The case for FSX...

[bobbyjack 61]

Noel.

I guess the "rely more on technology than themselves" thing is what I'm not getting. How is relying on a map, relying on yourself? If you were relying on yourself, you would just get in your car and go. How is relying on the library, relying on yourself? What you learn through experience is all you really need. What if your daughters had brought pocket photo albums, and were looking at those all the time? What if the folks in the observation car prefer the openness (scenery) to the cramped quarters of the passenger car? 

You  don't need much technology. That's fine. 

[HighBypass 2,339]

On 07/12/2017 at 6:23 AM, birdguy said:

....I told him it was a 1952 Studebaker.  He hung up on me....

That, sir , is priceless!  

Given all the add-on sales around recently - continued use of FSX is assured for another few years I reckon! Got myself a Carenado Skymaster and I'll be installing another UK2000 airport soon. 

[birdguy 3,943]

Bob, If they had brought pocket photo albums I would have chided the just as I did with their smart phones.  But their smart phones mad it that much easier for them than an album.

I suppose I should have said putting an effort into it instead of relying.

Going to the library and spending time going through the books is and enjoyable experience for me because I love books.  I don't need an electronic shortcut.

I love maps.  I collect maps.  Planning a vacation by putting personal effort into is part of the vacation itself.

When I make motel/hotel reservations I call each place I want to stay directly instead of going through a reservation central or one of those websites that I see advertised that all guarantee the lowest prices.  I like to banter with the desk clerk.  And I write down the reservation number with pencil on a notebook.

Your magic phones make it all too sterile.  Kinda like having someone else do the work I like to do myself.

Noel.  

[bobbyjack 61]

Noel,

There's nothing wrong with your wanting to do things your way. You like the personal touch. Great. "Sterile" and "afraid to be alone" are your opinions, and may or may not be accurate. I'm perfectly fine with letting someone else do things that I'm not interested in doing. 

I agree putting effort into planning a vacation is part of the vacation. You and I do it differently. So what?

[birdguy 3,943]

Many people drink.  Many can't handle it and become alcoholics or abusive or belligerent.  Behavior I criticize and I become critical of alcohol abuse.  So we have laws against drunk driving and public drunkenness because of the dangers they can produce. 

While not comparing smartphone use with alcohol I see parallels in the dangers that have become associated with smartphones.  I think too many people become addicted to them to the point of texting while driving and losing situational awareness when crossing a street and running into a car or walking into a lamp post or open manholes.  Those things have happened enough that many jurisdictions have passed laws prohibiting the use of smart phones in those types of situations.  

You seem to think I am attacking you because you use a smart phone.  I'm not you know.  I'm simply expressing my opinion of them and see them as another step toward turning our lives over to machines.  Just as I am critical of robots in factories that have taken jobs away from people.  

I see too much dependence on technology with the advent of robots and artificial intelligence stealing our purpose in life.

Two years ago an Asiana B777 crashed in San Francisco because the pilots became too dependent on technology that was supposed to land the plane by itself.

In 2009 a Northwest flight from San Diego to Minneapolis overflew the destination by 150 miles because they were so intent on working on their laptops that they tuned out ATC and only became aware of what happened when a stewardess came in and asked them what time they were supposed land. 

These are two gross examples of becoming too dependent on technology.  I see the same thing happening when people on smartphones are distracted while driving,  walking into telephone poles; not being aware of what's going on around them and allowing them to distract them from their immediate surroundings like my daughters comparing pictures in a restaurant.

We were visiting friends in Dunedin Florida a few years ago and they took us out to dinner.  At the entrance behind the counter were boxes where you had to check your cell phone.  They were not  permitted in the dining room.  I applaud that.

People should have enough common sense and discipline that they shouldn't have to be reminded by signs in the waiting room and examining rooms in a doctor's office to turn off their phones.  

The have become so ubiquitous that they are become and organ of your body; especially those that are clamped to your ears all day.

What are we going to do when the day comes that we don't have to do anything anymore, even think, because technology will do it all for us?  Like driverless cars.  I happen to like driving but I see the day when driverless cars will become so numerous they will outlaw driving yourself because you are too dangerous.  Another one of life's pleasures taken away by technology. 

You know you aren't going to change my opinion Bob.  Why try unless you are a smartphone salesman trying to sell me one?

But f you want to keep the discussion going please do.  I'm game.  I can go on forever.

Noel

 

 

[pete_auau 1,158]

if it  wernt  for  the new  tech  stuff now  days will still be using  tin  cans  with a  string  attached  and  wonder  where  we  would  be  in the medical  side  of  things  of  the latest  technology that is used  now.so  iam  glad  things  are  improving  and  not staying  in the  dark  ages

[G-RFRY 1,711]

I find I only have FSX:SE  on my PC for FSW side loading scenery, I now only buy 64bit flight sim software for P3Dv4 or FSW, sadly FSX on my PC will be removed within months 32bit for me is dead it will not let me run my sims the way I want FULL FAT.

Developers  one by one are giving 32bit the elbow I don`t see FSX lasting as long from now as FS9 did after FSX, few will stay only due to there hardware limits but that will change in a few years. 

