Paul Henty

I stopped buying the 'old version' after the first time I bought it. :( Paul

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I had the same problem - I also updated to SP2 from XP Home SP1 using the windows update feature.I noticed that this version of the SP2 install was only about 60mb, compared with another version that you can download from MS which is 266mb.I took off the SP2 update (control panel -> add/remove programs -> tick the 'show updates' box at the top of the form) and used the larger SP2 install.Ater that, FSX installed fine.Here's a link to the SP2 update that works: (Well, it worked for me.)http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&DisplayLang=enHope this helps.Paul

Isn't MFC and the Win32 API obsolete as of Vista? My understanding is that they are being replaced by the WinFX API and the rest of the .NET framework.Will it not be like running a DOS application in current Windows? Like a backwards compatibility thing rather than a program native to that operating system?I'm also surprised there's no .NET code because the FAQ's say that the best experience will be with Vista, which sounds like it's using some of the new Vista APIs (The new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) being a likley candidate) which are all .NET libraries.Maybe I have things a bit mixed up though. Can you shed any light on this?Paul

Can anyone say if FSX has been re-written in .net or is it still a Win32 application?Paul

HiI wonder if the two posters (or anyone else) who are running more than one Video Card in their PC for *outside* views can elaborate on how this is done and how well it works.Like Bryn said above - it is widely believed that more than one outside view will bring framerates into single digits. The only real way to run multiple monitors for outside views is to use video cards that do the monitor spanning internally and present a single desktop to windows (like the Peherila does with three monitors).As far as I knew nVidaa cards can do this spanning accross only two monitors. What models of video card are you using (presumably they are in PCI slots) and do you need to make any special settings to get this to work?Or do you simply have low framerates (<10)? Or do you have the detail sliders very low?Please guys - let us know the scoop there - 'cos it's widely believed that the setup you are using cannot work.I'd ditch my Paherlia card pretty quickly if it turned out you can do the same thing with faster video cards like nVidia's.Thanks...Paul http://www.jdtllc.com/images/rcv4bannersupporter.jpg

Hi,I don't have the required codec on my PC to view your video. Which one do I need?Thanks,Paul http://www.jdtllc.com/images/rcv4bannersupporter.jpg

>> FS9 can already do for you what you want; you don't have to wait >> for FSX to benefit from your widescreen monitor. You just have to >> play with the zoom level.Just to add to that - After you've zoomed out to get more field of view: if your VC is too far away and too small you can move your eyepont forward with CTRL-Backspace. (CTRL-Enter moves it back again). This brings you closer to the VC again and may help restore the guages to a readable size. Moving the eyepoiont doesn't alter the field of view angle.Paul http://www.jdtllc.com/images/rcv4bannersupporter.jpg

I may be missing something here but FS9 already supports widescreen. It can run at any resolution and aspect ratio that your windows desktop can be set to.I've got a Parhelia graphics card running 3 LCDs and FS9 streches over all of them. The total resolution is 3072x768 - That's an aspect ratio of 4:1 which is far more than a widescreen TV.Paul

>Late on the thread... But has anyone seen this?>>http://www.e-onsoftware.com/Products/vue5infinite/?Page=2>>This thing is also responding to python language. I am>wondering how such a visual representation can exist on one>side and the cartoonish stuff on the other... Technology is>not that different.One Frame in FS takes about 0.04 Seconds to render (Assuming 25fps).One Frame in Vue5 at 1025x768 with full quality settings (like the ones on the website) could take hours to render.How's that for a frame rate? ;)Paul

Is there anything about the 767 version that would stop me using it for a 737?For example, are there 767-specific notches on the flap lever that won't match up with a 737?Paul

I'd like to second that. I had my first ever online flight last night from Toronto to Montrial. I have to say I was very impressed. I had voice control all the way and there was quite alot of traffic. It was great to see the other planes in the multiplayer session and on the TCAS. It just made it so much more real. I don't think I'll be going back to computer generated ATC in a hurry.Even though I got lost taxing the controllers were very patient and they really knew thier stuff.I'd been put off before by the number of programs you had to run to get voice etc, but Squawkbox 3 is just brilliant. Thanks to the author for such a great bit of software. Paul

Not for free. Both those audio signals are mixed down together. Splitting them up again is tricky. I know of two options but both cost money:Option 1:You can buy a little gadget from www.goflightinc.com called the GF-ATC. This uses audio filters to extract the frequency range of the ATC speech from the total audio mix and passes it out over headphones. The audio is also passed along to your normal speakers. No idea how well this works or how much seperation you'll get. It also has some knobs on it for controlling the atc menus rather than using the keyboard.Option 2: (the way I do it)Buy RadarContact and run it on another pc accross a network. The ATC audio is totally seperate then. This will be used instead of the FS2004 ATC. It has some advantages like being more comprehensive than the FS ATC. The main disadvantge at the moment (v3.1) is it doesn't interact with the AI aircraft very well (if at all). I understand that version 4 will fix this.Option 2 is cheaper if you've already got the second pc and you're running an FSUIPC/WIDEFS setup. If not, AFAIK the GF-ATC is the only game in town. But as I said - I've never heard one so I don't know how good they are. Best ask around for some opinions.Paul

