John_Cillis

I am not sure where to place this post, since it covers all the sims I use, and some of them are not flight simulators. I have noticed with the latest series of Nvidia drivers some good improvements in my sim performance. When I run Windows update as recommended, I go thru a few steps to follow up with the update with my latest video drivers. A recent Windows update has really amped up my sim performance and the speed of my system in a big way. There have been posts about uninstalling such updates and I just want to caution others--do not be a beta tester for someone making such posts, because all of our systems are not mirror images of my system or your system. All computers are in a phrase I love 'Equally different" in that way because it applies to all my friends here too. Sometimes some really bad advice I have gotten here has yielded very positive results, because it wakes up something I was taught but might have forgotten, I call it Zen and the Art of Computer Maintenance. We in our hobby have to have a Zen attitude, even though I don't know what that means, to work with the challenges that crop up from time to time so we can enjoy our various computer hobbies--for instance if I need a break from flying, because I take every flight seriously, I do not believe in crash landings, so if I have gimped my sim airplane, (insert pregnant pause).... .......I take a break and go to either a Star Wars sim which is fictional reality anyway, or my fav sims, Road to Knoxville, F1 2019, No Limits Coaster 2, and Trainsim 2019, and finally Jack Nicklaus Golf, since my father and I learned how to Golf from Sam Snead's book and I learned navigation from the Star's, by HA Rey, which removed my fear of the signs of the Zodiac, when I saw the star Sirius, it gave me so much joy, as I really feel we will make it there someday and find intelligent life.

I have always loved that Alabeo aircraft, it was the epitome of low wing LSA's, which handle better in ground effect than high wing LSA's. That's why the Piper Cub edged out the 172 at Iasco's training program in Napa. The head of that program was the judge of my last grammar school science project in the eighth grade. I had read a book on hang gliding and the Rogallo wing. I used toothpicks, Elmer's glue, and Paper to make strutted Rogallo wings, about two inches in circumference. I would go to the choir loft in my grammar church school and just drop them. They had the perfect 4-1 glide ratio of the full size Rogallo wing. Like Bats out of Hell, they would sail between 50 and 75 feet from the loft, but unlike the Falcon and the Snowman, they did not make it to the altar--thank goodness, the candles there would have lit them on fire. Those were the days of those of us raised in church schools, but our elders there were not bothered by us playing in Sunday School. I won first place in that grammar school science fair, back in '75 which automatically entered me in the California State Science fair. Like Billy Elliott, I had to be grilled by a team of judges, with my father present. I was sweating bullets. But out of all the entries in that science fair, I was among a handful of students in each subject of science that got third place. It is better to show or win rather than place, lol... That's why I love those who show off their screenshots in this forum, it is flying when I am not in the mood for simming, just reading and relaxing... John

Sometimes single screenshots give meaning to the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words"....

I have Bus Simulator 18, which is similar to Euro Truck Sim, such sims are quite fun, but my fav two road race games I have on Steam, one is "Road to Knoxville" which I love and F1 2019. I was first raised in Sauk Village, IL, then Tinley Park, IL, and between 1964-1966 my folks would take me to the Sprint Car races where our family friend and Indy Hero Gary Bettenhausen would race, and our local Tinley Park Hero, Bud Kohler. I had a badge Bud gave me and I did not attend stock car races until I saw them in the Calistoga County Fair, and I'd see the demolition derbys, but I'd feel as all little boys and girls did every dent, ever collision, on those figure eight tracks. I was a huge hot wheels fan and I also had a toy which had airplanes that hung from hooks, and they flew down suspended from a 15 foot wire, my first Flightsim, lol, around the early 70's I recall, right around the time of my appendectomy. My first toy robot wasn't the one from Lost in Space, it was a robot called "Zintar", wish I still had it, Zintar was "My friend Mr Nobody" from Lost in Space, LOL, everyone has a spirit they remember as holy, the spirit of playfulness and joy. I finally saw one last stock car race, when a semi-pro racer and friend invited me to be with his pit crew at a race in Franklin Virginia, near Roanoke, in 2014, right before I went to work with American Airlines here in Phoenix. They actually held up the start of one of the races so I could cross the track and get to my friend WJ Alitzer and his Dad Jay Alitzer in the pits. It was his best finish to that point that year, he won third place and won $500, I was there when he collected his winnings. I believe in the following year he went all the way to win the championship, but like many race car drivers, the G forces on their neck cause a lot of nerve pain, so he gave up his passion for race car driving and went to work for Toyota. But because one of his fans was a child with cancer, he created a cancer charity for the race car drivers on their circuit, which included races in the Carolinas as well. He is quite an inspiration to me, as they say, there is always a bigger fish! John

