The case for FSX...

[Luke 782]

16 hours ago, birdguy said:

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars will appear for the public. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don't want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver's licence and will never own a car. 

Well, they haven't shot all the horses yet but according to that article they will be shooting the privately owned cars.  Where did you come up with the 99.9%.  A lot of people ride horses out here in the west.

No, they're just saying that the vast majority of people will no longer want or need to buy or operate a car for transportation, just like horses.

You can still buy and ride a horse if you want. (FWIW, I was incorrect on horse ownership - based on the American Veterinary Medical Association, 98.5% of all households do not own a horse... not 99.9%) :)

You're confusing "other people will no longer want X" with "I personally am prohibited from doing X". They are completely separate.

Cheers!

[birdguy 3,943]

Luke, how do you and the author of the article know what other people will no longer want?  Has a survey or a pol been takenl?  Have they asked people if they will no longer want a car n the future?  People dream about owning cars they can afford in the future.  If people didn't want cars they wouldn't make so many brands and models and types.  I see no reason that will change in the future unless it's forced on them by the government; and they will still want something they can't have.

Who is the author speaking for when he says, "You won't want to own a car anymore."?  Not me.  I enjoy owning a car.  I don't want to be productive while driving my car.  I want to enjoy the experience.  Just like I enjoyed the experience of flying an airplane with stick and rudder.

People want SUVs.  People want sedans.  People want pickup trucks.  People want sports and high performance cars.  People want compact cars.  People want luxury cars.  What makes you think they won't still want them ion the future.  Or do you propose to dictate what they want or don't want.

Getting a driver's license has been an Important rite of passage in this country for teenagers for years and years.  Do you want to take that away from them?

Noel

 

[bobbyjack 61]

Slot machines. No loss.

Noel, wanting a car and needing a car are two different things. You seem more concerned about maintaining your lifestyle than anything else. So you feel you've earned a car. You lament you new car. Never mind that it is far better for the environment than an older muscle car. Sure many people want a car. But do they need a car. I don't care either way, but we seem to live in a country of excess. Sure, I own a car, a smart phone, 4 computers, ( but only one TV). But on a small income. I work, but retirement is not possible. I'll get to work till the day I drop dead. So far, I don't mind that. 

[Luke 782]

48 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Luke, how do you and the author of the article know what other people will no longer want?  Has a survey or a pol been takenl?  Have they asked people if they will no longer want a car n the future?  People dream about owning cars they can afford in the future.  If people didn't want cars they wouldn't make so many brands and models and types.  I see no reason that will change in the future unless it's forced on them by the government; and they will still want something they can't have.

Please read the article again. The author is quoting or paraphrasing the Managing Director of Mercedes-Benz. You may have heard of this company. I hear they make automobiles. They also, if memory serves correctly, used to own a manufacturer of poor quality cars called Chrysler a few years back. I would assume that an automobile manufacturer would have entire groups of people dedicated to market research and understanding their customer base. They may not always be accurate, but I'm quite confident that they have way more data on the subject than you or I.

54 minutes ago, birdguy said:

Who is the author speaking for when he says, "You won't want to own a car anymore."?  Not me.  I enjoy owning a car.  I don't want to be productive while driving my car.  I want to enjoy the experience.  Just like I enjoyed the experience of flying an airplane with stick and rudder.

I'm pretty sure he's not speaking for you. There are, after all, 299,999,999 other people in America so what you and I personally choose to do doesn't really matter all that much. Since you enjoy digging into things and reading, let me give you a link from the Federal Reserve - they do a lot of research regarding the American economy as an aggregate to spot the trends of what millions or tens of millions of people are doing. Dig in. I'll wait: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/notes/feds-notes/2016/the-young-and-the-carless-the-demographics-of-new-vehicle-purchases-20160624.html

There's two interesting patterns I noticed. The first is that vehicle purchasing patterns have changed significantly in the last 15 years. It used to be that two-thirds of new vehicles were purchased by people under 50. Now it's almost flipped. Now that's new vehicles, and since the recession one can argue that stagnating incomes among the young are negatively affecting these purchases. But it's a data point that matches what I've seen - people are focusing more on cars as a practical mode of transport rather than a more emotional attachment as previous generations (including yourself) did. To me, the most interesting shifts in the article I reference is the percentage of purchases by 35-49 year olds. That's dropped by a third. Wow.

I think we agree that if you live in a large urban area, you are less likely to want or need a car. In 2010, just under 81% of the population lived in an urban area, down from 56% in 1950. That continues today.

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

People want SUVs.  People want sedans.  People want pickup trucks.  People want sports and high performance cars.  People want compact cars.  People want luxury cars.  What makes you think they won't still want them ion the future.  Or do you propose to dictate what they want or don't want.

