Trolling Through SimMarket P3D Took Longer

[Tim_Capps 474]

My insomnia is SimMarket's blessing. What I noticed last night is it took a lot longer to troll through the P3Dv5 products. I picked up about $50 bucks worth of odds and ends and left some reviews of things I had already bought. There were a few big name releases, but what I'm noticing is a lot of cheap airports the big devs wouldn't touch, especially Central and South America and Africa. I can't resist a 7 Euro airport. Besides, how often am I going to fly into Honduras, or Panama, or a regional Brazilian airport? (Not to say there are not some fantastic South American airports I have. Best flight I ever had was a 737-200 on the FD from Buenos Aires to landing in a blinding snowstorm in Ushuaia.) Weird how the devs who have publicly written off P3D are still selling products to us, too. My point is, unless you believe LM is just going to decide it lost a videogame war and pull the plug on P3D, I think we'll continue to see new scenery and maybe some developing confidence and ambition among some newcomers who find they have some room to breathe now. Major airplane releases? Not so sure about that, but I can't think of anything I want that isn't already available. If there's one thing I wish I did have it would be a P3Dv5 Fiumicino. Maybe Paulo Ricardo will do a Galeão International for Rio flights (Sao Paulo is already well-covered.) A good MD-11 would be nice. (Skysim doesn't seem to be it, but I could be wrong.) Oh, and, yeah, a 7 Euro airport looks pretty much like a 7 Euro airport but is a whole lot better than the default, which makes all the difference to me. It doesn't take much to feel like I'm landing in a real place versus the same place in a different part of the world.

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

33 minutes ago, Tim_Capps said:

troll through the P3Dv5 products.

Did you mean scroll? Must have, I don't figure you as a troll. 🙂

[Tim_Capps 474]

1 hour ago, Ron Attwood said:

Did you mean scroll? Must have, I don't figure you as a troll.

Not above trolling in a good cause. But, no, I meant "troll" in the sense of peacefully dragging a baited hook behind a slow-moving boat to see what you find. I don't think I spent $15 on any one thing, which meant installing sort of like getting that Christmas stocking full of cheap stuff. Can't say I feel disappointed in any of it. I rarely have buyer's remorse, although there have been a couple of "wow, that looks cool" items that were too pricey for impulse buys in the last month that I regret, at least for now. I think we've all earned a little retail therapy.

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

Gothcha. 🙂

[Tim_Capps 474]

I guess it's SimMarket baiting its hooks with tasty new P3Dv5 treats and seeing what I'll bite on. I've been installing and I can't believe the little gems that are becoming available on the cheap. If there's a drawback it's that installation is not always straightforward and English is not the native language of some of the developers. Some scenery has no installer at all and  you have to add it manually. But I learned. So far haven't run into any problems I couldn't resolve on my own. It's also kind of like going to a flea market and finding a bargain on something everyone else has overlooked.

[Bob Scott 7,704]

Flightbeam/Jetstream's LFBO (Toulouse) and Taxi2Gate's KMCO v2 (Orlando) were this week's prized acquisitions here. 

Also bought an African scenery, FSCGAA's DIYO (Yamassoukro, Ivory Coast), which was advertised as v5-ready (it's not) and was generally underwhelming even on sale.

As always, there's good ones, and not so good ones.

[Patco Lch 1,459]

Subscribed to Navigraph Charts this week myself. Very enjoyable. I have long had an ARAC subscription and used Avilasoft EFB but the Navigraph Jeppesen charts are really nice and fun to use. I also bought a Thrustmaster Airbus A320 HOTAS for the express purpose to use as a steering tiller for my PMDG and Leonardo birds. I’m also toying with getting the FS Lab at some point and learning the Airbus. So yea, there’s still a lot of adventure and things to discover and spend bucks on in P3D. Some developers might consider there are plenty of credit cards yet to be stroked on P3D.

Edited October 6, 2021 by Patco Lch

[Tim_Capps 474]

11 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

Subscribed to Navigraph Charts

I've used that for a while and it's one of my essentials, especially for long hauls. I use it on my iPad. I only recently learned (duh) that there's a Windows version. Since I have been flying older airplanes with INS lately, I learned I can manually plan a course with nine waypoints and save it. Then it's easy to copy and paste the names and longitude and latitude into a text document and print it out for the punchfest. Much easier (and more fun) than just generating a normal flight plan and removing most of the waypoints. (Yeah, there's always a cheat to load a regular flight plan, but once you know your way around the CIVA, it's not a big deal, and I'll eventually tackle adding waypoints after my nine are exhausted as well as DME updating.) If I want to fly a a STAR I can usually manage with radio navigation. Charts gives me a visual choice and even an overlay on the map to make it less dicey. Most of the time I just rely on ATC vectors, though, and use the runway approach chart, again, overlaid on the map. After the planning, I'm on the iPad for all that.

