the king of SOPs (for under a few hundred quid anyway).What SHORTY was referring to is practising for his IR (reval or whatever). You know, the scan, instrument interpretation, cross-checks, +/-50', +/-5deg. +/-5% TAS. Pretty hard stuff and 100% completely and utterly independent of any chart, plate or realistic placement of navaids or whatever. The fact of the matter is that the test and reval does use real-world features but that is by the by. If you can't hand fly it within tolerances then it is all academic.In addition to flight models, my understanding of what Elite offers, is realistic instrument behaviour. Such as ADF wander, cones of confusion, gyro errors, pressure errors, etc. To what extent I am not sure. Basically, all the things that get people lost, confused and dead.Another fact is that neither X-plane's nor FS' radio, gyro, DC or pressure instruments behave accurately enough (forget EFIS for this discussion, it is not relevant), but the smoothness does go someway to helping rather then hindering.

>>That's not the case with M$FS, and that why together with a serious >>hardware X-Plane got an FAA approval for CP and ATP on a full motion >>simulator. Even ELITE did not get that yet.Elite is FAA approved as a training device for several airplane types. It is also used in JAA approved FNPT 1 & 2 simulators which are, along with FRASCA simulators used for ALL JAA IR single pilot training.

I agree with you. Nothing to add to that. I cant talk about Elite, my experience dates from lond time ago where I find it ridiculous in the price-performance relation, but I dont know about what happend in the while.By the way, I do use the so called first generation Efis, close to analog instruments and when working seriously on my cockpit I do not use the ND map. Just the HSI. Must download a new Elite demo to see.Roger