It is good to see that those on the ground and in the air were not too seriously hurt. I had the heartbreak of sitting home while I was working from home more than a decade ago, and I saw a Microlight Crash on TV near Lake Pleasant in Peoria, in far N/NW Phoenix. I recognized it immediately as the aircraft owned by the CFI who signed off on my Light Sport license, Jim Blumer. It took five hours of calling before I found out he and his passenger survived unhurt, and the Dope/Fabric of his beloved Challenger II did its job. It would have been a perfect engine out landing on Lake Pleasant Highway, but he clipped a roadsign. https://planecrashmap.com/plane/az/N107BW/ John

This flight was recorded using Prepar3D, Flight Control Replay, and audio recorded in real time from LiveATC,net including Napa Ground, Tower, and Oakland Center.

Wow! I had no idea the numbers were that high on this site. Even my own business when I was a performance tester at an online education program we only had about 3000-3500 hits a day, and our infrastructure did not allow traffic to go higher, if it did it would shut our site down because our contract with our ISP provider did not allow more traffic. Because we were an educational site with a Religious affiliation we often had DOS attacks and I was hired to give our devs and network admins Analytics and how to thwart them. Avsim is better positioned on a small budget to handle such attacks, with experienced server admins working in the background, and of course volunteers to boot. I couldn't give attention to a web site like that anymore since my leisure time, such as what I spend with our hobby, is the mainstay of how I enjoy semi retirement these days. I no longer develop freeware for the hobby, not because it bothered me, I just ran out of ideas and my aircraft design product of choice was Abacus's AC Cad program. Really the only successful project I did with that was my trike hosted here at Avsim, which somewhat works in P3D4.x although some parts look like they are made with Star Trek IV's Transparent Aluminum. I live and breathe for product announcements at Avsim, especially those products kept so under wraps that they surprise me, like Flight Control Replay that works so well with P3D4.X, a product for a small price that gives great flight playback. John

This is a good program, I will tell you why, you must be a Nostradamus for us, a badly needed one for me. I believe the conflict I have had with Windows update is a program from ASUS called GPU Tweak II. It is a good program, but it seems to conflict with any update to certain Windows settings that any update, like this slick program you recommended, might cause. I ran the program, accepted only the recommended settings, but on restart once again, my latest GEForce experience driver was blown away. I thought "That's odd--that only has happened when Windows update has run". So instead of panicking, first I tried to install the latest driver from Geforce experience, since my screen resolution reverted back to the next lowest resolution my card and monitor support. GeForce experience said I had the latest driver installed, but my screen res told me otherwise. So I went to device manager, and deleted my Nvidia "device" and the driver software. My computer shut down, but did not restart. I do not get alarmed by that because I have write back caching disabled on my boot drive, just in case a file gets stuck in limbo and cannot be restored. It is a dangerous option and many systems of friends that have gotten hosed and had to be restored from a system restore DVD have had this option enabled. So I looked at my HD light, my power light and HD light was blinking, but like a patient in need of Oxygen, after all I had nuked my driver on purpose, but I have had to do this many times--since installing GPU Tweak II, I realized which Jim Young recommended and I still have no prob with his suggestion, it has worked for me well despite my Windows update issues, I will install it again now that my system is baselined, because as soon as it restarted, it was in my wanted screen resolution but devoid of the latest GEForce experience driver, which I just installed yesterday. My system is back at its original baseline, and I will see if the program you recommended allows me to choose when to run Windows update rather than having it forced upon me. Plus the program you recommended created a previous baseline restore point, just in case. Once again that is why Jim's insight and members like you, whose suggestions I have not seen often, helped me big time in solving a Whodunit case. I my case, I dunnit, and I now have a "Get out of Jail Free pass" thanks to your program suggestion. Now for some odd reason, since I stay online until about three AM local time, because I have a help desk for my family's computer issues overseas, I feel like playing Monopoly, always loved that game because everyone wins, because someone always has to put the money back in the box so we can play the game again... After all, it has less value than Bitcoin, it is money to burn and much more colorful than most country's currencies, lol... John -- One happy camper after reading your post!

