Well I'm back. Took some time off for work. (4 months at the FAA Academy in OKC :( ) New baby boy, well almost a year old now and a home purchase.Just finished putting together a new system that should run MSFS just peachy ;)Hello to Paul01, Gosta, and anybody else I may have missed.It's good to be home :)Bobby

Glad to see you in here again. :) I was wondering about you the other day. Some great freeware and payware releases recently, don't know whether you've been able to stay up on the news or not.Happy flying,Kevin

Thanks Kev!I actually haven't been able to and look forward to seeing what I have been missing :)Thanks Again,Bobby

Hi there Bobby and welcome back. You might want to get Chris Arrington's free Airport Enviroment Upgrade 6.0. It's available in at FS.com. filename: aeu6.zip It'll be available here at Avsim too when the library comes back online.It's very nice and upgrades all default airports. You might notice a slight stutter anytime an airport comes into view though due to the fact that the textures are mip-mapped for FPS performance. But on my system the little hiccup is very slight and well worth the nice upgrade it does to the default airports. I've heard you can get rid of the little stutter by removing the mip-maps. I've decided to stick with the mipmapped version myself though.Anyway, once again, welcome back!Cheers,Jim

Hi Bobby,welcome back! It's good to see you again - hope everything is going well with your family and the new home :).Cheers,Gosta.http://www.hifisim.com/images/as2betateam.jpg

Congratulations on your family's growth (and more room in your new home, I'm assuming) from me as well. Hope the wall(s) you'll have to take out to build your home cockpit/cabin aren't load-bearing... :D I seem to recall that you're a jet-guy, so you might check out Erick Cantu's rework of his FFX 737-200 at http://www.flightsimnetwork.com/sunchaser or give Flightsim.com a try. I know Henry William did a repaint in Southwest's Desert Sand scheme that has the model, air file, and aircraft.cfg with panel and sound aliases to the default B737-400. The key, IMHO, to rounding out the package nicely is to check out Richard Probst's panel-in-the-making for her at http://tinmouse.org. I'll just say I'm gonna have fun this weekend! That is, if I can get my 8 and 10 year-old sons off of carrier ops long enough to get my flights in. :-roll :) The propellerhead in me just can't go without mentioning Milton Shupe's Aero Commander 500 available different places, usually as ac500vc1 with virtual cockpit and ac500v1 without. I can't say enough good about this plane. It rivals a lot of payware out there. Great job, Erick, Richard, and Milton (and team).I'm sure you'll find out about the new Manhattan and Orcas Island payware sceneries along with FSD's Navajo Panther and the tons of freeware mesh being bandied about. The forums had a rather negative tone around the holidays, but we're all seeing a good bit more tolerance and good spirit nowadays, thankfully. That's a quick blurb, but it'll get you flying and smiling.Happy flights,KevinEDIT: Got Henry's name flip-flopped

"You might notice a slight stutter anytime an airport comes into view"You shouldn't. My system is just a little behind yours, and the only thing I get from AEU are great looking airports. Many thanks to Chris Arrington.David

Hi David,Well, I am getting great FPS. No change there. But I am not the only one getting a little hiccup when an airport comes in to view. You might want to read the thread"Airport Environment Upgrade v6.0 has been released!",and the thread titled"to mip map or not thats the question".Regards,Jim

Hey Bobby, glad to see you again, was wondering where ya went! Welcome back. Now if we can just figure out where Paul went, it'll be just like the good, old days! ;-)Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/PBTMCa.jpgCalVirAir International VACougar Mountain Helicopters & Aviation[link:www.cgrmthelos.com]Cougar Mountain Helicopters