Speedbird 11

Sorry, in post #21 I meant that I did not find it a user-friendly aircraft to use on the PC, I have no idea about its merits in real life. :rolleyes: Michael

I got the Q400 for Christmas. Fantastic simulation of a dud aircraft, so uninstalled it after a few flights. I found it more of a chore than a choice. Michael

None really. I recently installed FS X on to a new computer, and it was amazing how fast and well it ran by itself, all the sliders up, with "Acceleration" as the only add-on. A few add-on aircraft later, and the sliders are back down again. <_< I suppose the only add-on I go to great lengths to re-install (adjusting AI traffic, etc into the bargain) is Fly Tampa's Kai Tak airport and Hong Kong city scenery. The rest is nice to have, but I could do without it, so not indispensable. Michael

PMDG 747-400 was a keeper, my all time favourite (although not as dependable, in some respects, as their FS 2004 version which I bought on the day of release in 2005). FSL Concorde was also a keeper (purchased on release day 2010). Others come and go, but these two stay. Something to do with real-life sentimental attachment to these types for me, I suppose. Unfortunately, the 777 will probably not be a keeper either, since I prefer 2D panels. No real-world attachment to the type for me, either. Michael

I have, more than 5 purchases ago though, and also uninstalled now! Michael

5. Just Flight L1011 TriStar: a couple of circuits, then uninstalled. 4. Just Flight Traffic 360: won't use, because too much bother to send traffic to Kai Tak. 3. Aerosoft A320 X: a few flights, then uninstalled since far too fiddly for my tastes. 2. GS X: used a bit, a lot of fun, but had to uninstall since it kept crashing my system (even while airborne, surprisingly). 1. PMDG 737: used for a few flights, but uninstalling now, since it never really moved me much. 5 uninstalls out of 5 purchases! Michael

Great comedy writing K-Man. :lol: Sorry I can't help with your fps, I only use E6850 and ATI HD 7???, I have a bit of fun though. Michael

Dear Phil, FS X is a great product that you and your colleagues created. I use or think about it most days, not too many other items fall into that category! Best wishes, Michael

I have found FS X to be the most reliable and best version, having started with FS 98. The occasional problem has always been traced back to add-ons, including some that receive high praise from many people. I now work on the basis that less is more, so run FS X with minimal add-ons of proven stability. Michael

Nice to see a positive thread, and in that vein I will start with FSX and Acceleration. These were gifts, not purchases, but without them the rest of my list means nothing. But for actual purchases, the few that I use all the time and love the most are the ones that integrate seamlessly with FS X, and I forget that they are not part of the original program! - Fly Tampa Hong Kong - PMDG 747-400 - FSL Concorde - FS Dreamteam's Ground Services X - Just Flight's Traffic 2005 (updated for FS X), still unobtrusively enhancing every flight after all these years, with no input from me An honourable mention also goes to: - Pro Flight Emulator, mainly because it enabled me to use ProFlight 2000 in the end, an add-on for FS 2000 that passed me by at the time, since FS versions were coming and going so quickly in those years! Michael

FSL Concorde, and by an enormous margin. Michael

Flight Operations Centre - made flight planning a chore rather than interesting A380 from Wilco - frequent crashes, ghost external lights a few metres out from aircraft body A320 from Wilco - opaque windows B737-400 from Wilco - manual flight always stuttered badly on my system Flight Keeper - occasional big time crashes of FSX PMDG 737-NGX - only purchased to see what the fuss was about, still wondering (nice as it is) PMDG MD-11 - only purchased to see if it was as bad as many said at the time of release (in fact, it seemed ok to me, except that it messed up my PMDG 747 installation!) Michael

Thanks Jim, the 'closing windows' thing never fully went away for me, suspect it is something to do with my running XP. In the grand scheme of irritating FS add-on behaviours, this one barely registers with me! :Yawn: Best wishes, Michael