[Luke 782]

14 hours ago, birdguy said:

I think too many people become addicted to them to the point of texting while driving and losing situational awareness when crossing a street and running into a car or walking into a lamp post or open manholes.  Those things have happened enough that many jurisdictions have passed laws prohibiting the use of smart phones in those types of situations.

That's a danger with distractions of any sort, whether it's a cellphone, a magazine or merely talking to a friend. Human brains (at least the intelligent ones) are wired to seek out novelty and the challenge with technology is its a constant source of new information. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just different, and we need to determine new ways of dealing with it. Considering that we have (mostly) figured out moving machines on the roads despite those who wanted them to go at 5mph preceded by human waving a red flag, I'm optimistic.

And we certainly don't need laws to tell people to watch where they're going, but I suspect you already agree. :)

14 hours ago, birdguy said:

I'm simply expressing my opinion of them and see them as another step toward turning our lives over to machines.  Just as I am critical of robots in factories that have taken jobs away from people.  

This is just my personal opinion, but the thought of working on an assembly line for 30 years doing the same thing over and over again for days isn't a job - it sounds like torture. Society's problem today isn't that these jobs have been "taken away" from people - it's that we haven't determined new things for them to do now that they are (thankfully) no longer doing them.

What's happened in your lifetime is nothing more than a continuous historic trend. At one point, over 90% of the nation's (probably the world's) population was engaged in agriculture. If you were to suggest to an educated man in 1750 that we could go to a world where less than 3% was in this field, he'd predict some combination of starvation, massive unemployment, and social unrest. And while we've had some of the latter two, when we came out the other side we had a revolution in quality of life.

Nowadays, we look back at the Grange Movement and earlier notions of yeoman farmers as a quaint anachronism. One of the people on my team comes from a long line of Midwestern farmers - his father, three uncles, grandfather and great-grandfather all farmed the same patch of Minnesota soil. He's a software architect. None of his siblings have any desire to farm, and so when the brothers get too old I imagine the land will be sold, providing something of a retirement and maybe most of a modest college education for each of the grandchildren.

Farming is a really hard and lousy way to make a living. So is working on a traditional 1950s assembly line. The good news is that manufacturing value-add to the US economy has been steadily growing over the past 40 years. The jobs have been shrinking, but the ones that remain are high-skilled, high-value and generally a lot more interesting. That's true across the board. Building a road 75 years ago would be a small army of men with picks and shovels and maybe a bulldozer. Now it's highly mechanized, more productive - and a lot safer.

14 hours ago, birdguy said:

Two years ago an Asiana B777 crashed in San Francisco because the pilots became too dependent on technology that was supposed to land the plane by itself.

In 2009 a Northwest flight from San Diego to Minneapolis overflew the destination by 150 miles because they were so intent on working on their laptops that they tuned out ATC and only became aware of what happened when a stewardess came in and asked them what time they were supposed land. 

These are two gross examples of becoming too dependent on technology.

I disagree. The second example (Northwest flight 188) is pretty unrelated to technology - they could have just as easily been staring out of the window, arguing with each other or simply asleep - which is my suspicion, by the way. I think they realized they screwed up and agreed on a story that had the greatest chance of preserving their careers (which it didn't, by the way).

I don't see Asiana as a simple "they relied too much on automation". The automation is what got them from Korea to San Francisco in the first place, in a far more efficient and safe fashion than if they manually flew it all the way there. The problem, as I've discussed before, is more complex - it's an issue in the interaction between man and machine. You've got a crew that has had many hours of routine, boring work having to suddenly deal with an abnormal situation in the last critical seconds of flight. The mind cannot easily switch gears in such a rapid fashion, as we've seen there and in AF447. But it's not the technology's fault; we just haven't determined the right way to ensure that when an abnormal situation is encountered, the dumb bag of meat behind the yoke has had some warning and is up to speed.

I would also argue that in both Asiana and AF447, there's a strong training and CRM component that needs to be looked at and addressed. Just as we've taken huge steps in aviation automation in the past 30 years, we've also had huge advances in crew procedures and interactions and the realization that the "command" model of old is dangerously flawed - the PNF, no matter what rank, should constantly challenge and interact with the PF and PIC. I'm not certain Asian airlines have completely internalized that yet.,

If you look through the whole history of aviation incidents from the start of the jet era, there's entire classes of fatal events that are by and large unheard of today. Overall, it's a much safer experience. We're still going to have issues, because the human/airplane relationship has changed. The nature of disagreements with my wife has changed over the 25 years we have known each other. As our lives change, our relationship will change and our challenges will too. Overall it is still getting better (fingers crossed).

19 hours ago, birdguy said:

When I make motel/hotel reservations I call each place I want to stay directly instead of going through a reservation central or one of those websites that I see advertised that all guarantee the lowest prices.  I like to banter with the desk clerk.  And I write down the reservation number with pencil on a notebook. Your magic phones make it all too sterile.  Kinda like having someone else do the work I like to do myself.