Sure, people want them. Millions each year. But in 1986 11.4 million new cars were sold in America. In 2016 only 7.1 million were sold. That's over 4 million new cars that aren't being sold, and it's worth asking why.

To be honest, I think it's very unfair of you to accuse me of dictating anything. I'm merely pointing out a pretty significant trend in the economy and how the data seems to be backing it up. I'm a card-carrying Libertarian who really doesn't care what you do as long as it doesn't harm me and I don't have to see, hear or smell it. I don't see how you can draw the conclusion that I want to ban private cars. Why do you think the head of a major manufacturer of automobiles would be advocating a ban on private car sales? Pretty self-defeating if you ask me.

Cheers!

[HighBypass 2,339]

1 hour ago, bobbyjack said:

.....it is far better for the environment than an older muscle car. ....

Interesting... Would that include the pollution caused by running the power stations to generate the electricity, running all the factories (including those of the car part sub-contractors) to produce the car, then having the new car shipped to point of purchase? If it's come from overseas then how much pollution does a huge car carrier put out?

If the new car is one of those engine-less electric ones do you then factor in the environmental impact of disposing of the batteries once they're done?

If someone is still running a 40 year old car powered by internal (infernal? :) ) combustion then surely it is still "quids-in" as we Brits say over having a new car built?

Granted - a hosepipe from the exhaust will kill you in short order, no argument. However, if we had a planetary RE-forestation programme, then the plants could do what they do best with some greenhouse gases. Maybe we should all eat less beef - not as many cows farting etc.. 

I guess this is me...  .. a burner LOL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Dl9whQTTo

 

[birdguy 3,943]

Why do you think the head of a major manufacturer of automobiles would be advocating a ban on private car sales? Pretty self-defeating if you ask me.

Really Luke?  Think of it.  You just said between 1986 and 2016 car sales dropped by 4.3 million.  That could be because of affordability.

But automobile manufacturers see a treasure trove in changing for selling people cars one at a time to selling these automated driverless cars to governments and/or businesses selling them thousands at a time.

How many of these driverless cars would be required to service Manhattan alone?  Add Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and every city in the country where they would service people going from one place to another.  They would probably includes contracts for maintenance and periodic replacement because these cars would be running 24/7 until they wore out.

If this is going to work it will require that a car arrive to take me where I want to with a few minutes of my call.  Even if that takes only half as many cars as are on the road now it's a boon for the manufacturers.  I can see where they would be rubbing their hands with anticipation at the prospect.  

I'm not a card carrying anything.  I'm just a Noel and only have drivers license (which will become obsolete under the driverless car plan) and my military ID.  I belong to no political party and support or oppose each issue on the basis of what I think as opposed to what party doctrine thinks.  My liberal friends all me a conservative and my conservative friends call me a liberal.  Nobody has called me a libertarian yet though.

Noel

[birdguy 3,943]

Bob, the only thing I lament about my new car is it's complexity with all the accessories I don't need because they have nothing to do with driving.

But I'll take it because it was free.  (Well, almost free.  I have to take the income tax hit on it).  However I gave it to my wife and I kept the old (4 year old) car.

And of course I'm concerned about maintaining my lifestyle.  Why shouldn't I be?  Everyday is Saturday and I can do whatever I want whenever I want.  I spent a productive working life and I served in two wars so I feel I've earned it.  Fortunately I've lived long enough to reap the rewards. I don't want it to change.   What's wrong with that?

Noel

[Luke 782]

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

But automobile manufacturers see a treasure trove in changing for selling people cars one at a time to selling these automated driverless cars to governments and/or businesses selling them thousands at a time. ow many of these driverless cars would be required to service Manhattan alone?  Add Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and every city in the country where they would service people going from one place to another.  They would probably includes contracts for maintenance and periodic replacement because these cars would be running 24/7 until they wore out.

Noel, think about it for a second. Why do airlines constantly seek to maximize the utilization of their aircraft? Because that means they need fewer of them. It's the same thing with cars.

Right now, my family needs two cars even though each of them is used between 2 and 3 hours a day, at most, with little to no overlap. It's a terribly inefficient use of my resources designed almost to maximize the amount of money I spend on cars. It's this way because my car spends almost all of its time in my garage, or my employer's. If after I arrive at work I could send it back home for my wife and family to use, then have it returned to me in time to go back, I could cut my cars down to one and save a significant amount of money.

Let me repeat it - there is no possible scenario where an increase in utilization per vehicle results in increased vehicle sales. Every situation that allows me to use my car more than the 10% of the time it is currently in use results in less aggregate sales and revenue for automobile manufacturers. In a normal world, they would NEVER want this because it cannibalizes existing sales. They're afraid, however, that a new entrant with no existing sales to disrupt will step in and eat their lunch, and they're right. That's typically how incumbent businesses get dethroned.

