G MIDY

Just downloading the new AS version now (4.1GB!!!) and shall report back later!

In terms of technology, it is right up there as one of the best at the moment. A good read is QF32 by Richard de Crespigny the QF32 pilot to see why. Many pilot colleagues in industry love the A380 and I know guys who have flown everything in their fleets yet are very clear that the A380 is the best they have ever flown. The kind of testing methods going into the A350 too at the moment are unprecedented. As far as technology at the manufacturing level is concerned today, Airbus is ahead of Boeing. Airbus really does have a handle on it's supply chain and the way that works which is really bearing great fruits. Boeing will learn from the 787 and the complex, logistical nightmare that came with it for the 77X and 737MAX, those will be very good aircraft. Anyway this thread! This is probably one of the best times I have known to be in this hobby. We currently are awaiting the first like for like A320 from FSL coming soon. Flightbeam who I regard as the best scenery developer out there are covering EDDF which is a massive project. Taxi2Gate should have VHHH out before the end of this year too. FlyTampa are covering EKCH and VSSY, none of these sceneries mentioned really have a good FSX representation so it is fantastic. PMDG of course will I think shift to the 772 and then finally get on with their 747V2. It is really exciting times for this hobby and it will only get better. The biggest one for me personally will be the FSL, more so further down the line when they hopefully do the A330 where no single good product really exists.

I don't believe it is a total conversion which as we know is impossible without source code, this is rather a type of virtualization software (maybe). Scam or not or whether it even works I don't know but I can only imagine like any magic tool, the pitfalls will no doubt be greater than the gains. Many people should be aware that 64-bit first and foremost does not equal performance gains, it means you avoid OOM errors and that is it. To me FSX was designed to be run in a 32-bit environment for a reason, the 32-bit limit is a performance limiter allowing us to tweak to the maximum within those confines. 64-bit would simply allow users to roam free outside of those confines and ultimately have unstable, poorer running sims.

Oh wow that is incredible.

Awesome job! Fantastic idea on the use of ModelConv to view paints in progress, I never thought of that!

Same issue after (OCK-8), this is probably a problem with the STAR in the Navdata.

I flew BNN4A this morning without issue although not quite your problem. I'll fly the OCK4B to 09L now starting KATHY FL180 and see how it goes. What Navdata are you using, I'll be trying with Navigraph 1408. I usually go into HDG for landing at EGLL because it is very rare they aren't vectored onto the ILS nowadays.

This may help, I found it on the Aerosoft forum.

PMDG already have a 747 released, it is old but the systems are still great. I'm sure many would say they would rather see a 777 (which did not exist before in FSX) before the V2 of the 747.

Hi guys, out of interest, should the T7 777-300 include vortex generators on the flaps or is this a unique feature on certain aircraft? I've noticed that they do exist in the bump maps and textures but not on the physical wing model. I don't have any example images from the PMDG T7 but loading it up, setting Flaps to 30 and then comparing with the linked picture below and they are quite a prominent feature of the 77W wing. I had a look at the real -200 and they are absent so this seems to be a feature unique to the 77W and LR which distinguishes the wing a lot from the older series. http://www.airliners.net/photo/V-Australia/Boeing-777-3ZG-ER/1753971/L/ http://www.vortex-generators.com/vortex-generators.html Cheers!

I think quite literally any aircraft could be next but it will not be for a long time. I'm sure the NGX SP2, 747V2 and finishing off the T7 series with the 772 will keep them busy for the coming year and beyond. With the current sway to Boeing and some cockpit commonality to the T7 the 764 could be possible but there are very few operators to make it worthwhile I guess.

The latest sanctions threatened by Russia will certainly damage US carriers using this route although whether it will be extended beyond the European carriers is to be seen. It's quite interesting how or even whether flights from the Eastern US will be possible to Asia should the sanctions include US carriers. At the moment there is already a food ban but a ban on US carriers in this proposed sanction is so far seemingly absent. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/siberia-flight-ban-threat-sanctions-dobrolyot Cathay will not be affected as they are not based in a country being sanctioned but I imagine as a hypothetical scenario any airline using the mentioned northern route will have quite considerable performance implications added if they cannot route through Russia. KJFK-VHHH is ~7000nm and this great circle route involves flying over a significant portion of Russia. Playing around in FSC I found that routing across Canada and via Alaska to Japan/South Korea adds at least 600nm to the route point to point, it is probably more. I'm not aware of the prevailing winds over the Northern Pacific and Bering Strait area but I don't envy the flight planners and loadmasters should the sanctions go ahead and include the US.