Let me play armchair therapist for a moment. It's pretty obvious that you value the process as much (or more) than the result, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If I want to do a pork shoulder or a brisket, there's value in getting a charcoal smoker, lighting the coals in a chimney and then tending them over a morning and an afternoon until the meat is ready. I can relax on my deck, read a book or a magazine and watch the hawks and vultures circle in the thermals. It's fun to keep watching the temperature, keeping things fed at just the right time and when (if?) the meat turns out great I know that it was my hard work that made it possible. If it doesn't, I can spend time pondering and planning what to do next. 

But there's other times when I just want a properly done piece of meat and I don't have an entire day to devote to it. Gas grill, timer, walk away. Technology FTW! :)

You also have the advantage that being retired, you have a lot of time. It may also be a challenge filling it, so there's little opportunity cost to engaging in a less efficient mechanism. For most of us, we don't have that luxury/drawback, and so we use automation to reduce the time lost to things we don't want to do, in favor of things we do.

I'm not suggesting this to convince you, by the way, just to explain why people think the way they do. From an aviation perspective, I don't care much about the process, only the results - I want to get to my destination safely, efficiently and comfortably (in that order). While some pilots still want to fly 727s doing VOR/NDB navigation or do DC-6 jaunts across the ocean with a sextant, I'm happy that this occurs in the sim and not with me on board.

Enjoy your journey.

Cheers!

Luke

[birdguy 3,943]

Raymond, those of us who are satisfied with FSX see no reason to either upgrade our systems or keep up with the Joneses or have no wish to start climbing yet another learning curve.  In my case FSX and P3D are enjoyable pastimes.  For me it's a game, not pretending I'm still the pilot I once was.  And one of the personal advantages for me for dropping P3D and going back the FSX-SE is I get to reinstall all those wonderful FSD airplanes that work in FSX but not P3D. 

I like the Orbx scenery and I like flying different aircraft.  I also like to play Hearts and Freecell and Scrabble and chess on my computer.

At my age 'in a few years' is not much of a concern.

I'm sure you've been in a doctor or dentist's waiting room and seen the toys and coloring books in the corner for the children to play with while waiting to be called by the nurse.  That's me right now.  I've no more goals to achieve.  I've got nothing more to prove.  I'm just enjoying myself playing my games and engaging in forums like these until the nurse opens the door and say's, "OK Noel, time to go."

Perceptions differ with age.  Each generation has a different outook on where they've been and where they're going and make judgements based on that..

An example....

I was a young Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton waiting for my ship to bring me to Korea.  This was to be my last weekend before shipping out.  My buddy and I had weekend passes and went to the Pike at Long Beach, an amusement park.

We both had our palms read by a woman with a turban wrapped around her head and wearing a black gown.  I was 18 years old.

She traced out the lines on my palm and looked at me and said, "You have short lifeline.  You will die of a heart attack when you are 50 years old."

I thought that was great.  I'll be coming back from Korea and I'll live to be an old man!

I am now 34 years past 50.  And I look back at the hiking trips I took with my wife in the Sacramento Mountains when I was a young man in my early 70s. 

Noel

[birdguy 3,943]

I'm thoroughly enjoying my journey Luke.  I'm having fun.  I always have.  I never had a job I dreaded going to when I woke up in the morning.  I never lived in a place I didn't like...not even in Korea or Vietnam.  I always sing in the shower and I love these discussions.

When I was working for a high-tech firm as a development engineer my manager once gave me a review that was pretty glowing except for one sentence.  "His brusque and outspoken manner tend to irritate those he works with."  I kinda liked that.  

And I don't take myself too seriously.  I have often characterized myself as an expert on nothing with an opinion on everything.

 

Noel

[bobbyjack 61]

Noel,

I've never thought you were attacking me. Nor am I interested in changing hour mind. 

Machines aren't intended to think for us. What if they could free us to actually think. What if everyone's job was to think up new things. 

I find most restaurants unenjoyable.  Everyone is talking so loud I can't hear the person next to me.

[birdguy 3,943]

It's  not people talking loud in restaurants that bothers me, Bob, it the loud gawdawful music they play in some of them.  I can't stand to go into an Applebees anymore.

We have nice upscale (for Roswell) restaurant called the Cattle Baron we go to sometimes.  It's pretty quiet.  And The Red Lobster's music is decent and not very loud.  The seafood is mediocre but when you live a thousand miles from the coast it's the best you can get.  Nothing like Scomas in San Francisco or O'Bryki's in Baltimore.

Noel 

 

[birdguy 3,943]

Bob, this doesn't sound like a world I would want to live in.  But it might be right up your ally.  

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/interesting-talk-md-daimler-benz-jonathan-brathwaite

Noel

[bobbyjack 61]

Noel, I didn't see anything in that world that would completely preclude you from living the way you do now. Some people would welcome that world. Some wouldn't. Your approval not needed.

New technology has always been greeted with skepticism. And pretty much unstoppable. Some good effects, some bad effects, and some mixed. The cotton gin gave the South it's only real viable industry, and helped lead to the Civil War.

[Luke 782]

Keep in mind that it's LinkedIn, which has a ton of posers reposting word not allowed in a third-rate marketing exercise.

No, Tesla and Khan Academy are not going to completely upend the world in the next 36 months.

Cheers!