And why on Earth do you think that these companies would want to sell to government over private individuals? Fleet purchases are garbage - they focus on lowest aggregate cost which means as few (or no) high-margin accessories as possible. Do you think that government fleet buyers will go for ventilated seats, premium sound systems or sunroofs? Never. The best possible market for car makers is individual, unsophisticated and impulsive purchasers who let the car sit in a garage or a lot all day. Anything else is a significant loss of revenue and profit.

2 hours ago, birdguy said:

Even if that takes only half as many cars as are on the road now it's a boon for the manufacturers.  I can see where they would be rubbing their hands with anticipation at the prospect.  

Stop and read what you just said for a minute.

In 2009 we had a situation where in America new car purchases dropped by 25% over two years, then rebounded. Even this tiny blip caused two of the Big Three to declare bankruptcy, Ford nearly did so and Michigan was turned into an economic disaster area. And that's with just a temporary blip that soon recovered - you're suggesting with a straight face that car makers are welcoming a permanent decline of twice the magnitude. That's like suggesting a person is looking forward to cancer because chemotherapy will allow them to finally lose some weight.

Noel, part of the reason why I enjoy bantering with you is that you remind me so much of my mother. She's about your age, she has the same difficult comprehending that other people might make different decisions than her and he has the same disinterest in finding out why. She too is complaining about the world being different and worse than it was and wonders why people are so foolish as to make different choices than she would make.

I'll get back to what I said earlier - children don't have the luxury or self-awareness of determining that they don't like the world and therefore will not interact with it. They have a ravenous curiosity and determination to understand it rather than rail against it. I expect part of that is a humility that comes from being very, very small - you instinctively recognize that you are a very insignificant part of a very large world and as such need to understand it rather than trying to mold it around you. As we get older we loose sight of that, but our relative importance doesn't change too much over the years.

To get back to the original topic, I have FS9, FSX, P3Dv3 and P3Dv4 on my machine. By and large, the newer they are, the more I use them because overall I see more advantages to the newer software even though I had to do some work and stepping out of my comfort zone to get used to the new simulator and virtual cockpits. Right now I see an inflection point where FSX adoption is dropping like a stone (faster than the FS9-FSX switch in 2011) and thousands of pilots cannot all be misguided or masochistic enough to switch. There's a reason, and I'm young enough to be intrigued, not threatened, when lots of people make different choices than me.

Cheers!

Luke

 

 

[bobbyjack 61]

6 hours ago, HighBypass said:

Interesting... Would that include the pollution caused by running the power stations to generate the electricity, running all the factories (including those of the car part sub-contractors) to produce the car, then having the new car shipped to point of purchase? If it's come from overseas then how much pollution does a huge car carrier put out?

All manufacturing processes being equal, a new car creates less pollution than older cars.

I grew up in a small town south of Los Angeles. In the 60's, you could drive into Los Angeles on any given day and not be able to see across the valley the city sits in. Smog. Some days there would be warnings not to go outside because the air was unhealthy. California enacted some of the toughest smog laws in the country, and smog alerts are a thing of the past. We still can't build a gasoline powered car that truly burns clean, however. Catalytic converters do that for us. 

There are big ticket items, like cars, that have their components manufactured in the USA. Those components are shipped to (for example) Mexico to be assembled. Then shipped back to the US for more work. Then shipped back to Mexico for final assembly. That's still cheaper than having all the work done in the US. My guitar says "made in Japan" even though all the components were manufactured in the US. It was assembled in Japan, and sold for about a third of the price of a guitar assembled in the US with the same parts.

Noel, you get to do what you want, when you want. Great. You value your lifestyle, but begrudge others their lifestyle simply because you don't agree with it. Other lifestyles might be just as valid as yours. You look around and all you see is stuff to complain about. Seems like a waste of time to me. You view someone who uses technology as weak and helpless. Real men go out and shoot their own food. They wear animal skins for clothes, and cook over an open fire. They only talk with other people who happen to be around them. If at all. I get it. 

[birdguy 3,943]

Luke,

I think I would like your mother.

I have to disagree about automobile manufacturers.  I think they would be thrilled at the prospect of replacing virtually all the private owned vehicles in our cities with self driving electric vehicles.  They would have never ending customer base as whomever operates these cars for the public would require a maintenance program similar to what the airlines have now and a steady replacement demand as these cars cycle out because they would be in use so much.  Just like all the cycled out airliners at my airport here in Roswell.  Boeing 747s, B737s, B757s, etc, etc, etc.   Delta just signed a 15 billion dollar deal with Airbus to replace their aging fleet.

