Bill Womack

Hello,I'm having a new problem with the 737NG series that I hope someone can shed some light on. I started (trying) to fly these again this week after not loading them for a month or so, and now my flight displays won't, well, display. They're just black, no matter how I start up the aircraft. I've tried full cold-n-dark startups following the published procedures, and I've used ctl-e to autostart, both with the same result. I can't find any way to activate those displays. Are they supposed to become active when the battery power is switched on? I've got a key combo mapped to avionics master on/off, but this doesn't have any effect on them at all. Just curious if anyone else has ever had a problem like this. I even tried reinstalling both the base 600/700 models, followed by the 1.3 patch, then the 800/900 installer, and finally the latest service pack and model updates. Still no dice. Needless to say, it's the definition of a seat-of-the-pants experience to fly without them!BTW, I have no problem seeing the PFDs in the default jets, or any other aircraft that have vector gauges. Quite a puzzler.thanks,

Good thought, Lou. I'm not sure how the use of attachpoints for single objects differs from just placing the object itself in a Gmax layout, but it could provide a better option for library objects that are repeated. The only drawback I see with this method over hand-coding the locations of various library objects is that you lose the ability to have the objects conform to the terrain height. Even that isnt' a problem if you are building everything on a flattened surface, however. Interesting indeed!thx,

My understanding of the light_nav naming was that it creates a point light that is centered on one of the vertices of your triangle. I don't know which vertex is used (assume the first), so that's why I always use very tiny triangles for lights. It sounds as though your chief problem is scaling, since having a huge triangle and turning one of the vertices into a light could easily result in that light being far off the mark, position-wise. I'd check your units setup in Gmax again to make sure 1 unit= 1 meter and then double-check the size of the object to make sure it's suitably small. Hope that helps,

It would seem to my feeble brain that using an array within Gmax would produce one large fence object for export. Don't get me wrong, it sounds like a great trick for making a fence (I didn't know you could use splines w/arrays either -- good tip!). I can't see how it'd result in a performance boost though, as you'd still end up exporting one huge fence object w/one refpoint, which would create its own set of problems. Using the BiasXYZ in the XML would actually produce an optimized fence w/many segments with their own refpoints and thus better perfomance optimization, yes? Or am I once again completely befuddled ;-)?thanks,

An excellent point, Arno. I was thinking of the resample method for photo-terrain. Yes, VTP polys are depending on their layer order.

Looks great! Somebody stop me if I'm wrong here, but I believe photoreal terrain textures automatically take priority over the road lines such as in USA Roads. I know I made some for an airport I'm doing and even though USA Roads has a higher priority in my scenery library, the photoreal completely supplants USA Roads. BTW, I used Terraserver imagery as well, and the roads in my scenery, to my delight, match up perfectly in both position and width with The USA Roads around the periphery of the scenery. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that would happen! Anyway, beautiful work. I can't wait to try it out.thanks,

I don't have any experience with it, Eric, but have you tried Abacus' FS Painter software? I think it is supposed to do exactly what you're talking about; display a model with a particular repaint, just for the painter crowd. You might check it out if you haven't already.thanks,

Hi Eric,Well, I turn off all the services and programs that are listed in the help as okay to turn off. I let FSA defrag my memory, but don't have it set to force Idle Tasks to Execute (not that there's anything wrong w/that, I just haven't found it necessary). I have it set to wait 10 secs before killing an unresponsive program, then it starts my TrackIR software and weather program and then FS9. I like this new addition of being able to tell FSA not to start the main program but just to wait for a keypress before closing. That way I can do some scenery design, quit FS, then relaunch it to see changes without having to go through the whole FSA shutdown list again.I have so many controllers on my desk that I've set up multiple FS9 cfg files as well. So one, for instance, has all the joystick mappings for my FFB Stick, pedals and throttle, while another is for my yoke, pedals and throttle. A third profile is for flying multiplayer, with settings like turning on aircraft labels and limiting my frame rates and such. It's so cool that FSA allows you to then make multiple profiles, each with a different command line for FS9 specifying the different cfg files I use. Does that help at all?thanks,

Uh, hey Mr. Cold... that's exactly how FSA works now! I've got several profiles set up to launch IL2, FS2004, etc. Do you have the latest version? It's all explained in the readme I think, but you can have what you described above already.thanks,

Good idea! This is one of the only things short of coffee-making that would extend FSAutostart's functionality. If you could do it Ken, it would be great.thanks,

Hi Stuntie,Actually, I believe that's EXACTLY what is supposed to happen. The mipmaps are, essentially, a series of textures that are embedded into a single bmp file and have decreasing resolutions by a power of 2. So, if the highest res mipmap is 256x256 (the max for a terrain tile) then the other mips would be 128x128, 64x64, 32x32 and so on. By turning down your mipmap sliders you are, in effect, telling FS to use only the mipmaps at a certain resolution and lower. In using the lowest number, you're saying cover my ground with the same image, but only display the lowest resolution mipmap. The above example is exactly what you get when you do that. It should improve performance nicely, but at the cost of extreme image degradation.Hope that helps,

