1 minute ago, Wobbie said:

This is probably the most ironic thread....

Asking Avsimmers for advice?  

No. This is irony. I now am less certain and am expanding the request to FSX vs P3Dv5 (stipulating I’m not interested in MSFS AT ALL) in the FSX forum and, oh, yeah, I really want to use my CAPTAIN SIM airliners. (Is that still guaranteed to get heavy flack?) Actually, that’s not irony, and neither is asking advice, because it’s like dinner and a show!

 

2 minutes ago, Tim_Capps said:

I was a Navy JAG during Desert Storm, NAS Sigonella, but rode a circuit reaching from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Gulf. I got to visit a lot of ships—mostly in liberty ports—but got under way just enough for fun. No one had any idea what to do with on O-3 lawyer. One time I got the Commodore’s suite, it otherwise being unused. Another time I got kicked off USS Wasp by the Commodore with whom I got into a mutually alcohol-involved argument over the case in Toulon. (Moral: it may be your ship, but in the end it’s my case, heh heh.) What I did in the war was in Manama, mainly to do with USS Samuel Gompers (since target practice) and some interesting cases involving a certain no-longer-in-effect ground for adesps that had its diversions. The only bar story I can relate here is one that ended with two lawyers being removed by firefighters from one that was filled with smoke.

Oh my.....now you've gone and done it Tim!!....You went sea-story with another Sailor...you know how this is gonna end! 🙂

Boy do I have a bar story from Manama....more on that later (may even have to be another post!)

Anyway....spent 6 months in Manama twice during the Iran/Iraq war (84-89ish).  I was with the Desert Ducks...and not sure if they still had a Det there when you were there, but when I was with them we flew this old crate:

Anyway, Loved Sig whenever I had a chance to visit....but your engine maintenance facility there needed work back then.  They sent us 7 bad engines in a row and we were down for almost a month (COMIDEASTFOR (2 Star) was NOT happy he could not fly out to his flagship and had to motorboat out there).  Anyway I digress, hehe.

Short version of my bar story.  For those who are interested, Manama is the capital City (only city?) in the tiny island nation of Bahrain just off the east coast of Saudi Arabia.

Its so close in fact they built a causeway so Saudi's could drive there.   Why would they want to drive there you may ask?  Was it an exotic island filled with palm trees and resorts?  No....it was an island of desert sand.   Hehe...Tim knows exactly why they went there. 🙂    At least when I was there (and I'm sure it still is)...it was the only country in the Middle East where you can drink.  Also....it was one of the most westernized of all....meaning...McDonalds, KFC, you name it.  Why is this relevant? ....Hey...I'm a Sailor....I'm setting up the scene, so you can appreciate the whole experience.

They had JUST opened a Pizza Hut there, and my fellow sailors wanted to check it out naturally.   It was nice, more so than you see in the States anymore...like a real restaurant...with tablecloths and everything.   Tablecloths....hmmm....why would he mention that?   Well...if you know Pizza Hut's colors and branding, they have checkerboard red & white, which was exactly how they very nice tablecloths were patterned. 

Why is that relevant?  Well...with a few beers in us, we started to get silly like most young sailors do.  One of us had the great idea of wrapping that red&white tablecloth around their head and start dancing around.
I feel here that instead of explaining why this was probably not in the best decorum of international cultural respect....I'll just post a link:

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Saudi-royals-favor-the-red-and-white-headdress

The proprietor handled the situation as best and as graciously as he could, but we were strongly encouraged never to return. 🙂

 

 

 

 

2 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

 

Oh my.....now you've gone and done it Tim!!....You went sea-story with another Sailor...you know how this is gonna end! 🙂

Boy do I have a bar story from Manama....more on that later (may even have to be another post!)

Anyway....spent 6 months in Manama twice during the Iran/Iraq war (84-89ish).  I was with the Desert Ducks...and not sure if they still had a Det there when you were there, but when I was with them we flew this old crate:

Anyway, Loved Sig whenever I had a chance to visit....but your engine maintenance facility there needed work back then.  They sent us 7 bad engines in a row and we were down for almost a month (COMIDEASTFOR (2 Star) was NOT happy he could not fly out to his flagship and had to motorboat out there).  Anyway I digress, hehe.

Short version of my bar story.  For those who are interested, Manama is the capital City (only city?) in the tiny island nation of Bahrain just off the east coast of Saudi Arabia.

