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I know from the past that there need to be waypoints between origin and destination so that the MCDU flightplan sequencing doesn't crash FSX. But I have still situations where crashes occur, the f-pln page flickers shortly before this happens. Does anyone know what to avoid to not provoke a crash? Last time this occured when I hand flew towards the first waypoint, not following the straight magenta line from the origin airport. FSX crashed when the plane was in the near vicinity of the first waypoint.

In the ITTV Fokker 100 video the crew preforms a full autoland for demonstration purposes in clear conditions. And they watch the system very closely. After more than 2 years studying the MD-11, I still don't understand many systems correctly (need to ask some questions here the next days). Let alone when it comes to failures -- I didn't touch the failure generator at all yet. Same goes for the other planes I have. "Mastering" is a big word, I don't think I'll ever be able to fully "master" any simmed complex airliner in my lifetime...

Exactly. Don't know why so many consider autoland a must have and must do thing. Autolands in FS are quite unspectacular. I doubt that these autoland-people are aware that autolands require a lot of surveillance and highly alert pilots, let alone that this type of approach cannot be done just for fun, it needs support from ground facilities and regulatory rules. As far as I know autolands are rarely being used under normal conditions. In FS, autolands would kill a great portion of the flying fun for me. But we all have different preferences...

It all depends on the way the code is written. I wouldn't be that pessimistic, but I'd agree that it would be hard for developers to keep acceptable FPS rates. FSX isn't coded well, so that's a lot of a brake for add ons. If newer sims will make use of what modern processors offer, and if Intel's new Sandy Bridge platform is used, I'd be optimistic. Todays average computer hardware is much more capable than anything you can find in any real world aircraft or spacecraft. Where an Airbus needs 5 computers, you can do the same with only 1 or 2 cores of modern processors I bet. Provided the code is well written (assembler/machine language?).

Good question, MCDUs seem to be stuck in time somehow. Maybe it's the typical capitalistic approach to things which prevents larger technology changes (i.e. the usage of something that's proven and working and widespread/familiar and instantly available for little money is way more cost effective and controllable than a precarious and probably very expensive venture with unpredictible results money-wise)...

Cannot find my original post anymore, so I repost since I still have no sufficient information:On the takeoff reference page of the MCDU I need to enter an OAT for the origin airport. On the climb forecast page, there's an option to insert a temperature for the origin airport as well.The last line on the climb forecast page is automatically populated with the origin airport identifier, don't know if this can be changed and another navaid/waypoint can be entered. Anyway, the corresponding temperature field is empty (bracketed).I don't understand why the temperatures for the origin airport on both the takeoff reference and climb forecast pages aren't sync'ed. Maybe it won't harm the vertical path calculation if two different temperatures would be entered, but nevertheless I consider this a possible source of error...

Is there a syntax/grammar guide for the contents of the files in the SIDSTAR folder? I'd like to modify some and need to know more about the correct usage of keywords etc.

Apart from the restricted peripheral vision problem (I'd need a much better powered PC and TripleHead2Go to resolve this since I'm no VC flyer), the thing that annoys me the most in FS since day 1 is that the more I bank my planes, the more I need to pull on the yoke.I think depending on the type of plane, it's quite normal to pull on the yoke, but I cannot imagine that it's realistic when I bank my airliners 30 degrees I need to pull on the yoke like crazy -- sometimes elevator authority isn't even enough and I need to add trim. This waqy flying approaches like LOWI rwy 08 end up in a yoke pulling session.I faintly remember to once have seen something in an FDE editor regarding a relationship between bank angle and lift. Can someone provide me with more information about this so I can possibly make some changes in the air files?

This file looks to be very important when it comes to display quality. But in contrast to fsx.cfg, it is somewhat underrated I think. Maybe someone can give a more precise explanation on what keywords can appear in that file and what they do (Disable=, PanelAsTexture= etc.)...