That's a great idea! Kudos to you for thinking of it. I just registered, btw. Very clean and attractive site design and excellent use of a database. As someone who flies a lot of short flights due to time constraints, I'm sure I'll be using this service a lot.thanks,

>I cant tell what all I neet to get for IL-2>>There is a "IL-2 Forgotten Battles Gold Pack" that claims to>be a stand alone with the Ace Expansion included. Do I also>need the original IL-2 Sturmovik to go with this?>>http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/241057.asp >It looks like this would be all I need. Correct?>>YES! You are correct; you don't need the original IL2 at all since the advent of Forgotten Battles. It installs as a complete stand-alone sim, and the Aces Expansion Pack installs as an expansion to Forgotten Battles. It can get a little confusing if you weren't following it at first. I'd hate to see you buy both Forgotten Battles AND the original IL2, as FB has everything the original IL2 had and more. And you won't be sorry, either! I agree with everyone else, it's a top-notch sim.

Hi Ernest,I don't know about the virtual cabin problems you're having, but the mock French Village will only show up if your scenery density sliders are fully right at "extremely dense". Check to make sure they are and let me know if you still can't see the village.thanks,

I've been in a few real world cockpits lately and have been shocked at how cramped and tiny all of them have been! Compared to the perceived roominess of FS cockpits, one wonders how a pilot taller than 5 feet can even get into one sometimes. I've found that while in VC mode, zooming in a lot more than I used to simulates some of this claustrophobia. Then again, zooming out gives a better impression of peripheral vision. Don't be fooled by how big our virtual front offices seem... in the real world, they're quite small.

Yes, there is. Check in the file library here and order by date and you'll find it. I'm using version 2.21 and it can change aprons.thanks,

Congrats on getting started! You've assembled most of the right tools, so now it's just a matter of getting used to them. Aprons are probably most easily added using AFCAD. If you look in Lee's documentation for that program you'll see how it's done. It's probably one of the easiest things you'll do in scenery design.Good luck!

I've had that happen before too, Rob. But zooming in and out while in the top-down view resulted in the taxiways and aprons showing up at some magnifications and not others. Have you tried zooming?

Watch it, Ted! I may be the only one, but I think the Song livery is quite attractive, and a darned nice design. The one that drives me around the bend (in the wrong direction) is the new Northwest Airlines logo. Helloooo? Anyone home over there at NWA? The logo looks fine if you view it from the left side of the plane, but from the right the triangular "tick" mark points northeast! What a buncha nimrods. At least the old logo was both clever and made sense from either side. Sorry, had to interject ;-).

I don't know guys, if they're still talking about mold makers and tooling, sounds like it's a fair piece off still. I can't for the life of me imagine why a company would confidently announce that a product will ship on "x" date when they're not even done making them yet. I'm losing a bit of faith in CH. Anyone tried the Elite MEL Throttle Quadrant? It's all metal and seems to retail for $250... not too much more than CH and I'd imagine it's a lot sturdier feeling, too.

Heh, well that was part of the problem for me. Apparently I get motion sickness too, or so I discovered on that ride. I'd do it again though, even if I was a brilliant shade of green when it was all over.

I guess I'm lucky to be alive then! Last year at the Avsim conference I had the amazing good fortune to get a ride in the real Briefing Time. I was back in the waist gunner position, so my view of the overall orientation of plane to ground was somewhat limited. I can tell you that Russ really likes to throw her around up there, though! We did what felt like a wing-over at one point and I nearly had to go chasing my stomach back to the tail gun :-erks. I guess that's what you get with a really experienced pilot that knows his plane so well.

Hi Johnny,I use a TrackIR2 device for head-activated panning in the VC mode, and I love it! It didnt' take much tweaking to get it working just the way I wanted, and I find it brings the realism in my 'simming to a whole new level. If you fly a lot from the virtual cockpit mode, then it'll help quite a bit. If you fly with 2D cockpits usually then you'll likely not get any use out of it. I've especially found it useful when flying patterns or making a particularly tough landing, because you can quickly and smoothly pan around using your head to get all the information you need. There's a new version of it out now called the TrackIR3, which supposedly has greater resolution, resulting in even smoother panning. But I've got no complaints in that department about my '2' version. By the way, I've attached a pic of my headphones with the little TrackIR adapter I fashioned from some coathangar wire and a couple of zip-ties. The reflective dot that is received by the TIR camera is stuck onto the end of this affair, and it works great. Just one idea for how you can set it up.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/75406.jpgthanks,

Montevideo, specifically. My uncle bought an apartment there and he's looking to buy a computer. I'm not familiar with the more popular brands in South America, so I thought I'd turn to my favorite source of international info... these forums! So what say you... can you help a buddy out with some computer info?Gracias!

It may be very different in FSDS, but in Gmax if you make a material that has less than 100% opacity, the shadows are automatically turned off when the object is viewed in FS.