What does your typical v4.1 flight look like?

[OzWhitey 3,353]

I don't know about you folk, but I'm really enjoying the improved stability and lack of VAS issues that v4 has brought. With that in mind, I thought I'd describe the way I'm typically using this sim to fly in November 2017. For the other v4.1 simmers out there, I'd be interested in exactly what your typical flight looks like (it might give me some good ideas!)

So here goes:

Prepar3d V4.1

Favourite aircraft: PMDG NXG - 737 800 WL, any US livery. Alternates are the Q400 or the A2A Commanche or Cherokee. Using the Immersive Audio soundpack, after that was discussed in a thread here late last week.

Exclusively VR flying, using an Oculus CV1. Using native 4.1 VR, in preference to FlyInside (I prefer it).

Area and scenery: Short flights (around 30-45 minutes) between medium-sized airports. Short, because I like to keep busy, and medium airports because they're large enough to land a 737, but not as heavy on frames as the mega airports (there are so many great payware airports that I want to fly - but not viable in VR with current tech). Flying mainly around the Smoky Mountains, good mountainous terrain, plenty of decent-sized airports. Tonight will be KAVL Asheville to KTYS Tyson McGhee in Knoxville, TN. KRHP Andrews in NC is a bit smaller but will accommodate a 737 at a pinch. 

Type of scenery: photo scenery - looks the best in VR from the cockpit of a jet. Airports and photo scenery are home-made, I really like inhabiting a world in VR that I've designed, also allows me to build framerate-friendly environments.

Mesh: yes, FS Global Ultimate 2018, DL version (I think it's called, the one that was released recently, that's V4 compatible).

Weather: I'll give up some frames for great clouds. ASP4 as the engine, and ASCA or Envtex for the clouds. Lots of good IMC conditions lately, with some marginal CAT3 landings.

Flight planning: PFPX, exporting plans into P3D (for ATC use) and to PMDG (as company routes).

Graphic mods: Envshade (changed from PTA last week, the photo scenery has never looked better!). REX texture direct enhanced for airport textures (runways, taxiways etc, looks a bit better than Envtex, which I also use for some other graphics mods.

Traffic: MyTraffic for models. Actual traffic is Real Traffic (subscription) plus PSXSeecon Traffic (freeware), puts some real aircraft in the air, a few at the gates around me and has very little impact on frames. Great immersion!

ATC: VoxATC. Been flying with this for about a month, after hearing it mentioned on another thread here. Great program, adds so much to the sim-airliner experience. Voices by Cereproc and Ivona.

Other accessories for a typical flight:

• SImStarter is a must-have for complex setups, I hadn't used it for a while but now I'm back to it I'm getting in the air so much quicker. Startup includes the weather programs, an FS Real Time, though that's more for atypical flights, such as crossing the pond.
• Voice attack - this app is just briliiant for VR flying in 4.1. I've setup a FO to control the essentials, its now easy to complete flights without taking off the HMD.
• View control: thinking about Chaseplane, but haven't added that yet.

Flight hardware. MS Force feedback joystick, with FS Force. CPFlight MCP Pro and 2x EFIS pro (work great with the NGX). Thinking of adding some more hardware for use in VR (need to sort COM radios, but CP flight modules dont seem to work).

Other hardware: 5.1 surround with a proper home cinema AV receiver, and Klipsch speakers incouding sub. Run the engines and environmental sound through that, and use Logitech G933 headphones for ATC and in-cockpit communication with my FO via VoiceAttack).

There it is! I am having so much fun with this combination in v4.1, many of the great apps that I've mentioned above are things I only know about due to other simmers posts in this forum.

If you get a chance, let us know how you've set up 4.1, and how and where you're flying.

[Heavy Metal 83]

Hi,

this is my first post on this forum (due to technical issues, it might actually be my second now...) and as my main sim is P3D V4.1 at the moment and I also think, this topic might tell a bit of myself, why not use the opportunity to introduce myself, my preferred way of flying and some hardware/software related stuff I currently use..?

 

Prepar3d V4.1

Favorite aircraft: Also the PMDG NXG - 737 and the FSLabs A320 with any appropriate livery depending on where I am flying. Alternates are the PMDG 747 for "long" hauls and the default F22/F16 or one of the GA aircrafts for some VFR flying from time to time.

VR: No VR flying right now. I will keep waiting until the next hardware generation gets released and there are more titles actively using VR (also in the gaming sector). So I am still starring at my 27" LG monitor (4k).

Area and scenery: Short to medium flights (around 30-90 minutes) between medium- or large-sized airports. I tend to fly through European skies most of my time, as I am based near EDDM. Across the pond, you will find me near the typical areas of KLAX, KSAN and so on. However, I also like flying known airports that I did not visit in P3D yet for whatever reason (as I did yesterday from Anchorage to Fairbanks). I also flew a vast tour through most major European countries a few weeks ago which was quite nice.

