Hello, after a very long time!

[Naji 5]

Greetings after so many years. I hope you are all fine in these difficult times.

Sim wise, I am loving the new MSFS 2020, with its astounding technological breakthroughs, in spite of some bugs. But guess what, I spend as much of my simming time in FU3. Yes, FU3's charm is still unbeatable.

I was running it in Windows 10 flawlessly but without anisotropic filtering and antialiasing. New nvidia cards and drivers don't recognize the game. Till I came across  patrikmore's post here, wherein he mentioned dgvoodoo2 along with ddfix. ddfix didn't help solving the problem, but dgvoodoo2 alone has solved it beautifully along with a higher resolution. The only glitch was that with AA I got the line across some views, which by using Cockpit Designer I eliminated (by increasing the blue rectangles where the lines occurred by one pixel only).

So for those wishing to run FU3 in Win10, simply download the latest version of dgvoodoo2 (I downloaded ver 2.7) and follow the instructions how to place it in FU3 folder. Play around with the settings and apply those glorious AF AA. I chose resolution 1400*1050 to keep the aspect ratio. Voila!

So thank you very much patrikmore for your tip!

[Christopher Low 5,354]

Nice to hear from you again, Naji!

I have been flying the PMDG 737NGX (and others) "low and slow" around the UK for a long time. However, I was starting to get bored of this, so last night I made the decision to uninstall my PMDG and QW airliners, and reinstall the excellent A2A Simulations Piper Cherokee 180 (in P3Dv4.5HF2). I am looking forward to getting back to basics, and flying a small GA plane in and out of lots of small UK airfields that I have not seen in a long time!

Edited October 9, 2020 by Christopher Low

[Naji 5]

Hi, Chris. Great to see you here again.

And many thanks for your Seattle and San Francisco scenery packages. Together with the AI package, they are the only things that I have installed and they populate the sim beautifully.

You haven't tried MFS 2020 yet?

[Christopher Low 5,354]

I am in HOLD mode with the new Microsoft Flight Simulator at the moment. Too many reported bugs/issues, and too many features missing. If I decide to take the plunge at some point in the future, it will only be when stuff that I know would annoy the hell out of me has been rectified (and that includes those horrible smudge marks on side windows; a totally unnecessary "feature" as far as I am concerned).

[Naji 5]

Yes, there are some bugs, but the sim as it is now is a pleasure to fly low and slow. When I flew for the first time out of Seattle, heading towards Vancouver, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The world is really populated in a natural way. 

I mostly fly the Bonanza and I didn't notice smudges. 

Anyway, take care Chris, and I hope to see you here often.

[patrikmore 10]

Thanks heaven the thread is still alive!

On Windows 10, I tried many combinations, but the one that works without bugs, crashing to the desktop, smooth sky, etc. is the one below:

Install on windows 10 “applying two layers”:

Install ddfix 1.5.13 https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143020 You have to edit flight3.exe replacing ddraw by ddfix, with the help of HxD Hex Editor, follow instructions. This improves DirectX working with settings specifically for Flight Unlimited. Without it I saw IA planes flying thru the ground.

Install “DDrawCompat experimental/test release” (just put ddraw.dll on game folder) link: https://github.com/narzoul/DDrawCompat/releases This connect DirectX 6 with DirectX of windows 10. It is better than dgvoodoo2, it is stable and procures smooth skies.

Today I’m “fighting” with ATC for takeoff and landing, and I am practicing smooth landings with the beechjet. For this plane you need to master autopilot for altitude and vertical speed.

[Naji 5]

My favorite plane is the Mooney. All about it is great, even the virtual cockpit F4 is decent compared to the other planes.

I spend a lot of pleasure time experimenting with weather conditions and cloud cover and the settings in flt3.cfg.

[patrikmore 10]

I answered you in the other post. For this post just to say, I managed to land the Beechjet with no visibility at all, with autopilot ILS, in an airport ILS equipped.

[AnsgarA 9]

Uuups, getting unexpected close and cuddly here after all that long time....

A very nice hello to my old friend Chris, and a big thanks to Naji and Patrikmore to reactivate our beloved old sim under Win10 that good and on top with improvements by using more features out of our new graphic cards. I'm happy to meet you back online and full in action!

I tried for some weeks to get FU3 run after <1year or so and was struggeling with CTD (still not sure if damaged fragments of HDD are the reason or my newer NVIDIA of beginning this year. But looking here it looks more to be the NVIDIA. Will give it a try to reactivate - as the rest is still installed.

Very nice to hear that all our old developments are still in usage: Chris detailed Seattle and San-Fran scenery improvements, the AI-pack, B747 - I still love the engines and realistic alarm sounds of it, or the Reno race challenge...

hope I get it work again now to see also the improvements in resolution and may be quality of the shaders (reshade).

Have a good day and keep healty these times!

Nice greetings

Ansgar Avermeyer

[Naji 5]

Hi, Ansgar. Very nice to hear from you.

[AnsgarA 9]

Hello Naji glad to meet you here,

a short question from my side, fitting to the beginning of this thread:
A short test and I have my FU3 back up' n running now unter Win7 64bit.  The "admin rights" to the .exe are missed after I changed to a new NVIDIA card this spring (along with Win-XP SP3 compatibility) - thanks to your tip longer time back, and patrikmore also gave it in his Win10-request list. May be the last year I played direct as admin and didn't noticed that...