11 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

I also bought a Thrustmaster Airbus A320 HOTAS for the express purpose to use as a steering tiller for my PMDG and Leonardo birds. I’m also toying with getting the FS Lab at some point and learning the Airbus.

I just got a CH Quad for the Aerosoft DC-8, and programmed everything through FSUIPC. Wow. Having a handful of throttle levers and a reverser detent is so different from using my dinky single throttle on my CH Yoke. And more buttons than you can shake a stick at! Let's use the autopilot! So we'll first engage the yaw damper, then the servos--that's two buttons right there. A lot easier than fiddling around in the VC. Just wish i could figure out how to map the VS and mode selectors, but that seems to be a no-go. That DC-8 has become my favorite and is quite a handful, It's a great plane, but will kill you if you don't pay attention (sadly realistic) and fly by the numbers. In cruise, it becomes a "fuel management simulator." They did a good job on the engineer's panel. And I assigned an axis to a tiller 😉 Don't know about you, but I've yet to develop the touch to avoid careening around the airport. So, yeah, software drives hardware sales and vice-versa.

I bet there's ten guys on this forum who spend as much as a thousand average MSFS players. Something for devs to consider, at least after consulting the actuarial tables. Old guys with deep pockets will be around for a few more years. I love the Leonardo Maddog, but find I just don't have time to keep up on it or the FSLabs Airbus. Besides, real men do it with needles 😄. (That would be a great bumper sticker for my next traffic stop.) In a moment of madness I did consider adding an Aerosoft bus last night due to some fond memories.and thinking it might be less intimidating than FSLabs'. But, like I need another jet, and I'm not really the bus sort. The next airplane I buy will probably be A2A's Connie.

Now I just have to get up the gumption to map my other airplanes, including my props, which, of course, gets a lot more complicated.

13 hours ago, w6kd said:

FSCGAA's DIYO (Yamassoukro, Ivory Coast), which was advertised as v5-ready (it's not) and was generally underwhelming even on sale.

Almost bit on that, but decided Dakar, Nairobi and Cape Town were enough for Africa (I miss the old African Airstrips Adventures) and I have the Monrovia airport, too, which is close to the one you mentioned.. Sorry you got a cropper. I felt the same way about Project Max's rendition of the infamous Toncontin International at Tegucigalpa, not because of the airport per se, but because the surrounding area is flat out ugly, and there's a bad mix of (too little) autogen and flat building textures even after making sure the LC was below the airport. I'll reach out the dev about this, but for 7 euros, it's hard to complain.

At least if  you're disappointed, w6kd, the price doesn't sting too much. I agree the pics on the SimMarket page aren't very inspiring. I never tried FSCGAA--just looked at Nunavut when I was binging on Ice Pilots. But wasn't impressed, and was never really going to slog all the way up there from Yellow Knife in a C-46. Still can't believe no one did the Ice Pilots airports, even as freeware. My wife still teases me about "make sure you have your Herman Nelson."  (She's a bit humor-impaired, so the jokes always don't make sense, or do, in some wildly unexpected way.)

I did get the Cape Town city for 9 euros and was pleased, as much for the spectacular landscape as the city. Can't say if the soccer stadium really looks like a frosted doughnut from the air. As for the rest...

WingSim has a couple of Columbian regional airports that are beautiful little highly recommended gems for the low, low price of 7 and 12 euros: SBTT and SKUC. Lots of weeds and custom trees, some beautiful azaleas or something, equipment, and even birds. Good attention to detail and decent textures. I think they are a steal, and nicely situated for shorter flights from PKSim's Bogota, or hops across the border. Santiago Perez Quiroz in Arauca is on the Venezuelan border. Tabatinga is twice as far from Bogota to the south, right where Columbia, Brazil and Peru share a border. It's roughly the same distance to PKSim's Lima, and a very short hop to Coronel FAP Francisco Secada Vignetta International Airport Iquitos  by  Low End Studios (great name), and not too far from Flightbeam's Quito. SierraSim's Alcantari SLAL was another steal at 9 euros for a very high-altitude Bolivian airport: 10,210 feet! It's in a sweet spot about half-way down the west coast of South America. I loved the old Viru Viru airport with the fish hook approach I usually managed to mess up. Sadly, didn't make it into P3Dv5.