Type of scenery: While I love photo scenery in XP11, I prefer the ORBX landclasses/products in P3D which look quite nice to me, even though not perfect in regards to accuracy. Even with the ORBX Germany sceneries, it comes nowhere close to the OpenStreetMap roads and Orthos of XP. Well I guess you cannot have everything. But FTX Global, Vector, OpenLC Europe, HD Trees and the regions of England and Germany North/South make my simming world very lovely in visual terms.

Mesh: thinking about adding FS Global Ultimate 2018, too, but not yet decided - most areas I fly are rather flat and from altitudes above FL300.... well, let´s say it´s ok for now.

Weather: Same here, ASP4 as the engine, and ASCA or Rex Soft Shadows for the clouds. I change between ASCA and REX every few flights - no real favorite here, both are great in my opinion. 

Flight planning: For my purposes, I use a mix of Simbrief, Flightaware, Flightradar24 and Skyvector, which perfectly fit my preferred way of flying.

Graphic mods: Just bought Envshade yesterday and like it so far. Never used PTA, but I think I would spend endless hours (I do not have) for tweaking until I am satisfied... for 5 EUR out of the box solution, EnvShade appears to fit my taste quite well. Once or twice the shaders had some light/dark flickering issues when passing through clouds. Will check on it on next flights again...

Traffic:  none so far. not really missing it, to be honest. Goal is to fly more on VATSIM in near future, but I am still terrible at understanding lots of controllers...

ATC:  basically same as I wrote under Traffic. 

View control: Definitely Chase Plane, great tool. Unless the servers are offline like yesterday... I would currently suggest to wait until the offline functionality is implemented, but then this is a very neat software. Never used EZDOK though, so I cannot compare.

Flight hardware: my old and trusted X52 Pro (well, it is perfectly enough for starting and landing those tubes and also good for the F22/F16 stick flying).

Other hardware: G633 for late at night flying and my loved Teufel Theater 8 THX Ultra 2 system powered by medium sized Denon AVR (yeah, what a waste for just PC audio, but after I upgraded my main speakers to a system that better fits both movies AND music, I could not get myself to sell these babies as they are not produced anymore and I still just love the sound of them. 

Other Sims:  XP11 (good alternative with FF767 and upcoming FFA320), but it really lacks a good save option for people like me who can get quite furious when flying longer than 60/90 minutes and then the sim is crashing without being able to recover the flight (most airplane add-ons are realized via plug-ins and plug-in states are not correctly saved by XP default save system...). Keeping an eye on FSW, really hoping this sim to get into competition to the pricey P3D. 

Why I love P3D V4: Well, I have flown it for quite some hours now, and it only crashed twice on me, and both were not caused by P3D but add-ons. So from my point of view, this is the most stable sim platform I have used for the last years after having OOMs in FSX (boxed and SE) and P3D V3. So I agree with folks saying the we are currently having the time of our lives in regards to sims moving to 64 bit and the only limitation is more a hardware issue than an outdated software. Times are great!

 

Thanks for reading.

[snglecoil 1,828]

Step 1: Put the kids to bed.

Step 2: Tuck my wife in.

Step 3:  Load up somewhere SoCal. 

Step 4: Connect to PilotEdge

Step 5: Put kid who refused to drink water during dinner that is now dying of thirst back to bed.

Step 6: Get clearance from PE controller.

Step 7: Put second kid back to bed who “just can’t fall asleep”

Step 8: Request taxi.

Step 9: Put first kid back to bed that drank all the water and now has to go potty. 

Step 10: Request takeoff, depart, and contact Departure. 

Step 11: Lose it on the third kid who woke up panicking because they forgot to finish homework...which wakes the wife...and the other 2 kids up. 

Step 12: Disconnect from Pilot Edge, shut down the computer and get a restless night’s sleep on the couch because the wife has locked you out of the room. 

... Just me?

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

5 minutes ago, snglecoil said:

Just me?

You sound like you need better Heir Traffic Control.

[fluffyflops 1,846]

1 hour ago, snglecoil said:

 

... Just me?

Sounds like my pilots at work, grown men on 90k a year that can't work out what time to get up for work unless we arrange a wake up call from the hotel reception desk. I'd rather have the kids on the potty then my pilots 

[ryanbatc 12,802]

2 hours ago, snglecoil said:

Step 1: Put the kids to bed.

Step 2: Tuck my wife in.

Step 3:  Load up somewhere SoCal. 

Step 4: Connect to PilotEdge

Step 5: Put kid who refused to drink water during dinner that is now dying of thirst back to bed.

Step 6: Get clearance from PE controller.

Step 7: Put second kid back to bed who “just can’t fall asleep”

Step 8: Request taxi.

Step 9: Put first kid back to bed that drank all the water and now has to go potty. 

Step 10: Request takeoff, depart, and contact Departure. 

Step 11: Lose it on the third kid who woke up panicking because they forgot to finish homework...which wakes the wife...and the other 2 kids up. 

Step 12: Disconnect from Pilot Edge, shut down the computer and get a restless night’s sleep on the couch because the wife has locked you out of the room. 

... Just me?