Without wading thru the other replies, I'd say about seven months ago or so, every Windows update has wiped my latest Nvidia driver update. After yesterday's upgrade (and I was still groggy from a weekend visit to the hospital for a minor brain clot), my Nvidia driver was wiped, my screen resolution was, as usual dropped to the next lowest resolution after the update. On restart I received a message that I was missing vender.dll. I googled the issue, some websites offered a download of it but I do not willy nilly download a dll from a website I do not trust, since within it could be some virus exploit caused by someone who is forcing these windows updates to begin with, which are happening more often. So when I lose my screen resolution, I always make sure I have a backup of my last GeForce Experience executable. So I have had to follow these steps since windows update first caused these issues: 1: Go to Display properties, remove the video driver that windows has been substituting in my most current driver's stead. My system goes blank, pauses for some minutes, then restarts, with its former resolution but with the missing vender.dll message. 2. I try a sim, usually Aerofly FS2 because it loads quite fast. I always get a driver error message, but Aerofly starts anyway, I just use this as quick confirmation that the Windows update has hosed my video driver. 3. I try to launch the last GeForce executable again, if it launches, I am in fair shape, if it cannot because of a file lock issue, then I go to the GeForce Experience website or program, if still on my system, and grab their most current driver. That is my system as it stands today, everything runs well, I always do a run of all my sims and between ground, sea, air and space sims, I have quite a few. So once I have a stable system, I have a stable system I have written Microsoft on these issues, my relationship with them goes way back to when I met Bill Gates and had a followup PC group meeting I chaired and Steve Ballmer showed up. Microsoft's current folks do not know Joseph, so to speak because I haven't communicated to anyone with Microsoft since the FS9/FSX betas. But someone with lower friends in higher places than I have needs to express to Microsoft that their latest updates are causing issues, which vary depend on how we have configured our systems, which drivers we use and so on. Reason I say this is my original Nvidia driver came from MSI, not from the GEForce experience site. I switched to GEForce experience so I could have the free game video capture my multimedia system lacked, so I think this is why this issue has slowly cropped up for some of us, if our drivers differ from the original driver we had if our systems were store bought, or we loaded a driver from another source than what we have today. So I have cited the issue and how I skirt it, but it is not a miracle cure because all of our systems very in some way or another, because we baseline our own systems based on the programs we use on them. John

I always loved that actor, because whenever something pranked me in some way, like a friend or family, I would kind of make the same movements he would. I used to curse when I stubbed my toe but my young daughter, and your children always replace your parents as your mentors as you grow older in life, scolded me. So instead, if I stub my toe, which is worst than my hardest student flight practice landing at Falcon Field, i would just jump up and down like a loon, screaming "Mommy" at the top of my lungs until the slight shock that settles in sends our natural endorphins to help us cope with the pain. I have never understood how drug companies have not replicated endorphins, because our natural ability to handle pain was put in us by our evolutionary relationship with the stars and galaxies created from the birth of what they now believe is a multiverse, many individual collections of galaxies in their own gravitational nexus, so even if the original creation of what we see today as a distant past goes away, we will still have an endless source of re-coalescing energy sustaining a certain eternity, because even if our sense of the past ends our own personal sense of our personal future comes more from what we have enjoyed, like Kramer or Seinfeld (Seinfeld, followed by Cheers, Family Ties, Charles In Charge, Head of the Class and Benson were my fav comedies). Whenever I take my mountain bike for a ride, since I cannot own a car anymore due to arthritis my lower leg (it's the getting in and out, not the driving which is why I can still fly, because you either walk in an aircraft or lift yourself up a bit so you can sit down in one). Of course I forgot Newheart, simply because it poked fun at my chosen career, hospitality/F&B/Retail/Aviation/Publishing and the information tech that I chose to work on afterwards for those industries. This is a fun thread to follow, so I thought I would add to it.

Oh well, wishful thinking, I do not have quite that much space free on my Orbiter drive, but maybe with a little bit of shuffling between my two HD partitions and my SSD drive, I can get the scenery, it would be fun to hang out in Space with some tribbles, lol...

Very nice video, I love the background music and the landing reminds me of the only grass takeoff and landing I ever did, in a Luscombe 8A while visiting a friend and CFI in Penn. Handling a taildragger on grass is such a wonderful feeling, so smooth on takeoff. John

I have added LiveATC to this short video from Falcon where I trained as a student pilot into Sky Harbor. It is a nice route and with LiveATC as a backdrop a fun little flight to share.

Your ground textures look a bit sharper than mine in Orbiter, Which version of Orbiter, and are they a ground texture add-on, and which one? Great shots, good to see Orbiter shots from time to time, such a wonderful sim!