Is there a chance to get the nice ReShade improvements running also under Win7 64 Ultimate with ddfix and/or dgVoodoo underlayed? Until now I didn't get the reshade "home" to work nor could find any reshade-presets for FU3.
Also trials to switch "home" button to Shift F2 or so didn't bring it up. Ddfix is working since there are effects noticeable (start menu looks worse in low res). But also at start of FU3 reshade does not appear in any way - as window info or boot line. Seems not to start really at all.
Any tricks or hints what I may did wrong?

Thanks in advance

Ansgar

[patrikmore 10]

Hi Ansgar, just a tip.

Dgvoodoo2 seems to  work, according to their docs, on windows 7. That improves performance and solve problems.

Converts DirectX 6 output to DirectX 11, more compatible with modern graphic cards.

It's not an install, just drop 3 files on the folder game: D3DImm.dll DDraw.dll and dgVoodooCpl.exe

Reshade could work on windows 7 but perhaps some issues according to their web page. By the way reshade 4.8 doesn't work in my case with dgvoodoo2, on windows 10, only reshade 4.7.

Nothing to do: I'm looking for planeunlimited.exe

For Shift F2 working on reshade you need to have lines like that on file reshade.ini  path is: C:\Users\"username"\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Flight3  (I play FU3 without administrator rights, dgvoodoo2 doesn't work with, in my case):

[INPUT]
ForceShortcutModifiers=1
InputProcessing=2
KeyEffects=0,0,0,0
KeyMenu=113,0,1,0
KeyNextPreset=0,0,0,0
KeyOverlay=113,0,1,0
KeyPreviousPreset=0,0,0,0
KeyReload=0,0,0,0
KeyScreenshot=44,0,0,0
KeyWireframe=0,0,0,0

 

 

Edited November 7, 2020 by patrikmore

[AnsgarA 9]

Dear patrikmore,

thanks a lot for fast reaction - I will try that and give a response how/if it works or where i stuck.

"Nothing to do: I'm looking for planeunlimited.exe"
I sure have it and you could get it direct vial private mail.... but I also found it official here in the library from our beloved old FU3 friend Jon Point:
=> https://library.avsim.net/zipdiver.php?DLID=29262

Pls. notice that it will start i.e. unter my Win7 64bit but not work properly if you try to open a file. May be it runs in Win7 32bit direct. So run it in "WinXP compatibility mode" or under a VM-machine with XP, Win2000 to didn't get an unusual message like:
File ..\dlgcore.cpp Line45  - cancel, repeat, ignore etc.

Enjoy and successful trimms 😎

Ansgar

P.S.: I just noticed that the readme.txt of planeunlimited is missing in there. That will make it easier...
So here is the old original of Markus (Brunner?):
***********************
Hi all,
here is a step by step instruction for the use of "planeunlimited"
To work with flight models, you need:
a.) The Tools LG has released, available at AVSIM
b.) Gideon P.'s ResViewer version 1.31
c.) Planeunlimited, available at AVSIM
INSTRUCTIONS

1. Open resviewer and select the RES file of the plane where you whant to get the physics from.
2. Search the file item wich contains the Resource ID 2130. For the cub it is file number 139.
3. Select Export Multiple from the menu
4. Change the path to an empty folder and select the files 139 to the end (9 files at all)
5. Save the files whitout converssion
6. Start planeunlimited
7. Select File-> Open
8. Find the file with the ending _2130 and open it.
9. Select Save and save it as plane.txt -> Thats youre file for working with
10. After that you can work on youre plane.txt file for changing the physics.
11. To convert the TXT file back to a RES file you need the LG resttool
12. Start stripres, from the Command line, with "stripres plane.txt plane.seg" Stripres remove comments and other things from the txt file
13. Then start restool, from the Command line, with "restool plane.seg"
14. The resfile is reinserted with the ResViewer in the orginal ResFile, you must use Import -> Flight Model

Thats all
Bye Markus
***********************

Edited November 7, 2020 by AnsgarA
added readme.txt for planeunlimited.exe

[patrikmore 10]

Thank you Ansgar.

I finally found fu3_tools file on AVSIM. https://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=lgfu3&DLID=29262

I wanted to "cheat" with the Fokker. I do not like the Fokker behavior tumbling to the nose on landing. At this moment taxi on airport has to be done pulling the stick, nose up. And landing... maintain 1200 RPM on final, have to keep a bit of throttle, not 60% like the Beechjet, but yes. Fly horizontally near the ground to lose power, and on touchdown nose up!

[AnsgarA 9]

Hello patrikmore,

if it is only the landing behavior this has sure to do with the mass x-positoning of the plane and the "wheels x-position" and their "drag" effects. Also the foil effects of the elevators effect this (but if you tweak there also the flight behavior is effected heafy).
So I recommend you should look in the plane.txt file to the x-pos of the wheels and the drag values to tweak there around a bit. You also can check if the positioning in general is fitting to the reality - simply make a sample drawing in excel or so to see if the x-values of body to wheels position can be realistic. And after this is the case tweak their drags around the y-axle.

According to your very helpful above tips I got reshade and Dgvoodoo2 to run in Win7 now. The reason was: working without the DDFix and using only the 3 files of Dgvoodoo2 as you wrote.
Also FU3 is starting with that ddraw.dll again now without adimin rights for me also. So I can tune and see how it works and try improvements in FU3 under Win7 64.
Thanks a lot to you!

Ansgar