ahinterl

Not so long ago I read about a tool that's capable of positioning even complex 3rd party airliners anywhere in the air including configuring them accordingly so that "instant flying" is possible. Unfortunately, I didn't make appropriate notes for later reference, now I've forgotten what that tool is. The closest I found googling is "FS Instant Approach" (http://www.fsinventions.com/featuresinstantapproachpro2015.asp). Is that what I'm looking for or does another software for the purpose of aircraft positioning exist? Andreas

These two Paro approach videos can be easily compared (rw video is shakier, but that doesn't really matter I think): Real world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzcwdYJ1ibE FSX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxYNCFNvzOk My personal overall feeling when watching those videos is that the sim gives me the impression that speed is much higher, terrain much closer, there's less time for maneuvers - all in all the real world video is much "less frightening" to me. The real world situation looks more "relaxed" and "doable" - look how the simmer drives the plane like a racing car onto the runway... That kind of "wrong immersion factor" is one of the reasons I ceased simming some time ago. As long as it's not an approach like the ones into Funchal, Tocontin, Paro etc., FSX is great, but when things get tough, there's that odd feeling... Maybe just a matter of wrong zoom factor or whatever, I'd be happy to read some comments... Andreas

I was away from flight simming almost completely for more than 18 months now (but have followed the sim news and most developments during that time) and now plan a slow comeback (incl. new hardware). Since I'm not up to date information wise, I'd appreciate opinions about what sim and base add ons to use, that would become my setup for the nearer future then. In the past, my FSX was crammed with stuff and big iron (in other words I have tons of FSX add ons, I think I can update most of them to recent versions)... Guess FSX Steam Edition (purchased that "ahead" for 5 EUR today) is a better solution nowadays than the original FSX (I had troubles with Windows 8) What about Prepar3d? Should I favor this product over FSX SE? And there's X-Plane: Is it mature and competitive enough or better to avoid for (ex-)FSX simmers? Andreas

When I look at Lockheed's licensing page for Prepar3d in the web, I see red crosses where the row header says "entertainment purposes". Strictly said, because my one and only reason to use any flight Simulator at all is exactly pure and sole Entertainment, I'm not at all eligible as a legitimate customer. Are there really so many P3D users here in this forum who use the sim in a "really serious way"?!

Developing a good airliner needs more resources, talent, expertise and experience than 98% of any FS add on company can deliver. I'm simming long enough to have learned that only a tiny number of companies are worth buying from. Everything else is waste of time, the best is just good enough. Purchased CS's 757 once ago, that plane is a disaster. Will not buy from them again, and I never expect them to change to the better in a miracle. I know, lots of people don't agree, but I don't really care. Everything's well as long as everybody has fun...

Negative pitch?! You look to be way too fast (long glides above the rwy)...

FSX has gotten aged these days, no hope for a successor from Microsoft, Prepar3d and X-Plane are around - and I wonder in which direction flight simming as we use to know it is heading in the future. Addon developers need to make revenues, currently we see products for either of the beforementioned FS alternatives. I miss a common consense in this respect, maybe it's still too early for a "general decision". What I cannot think of is that companies like PMDG (provided they'll get their Prepar3d licensing issues sorted out one day) will develop for both sims. I'd rather suppose developers have to make a decision for only one sim sooner or later... Any comments on what we can expect?

Sorry, I've been off FSX for several weeks now, and in the meantime I've watched lots of aviation videos. When I compare those from real world with others that show the same or a similar situation in FSX, I almost always have the impression that in reality, turn radii are much tighter than in the sim. E.g. the visual circling approach to Innsbruck rwy 08 (after leaving the ILS to rwy 27): Whereas in reality, a 737-800 makes such a tight right turn that it ends up well to the right of the centerline of rwy 08, in FSX, you find yourself displaced a good amount to the left of it. Bank angles are similar and not excessive in the real world videos. This corresponds to my own personal experiences, where I always felt that those curved/circling approaches look very different from what I see on real world videos, and which frighten me to a certain degree because it's more a fight with aileron and elevator, and the plane (I speak only of airliners and not of smaller aircraft) never seems to turn fast enough. Those approaches look a _lot_ easier to do in real world than they do in FSX, for me! Is it really so that FSX models turns badly or is what I see just a result of the missing peripheral view on my monitor and the restrictions the 3d-to-2d world imposes? Andreas

Let's face it: They're both aged, if you want real progress, look what Bombardier's C-Series offers :Drooling:

All I can say is: Wow!!! I'm really, really impressed by that!