I videotaped this glider ride using a Sony 8MM camera, 8MM was the best video quality one could get back in the mid 80's, which replaced the bulkier VHS systems and used an FM soundtrack for enhanced stereo sound. It's a long video, it gets interesting about 12 minutes into the flight, but no spoilers here, to me though it is the epitome of the feeling I get every time I read the classic Richard Bach story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. It also debunks the old Ford Commercials, quieter than a glider, because any glider soaring at 60-70 KIAS is as loud as the "Queen of the Skies", the 747 and the "King of the Skies", the A380...

This was a real flight I went on in 1987. It was a complimentary flight since me and my hotel staff worked with the owner of the company that invited me on the flight. It was filmed with a Sony 8MM Handycam (which is why it is grainy, but it was the highest resolution camera available at that time). I then transferred it to my PC video archive via Sony Handycam and when I lost my last computer due to a hardware failure, I restored the video from my USB HD backup drive.

Thanks, I plan on posting a real life glider video I shot sometime around 1986 after I bought my first car, a Nissan Sentra Wagon. I also have a hot air balloon flight I plan on posting next, which will begin with some special effects. But you should not watch that video and operate heavy machinery for 24 hours, because if you do not skip thru the dull parts, you will fall asleep. Both the glider video and the balloon video were recorded with an 8MM camera, so they are a bit fuzzy, since that was the best cam one could get in the mid 80's. My brother, who worked in an electronics store, which is why I became so good in system electronics, because he trained me in Audio/Video/Computers and computer programming during and after the time I bought my Commodore SX-64 in 84. What was the first software title I ever bought? Sublogic's FS2 which I later installed on a RamDisk when I bought the next version for an Atari ST. I met the owner of Atari, Nolan Bushnell, as Atari was starting to go out of business, but he teased me and said he was selling binoculars, and my binoculars were Bushnell binoculars. John

Sorry if I have to make my font a bit bigger, have had vision issues since I just got out of the hospital recently. If you really want to get a great picture of ATC coms, both GA and otherwise, I highly recommend this site: https://www.liveatc.net/ I use it especially with AeroflyFS2 when I am not using P3D or Xplane, since AeroflyFS2 has no ATC comms. Not only does this site allow you to listen to tower feeds, you can also listen to ground, approach and departure, and especially Oceanic. The best time to enjoy Oceanic is about 0:00 UTC, also you can listen to airline maint to the pilots in command as well. I use this site to practice for a real training flight whenever I take one, because I have a very slow drawl, mix of many accents, and it has always caused me challenges with ATC. That is why I prefer my lessons in uncontrolled Airspace since I fly Microlight Fixed wing and ultralight trikes. Unicom is especially fun to listen to for that reason. Regards, John

What an outstanding choice of city pairs and set of screenies!

Those are very nice screenshots, love your customizations.

Thank you. Main reason I've been fighting cancer in one form or another since a pre malignant melanoma was removed in '97 (fantastic dermatologist by the way, he came leering at my forehead with a needle while I quaked like a little boy in a dentist chair, driving myself there after work, and I did not feel the injection or any pain during surgery). I had effortless euphoria from being in such skilled hands and only needed a bit of Excedrin when I got home to take the edge off, my preferred pain remedy, or dissolved aspirin tablets in a soda. I am so militant in enjoying my simming that I do not like to drink (diabetics should abstain if at all possible anyway) at all, it takes away the fun, because I like to create intentionally stressful scenarios with tricky crosswinds to raise the adrenaline a bit to make flight as realistic as any of my real world piloting experiences. Also I was exposed to high levels of radiation after an above ground atomic test my father went to right before I was born when he first began work for Argonne Labs in Chicago. He, with no paper degree at that time, went to keep a friend company while his friend applied for a job, and his friend said to him, "if you're bored, apply and take the test too". My Dad and I are Good Will Huntings when it comes to math, Landclass Assistant mentioned in the above reply was an example of integral calculus I learned out of college with help from knowledge my Dad taught me. Anyway, my Dad took the test, got the job, and his friend had to shrug his shoulders because my Dad was offered the job he wanted, but he dared him anyway, and folks that know our passion for both the arts, math and music should know we take on a dare as a battle of Gin Rummy so we all come out feeling like winners. That is why, in Phoenix, surrounded now by more Casinos than Reno Nevada, I do not dare fate with one armed bandits, lol... But I respect them for their entertainment value if people enjoy them for the purpose of just playing and sharing their fun with their casino hosts hospitality. Anyway, I have lived my life with the understanding that Cancer, and we all have Cancer genes because it is vital to the aging process, is something that can be dealt with symptomatically as a chronic disease to the aggression the doctor and patient agree upon. I learned this from my father, which allowed me to help my Mom and Older Brother deal with lung and a brain tumor, respectively. I was my Mom's medical power of attorney, medication manager, and support after my brother passed four months before she did. His cancer was brought on by radiation exposure and a work accident, and sadly he lost his own life after an accident related to his illness, a blessing in disguise. I was a military brat even given an honorary rank in the Sons of VFW, I wore my khaki shirt proudly, in honor of my Dad and Two Uncles, My Dad and paternal uncle served in WWII and Korean, my maternal uncle in the 101st Airborne, and my other older uncle who we owned a cottage with in Cedar Lake Indiana was Gene Autry's personal driver while he toured Europe to rally the troops in WWII. My two brothers, the oldest served 20 years in the California National Guard, and he worked with the TSA shortly before his passing in 2009, and my middle brother in the Air Force as an aircraft electrician going thru basic in Colorado and stationed in San Anton. Hats off to anyone who served in the place of others who could find work, to save them from the sacrifice that comes with any form of public service. John