I like South American flying because there's surprisingly good and cheap coverage by airports with a lot of exotic (to me) atmosphere. Also, it's not Taxi Simulator. Give me a short drive to one long runway instead a bus tour of the Netherlands--whoops, I mean Schiphol--any day :-) I got bored with the U.S. and Europe and South America has renewed my interest.

CentralSim's SABE in Buenos Aires is good, so I spent five Euros for SimAddon's Dynamic Lights and Rain Effects. Okay if you like SABE. Wet, Eh, that's what happens at 3 a.m. Now I did pick up their MPPA Panama and was a little disappointed. It seems unfair to complain that a 12 euro product looks like it's worth 12 euros, but there you go. MPPA doesn't get much use, and it could have been this sprawling former U.S. Air Force base that is probably not maintained to its former standards. A lot of buildings using the exact same textures just seems lazy to me and is the tower really stuck in a dense woods so you can barely find it? But it's not like we're spoiled for choice in Central America. I somehow picked up SierraSim's MHLM La Mesa International for 9 euros, which is a great bargain with moving jetways and nice detail. I see it's 16 now and if you want to add Honduras to your itinerary, it's probably worth that. I know I've plugged Paulo Ricardos's Brazil sceneries before, but they're another great deal with lots and lots of work put into them for the price. Add TropicSim's SBGR (19 euros and worth it) and you've got the perfect international airport for Brazil. Surprised there's no GIG, so Sao Paulo's as close as you're getting to Rio. (Viracopos is even farther away, and mainly cargo I think, but another sprawling Paulo Ricardo epic.)

Almost bit on SimStarter, but the interface looked complicated and the ad copy was so dense with all the features it looked way beyond me.

I should probably learn how much a euro is. And buy now before the dollar tanks.

[Patco Lch 1,459]

5 hours ago, Tim_Capps said:

I bet there's ten guys on this forum who spend as much as a thousand average MSFS players. Something for devs to consider, at least after consulting the actuarial tables. Old guys with deep pockets will be around for a few more years. I love the Leonardo Maddog, but find I just don't have time to keep up on it or the FSLabs Airbus. Besides, real men do it with needles 😄. (That would be a great bumper sticker for my next traffic stop.) In a moment of madness I did consider adding an Aerosoft bus last night due to some fond memories.and thinking it might be less intimidating than FSLabs'. But, like I need another jet, and I'm not really the bus sort. The next airplane I buy will probably be A2A's Connie.

Tim, you will really enjoy A2A Connie being an old school flier. It comes with a study level and I mean study FE panel. Learning to start using the inertia fly wheel starter and all that process involves then maintaining fuel balance and keeping the engines happy is as much fun and challenging as flying the bird. A good flight engineer must have been a valuable commodity in those days. Reminds me of when I was in the grocery route sale business it was said the meat and produce market managers made or broke a grocery store. The store manager was the boss but he was basically a glorified stocker, it was the market guys that had unique skills and kept the customers coming back. I'm sure that dynamic must have been at play in the old complex props. Anyway there's a virtual FE that will handle the panel for you if you prefer. The graphics are not exactly up to present PBR standards but there are dozens of liveries to be found on line and even cockpits textures to match. Haven't used it for a while myself but the Connie is loads of fun and challenging and can be humbling.         

Edited October 6, 2021 by Patco Lch

[cowpatz 243]

7 hours ago, Tim_Capps said:

I've used that for a while and it's one of my essentials, especially for long hauls. I use it on my iPad. I only recently learned (duh) that there's a Windows version. Since I have been flying older airplanes with INS lately, I learned I can manually plan a course with nine waypoints and save it. Then it's easy to copy and paste the names and longitude and latitude into a text document and print it out for the punchfest. Much easier (and more fun) than just generating a normal flight plan and removing most of the waypoints. (Yeah, there's always a cheat to load a regular flight plan, but once you know your way around the CIVA, it's not a big deal, and I'll eventually tackle adding waypoints after my nine are exhausted as well as DME updating.) If I want to fly a a STAR I can usually manage with radio navigation. Charts gives me a visual choice and even an overlay on the map to make it less dicey. Most of the time I just rely on ATC vectors, though, and use the runway approach chart, again, overlaid on the map. After the planning, I'm on the iPad for all that.

