hi

 

i try the demo and i see and feel nothing,

i have used the startup guide.

hi

 

i try the demo and i see and feel nothing,

i have used the startup guide.

 

Wow, where do we start, page 2 of the Getting Started guide for Single PCs I guess.

 

Where have you installed the OpusFSX.msi installation and do you have the prerequisites ?

Have you set all your sharing and permissions ?

Have you configured the FSXSERVER program ?

 

If you could get to page six and then run the FSXSERVER program, open the Spy window and please let me know what it says.

 

Stephen

Hi Dave

 

Creating a Virtual Cockpit Camera View - Step by Step Guide

 

A few words before you begin ...

 

Run the simulator in windowed mode

 

You will be needing to open and access the Camera dialog within your main OpusFSX server program, or simply your OpusFSX program if you don't have a networked system. In each case, I am referring to the FSXSERVER program installed in your c:\OpusFSX folder. It is therefore essential to set the simulator into windowed as opposed to full screen mode so that you can see and access the server program's form.

 

Select your aircraft in the sim before you start

 

You will be creating a camera view for a specific aircraft's virtual cockpit so it is best to load that aircraft into the simulator before you get started. The OpusFSX camera editing software will not do this for you.

 

Selecting the computer system

 

If you just have a standalone PC you can ignore this step.

 

However, if you have a networked system then you should make sure you have selected the FSXSERVER computer system when you open the OpusFSX Camera dialog. Note, it is rather pointless creating virtual cockpit views on a client system since you can only monitor and control the flight from the main server PC. The OpusFSX camera editing software will remember what computer system you have selected and always assumes you wish to continue editing the cameras on the same system, so you will probably only need to select the FSXSERVER computer system once. It is also the default selection when you activate the server program.

 

Select Aircraft Types of Interest

 

This feature is only needed on systems that have many camera views configured and assigned to a large number of different aircraft. This option is used to restrict the number of camera views listed for your selection when you press the Select Camera View button, it just saves you having to search for a specific view you wish to edit. For this exercise just make sure this reads All Aircraft Types. If it doesn't then open the list and select the first option.

 

Select an existing camera of similar type to edit

 

This can be a very useful procedure. For example, if you have already created a view for the captain's position, then selecting this camera view prior to clicking on the 'Add New Camera' button will mean you only have to slide the camera over to the other seat to create the first officer's camera.

 

At present the DHM effect settings, AHM effect settings, and a few other parameters such as transition speed are not cloned but this will soon be remedied.

 

Deleting a camera view you no longer need

 

To delete a camera view you no longer need just select it using the Select Camera View button then click on the Delete Camera option at the bottom of the dialog.

 

Deleting all the cameras and starting afresh

 

All the camera views for your main flying server system, or standalone single PC system, are stored in the c:\OpusFSX\FSXSERVER.CAM file. You can delete all camera views and start afresh simply by renaming or deleting this file prior to running the FSXSERVER program.

 

One final note ...

 

We will be concentrating on creating a new virtual cockpit view for the main display so you will not be setting the Windowed View option nor will you have any need to display a Windowed View to assist in the camera's alignment.

 

 

Creating a Virtual Cockpit Camera View

 

I will take you through creating a VC camera view in six easy stages. Stages four and five are optional, stage four (zooming) is not usually required in VCs since it is best to use the default zoom level for all VC views, on the other hand, stage five (head movement effects) is intended specifically for VC use.

 

At any stage during the process you can click on the Save All Cameras button to save your current state of affairs in the CAM file.

 

Stage One - Create and name the new camera view.

Stage Two - Assign the Aircraft Types.

Stage Three - Move the camera into position.

Stage Four - Adjust the camera zoom.

Stage Five - Add head movement effects.

Stage Six - Assign a joystick button or key to the view.

 

Stage One - Create and name the new camera view

 

If you already have created a similar camera view in the past and just wish to edit it then simply select the view using Select Camera View button before you start. Otherwise just select the camera type (Virtual, 2D, or Aircraft) before proceeding. Select Virtual to add a virtual cockpit view, 2D to add a 2D 'scenic' camera view, or Aircraft to add an external aircraft view. For this exercise make sure you select the Virtual view type.

 

Click on the Add New Camera button, a new camera view will be created and you will see a name of the form 'Camera View X' appear in the name window. Click in the name window and rename the view to something more appropriate (for example, B737 Captain).