Its so close in fact they built a causeway so Saudi's could drive there.   Why would they want to drive there you may ask?  Was it an exotic island filled with palm trees and resorts?  No....it was an island of desert sand.   Hehe...Tim knows exactly why they went there. 🙂    At least when I was there (and I'm sure it still is)...it was the only country in the Middle East where you can drink.  Also....it was one of the most westernized of all....meaning...McDonalds, KFC, you name it.  Why is this relevant? ....Hey...I'm a Sailor....I'm setting up the scene, so you can appreciate the whole experience.

They had JUST opened a Pizza Hut there, and my fellow sailors wanted to check it out naturally.   It was nice, more so than you see in the States anymore...like a real restaurant...with tablecloths and everything.   Tablecloths....hmmm....why would he mention that?   Well...if you know Pizza Hut's colors and branding, they have checkerboard red & white, which was exactly how they very nice tablecloths were patterned. 

Why is that relevant?  Well...with a few beers in us, we started to get silly like most young sailors do.  One of us had the great idea of wrapping that red&white tablecloth around their head and start dancing around.
I feel here that instead of explaining why this was probably not in the best decorum of international cultural respect....I'll just post a link:

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Saudi-royals-favor-the-red-and-white-headdress

The proprietor handled the situation as best and as graciously as he could, but we were strongly encouraged never to return. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Yes, I remember the Pizza Hut. And a bar with a couple of old expat British rockers, and I take full responsibility for the bad engines from Sig because I got blamed for everthing else. I got to fly in a Hawaiian Airlines DC-8 to Manama. Surreal. I caused an international incident that got me banned from Israel (well, my Marine client started it, and my zealous advocacy got the attention of the State Department). I got to fly in small twins, C-9s (there on a deserted tarmac with my stuff—it landed, got refueled, we boarded and off it went!) land on helo decks, and take off with little warning, hung over and without my stuff from Wasp... C130s, quite a bit of Alitalia’s of the day (mostly MD-80s). I never got the chance to do a COD landing on a carrier, though. Which brings me back to the topic of the best platform for flying MD-80s!

Hey @Tim_Capps here is a trick slighty new to the forums...at least since you last visited.

When you want to quote something within a post....just highlight then hover over the text...

Saves a lot of room in the thread for Squids like me who like to embellish my sea-stories with a lot of pics 🙂

 

Edited October 13, 20205 yr by Steve Dra

15 minutes ago, Steve Dra said:

And once Tim had P3d setup with his CS L1011 purring, but had not tweaked it yet...so he's at 10FPS.....he spends the next XX hours in that heII-hole we all affectionately call "Tweaking"....here is one of the dozens' of posts he'll probably encounter in his journey to get more than 30fps..

So you are telling me that no matter what my computer, I’m going to be getting much fewer FPS that I did with my Best Buy special 10 years ago? I’m not being snarky. It’s a legitimate question. I don’t want to buy a bunch of tweaking problems, or if I do, not a bunch of non-familiar ones. If that’s the truth, then it would seem to absolutely eliminate P3Dv5 from consideration. I hated spending more time wading through forums than flying.

4 hours ago, Steve Dra said:

While FSLabs has the market for the Bus in P3D....do you think they'll keep the dev ONLY in P3D

This doesn't matter. This thread is about what you'd want to use NOW to simulate airliners.

I find it likely that MSFS will be great for this in two years but again: I want to fly complex airliner addons now. 😉

And so does the person who started the thread.

 

People coming into this thread yelling "But MSFS!!!!!" are just totally missing the point (I'm not referring to you.). 🙂

Edited October 13, 20205 yr by flycln

11 minutes ago, Tim_Capps said:

So you are telling me that no matter what my computer, I’m going to be getting much fewer FPS that I did with my Best Buy special 10 years ago? I’m not being snarky. It’s a legitimate question. I don’t want to buy a bunch of tweaking problems, or if I do, not a bunch of non-familiar ones. If that’s the truth, then it would seem to absolutely eliminate P3Dv5 from consideration. I hated spending more time wading through forums than flying.

@Rob_Ainscough is a much better authority to answer that than me.

I just want to say that no matter how much horsepower we throw at sims....proper configuration of the software (and hardware) is just a fact of life.

How much of that actually constitutes "tweaking", is up to the individual's concepts of where good, foundational configuration ends and "I wonder if I change this will I get 2 more FPS" starts. 😉

 

Edited October 13, 20205 yr by Steve Dra

2 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Actually I've installed MSFS dozens of times during the Tech Alpha because many of those same issues you and many others had ... I even provided a solution for the Tech Alpha folks after I figured out how to get it to work.  And to this day MSFS still doesn't like to be installed in anything other than it's default location (problematic).  The "release" went smoothly, but was still a 5 hours process from install to my first flight in the released version.