Pro-ATC/X assigns a provisional SD and STAR at the planning stage. Waypoints before the end of the SD and after the start of the STAR can't be edited. Apart from this restriction (which makes sense, I suppose), you can edit the en route part of the plan to your heart's content. I tend not to do this, since you can ask Pro-ATC/X to think again as much as you want, and it will keep generating a new route until it exhausts the possibilities, or you find one to you liking, whichever comes first! Secondly, fiddling about too much with the auto-route generator detracts from the amazing speed and simplicity of the planning process, which is one of the program's strong points for me. Thirdly, on my system the program's windows (except the home window) sometimes close unexpectedly, so I quickly accept the first decent route on offer in order to get on with the flying (and most of the time, the route on offer is largely ok). Hope this helps. Best wishes, Michael

Hi Steve, Correct, I've never heard FSX ATC name a STAR, but some of the approaches offered are amazingly good, including the correct altitudes! Also, the number of airport names pronounced fully around the world always amazes me. I have not been tempted to try Pro ATC/X with IF, since I see that they both use the GPS and planner. I am frightened of something disasterous happening as a result, so not worth the risk! More generally for the benefit of others, the TA is not a big deal in Pro ATC/X, since it tends to give you brisk climb clearances, so you shoot through the TA very quickly. I should add that although it assigns you a SD and STAR, I think this is only the horizontal profile, I have not noticed any alignment with the real vertical profile, although I may just have been unlucky so far. PFE allows you to enforce the vertical profile to an extent, but even there with all the options this is not always fully possible. In real life, after many, many departures from Heathrow, I recall only once flying at the initial departure altitude of 6000' on the Brookmans Park and Dover SDs, so I do not fret unduly about this sort of thing in the buiilt-in and add-on ATC programs (especially since I am free to flly the published altitudes if I want!). Best wishes, Michael

Hi Jim, Yes, I can't realistically see any ATC program mentioning all the SDs and STARs by name, even PFE only gives a phonetic rendition such as "Bravo - Papa - Kilo - 6 - Foxtrot", similar to Pro ATC/X. They say that VOX ATC is good, but I don't use it, since I don't like voice programs, so I don't know: possibly its use of text-to-speech enables it to more or less say the SD or STAR by name, but I don't regard this as a big deal or worth the effort of using speech. Actually, I have since noticed how good a job the built-in FS ATC does by pronouncing so many places in the world in full! I too tend to regard the gate and taxi information as 'dummy' data or ear candy. I can't work out what the program's doing , since it's not completely random, and the taxi instructions for example do include actual marked taxiways at the airports in question. The next update will be interesting, although the program will never suit all my needs, given some of the defects in the original recordings such as defective call-signs (e.g. "British Airways" instead of the more iconic "Speedbird", to name but one). It's a shame, because the simplicity and rich feature set of the program otherwiise border on genius (when it works, at any rate). Great combo with GSX, isn't it! All the best, Michael Hi Steve, ATC gives you a gate on arrival, and that's about the end of the ATC feature of the program, so you can choose a gate of your own in practice e.g. if you have a preferred one for GSX features. The bit that interests me about how Ideal Flight will play with it stems from the fact that Pro ATC/X uses the GPS (and hence the flight planner) to achieve its ATC functionality. Michael

I completely know how you feel Jim, well done for sticking at it. My experiences are broadly similar, except that I have not heard a SD or STAR in full. For example, departing from London Heathrow I hear "B-P-K-6-F", not "Brookman's Park 6 Foxtrot". Transition altitudes are not fixed at 18,000' but I have not been able to work out whether they differ between countries or whether they are all accurate. In the Alpine region they seem a little high compared to my charts, in the Hong Kong region they seem about right. I don't know whether this is by accident or design, but will continue looking for a pattern. There's nothing editable here for TA so far as I can tell, unlike PFE. Completely agree with Jim that when used in conjunction with PMDG, FSL and GSX, it provides a lot of fun for very little effort. Other ATC programs (including the FS in-built) do some things better, but it's hard to beat the fun:effort ratio for Pro-ATC/X. Best wishes, Michael

It's all canned chatter, but the ATC does 'know' about the AI, so will tell you to wait for landing aircraft, etc rather than clear you to enter the runway. I confirm what Jim says above about selecting the correct user options in order to have less (or more) interaction with ATC. Michael