 

Stage Two - Assign the Aircraft Types

 

Click on the Assign Aircraft Types to Camera View button and select (highlight) the aircraft types you wish to assign to the view from the displayed list. You can use the standard Windows selection procedures to highlight your chosen aircraft types. Hold down the CTRL key to add/remove items, hold down the Shift key to select a group of items. Click OK when done.

 

Since this is the first view to be created for the selected aircraft group, click on the Default View option to indicate it is the default view, to be automatically displayed when the aircraft is selected.

 

Stage Three - Move the camera into position

 

The camera's eye point is adjusted using the green arrow buttons. The six available degrees of freedom (6DOF) or XYZ PBY axes are all controlled about the aircraft's central axis looking forward. The X axis moves the eye point left and right, the Y axis up and down, the Z axis forward and back, and the Pitch, Bank, and Yaw movements are as expected.

 

The speed of movement, or step size, is controlled using the Speed slider. The camera's motion can be either continuous or stepped by selecting the appropriate mode radio button.

 

In continuous mode, any of the red stop buttons can be used to stop the current motion. Also clicking more than once on a green arrow button will speed up the movement in the chosen direction, or slow down any motion in the opposite direction.

 

If you wish, you can also assign the coordinates manually using the current XYZ PBY coordinate edit boxes.

 

At any stage you can press the Reset button to reset the eye point back to its initial, last saved, position.

 

Remember you can click on the Save All Cameras at any stage in the proceedings.

 

Stage Four - Adjust the camera zoom

 

This stage is optional and my advice is to not use anything other than the default zoom level unless you absolutely have to, for example when adjusting the view to show a specific area of the instrument panel. If you do need to adjust the zoom for any view always try to minimise the number of fine zoom steps, that is always use the nearest coarse zoom setting before making any fine adjustments. When the software displays the camera view it must follow your exact steps to recreate the same zoom setting, setting zoom level x1, then adjusting the coarse zoom, then issuing the fine zoom steps.

 

Stage Five - Add head movement effects

 

Dynamic and Automatic Head Movements (DHM and AHM) are intended for use in virtual cockpits and are usually always set for the pilot and copilot cameras. These effects are usually disabled for virtual cockpit views that are specific to instrument panels, engine controls, communications panels etc.. In other words, do not use these effects if you want your view to be completely stable.

 

Having said that it is fairly simple to operate buttons and switches with the mouse even when the DHM effects are enabled.

 

For this exercise click on the Enable DHM checkbox, open the DHM dialog using the DHM button and enable all the DHM options, open the AHM dialog and enable all the AHM options then close the AHM and DHM dialogs.

 

Stage Six - Assign a joystick button or key to the view

 

Click in the upper Button / Key Cmds box to assign a joystick button, click in the lower box to assign a key command. Any assigned key command must not be used elsewhere, if it is then FSX will refuse to relay the key press event to the OpusFSX interface. The OpusFSX interface will accept buttons 1 through to 32 of Joysticks 1 through to 6. All button and registered key events are displayed within the Spy window when the button or key is pressed. If they are not displayed then the joystick or button is invalid, either not registered within FSX, already assigned elsewhere, or just an illegal entry.

 

Please refer to the Live Camera guide for more details.

 

 

Finally don't forget to click on the Save All Cameras before closing the Cameras dialog. Your default virtual cockpit view should now be defined and saved within the FSXSERVER.CAM file.

 

You can repeat this exercise and move the eye point across to the right hand seat position to create the non-default First Officers position.

 

Regards

Stephen

Stephen

 

Could you please put that post in a sticky at the top of the forum for us? I'm sure Dave and I aren't going to be the only people that appreciate the detailed description.

 

Thanks

 

Mike

Hi Mike

 

We intend to do just that but are just checking it over and adding it to the manual first.

 

Regards

Stephen

Cheryl and Stephen:

I have been monitoring the development of OPUS since you started but have refrained from purchasing yet because upper level winds/temps are extremely important to me. I have been using AS2012 without smoothing (standard mode) and have found the winds/temps to be very close to the NOAA FD charts. I do not want AVERAGE wind temperatures but rather ACTUAL wind/temps. I also fly the ConcordeX so high altitude accuracy is also important to me. I have FSIUPC registered and it prevents the sudden wind shifts, so no problem there. I have no interest in your "view" settings since NGX VC has preset views that work fine and the rest of my livery is flown from 2D panels. I am, however, interested in destination weather accuracy particularly when it comes to cloud cover (true CB and low overcasts) as well as precipitation. I am impressed that you finally figured out that FSX continually attempts to smooth the weather and return it to clear skies, calm winds. AS2012 promised to have that anomaly corrected but not so.