If he's tweaking P3D because of 10 FPS, then that's only going to make things worse not better (all my tweaks use more VRAM and/or will reduce FPS NOT increase it).  I haven't "needed" to tweak MSFS and I haven't "needed" to tweak P3D to meet my 30 FPS threshold ... on my "normal" working installation of P3D I have two tweaks (TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 and MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.000000), none of which improve performance and both of which increase VRAM usage.  I'm not aware of any P3D "tweaks" that can bring P3D from 10 FPS to 30 FPS ... all my P3D tweaks are about increased visual fidelity for terrain in the distance via using more VRAM.  MSFS tweaks such as LoDRadius is to get MSFS distance rendering to be better at the cost of VRAM and FPS.  Please do share these tweaks in P3D that will get me from 10 FPS to 30 FPS?

I'd recommend Tim NOT do anything with tweaks in P3D, adjust the graphics setting to meet his FPS desires, same thing I/we all do with MSFS and XP.  

Yep agree, and Tim already indicated he doesn't want to do MSFS so not really sure why MSFS entered into the discussion at all?

I would not use FSX for complex aircraft because of the 32bit memory addressable limit ... one will have to constantly fight the OOM battle in FSX with any complex aircraft (it can be done but that will require lots of adjustments).

The only choices are P3D or XP11.  XP11 does a good job also but is missing in some of the complexity P3D offers to aircraft designers.  So this leaves P3D as the best option for "his desires". 

The Maddog has been consistently updated also, including P3D V5 support.

Are PC's difficult to keep "healthy"?  Yes absolutely, even more so when folks Overclock and do all kinds of other strange things to their PC.  I'll freely admit the PC is not for the technology timid ... how many PC users will know how to answer the question "Do you want to completely remove the selected application and all of its components"?  In so cases the correct answer is "Yes", in other cases it's "No".  How's and end users supposed to know the correct answer?  Or when a user gets "Error: 0x80240FFF" when trying to do a Check for Updates under Win10 ... massively unhelpful from Microsoft ... as are the recommendations to wipe your OS and re-install or run a "repair" ... yikes!  It makes one wonder if this is all part of Microsoft's plan to get everyone off PC's and onto a "Surface" or "XBOX".

And yes it was a pleasure to meet you in Las Vegas and I hope we can meet again in San Diego in 2021 for FSExpo.

Cheers, Rob.

Yeah...I get carried away in the moment...and 10 to 30 FPS is, in the words of my favorite geek "Bupkis"....I apologize for the complete exaggeration, and I don't want to scare you @Tim_Capps away from P3d with my last "Doom and Gloom" post. 🙂

Just look at my post with the pics of the Maddog and PMDG 747 in all her bare-metal goodness....remember those were in V4.5...not even 5!...and my comment about your footware. 😉  The path to that may be a small journey, but if you're passionate about flying heavy metal in a flightism...your journey will be well worth it.  Make Rob help you through some of it!  (You'll probably encounter some of his very helpful posts here by accident in that journey if he doesn't point them out to you) 🤣

As hard as is may seem...I was a pretty diehard P3D'r in my day....at least enough to paint the heck outt'a every thing that flew (that interested me anyway, hehe).

Sadly, those days are over pretty much (at least as the volume I used to put out), due to both health reasons and burnout.  I have moments of inspiration, but they are fleeting. 

@Tim_Capps.......Good luck Shipmate!  Anytime you want to share more Sea Stories, you know where to find me. (NOT in the Pizza Hut in Manama, LOL) 

 

Happy 245th Birthday of the United States Navy. My daughter modeling my mom’s (L) WWII WAVE uniform.

1 hour ago, Tim_Capps said:

I got to fly in a Hawaiian Airlines DC-8 to Manama

Sweet!   My last DC-8 flight was in a Delta with the big CFMs....were you in a "stove pipe" version?

1 hour ago, Tim_Capps said:

Which brings me back to the topic of the best platform for flying MD-80s!