 

Do you use the Automatic Data Entry Unit (ADEU) for entering you flight plans? Makes it a little less tedious than manual entry.
I have to admit that I haven't used it in P3DV4+ but if the CIVA unit works then it probably does to. It would be possible to use a flightplanner like Simbrief and then export it in a .pln format that the Convertor can use to convert to the format that CIVA uses. It sounds complex but in reality is very quick and less error prone than manual entry.

[Tim_Capps 474]

14 hours ago, cowpatz said:

Do you use the Automatic Data Entry Unit (ADEU) for entering you flight plans?

The INS in the Aerosoft DC-8 I'm currently wearing out does have an interesting feature where you make an airway flightplan plus a VOR flight plan, both IFR. Then you pick out waypoints until you've got nine in each flightplan. The airway flightplan can be loaded into the INS as the actual route. The VOR plan is (clever. this) also loaded, but is used only for DME updating. The Captain Sim L1011 INS works conventionally but will take any old flightplan with no limits on waypoints. I might have clarified that when I say "CIVA" I'm using it in the generic sense (I believe it was commonly called that) and not the famous add-on many of us have used. The ADEU sounds interesting, but using the remote function it isn't too tedious. I'm actually finding the the modern FMS more baffling and tedious. The older I get, I think I'm going backwards in sim-time!

[Tim_Capps 474]

17 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

Tim, you will really enjoy A2A Connie being an old school flier.

I'm thinking I'll need another CH Quad for four props!

[Patco Lch 1,459]

3 hours ago, Tim_Capps said:

I'm thinking I'll need another CH Quad for four props!

Actually the props are synchronized and prop speed changed with an up off down electric toggle switch so one axis for prop speed works or even a button. If you want to do it from the FE station you can use your mouse for everything. I use my 747 quad for manifold pressure and mount my old ch throttle quad on the desk in front for extra axis and switches. Not essential though. I haven’t tried it but seems I saw where others have programmed axis through fsuipc  to the fuel tank valves. 

I read recently on the Constellation the pilot rare to never touches the throttles but calls settings such as “increase one inch,back 1/2 inch” etc and the FE handles the setting. This was on Capital Airline back in the early sixties.

Edited October 7, 2021 by Patco Lch

[SimeonWilbury 220]

23 hours ago, Tim_Capps said:

I might have clarified that when I say "CIVA" I'm using it in the generic sense (I believe it was commonly called that) and not the famous add-on many of us have used.

If I remember rightly the name for that model of INS was the Delco Carousel (though I don't know of any nicknames per say)

On a slightly off-topic note, one navigation system I would be curious to see implemented in some form would be the old 'Omega' radio navigation system. It relied on 8 ground based aids globally and used very low frequency radio beams to judge the distance of the beacons to work out your position. It was I believe one of the contemporary alternatives to the Delco; the VC10 used by the Sultan of Oman as a private transport (and now on display at Brooklands in the UK) had at least 1 OMEGA unit (or similar) fitted in the flight deck when I visited.

I think the Soviet/Russian equivalent has been simulated on aircraft like the ProjectTupolev Tu-154 but my lack of aptitude in working the Russian-language flightdeck and lack of v4/v5 compatibility meant I never got round to learning it.

Edited October 8, 2021 by SimeonWilbury

[Tim_Capps 474]

4 hours ago, SimeonWilbury said:

one navigation system I would be curious to see implemented in some form would be the old 'Omega' radio navigation system.

Fligh1 / Coolsky MD-80 “Classic” (works fine in v5.2) has it and Captain Sim’s late lamented 707 did too. I don’t think it got too much use in the Douglas, though, and somehow it seems weird on a non-long-haul airplane so I never invested the effort to learn it (special flight plans). It’s part of the MegaPack from Flight1 that has the excellent old steam gauge DC-9 and the above-mentioned “Classic” plus “Professional” (transitional glass like the Maddog) MD-80s, which are a bit more graphically dated inside but all of them are well done and lot of fun. The 707 was a blast, though! The antenna in Africa is (or was) the tallest structure on the continent. Long after it was abandoned people were climbing the thing. One was a wire stretched across a fjord. The last one operating was (is?) in North Dakota or somesuch and used to communicate with submarines. That short era of amazing new navigation systems is indeed one of the attractions of flying in the period.