Al, guess you meant PBN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance-based_navigation). RNAV means "area navigation" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_navigation). PBN basically requires RNAV and RNP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Required_navigation_performance). Andreas

For me personally it will be interesting what simulator will replace FSX in the future. Sure there's Prepar3D, but maybe it is based too much on an old and outdated platform so that X-Plane might have an advantage...

+1

Since more and more plane add-ons are developed without 2D panels, I thought I give the VC another try and ask the community how to transition best. Complex airliners the size of an ERJ and up is what I'm almost exclusively flying. I have tried to become accustomed to VC panels in the past several times using head trackers and camera position utilities and the likes, but have never made it to a point where I was convinced to abandon the familiar 2D pit. The main reasons for this are mainly: During the critical phases of flight (landing,...) I have my hands on the yoke and the throttle, so no time/possibility to use the mouse, maybe the keyboard if keys can be pressed quickly enough In these situations, I prefer to have important instruments (PFD, ND, flaps indicator, warnings...) simultanously on my screen and perfectly readable (big enough) Clearly, a VC would give me more situational awareness during curved approaches, that's another reason why I want to transition to VC. The reasons why I didn't feel comfortable in them are mainly: I found the way to pan around the VC always somehow cumbersome and strange: I either used the mouse, that consumed my right hand which should be on the throttle levers instead a head tracking device which made me like sick because it felt somehow "unnatural" attracted much of my attention: I had to invest a considerable amount of effort in getting the right viewing angle, time that I'd better have spent to flying the plane [*]somethig like EZDOK where I needed to fiddle with the keyboard, what, like the mouse, consumed one of my hands as well [*]I was never satisfied with the handling of the plane in the VC: Because the knobs and displays sometimes are far apart from each other, I constantly had to make big panning movements within the VC. And as I said above, that was difficult because I needed to finely adjust the viewpoint and zoom with the tools available (mouse, head tracker, keyboard). During that time, which consumed much attention, I didn't look out of the plane's window, and my hands where somewhere else than on the systems where they should have been (throttle levers instead of keyboard/mouse). All in all, e.g. during the final turn to the Tegucigalpa runway, I found myself spending more time to adjust my viewpoint in the VC than to actually handle the systems. Because of this, I often ended up in situations where I decided to switch back to 2D and recover from the mess. I found 2D panels more suitable for my requirements until now. I have all important things in front of me there and don't need to pan around, especially when I use a 2nd display. If you ask me, my logical preference would be using 5 displays, covering ~180 degrees of view left to right. Instead of needing to pan within the VC, I'd use my real head to quickly glimpse to the left, and then back to the instruments on the center 2D display. Because of my problems to transition to VC and the many postings where people say that 2D only flyers are already a minority, I wonder how all these people handle their planes. I don't want to fly in a VC where I can see almost all of the cockpit but have unreadable tiny instruments. It's possible to do that in FS because it's a simulated world and a crash wouldn't harm you at all, but that's not what I want. Like in the real world, a certain size of all knobs, buttons and instruments is required to make them usable. So, anyone have some serious recommendations for me?

+1

Guess those who love the MD-11 would pay. No one else would. The PMDG MD-11 for me is the greatest plane ever produced for FSX (I dare to say this because I own and have flown each and every other high-end airliner for FSX and FS9). But to be honest, I don't have big hope that a "final patch" or an upgrade will ever see the light of day. The MD-11 is too underrated and neglected in the community, it's simply not attractive enough for people.

I guess PMDG is well aware of all the remaining bugs and flaws in the MD-11. I'd be much more than happy to see them eliminated one day. Even after all those many years of simming and purchasing so many airliner add-ons, and even with all the latest releases and previews of airplanes, the PMDG MD-11 for me still keeps holding the crown.P.S.: Because of the removal of the 2D cockpit, I'm unfortunately not really excited about the upcoming 777. This was very different in the past, e.g. when I remember the old PMDG 737. Times have changed, and maybe one day not so far we'll meet again on X-Plane...

Tegucigalpa is very difficult for me, too.But, I have difficulties with all non more-or-less-straight approaches. Why? It's because of the lack of peripheral vision. Even in the VC, I don't get the vision I'd need to fly all those great curved approaches well. I bet that if I were in a real plane, Tegucigalpa, Innsbruck, Santos Dumont,... wouldn't give me that much of a problem! It's a "simulator restriction" - in the sim, that's what I'm very convinced of, this lack of peripheral vision and the lack of movement sensation make landings a good factor more difficult than they would be in real life. I bet.