Out of normal law in an empty aircraft I'm sure you could achieve such an AOA, obviously the protections limit this to 30 degrees so it would require mode degradation. I'm more talking of a test scenario where lift would be at it's greatest. I'm sure Airbus test pilots have attempted to push it beyond that. I understand what your saying though Joshua, animations do lag and always will but the animation still to a degree represents what happens in real life which for me adds to the main thing here which is immersion. I do only experience things from the window and I think most people buying FS addons are also too very used to the window seat so it is very natural to load up FS and view things from the wing now and then. Pilots themselves after all do not see the aircraft from a 3rd person perspective so there is really in essence no need for a model at all. I think many like me want to get into the systems but they also like to immerse themselves in the simulation of things beyond the cockpit. Immersion is the key word I am after and I think a demonstration of the mechanics of the wing is something that adds to immersion, just my opinion anyway. I am not however talking really about the Airbus X here of course, it is just my opinion in general. The Airbus X is a great product and it certainly did not affect my choice to buy it.

I think many confuse wing flex with the natural tendency of the wing to bend on takeoff which happens but it does only happen mostly to a small degree. Personally, the flex for just that purpose IE, for the sake of it is not important to me. I'm not interested personally in the modeling of wingflex so that on takeoff it bends a little for visual purposes. What I personally like to see is how the wing reacts when for example you launch into a 30 degree climb and a huge amount of lift force is actively bending the wing much further than normal or when turbulence forces are interrupting lift etc. The wing also would exhibit such behavior in say a stall where the absence of lift causes the wing to actually bend the opposite way under it's own weight. This behavior is something we would expect to see in any aircraft because we know if you have any long and thin composite, it will bend, even under it's own weight. I can totally understand a developers choice not to model wingflex but I would hope they would reconsider on the basis that the absolute BEST products go into the extremes of detail, into the physics! The PMDG modelling of the 777 is simply incredible because it is not just visual wingflex at all it is a highly accurate and dynamic simulation of the wing loading of a 777 wing. The A320 wing is subjected to the exact same forces and bending moments although it does have a much more rigid wing and clearly isn't as obvious but in terms of a simulation and immersion, to miss out the effect of air on a wing is quite off putting. To ignore that will always in my opinion detract the quality of the product because a completely static wing in a fully powered, empty aircraft that is in a 35 degree climb does not make sense.

I doubt it will be delayed. The first post in this very thread states that they anticipated the final build of the airplane within 24-36hrs which worked out as 2 days ago. I wouldn't think there could be any significant delay with a date being given and all the testing that has no doubt been going on. You have to remember even the installers need testing and proper integration into Ops centre which needs to install everything correctly so that is quite a significant job to do in just a few days.

Ugh, I head on vacation on the 17th.. I may cancel now....

+1 DX10, since moving I have never had an OOM nor any problems and I don't have the strongest system. Sometimes with FSX you just have to forget about performance expectations and just enjoy what you have. I have tried P3D and performance is terrible plus the very best addons like the T7 do not work. No simulator compares to DX10 FSX for me which to be honest with tweaks and tailored to the system is the most optimized sim out there. With all the new scenery developers and some fantastic things to look forward to like the T7 SP2, FSLabs 320, QW 787 etc, FSX has never looked better.

The EULA just basically reinforces that it all boils down to money. I think DoveTail will push a highly dumbed down version of the game integrated into Steam for mainly online use but totally reliant on ongoing DLC's, IE no 3rd party addon support. P3D is the polar opposite, lots of constant development and improvements but users certainly pay for it but then again they are paying for what is intended as a realistic training platform. FSX in it's current form is actually the only simulator sat in the middle and I can understand why MS stopped development and sold licenses because the only money they make is a measily $30-$40 when we buy the box in the store; they get nothing from addon makers who are the real benefactors. I'd hazard a bet that PMDG have probably made close to if not more money than MS has made from FSX over comparable periods. It's unfortunate but the EULA will ensure that we can't act in a way that will threaten their investment, the same goes for DoveTail. I think FSX in it's current form is here to stay and will be here for a very long time until someone is willing to take a risk and push out a simulator that allows us to maybe ignore their DLC's and spend it on 3rd party addon makers.

Someone new looking to invest their time in this stuff is always a good thing. I would suggest anyone who is thinking of going in depth into FSX to begin by taking a course in what FSX is fundamentally based around. Having a strong, probably degree level working knowledge of XML/C++/3D modelling will get you very far I would imagine. An aircraft fundamentally is difficult because it involves so many 'separate' disciplines. 3D modelling for example is extraordinarily difficult, programming again even more so. Then comes texture work, sound work. It really does take a whole team of 'experts' in their discipline to produce a PMDG level of quality.

Expect to see FSX available on Steam later this year judging on the press release. I'm not too sure that this is will be a whole new simulator but just a rebadging of the existing platform. I think this will mainly just involve the integration of Steam into FSX and obviously all the online features that might entail... I'm not getting my hopes up with this one to be honest! They have mentioned a product being made available by next year and it would be stupid to start development on something they have no license for. I doubt you could develop something of any ground breaking scale within a year. Still anything new is appreciated and I hope this opens up the market to new things.