Thanks for your follow-up, most of my challenges have been due to the grind of pain for diabetes nephropathy, because it takes away my ability to self edit my thoughts, so I just get kind of wore out making posts, get cranky, hey, it was part of being in school anyway when we were so innocent and young, lol, but flightsim students are innocent because we can freshen up our hobby with a new hummingbird to fly. So after my last post I just put my daughter on notice that I went in to get treatment for a severe migraine that had built up, and not to worry if I am offline for several days while I am on the mend, I have to do some fall cleaning anyway, I've been having so much fun with the now many sims I have, from boat/ship simulations, racing simulations and the holy grail of flight simming, three good flight sims (take your pic, I can't). I highly recommend folks see what will probably be my last video post for a while, simply because they grind my gears a bit because I like to spiffy them up with some of my self composed music and title cards, of the Mosquito Ultralight Helicopter I found just by using Google, for P3DV4.5. It arguably the best, cutest flying copter in all the sims I have, second only to Xplane11's VSkylabs Gyro.... As we love to say in Italian, Capice (that is what I love to say for my family from Italy it just means game, set and match, I found my toy of choice for now, good way of teasing myself towards my next payware purchase, which is always right after I get paid my pension check. John

Although I am still active on the web, I am going to enter home hospice care and I cannot post anymore due to nephropathy and literally a panic attack I had yesterday when I stopped breathing, however my therapy pet woke me so I could put on my oxygen.. I wanted to share this email I received from Flight One, it is not of concern for me since any accounts I have used there are long since inactive, but they were a good company while they lasted. I do not know whether this post is a spam attack or true, so I wanted to advise the forums of what I received in case you receive one and follow their advice, if some asks you to confirm your commercial vendor relationships or Avsim info, do not trust them, especially via email.... Lou Betti and I had some strong exchanges here but he and his team are still a class act and gave us many great add-ons. _______________________________ Important Information: Yesterday, September 5, 2019, Flight1 was notified that some of our customer data was found on the internet. We are posting what we have discovered. First, Flight1 is a data-minimum company. We do not store more data than what is required to provide our service and we do not use data for marketing purposes. We do not store credit card numbers with the exception of the last 4 digits so you can inquire about a sale. Credit card expiration dates and CCV verification numbers are NOT stored. Card processing data is passed directly to the processing gateway and is not retained in our database. All flight1.com account passwords are stored as secure 1-way hash codes using an advanced algorithm. Please see our terms of service page for more details on our data policies. What was discovered: An audit was completed and does not show any active exploit on our server or database. We have examined our server logs going back a full year. Discovered during the audit was a script (for viewing information on a product) where logs showed there were attempts to retrieve data using an automated bot. We believe this is where some data may have been leaked. Not all current accounts were affected and yours may not have been affected. That version of the script is no longer in use and has not been in use for months. In auditing the current version of the script no vulnerabilities were found (also verified in current logs). What you should do: Due to the strong 1-way hashing used we do not believe it is necessary for you to change your passwords, but you are welcome to do so. Flight1 recommends you always be vigilant on the Internet. Be aware of email phishing attempts. Flight1 NEVER sends unsolicited emails asking you to log in to our site, or ask for any payment information via email.. In Summary: Whether you have been a customer of ours for 20+ years or are a new customer, know that security is always at the top of our list and will remain so. Thank you for your support and please feel free to contact us.