I also have flight simulators gong to back FS9.  I have two FS9 installations; one for the California Classic retro scenery, aircraft, and ai traffic for the propliner and old jet airliner era.  I have a second FS9 installation for the MAIW military ai program that covers the world.  In FSX I can still have military ai through My Traffic.  But it doesn't work in P3d.  I have P3D v3 and V4 but I took them off my computer because they don't have what I like about FS9 and FSX.

If you go to Flightsim,com and search FS5.1 Scenery and search my name you'll find a lot of scenery I developed for that version.  Likewise I did all the California seaplane bases for the California Classic retro scenery.

If I could wave a magic wand and have any aircraft and automobile I wanted it would be the Luscombe 8E on floats I learned to fly in and an MG TC.  They were simple, no frills vehicles that did what they were designed to do without needless add-ons.

Bob, 

I have shot my own food.  Deer, ducks, pheasant. I have fished for my own food although in the later years I released all the fish I caught.  I have cooked over an open fire in the wilderness.  One of the best backpack trips I ever went on was with my dad in about 1947.  We packed into the high Sierras in Caifornia and didn't see another soul for a week.  We had only each other to talk to..  That was nice.  Although back in the world I do like to talk to people.

Noel

[G-RFRY 1,712]

At the moment there talk the internal combustion engine will be banned in the UK , FRANCE and possibly Europe from 2040, and in some city's by 2020, there`s talk of Mercedes going into formula E, For the first time F1 drivers have all joined the drivers union worried about there future.      

[HighBypass 2,339]

Raymond - I watched a Formula E race for the first time on tv recently. The Hong Kong race. I had to laugh as it reminded me so much of the Saturday night RC car meetings I used to take part in at a local sports hall. The whining noise was just the same LOL - Not the drivers, just the car's whining 

Perhaps they'll get to the stage where they can complete a race without swapping to another car! Or perhaps go faster than 140 mph or so.. Interesting all the same.

On 15/12/2017 at 6:28 AM, bobbyjack said:

... have their components manufactured in the USA. Those components are shipped to (for example) Mexico to be assembled. Then shipped back to the US for more work. Then shipped back to Mexico for final assembly. ....

Bob - that's sort of what I was alluding to; the added pollution (not monetary cost) caused by producing & shipping the car parts and completed cars around before the new owner takes delivery. The 40 year old muscle car went there 40 years ago and hasn't had to invoke that extra "production" pollution since that time...

 

[ASP Rao 4]

On 07/11/2017 at 0:57 AM, 1st fltsimguy said:

I keep my FSX, still have P3DV3+ but have moved almost totally to P3DV4+ and XP11

Nice to read good sentences from experienced gentlemen and more importantly saving the first love though better looks available in the market today. Even am unable to come out of FSX, though planning to have Prepar3d.V4 now, just to get out of OOMs.  Not able to surf the net exactly for the detailed information i wanted before I add Prepar3D. I seek suggestion based on your change experience, on what add ons of FSX will work with Prepar3D V4 and what I have to buy again from this list.  My O/S is Window 10 Pro. CPU-Intel Core i7-5960X Haswell-E 8-Core 3.0GHz, GPU-GeForce 12GB GTX TITAN X.  

1. REX - OD and REX TD Enhanced Edition.

2.ORBX - FTX Global, FTX Vector, Open LC Europe, Open LC North America, Open LC South America, EU England, EU Germany North and South, PNW and Oceania.  Few other ORBX payware airports.

3) Aerosoft Airbus Bundle A318/319/320/321 with FS2Crew and RASS ( both integral )

4) GSX

5) PMDG 747-400

6) ATR Family

7) Aerosoft airports, Farnkfurt and Amsterdam. 

Am not sure to post my doubt in this forum or not but after having read that you added Prepar3dV4, wanted to know from experience.  Or you may please guide me if detailed information is available elsewhere. 

Regards,

ASP Rao 

 

[bobbyjack 61]

On 12/16/2017 at 0:41 PM, HighBypass said:

On 12/14/2017 at 10:28 PM, bobbyjack said:

 

Bob - that's sort of what I was alluding to; the added pollution (not monetary cost) caused by producing & shipping the car parts and completed cars around before the new owner takes delivery. The 40 year old muscle car went there 40 years ago and hasn't had to invoke that extra "production" pollution since that time...

Sure. But most any full sized car from the 60's got less than 10 mpg. Beatles got less that 20. None burned very clean.  Many new cars get over 30 mpg and burn cleaner. No one cared about pollution in the 60's

And while there aren't really any left on the streets, They did their damage back then. I was a California smog mechanic for many years.

[HighBypass 2,339]

Hello Rao,

 

You will certainly have to buy any PMDG product again for the different flight sim. I'm not sure about the other products.