This is intended, the Airbus will rate thrust as an equivalent according to the outside conditions. If you are at a hot airport for example air density is reduced therefore the engines ability to combust and ingest air is also reduced because of the reduced density. Think of it as if you were breathing at sea level compared with on a mountain, the higher you go the harder it is to breath, so to achieve a similar amount of thrust as at sea level the engine must do more work. Hot and high airports are the biggest challenges when considering aircraft performance. The Airbus FADEC rates power accordingly to those conditions to achieve equivalent thrust. If the FADEC sets TOGA as 88% at a 'colder' airport you may achieve completely equivalent thrust at 95% at a hot and high one, the value will always be greater the hotter and higher you go. Bear in mind N1 settings are not indicative of thrust, they are indicative of the speed that the N1 rotor is spinning as a percentage of it's rated speed. This does not mean it is producing the same thrust in any situation or any thrust for that matter! An engine requires a lot of air and the necessary properties of air are variables we cannot control so the FADEC simply takes these conditions into account and rates the engine accordingly so that it's life is extended as much as possible. We must also remember that TOGA does not take into account the actual airport. FLEX is used more because calculated properly, FLEX can determine an appropriate thrust according to the conditions, weight AND the airport. Airbus mentality is to use all of the runway using as little thrust as possible so FLEX makes this possible. As a pilot your job is to work out whether the conditions are conducive to takeoff with that particular weight, temperature etc at an appropriate FLEX and if required whether a takeoff will be possible with TOGA. If a takeoff is not possible then weight must be considered, flap setting and so on. TOGA is seldom used but is most often seen when conditions merit maximum performance which is usually when flying heavy, hot and high or in adverse weather/contaminated runway. The A320 is a very capable aircraft and when you use TOGA, you are achieving maximum thrust!

Had a test of this and I didn't really notice any difference. The main thing though is that I run at 60FPS with FPS being locked externally. Is it worth buying this for my case? I only see smoothness problems when I drop below 35-40FPS which can happen with the T7 etc. The program didn't see to have any effect at reducing that but maybe that is because of the way I run FSX?

Looks stunning but as usual I am going to put off and wait for AES, AS is slow to update it nowadays. :(

This is just my take on the use of 4096 textures/performance etc - In terms of performance I think the key to 4096 textures is the memory bandwidth speed and quantity on your GPU. If it is extremely high (beyond 256bit, Titan-Z is 768bit!!!) then your GPU can cope just fine with the loading/unloading of large textures. Memory bandwidth is like a channel which your textures must travel down to be shown in-game and if that channel is small then you are forcing large amounts of data through a small channel. This induces stutters, the most likely place you will see them is when using 4096 clouds where eventually with an intensive aircraft with 4096 textures, a runway with 4096 textures, you will run into trouble. It is worth running a test just to see how much VRAM is being used on your GPU. If it is constantly at it's limit then you will see stuttering in-game due to the choking of the bandwidth channel. If you see this at 4096 textures then you might want to consider reducing the size of key textures such as clouds or autogen because eventually you will run into a problem. Settings such as TML/BP/TBM are all designed to control the way in which FSX handles textures and memory. There is however no perfect formula with these and experimentation is the only real way to get things perfect. This choking gives the illusion that your FPS is being affected when it isn't, it is the queued loading that is choking your sim. In extreme cases you will see this in the form of textures not quite loading fast enough, no SSD can fix this. If you take it far enough (with BP=0 where FSX is allowed to roam free) then you will crash FSX. This is NOT an OOM because of VAS it is a crash due to instability and starved VRAM. It will almost always happen in FSX due to incorrect usage of BP=0 and high settings. Another symptom of too high settings with BP=0 is artifacts with autogen. BP=0 will eventually cause crashes if your GPU cannot cope with the memory load FSX places upon your GPU. FSX does not know nor care how much VRAM you have with this setting, it will use all of it if it can and when it's gone it will crash. This does not mean you should not use BP=0, it means if you use 4096 textures and get crashes then you will need to control things either by lowering settings/reducing textures or by using BP=1 and an appropriate pools setting, the latter however will always reduce performance. Personally I use 4096 textures to allow aircraft/airports to look as intended but my GPU cannot cope with 4096 clouds and the AA settings I want so I had to reduce them down to 256x256! I have also resized autogen textures to the absolute minimum, in fact autogen is mostly turned off on my system. I get mostly consistent 50-60FPS in most situations and have never OOM'd. Since I have been running DX10 I have also seen much better performance even with 4096 textures. Anyone considering 4096 textures must consider their system limitations and in cases where you might start really stressing your GPU, you need to reduce something somewhere or the sim does unfortunately implode either by VAS crash/BP=0 crash or simply you will just see stutter associated lowered performance. 4096 textures can seriously affect stability on a sim that is not optimized to accept them. A sim that perfectly accepts 4096 textures without crashes/stutters is one that is not being overrun at the GPU.

DX10 can also help with VAS considerably. I have yet to notice any real side effect in making the switch when using Steve's Fixer.