Hands down P3d.  There are some outstanding paints for her out there....if you're looking for Alitalia, there are several....hit the forums and FB page of Leonardo and go "shopping" for liveries.    
Brian T and I actually developed the metal maps for the paintkit and did a lot of detail work to make them easier for painters to use.   Although I was a freeware painter....thru the years, collaborating with Devs of these great products did have its "perks".   I can neither confirm nor deny if I acquired any free software in the process. 🙂 

1 hour ago, Tim_Capps said:

I never got the chance to do a COD landing on a carrier, though

Me either....but I did get a chance to be hoisted to and from the deck of a smallboy. 🙂  That was an experience....sliding out of a helo door...and in that brief second thinking "Is this horse collar on right?....are the hydraulics gonna fail when they are hoisting me down?, is that thin cable gonna hold me?, is that guy with the grounding stick gonna' light me up by 'accident' when I swing by him?" Hehe....it was pretty much over before I could think of any more catastrophes. 🤣 

Edited October 13, 20205 yr by Steve Dra

30 minutes ago, Tim_Capps said:

My daughter modeling my mom’s (L) WWII WAVE uniform.

Wow....that is one of the most patriotic' things I've seen in a while!  Whenever I hear of WACS and WAVES, I wanna hear every detail of their experiences.  They gave so much to the war effort that many have no clue of.   Please, if you feel inclined to share her stories....I would love to hear them.   Not here, but please IM me and fill me in....just one of the probably many great stories she has!

I come from a family that is also rich in service in the military.  Just one story....just one I promise since its related to the subject (Women's service).  My step sis enlisted and when thru all the ranks up to Chief.  Then made Warrant and was the first person to make officer in our family....and happened to be the only female in our family to serve.  Although we served during the same time, we never met in a military situation where I had to salute her (she was my much younger sis and while I would have been proud to do so...the natural kidding we did back and forth made it fun to rib her when I could....never had to call her ma'am, LOL).

Perhaps the proudest moment was when she made Chief in Hawaii, my Dad, a retired Chief, who also made Chief in Hawaii, only 50 years earlier....had the honor of attending her initiation and pinning ceremony...in the same Chief's club.  Said it was one of the proudest moments in his life.

Edited October 13, 20205 yr by Steve Dra

26 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

And now I'm hungry for pizza ... thanks!

Cheers, Rob.

 

Hehe....even so many years ago....I remember the Pizza in the middle east is NOT the same as your corner-store pizzeria.  Even though it should have been standard recipe from Corporate....it was most definitely not!  Of course...I think we went there literally the day they opened so them may have been still figuring things out. 🙂

 

1 hour ago, flycln said:

This doesn't matter. This thread is about what you'd want to use NOW to simulate airliners.

I find it likely that MSFS will be great for this in two years but again: I want to fly complex airliner addons now. 😉

And so does the person who started the thread.

 

People coming into this thread yelling "But MSFS!!!!!" are just totally missing the point (I'm not referring to you.). 🙂

Hehe.....agree.

But if you followed the military parodies in this thread....me and @SierraHotel were the Marines walking into a Sailor bar and shouting "Squids suck!" 😆  (not really, but we're interlopers, coming here to cause havoc!) 🙂

 

7 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I don't remember any Pizza in the middle east, probably after my time (60's and 70's) ... I do remember Chapati from stone ovens on the side of the road/dirt, Chicken tikka, and lamb during my time in Bahrain ... the real spicey stuff not this watered down Americanized/Englander stuff  🙂

Cheers, Rob.

Yeah this was the mid-eighties.  And the causeway wasn't even built yet (they were building it when I was there in '85).  I was looking to see if pizza took off in Bahrain...looks like it has...and some restaurants even don't know the risk they take by making certain tablecloth pattern decisions.🤣   Just one group of Sailors in the right conditions....and these tablecloths may cause an international incident. 🙂

 

18 hours ago, Tim_Capps said:

So you are telling me that no matter what my computer, I’m going to be getting much fewer FPS that I did with my Best Buy special 10 years ago? I’m not being snarky. It’s a legitimate question. I don’t want to buy a bunch of tweaking problems, or if I do, not a bunch of non-familiar ones. If that’s the truth, then it would seem to absolutely eliminate P3Dv5 from consideration. I hated spending more time wading through forums than flying.

No...one of the good things about the evolution of P3D is the migration away from Tweaktown.  I doubt I have half a dozen changes to the default config files in P3D v4 and v5, none of which I would consider essential.  It's far less complex than all the massaging we used to do with FSX to get it to play nice.

The biggest improvements that P3D brought to the ESP family of simulators, IMHO, are migration to 64-bit code that eliminated the 32-bit memory constraint that was more and more frequently blowing up FSX sessions with OOM crashes as addons grew in size and complexity, upgrading the graphics engine to DX11 (DX12 in v5) which enables the power of modern GPUs to be leveraged far beyond the limitations we had with DX9 in FS2004/FSX, and recoding more and more of the simulation core to utilize threaded CPU parallelism to take advantage of the advances in multi-core processors.