Mark,I see you have the same problem I had some time ago: The ground illumination doesn't have a nice gradient but rather a color banding effect...To answer the question of the initial poster: I guess many will see this effect sooner or later for some reason (e.g. the installation or usage of a specific addon). The cure for the problem is to overwrite spotlight.bmp with a "working version". This file is responsible for ground illumination, how it looks, where it is, what color and luminousity it has, its shape etc.I eliminated both my problems (displaces ground illumination and color banding effect) by repeatedly manually overwriting spotlight.bmp with files from REX v2 until I was satisfied with what I saw in FSX. There are very few downloadable spotlight.bmp replacements (I found only one in the Avsim library, don't ask me the name of it), and I found them not as good as the ones that come with REX.Search the REX installation folder and the FSX folder for occurrences of the spotlight.bmp file, then you know where the REX files are and where the FSX file needs to be, then you can simply copy the file over from REX to FSX.Hope that helps...

What does "heated, but not ventilated" for the center carco compartment mean? Does "ventilated" mean there's considerable amount of air mass moving in and out of a compartment and "not ventilated" that there's only minor airflow because of pressurization (i.e. excess air flowing out of the compartment)?

In case engine control is completely lost on airliners (destroyed signal cables, no control over fire extinguishers, no way to cut fuel flow etc.) and they're able to "continue on their own", how do engines react in such a situation (I can imagine different scenarios for older and newer FADEC type engines)?I faintly remember to have read somewhere that on one A380 accident where parts of the engine disrupted the wing and caused a similar condition, the engine electronics kept the latest thrust setting... Imagine thrust is high and you need to land with an unstoppable engine :(

Kyle, you're the man! Thank you a lot. It's that simple, just like common sense, but my brain seems to be blocked in some areas :(. Good to have experts here on board :(!I conclude from your explanation that having the proper amount of stabilizer trim set is absolutely crucial for a safe and successful takeoff. I always had the feeling that without the stab trim numbers, takeoff would be a risky venture, and in real life I woud never dare to perform any takeoff with stab trim improperly set.Though I guess there are transport planes that allow a certain "safety margin" around the right stabilizer trim setting, I have a lot of pretty good add-on planes where stab trim numbers are completely missing in the manuals, a real shame - but most simmers look like they don't care...

That's what I want to leave behind me in the future.Surprisingly the PMDG MD-11 is motivating enough for me so that I try to understand most things, not simply doing them because the QRH or a checklist says so. I'm sure I can handle emergencies better when I know the backgrounds of the plane's systems (once I get to this poing, I'll start using the failure generator :()...

To ask another of my silly questions: My understanding of TO stab trim is that less elevator is needed for rotation. But what exactly does TO stab trim, put the plane into a "neutral" state (such as no up/down forces on the elevator) at rotation time?

Thank you, Kyle, this was very informative.

Thank you, Nick, your explanation was very descriptive. But things are still not clear enough for me:1.As the MD-11 controls CG during flight by relocating fuel in the tanks, I can imagine that TOCG is required as basis for CG calculations and therefore fuel relocation actions. Is this correct?BTW: Which other plane controls CG in flight like the MD-11?2.Am I correct to say TOCG determines the amount of TO stab trim required?3.What tool provides ZFWCG in real world, how is that value determined?4.How is TOCG calculated? The manual states it's the result of a calculation where only ZFW and BLOCK are involved, I don't understand why ZFWCG has no relevance in this calculation.5.What is the practical meaning of the relationship to trip fuel when RTE RSV/% is expressed as percentage of trip fuel?6.I can imagine RTE RSV/% has a relationship to certain airline SOPs. Me as an armchair pilot without such airline policies, how do you recommend I use that value for my flights?7.Why is the fuel required for a hold at the alternate labeled FINAL?8.The advanced tutorial says that the CG value from the secondary engine page should be taken for TOCG on the weight init page. I don't understand what these two values have in common.