LOL that's pretty much my life these days!  I have a 2,4, and 6 year old - I spend most of my flying time installing addons and tweaking hehe

[Boeing or not going 578]

No kids but a smaller budget these days than I used to have. I like to stay consistent and fly one airline for months until I get bored or find something better, the airline depends on the addon scenery I have bought. Just moved from Emirates for United, started flying FedEx the beginning of the year, might go back to FX after Aerosoft release EDDK, and since I only have the PMDG 777 package it is all 777 flights! I did buy the Flysimare Learjet35 but no gps addon for it yet. I am on the fence about buying the Flight1 GTN or saving up a bit more over the Holidays and buying the PMDG 737 package instead.

My ritual I have become good at it. Find flight on flightaware, get the route there if available, plan in pfpx, on my laptop go to liveatc.net and start the feed for the airport if available, ground or clearance delivery, use the liveatc coverage map to make a playlist of all the feeds I am going to go through on the flight to quickly change, on laptop again open up charts I've found and sit on flightradar to see the airplane get active, get my sim airplane ready, and push back just as they do, I am so addicted to realism I even set the same squawk code they have!

[simbol 5,815]

9 hours ago, snglecoil said:

Step 1: Put the kids to bed.

Step 2: Tuck my wife in.

Step 3:  Load up somewhere SoCal. 

Step 4: Connect to PilotEdge

Step 5: Put kid who refused to drink water during dinner that is now dying of thirst back to bed.

Step 6: Get clearance from PE controller.

Step 7: Put second kid back to bed who “just can’t fall asleep”

Step 8: Request taxi.

Step 9: Put first kid back to bed that drank all the water and now has to go potty. 

Step 10: Request takeoff, depart, and contact Departure. 

Step 11: Lose it on the third kid who woke up panicking because they forgot to finish homework...which wakes the wife...and the other 2 kids up. 

Step 12: Disconnect from Pilot Edge, shut down the computer and get a restless night’s sleep on the couch because the wife has locked you out of the room. 

... Just me?

LOL,

Similar, Mon-Fry I put by daughter to bed, my wife is just exhausted from the day and goes to bed, so I have then green light to hit Visual Studio to code . Of course I had a 10 hour shift during the day also developing, maintaining an International Network and being in charge of the corporate Network Security, but nothing can beat the passion for flying as it is bigger than anything!! so I also manage to fly very often, short hauls mostly of course: Vienna - Zurich, EHAM - EGKK, EGKK - LOWW, and if I fancy a challenge GCLA - LPMA (Madeira) Love the approach to runway 5 using the PMDG 737NG it really test your manual flying skills!.

Best Regards,

Simbol

 

[earthdog 842]

6 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

LOL that's pretty much my life these days!  I have a 2,4, and 6 year old - I spend most of my flying time installing addons and tweaking hehe

 Me too ...You have to make more "presents" to your wife if you want to fly ...

[Matthew James de Bohun 55]

Step 1: tweak PTA.

Step 2: Decide which plane and route. I predominantly do European short haul out of the London Airports and Budapest. The latter is very well situated for getting to a wide range of European destinations without it taking 4 plus hours! Also do some North American flying and quite a bit of turboprop flying in Norway which has some really challenging airfields such as Honningsvag.

Step 3: fly the route. Pass the time in cruise by reading about the destination I've been rostered. Browsing flight sim forums and comparing the look of my sim to reference photos I take when I frequently travel for real.

Step 4: realise something about visuals still looks a little off 

Step 5: Finish flight.

Step 6: See step 1:

Add-ons typically used.

PMDG, FSLABS, Aerosoft . A plethora of Orbx scenery. AS16 such a great product I just love the fact that where ever you fly the weather is pretty much as it is in real life. ASCA for the clouds, Rex textures for Sky and runways etc. Chaseplane another fantastic add on which makes moving around the cockpit effortless.

Planning done using Simbrief and Navigraph charts.

ATC: Default. Tried the likes of Pilot2 ATC.  But just couldn't get the voice control to work properly.

[AnkH 2,233]

My typical flight? Actually it is none...

1. Start up computer with the aim to do whatever flight in P3Dv4.1...

2. Surf on the internet... just for some "news"...

3. Realize that there is a new AI model, repaint, whatever...

4. Start downloading... keep telling me "just this one"...

5. Install the new AI model, repaint and fire up UT2 to configure it...

6. Realize that the flightplan is outdated in UT2 and the downloaded model is missing...

7. Search a current flightplan online, download it and import it into UT2 via Powerpack...

8. Assign the new plane or repaint and realize that another one is missing...

9. Download and install the missing paints...

10. Finally, fire up P3D to verify if the new schedule works and the new model, repaint is showing up.

11. Rethink what I flight I actually wanted to perform.

12. Set this flight up and realize that already 2-3h went down the drain configuring the AI traffic...

13. Close P3D, shut down the computer and do something else...

[ryanbatc 12,802]

15 hours ago, earthdog said:

 Me too ...You have to make more "presents" to your wife if you want to fly ...

I ask her to step into my cockpit hahha!