Compare these two videos: The real world video looks much more "relaxed" and "slower", whereas the NGX driver has troubles not missing the runway and the NGX flies in a more "stressy" manner.Apart from the visibility differences, the FSX video has much more of a stress factor. That's what I mean with turn radius, see how it's in real life and compare that to what the NGX driver does.I guess in real life, flying those big planes is much easier than in FSX...

How realistic is the turn radius of the NGX (I'd better say: are turn radii)?I'm asking because in the past, and right up until now, I have difficulties when performing real world approaches like Santos Dumont (the one with the ~180 deg turn in front of some hills) or Innsbruck (includes a 180 deg turn as well): In all the videos on the 'net, those approaches look like a relatively easy to do thing. When I try to do the same in FSX, I'm about to crash into the mountains or miss the runway extension line even with full possible bank and minimum speed. Besides, I need to pull like crazy on the stick when doing such maneuvers, looks like an MS FS problem.It's a nasty problem that I had from day 1 of my FS experiences. I thought I ask the experts if the bank radius that the NGX flies are realistic, before I try my maneuvers in that plane(s).

Fact is you can never stop pirates. Even if you sentence them to death, smuggling and piracy continue to exist (see some counries in real life). It's difficult and expensive to try to prevent reverse engineering. You can make cracker's lives more difficult, but you cannot stop them. Companies like PMDG will always face profit loss due to piracy. Some crackers these days are people with deep knowledge of how to undo protection mechanisms. The higher a program is ranked on a "most wanted" list, the higher the probability it will be cracked. The NGX is such a program, as is Photoshop or the likes. Sad, but true. So, you will always find cracked versions of such programs on the 'net. And, pirates don't need a hint here at this forum where to find what they desire.

Sorry if this was answered before already, my searches didn't yield the desired results.Something I came across those long years of simming is speed constraints during VNAV descents on add-on planes like LDS 767, PMDG 737NGX, iFly 73NG, Wilco E-Jets v2 and probbly many others s well.Because the PMDG MD-11 is still my favorite plane that I now fly for a long time already, I'm accustomed to the advanced automatism that this aircraft provides. This includes the capability to meed altitude and/or speed constraints along the lateral flight path almost 100% each time, as well as the ability to nicely manage deceleration during descent.When I recently "reverted" back to the PMDG 737NGX (sorry, but regardless of all the eye candy and the level of realism it doesn't beat my MD-11), I wondered why this plane seems to disregard speed constraints during descent (I have the assumption that the target speed becomes the constraint speed after passing the constraint) completely. My LDS 767 and the iFly plane do the same, as does the Wilco E-Jets v2, so I suppose there's a "logic" behind this.I must admit that I never made a descent fully on VNAV only in the past on my planes. I use this feature since I have the MD-11. It's so intuitive and understandable that at first, I was kind of shocked when I saw my 737NGS cross a 200/4000 constraint with 240kts.I guess in real life it wouldn't make a difference whether a plane could do VNAV speed management like the MD-11 or not since it would be under ATC control most of the time where the VNAV path would be violated anyway. But, I'd like to know whether the optional entries for speed constraints e.g. on the LEGS pages of the Boeings are "just a reminder" but have no real effect on the calculation of the descent path.

I know many will disagree with me, but I the only successors of FSX that I personally can imagine at the moment are either X-Plane or FlightGear. FSX can be kept alive forever provided you keep adequate hard- and software (OS, drivers,...). But that's a dead end in the long run, something really new is required. MS Flight simply joins the bandwagon of tightly controlled, online centric apps markets. I for my part don't want to depend on the Internet, nor do I want to be restricted by a monopolized online market or to features that MS dictates. That's why I see Flight as a not so good option. X-Planeon the other hand would certainly have the potential to replace FSX as sim basis for enthusiasts. MS Flight for the masses and game kiddies, X-Plane for the "pro's" ;-)

If the ND is in HDG mode (selectable on the FCP), there's a drift angle pointer (green diamond) that points to track (it's removed when in TRK mode).No green arc exists on the MD-11. Indications on the magenta course line on the ND indicate the points where the vertical profile is expected to be joined from either above (crossed hollow circle) or below (hollow circle with label "I/P"). A cyan arrow pointing towards the magenta course line indicates the point during descent where the FCP altitude would be reached.The MD-11 has a much higher level of automation than a 737NG and the FMS is capable to automatically perform non precision approaches.Hope that helps. Have a look at the manuals, there's much information about such things in them.

My all time favorite.