I asked because I'd like to know "the story behind" the items on the weight init page. I guess there's a lot more to say about them than just "1r, 2r, 5r, and 6r (block, togw, tocg and zfwcg) appear as boxes"...The importance of several values (e.g. RTE RSV/%) for me as the pilot aren't clear enough, and I ask what e.g. TOCG is used for at all. Let aside that I don't understand what "before eingine start, none of the calculations of weight data (zfw=togw+taxi-block) account for ballast fuel[...]" means exactly.Hope someone is a "good story teller" and can enlighten me...

Anyone knows if and where I can find in-depth and background information on these MCDU pages:+) weight init+) fuel init (ballast fuel)Please no answers "read the product manual" or "do the tutorials".

Which ground texture replacement packs exist for FSX?I know of:Ruud Faber's FSCene XFlight1 Ground Environment X (Europe and N-America)Hifisim X GraphicsAre there others? Can they coexist in an FSX installation?

Simflight.com recently did an extensive Review of the PMDG MD-11 X. The author depicts some imperfections on the exterior model. PMDG emphasizes that they have access to original Boeing material, so I assume they have modelled the MD-11 according to real world dimensions. Apart from the obvious bugs like the free floating slats panel(s), is the author right if he says that the exterior model of the sim plane doesn't match its real world counterpart exactly? After all, he compares using photographs and not blueprints...P.S.: I hope we can expect a "final patch" some time in the future where those imperfections will be pretty much corrected. It would be a real shame if that wonderful piece of software would stay "only" 97% perfect...

Sorry, but you misunderstood the purpose of the registry, the file system and .lnk files completely here. The file system holds informations of files, their location and the associated metadata (file system explained; NTFS explained). The registry does other things (Windows registry explained). .lnk files are soft links pointing to destination files (symbolic links explained).

Sorry that I cannot help you. It's these misterious problems, popping out of nowhere, that ruin the sim experience completely. Hope for you that someone can help you. I for my part look forward to re-install everything just because my landing light ground illumination effects have gone crazy...

Somehow REX messed up my landing lights reflection from the ground (see also my thread here), so my questions:1.Does the MD-11 come with its own set of landing/taxi/... lights and the effect of ground lit by the landing/taxi light files (whatever they are) which could easily be "destroyed" by applications like REX, can I restore them without re-installing the MD-11 completely?2.If 1. is impossible or difficult to do, is it possible to successfully use replacements like A2A lights redux for the MD-11? Would this replace the ground lighting as well?

After all these years, I'm still surprised at times how easy it is to "destroy" something in FSX, often in an irreversible manner.Sometimes scenery gets "out of control" and there's landmass instead of water, or straight coastlines, or holes instead of lakes, or perfectly rectangular islands etc. etc. Sometimes strange things like gradient banding (see my posting of my recent landing light beam problem here) occur, the list of possible problems is sheer endless.Unfortunately, it's very likely that one runs into one or the other with almost no chance to recover. Sure, there are methods to counteract this general problem (using "sandboxes" or data imaging techniques), but I happened to detect some problems only after weeks or months and after the installation of several add-ons. So, many problems are left undiscovered until one stumbles over them fortituously. There might even be problems lurking in someone's FSX folders that would never be revealed because that person never flies under the conditions required to make them pop up and become visible.The downside is that except of a few, most of these problems are unresolvable because of the lack of "user friendly" tools needed to "debug" them. This way, the installation of a single scenery add-on has the potential to corrupt scenery in a region far away from the region for which this add-on is designated - and may become one of the undiscovered problems.I for my part am repeatedly forced to troubleshoot such problems in an endless quest for keeping my FSX installation as clean as I can. And still, I run into troubles where FSX suddenly crashes because of a missing .bgl file and such.I only wish that there will be a simulator version one day that is capable of better taking care of itself so that most problems can be avoided. As long as it is like it is, I'm cought in the endless cycle of tuning and troubleshooting without any hope for an end of this loop, and often enough I spend a whole lot more time troubleshooting and tuning than flying...Rant mode off. Needed to get this off my chest, back to daily work :(