 

I simply want a weather engine that will depict accurate weather, surface and aloft. I don't require any other bells and whistles. Will your current software provide that on my Quad Core 2.66GHZ/4G ram system with FSX sp2? In other words, will the cloud cover as well as winds/temps aloft be depicted accurately? I do no fly with RW downloads. I download a particular set of weather data for a date and time and then use it as static so there are no NEW downloads during my flight. Does your software continually INJECT weather ahead of the area to be flown or does it inject it all at once when FSX is loaded? I have been following the thread but so much talk over view positions is confusing and unimportant to me. AS2012 Standard mode continually re-injects weather during flight every so many minutes and it does stutter the frame rate while so doing. Is that to be also expected with OPUS when using STATIC weather? What about cloud redraws during injections?

 

Another important point for me would be the ability to tweak my departure or destination metar if I so desire. In other words, will I be able to add CB coverage or lower the ceilings or increase the wind, etc., and save it into the metar or at present will I be restricted to actual weather as downloaded in the metar?

 

I am very frustrated with AS2012 and am very hopeful that your product will eventually provide the functions that I desire. As soon as I am convinced of that I will purchase immediately.

 

Thank you.

 

Craig

Any other questions Craig? :lol:

Hi Craig

 

Firstly, the OpusFSX LWE generates real world very detailed weather and I must warn you I think your system may not cope very well with only 4Gb of memory.

 

When using RW detailed weather FSUIPC4 wind smoothing just does not work well enough to prevent erratic wind shifts. It only works with AS because the weather is really global and static. You will never see a distant weather front, fly to it and through it with AS, or any other weather engine other than OpusFSX for that matter. But you are going to need a higher spec system.

 

All weather is depicted accurately with our LWE, true winds aloft will be available very soon along with using the historic NOAA 24 hour cycle data, with other options added at a later date. If you wish you can prepare your own METAR import file and load this manually but you would have to continue doing this periodically during the flight. If using RW or 24 hour cycle data then the LWE can do it for you, but you will get the weather the METARs report. You should check out our Flight1 forum topics including the Weather Smoothing upgrade coming soon - this promises to be as revolutionary as our LWE.

 

You should know that FSX cannot store detailed weather that extends beyond its horizon, it was never designed to do that, it does not work that way and never will. All weather beyond about 80km is slowly smoothed out until it becomes global and unchanging. So do not expect any system to allow you to load a static theme covering an extensive area, it simply cannot be done.

 

Our LWE constructs a weather map 992km x 992km in area and loads the weather data for your immediate (well beyond your weather horizon) region. All weather updates are virtually instant. The detailed weather from horizon to horizon is updated as you fly.

 

FSX always repositions and redraws the clouds each time the weather is updated, no package can dictate the position or bitmaps used to render the weather. That's all down to FSX, but our LWE does just about everything else to give you the most realistic experience you can achieve, second to none!

 

There is a world of difference with the RW detailed weather our LWE gives you compared with everything that has been available up until now. This sort of weather has never been seen or offered before but with the sort of flying you are wanting to undertake then your system may find it difficult to cope. It will cope much better when we release the Weather Smoothing upgrade (beta testing will probably start next month - that is Opus style beta testing, other users will tell you what that involves).

 

Or you could take the plunge, take an active part in the dev cycles and future upgrades, and just let your system cope the best it can until you can upgrade.

 

Whatever you decide, we will still be here ready. Good luck with your system.

 

Oh and yes of course, our LWE depicts CBs, TCUs, etc. correctly, especially low overcast conditions - if the cloud base is reported as 400 feet, you will pop out of the cloud at 400 feet. I would also strongly advise you to use the Live Camera for its DHM and intelligent realistic turbulence effects. A CAM file for the PMDG NGX is provided, just make sure you tighten your seat belt. But again, these are real effects so you will need a higher spec system to render the 3D accelerometer data. I fly NGX and the SF260 for VFR and I could not bring myself to even bother getting airborne without LWE and DHM effects enabled now, but your system must be able to cope.

 

Any other questions can probably be answered by studying the Flight1 forum topics.

 

Regards

Stephen

Hi Craig,

 

Give the demo a try to see how your system performs.

