How much would you compromise to fly your favourite acft?

[SimeonWilbury 199]

I can only really manage one Sim at a time, mainly due to hard-drive size constraints.

I abandoned FSX and the 32-bit Concorde so I could fly the PMDG 747-400 in 64-bit P3D, I don't regret that as I really enjoy the 747, it's my most flown aircraft by a good margin. Big reason I haven't moved from P3D is that there is yet to be a 747 of PMDG quality or higher on MSFS - the closest alternative would be the Felis 747 Classic on XPlane, but deep though my affection is for the classic it hasn't been enough to convince me.

That and the presence of the MD80 and the 737NG gives me no reason to move off P3D at present, I don't sim enough at the moment to really justify any substantial investment beyond my current stock of addons and scenery regardless.

The Concorde and TFDI MD-11 being released for P3D will probably add to my reluctance to move Sim, at least until there is a 747-400 of suitable vintage available for newer sims. Maybe if PMDG release their 744 for MSFS and the strange mythical beast that is Just Flight's 747 Classic finally gets released after the P3D version was cancelled I might be tempted to move over.

Edited March 15 by SimeonWilbury

[beechcaptain 98]

I guess I am fortunate in that all of my favorite aircraft (PMDG, A2A, MilViz, RealAir, FlySimWare, Carenado, to name a few) and scenery work in P3Dv5.3 on my modest system.  i5-4690K CPU @ 3.50GHz oc to 4.0GHz, 32 GB Ram, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 12 GB vram, 1 TB SSD, 1 TB HDD, 4 TB extHDD that contains photo scenery (megasceneryearth lower 48). 

I'm staying with what I have now, unless by some miracle, I can ever afford a new pc capable of running MSFS 2020 + wide variety of addons.  Nuff said. 😉

[Patco Lch 1,377]

This is an enjoyable thread. I often consider reinstalling FSX-Steam just to buy the cool looking A2A COS Stratocruiser. I have a freeware C97 in P3DV5, but military variant only and of course not detailed like the a2a. The Strat is just quite expensive for such an old addon, but I have such a love for radial props. Have wanted that plane for years but held off for that reason. Also as has been mentioned that sweet Level D 767. Yet to be equaled in my opinion.   

[jimh 21]

I see my future with P3D 5.3, or perhaps the next version, solely for my choice of aircraft and navigation.  I used to enjoy planning and flying PMDG aircraft, but I'm not as sharp as I used to be (I'll be 90 very soon).

I'm happy now flying, either a B120, or a Falcon 50, each fitted with an RXP GTN 750, with my flight planning done with IdealFlight Pro.  This combo takes me anywhere I want to go, suits my waning capabilites, and when I don my VR headset, kind of allows me to take the base sim for granted.

Cheers, Jim

[Ray Proudfoot 8,534]

What gives me such pleasure in flying Concorde - even the 32-bit version - is many things that are taken for granted in Boeing / Airbus aircraft require attention in Concorde.

Only 9 waypoints can be stored in the INS. So you have to remember to load new segments at the appropriate time. No need to type lat / lon. Just load a file. There’s no warning this needs doing. You have to be alert. Fortunately with waypoints hundreds of miles apart this only needs doing twice on hops like EGLL-KJFK.

Then there’s the fuel management. Optional of course but if you do it yourself keeping the CG between the forward and aft stops is extremely important. The warning klaxons will ping if it’s outside limits.

When Mach 2 is reached you might relax. But what if the overspeed warning goes off? That’s happened to me a few times. It’s when the temperature on the nose has exceeded 127°C. You have to slow down until cooler air is reached. Hence why the upper air temperatures need monitoring. There’s an instrument to check ISA DEV. That’s deviation from a standard temperature. Negative numbers are good. Positive ones less so.

Then the descent. There’s no VNAV of course so no ToD point. The ceiling of FL600 is only reached when in the tropics so the aircraft is slowly drifting up until the point comes where you have to start going down. You have to work out using tables when to start decelerating and descending. Get it wrong and you can be thousands of feet too high or too low.

But you can’t descend at Mach 2 so need to slow down first. The aircraft levels off and throttles are retarded to a fixed position at the calculated point. Once 350Kts IAS is achieved the descent starts and at Mach 1.5 the throttles are further retarded. The descent rate increases to 6000-8000 fpm all the way down to FL360 when you go subsonic and at FL100 the speed is reduced to 250kts and the visor / nose comes down for approach and landing at 160kts.

If all that sounds a bit daunting think of your flight times. JFK to Barbados today took me just over 2h 5m. In a subsonic it’s 4h 30m. 😁

Don’t forget you have one great advantage over real pilots. The pause button that will give you time to work out what needs doing. 😁

[shivers9 1,173]

What a very enjoyable thread. It is nice to hear from all the folks who are hanging in there with P3d or older versions. The longer I wait for V6 or whatever from LM, the more I find that I enjoy V5.3. I have become a real fan of the Vertx DA-62 and as time passes I am just more impressed with what a great job the developer did with that add-on. It is just a pleasure to fly either by hand or using the autopilot. Ray Proudfoot mentioned a while back that he used the Aivlasoft EFB with it for flight planning and sure enough....it is great stuff! Thanks Ray!!