Yes, with 1.0.3.2 the descent clearance comes much sooner than before, but on my short EDDM-LIML this was well before cruise altitude and about 75 nm before the PMDG FMC tod. As a result, some of the ambience sounds seem to have been thrown off-kilter. Even so, a simple and overall pleasing experience now. Michael

All very true, the BIGGIN STAR for Heathrow being a good example of where the STAR and the approach are conflated for practical purposes. This can be used to advantage when just using the FS ATC, where the simplicity sometimes is ideal for my needs. PFE is very good and flexible for this sort of thing, but time-consuming for a quick flight. So I don't know about you, but I build up my favourite SDs and STARs in PFE incrementally, as time permits (which is not very often, for me!). Pro ATC X's use of SDs and STARs is more automated and very much simpler, and it's interesting that it uses the FS GPS and flight planner to achieve this behind the scenes, very clever. Pro ATC X is, of course, the subject of an extensive thread elsewhere in the forum. It's good that there are lots of ways to use FS X, depending on time and mood! :lol: Thanks for your thoughts, and best wishes, Michael

True, but the two are often conflated (and for obvious reasons). The practical point is how best to reflect the arrival and approach using the FS system (and with minimum fuss ). Michael

I add the GPS to those aircraft that do not have it, and use it as a data source, since I am more interested in the FS world in which I actually fly than in the world represented by the FMC database in which I do not. Most of the time though, they are not very different. I expect I am using different airports to you, since I generally only use a handful of the major ones in which the approach is coupled with a published STAR in FS. The situation is complicated further by the fact that transitions, STARS and approaches are handled differently by different countries in real life. I do not worry about things unduly if the published approach (or departure) is not in FS, since I have never found that the ATC has any difficulty with my following it. As such, I prefer to 'fly' rather than fiddle about with the innards of FS! But thanks all the same for your tip about the RNAV approaches, that's a new and useful discovery for me. Michael

You can see them in the FS GPS, if you look for the approaches for each airport. The FS ATC window will initially offer you vectors, but underneath there will be the option to ask for a published approach, depending on the runways in use. You can choose the one that's appropriate, and the FS ATC then clears you to fly it. I have found that even in some out of the way places, the FS ATC also clears you to an altitude more or less in keeping with the pubished approach. Hope this works for you. Michael

More accurate to say that PFE permits you to use SDs and STARS. For SDs, there are four ways. 1. Accept a generic "SD", which will be plausible vectors much like the FS ATC. 2. You select a waypoint in your flight plan that marks the end of the SD (ATC largely leaves you alone until you reach it). 3. You select an altitude at which the SD ends (similar to 2 above). 4. You designate a 5-character name for your desired SD, one allowed at a time for each runway e.g. for Brookmans Park 5J you could desingate "BPK5J" and ATC will clear you for "Bravo-Papa-Kilo-5-Juliet". You define them as per point 2 or 3 above. For STARS, there are three ways. 1. Accept a generic "ST", which will be vectors much like the FS ATC (not as wandering in heavy winds though). 2. You select a wayoint in your flight plan that marks the start of the STAR (ATC clears you for the approach, then largely leaves you alone until finals). 3.You designate a 5-character name for your desired STAR, one allowed at a time for each runway, similar to named SDs above. Separately, you can also nominate your missed approach altitude for each approach. Pretty good, all told, in conjunction with regional accents and other features. Like all ATC products though, it lacks some of the better features of the FS ATC, but gives you other things instead. I suppose since this long thread is about Pro ATC X, I should add that Pro ATC handles SDs and STARs automatically (making it much easier to use in this respect), but pronounces them in a similar way to PFE (although regional accents are not really Pro ATC's forte right now). I hope this helps. Michael

In fact, the default ATC also offers you a wide range of STARS instead of vectors. If you choose one, it does a pretty good attempt at clearing you for that STAR using an abbreviated name. The altitude clearances are often the same as or very close to those published for the approach in the real world charts. I actually quite like the default ATC. Best wishes, Michael