 

Regards

Cheryl

Also, Flight 1 has a 30 day refund policy. I Do not know if they offer that for non Flight 1 developed products but would be worth asking. This way you could use Opus with how you use your simulator and if performance is an issue, you can keep the program and wait to upgrade or ask for a refund. I tried the demo but is limited to 10 minutes on the ground only and it would be nice to see what the performance is like in the air. I have a Core2Duo 2.53 laptop with 6gig ram and was going to buy this weekend, now I am not so sure because performance would be an issue on my system if I use any add-on aircraft.

 

Mike

Thanks for the camera guide. That looks great. Will fire it up later and go through the steps. Thanks. Appreciate it. Ill let you know how it goes.

We have a 30 day refund policy so give it a try - nothing to loose!

 

OpusFSX has virtually no impact on your system's current performance however if you are going to fly long haul and want true winds and true temps aloft whilst still retaining all the detailed and real weather, in other words without enforcing wind stabilisation, then you are better off with a reasonable performance system which seems to cope much better with the infamous FSX winds aloft bug. Please note, when using detailed RW weather you cannot rely on wind smoothing within FSUIPC4, this means you will be more suseptable to wind shifts. However on reasonably performing systems the wind shift problem seems to have been eradicated within our live weather engine.

 

We also provide various other options which get round the wind shift problem. So to summarise there is no reason based on your system spec not to opt for OpusFSX, in fact if you use OpusFSX to replace your current weather engine and EZCA then you can expect a performance boost of between 3 and 6 FPS.

All I was trying to advise above is that you will always be better off using a high spec system if you want to protect yourself against many of the problems in FSX whlist still enjoying all the benefits of RW weather totally uncompromised. For instance on our in-house system we have completely eradicated all of these problems and have not seen a single wind shift whilst still using RW weather and conforming 100% with the METARs.

 

My advise to you would be to have a go at the demo, you can see for yourself that there is abslutely no impact on your system performance. In-house with all options enabled and driving a single client computer we had no measurable effect (less than 1fps) on the FSX performance.

Also, Flight 1 has a 30 day refund policy. I Do not know if they offer that for non Flight 1 developed products but would be worth asking. This way you could use Opus with how you use your simulator and if performance is an issue, you can keep the program and wait to upgrade or ask for a refund. I tried the demo but is limited to 10 minutes on the ground only and it would be nice to see what the performance is like in the air. I have a Core2Duo 2.53 laptop with 6gig ram and was going to buy this weekend, now I am not so sure because performance would be an issue on my system if I use any add-on aircraft.

 

Mike

 

Hi Mike

 

See the above post. I would just like to add the 10 minute demo is only limited to generating and updating the weather whilst on the ground allowing you to take off and explore. But all weather updates are the same irrespective of whether you are on the ground or in the air, they are virtually instant.

 

Using OpusFSX will certainly not affect your current systems performance, it is designed to have no impact, and could even improve things if you replace a previous weather engine and say EZCA. The 3 to 6 FPS performance increase is reported by our users.

 

But there were many specific questions asked by the previous gentleman, talking specifically about long haul flying with real world weather, true winds aloft, true temps aloft etc. if this is what you want then yes you can achieve this with virtually any FSX system spec, but there may have to be compromises such as adopting surface wind stabilisation. Considering up to now you most probably have been using global weather then that should put things into context. By the way, just because a bit of mostly false weather is thrown in front of you does make it RW weather, when I say RW weather I mean the ATIS reports can be relied on, distant storm fronts can be seen, approached, flown through, even returned to if you wish.

 

I always advise people to upgrade their systems but we have many many users using mid level systems and virtually all of them report either no impact on performance or performance increases.

 

Regards

Stephen

Wow, where do we start, page 2 of the Getting Started guide for Single PCs I guess.

 

Where have you installed the OpusFSX.msi installation and do you have the prerequisites ?

Have you set all your sharing and permissions ?

Have you configured the FSXSERVER program ?

 

If you could get to page six and then run the FSXSERVER program, open the Spy window and please let me know what it says.

 

Stephen

 

i try to upload a screenshot but i dont made it. :-(

 

i writte it :-)

 

GEN General process has been enabled...

SIM Connected to Simulator

SIM Air Folder = Carenado Skymaster 337

MET Dynamic Weather Updated 12:38:45

 

thats all

thx you make a very good support :-)

Creating a Virtual Cockpit Camera View - Step by Step Guide

 

Much appreciated!

 

Thanks.