Like many have said the ground friction bug causes some problems with high power getting the thing rolling but other wise pretty sweet if you are into GA. I did run across a nice piece of software called GroundAssist for Microsoft Flight Simulator X and Lockheed Martin Prepar3D Copyright © 2012-2020 William Ruppel. You can get it here in the AVSIM Library. I some how missed it until I stumbled into it this morning. It is worth a look if you get tired of fighting with taxi speeds and throttle dancing with the light twins.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,534]

35 minutes ago, shivers9 said:

Ray Proudfoot mentioned a while back that he used the Aivlasoft EFB with it for flight planning and sure enough....it is great stuff! Thanks Ray!!

You have probably found this yourself but if you have entered altitude constraints in the DA62 plan they are removed if you change the plan in EFB.

It’s a brilliant aircraft and I hope the developer will find the enthusiasm to tweak the installer so I don’t need to add v4 entries to the Registry to get it to run in v5.

[jcomm 5,462]

Well Ray,

as much as I opt flying Condorsoaring tasks instead of going for gorgeous looking scenery and the worst ever glider flight dynamics in any sim, or Aerowinx PSX 2d panels and extremely basic outside World views, because there's really no closer to a 744 simulation available for any other flightsim platform, and as well as I sometimes buy a monthly P3D license to run what I consider to be still the most complete / complex simulation of the A319/320 - FSLabs, unless one of these days I decide to spend a few more euros and go for an even more basic graphics/sounds/graphics wise Airlinetools A32x... and get a professional training tool.

It all depends on your choices and priorities, and mine are usually not compatible with graphically nice looking sims...

Ah! DCS World is an exception, OK, but I have promised myself I would do my best to stay away from War, in any form, including flight simulation...

Edited March 15 by cagarini

[C2615 298]

I bought QW757, CS757 and FF757.... but all of them are sort of compromised systemwise.....

But I guess I won't buy BB757 soon, as the online nature of MSFS is uncompromiseable for me.

 

Also One of the reason I bought new computer and moved out from my 10-year-old windows7 system are for iFly737MAX.

Edited March 16 by C2615

[vadriver 243]

3 hours ago, shivers9 said:

What a very enjoyable thread. It is nice to hear from all the folks who are hanging in there with P3d or older versions. The longer I wait for V6 or whatever from LM, the more I find that I enjoy V5.3.

sam & all

can't agree more with sam's.

as well as aircraft, i compromise as much for the "mature" addons for weather, planning, atc & traffic etc. that compliment the core sim "experience" .... & of course, the long list/history of fellow users ideas on control hardware use.

[UrgentSiesta 643]

Prepar3D was the compromise I made to fly favored aircraft.

At the time, P3D was looking and running better than X-Plane. The addons below made it easy to switch.

BlackBird nee MilViz T-38C & Phantom ADV

PMDG 747

Majestic Q400

A handful of A2A Sims (especially their warbirds!)

VRS SuperBug

 

 

[UrgentSiesta 643]

7 hours ago, cagarini said:

Ah! DCS World is an exception, OK, but I have promised myself I would do my best to stay away from War, in any form, including flight simulation...

There's PLENTY to do in DCS World besides pew-pew, even in multi-player.

[Beardyman 567]

19 hours ago, Luis Hernandez said:

I've had to return to v4 for better default airports and terminals

Really, u see the difference ??, for me those are equally ugly to the level that i can't fly into default ones as it destroys whole experience and fun.

[Daube 286]

No compromises from my side. The reason is a simple fact: No matter how much I love an aircraft/addon, if the environment does not allow me to enjoy it, then it's useless.

At some point my favorite aircraft were in P3D. I'm referring to aircraft like the A2A warbirds or Milviz jets with TacPack and such. I loved (and still love and miss) that kind of stuff. But when XP11 came in, and suddenly offered me greater visual quality, much greater performances and generally a more enjoyable environment, I didn't really come back to P3D. Every time I came back, getting back in the cockpit was nice... until the takeoff. Then it was over...

Things got worse when I switched to VR. I started flying in VR in P3Dv4 but the performance hit when getting near cities or airports was really annoying. So I went to XPlane11 and finally started enjoying flying low over very dense and complex sceneries, which was impossible for my computer in P3D. From that point, I was using P3D less and less often. My favorite aircraft at that time was the XTrident Bell 412 helicopter, a truly fantastic model with excellent details, realism and flight model. Flying that aircraft over the Washington state with OrbX TrueEarth sceneries was my main activity in that sim.

However, both XPlane11 just like P3Dv4 was suffering from a major issue: 2D clouds. 2D clouds are nice when flying 2D, but in VR they just make your eyes bleed. When MSFS appeared with its majestic 3D clouds, and once it started supporting VR, XPlane was done. There is just no way back. Every time I would launch XPlane, set the weather and try to fire up the engines, the ugly clouds were immediately removing any pleasure from watching out of the cockpit... Yes, I didn't have any comparable addon in MSFS, but that was not sufficient to keep me flying in there.

When I read about Ray flying his Concorde in P3Dv3, I just feel sorry. I understand he loves the aircraft, that's cool. But I would personally get ZERO pleasure from doing that.

[d.tsakiris 410]

I really don't think you have to feel sorry for him...