Luca,Without knowing what kind of graphics card you have it's difficult to give specifc details but here's some general guidelines:The first thing you need to do is setup the monitor and laptop display so that the windows desktop is extended over both displays. If you have windows XP it fairly easy:Do a right-click on the desktop and select properties from the shortcut menu. Goto the settings tab. You should see your two monitors. The laptop display will be number 1, your monitor should be number 2. For the external monitor you need to select it and make sure you tick the option: "Extend my Windows Desktop onto this monitor."You don't need to do anything with the 3d acceleration in the trouble shooting tab - leave these both on full.That's the hard part. Once you have that working in flight sim it's easy:Start a flight as normal. Make sure you are not in full screen mode. You have to be in windowed mode. (Alt-enter toggles these modes)Right-click on the outside view and select 'undock' from the menu. the outside view will then pop out of the flight sim window into it's own window. You just drag that onto your monitor and size it. Make sure it's completely contained in the monitor and that bits of the window do not creep onto the laptop display or your frame rates will be very poor.Once you are happy with the window positions save the flight. The window positions are saved with the flight.If you're not using windows xp you may have to make the monitor your primary display, run flight sim on the monitor and drag the panels to the laptop. (You undock the panels in the same way as the main display).Paul

Just to correct a factual error in your post:------- Project Magenta should be testable outside of the "official"graphics demos that show it animated but not working connected to FlightSimulator.-------The official demos on the project magenta website are not just animations - they are working versions of the program that can indeed be conected to flight sim. The demos however will cycle thru different instrument displays at regular intervals and will quit after a set time.The 'animation' mode that you discribe is only activated if no FSUIPC or WideFS is detected.Paul

There is no doubt that SimCity 4 has much more detail on the buildings than any building in FS.BUT... Sim City is not proper 3D. It just an isometric projection. You can't go down into the streets and walk or drive or fly around it. You can view the city from exactly 4 headings 000, 090, 180 and 270. :-)The Sim City 4 team did intend to render the game in true 3D when they started, so the user could view their city from any position and walk around it. They soon found out that the frame rate was too bad because they like to use very hi-res textures on the buildings. The only way they could get it to run in true 3D was to reduce the detail on the textures so a level they concidered to be unaceptable. So they stuck with the isometric projection.This was all documented on their web site during the development of SC4. Paul

Yes, you need the registered version of FSUIPC. You can map key presses or joystick buttons to one of two traffic functions:Traffic Density Set - which allows you to specify a traffic density percentage.Traffic Density Toggle - which toggles between No traffic and the density you had before you turned the traffic off.When you turn the traffic off, the effect is instant - they just disappear. When you reinstate the traffic you get the "Loading Traffic" dialog box and the game pauses while traffic is loaded.Paul

I'm getting the 128 version. The price difference between the two is not insignificant and the posts I have read say there is no benefit to be had in using the 256Mb version with FS9. One bloke tested both in the same PC and saw no difference.This is the thread on the WideVieW support forumhttp://www.flightsim.no/cockpit/forum/viewtopic.php?t=244Actually there's a few posts on that board about the Parhelia cards.Here's the URL to the main board.http://www.flightsim.no/cockpit/forum/viewforum.php?f=3Anyway, I'll keep you posted.Paul

Hi Barry,My Parhelia card should be arriving by the end of the week. If no one else posts the info, I'll put my results here. I'll be using a 3Ghz pc with 1Gb ram, so not far off your spec.Paul

Andrew,Where can I get a Foobar 1234zx? They sound great. Is it worth getting the zx version? Will it work with my BIOS? Will it improve my framerates and get rid of the blurries textures? :-lolPaul

Here's my experience:I went from using a single LCD monitor (17") with a Frensel Lens to a 1024x768 projector (rear projected onto the front of the cockpit (~1 metre wide) and I was very dissapointed.Yeah, the image was much bigger but even with a 1024 projector the pixels are way too big - each one is clearly visible. You need to crank the anti-aliasing on the video card up to max to make it barely useable - i.e. to get jaggies and shimmers down to a useable level. Watch the framerate crash.The problem is that you're sitting about a meter away from the image. (On rear projection anyway).You might have more luck sitting further away but then you'll need to project bigger.I also tried out a 800x600 projector and this really was far too poor to use.Having lived with it for a year, I've now gone for a Matrox Parhelia and the BugEye display unit (three LCD displays with Fresnel lenses). The resolution can run up to 3096x768 in FS9 covering the same area as the projector. The other consideration is depth perception. Because the Fresnel lenses are colimating the light you get a real sense of looking outside the cockpit. With the rear projection you're looking at a flat image a metre infront of you. Your brain isn't really fooled.For me, I got a better sense of emmersion using the 17" monitor and lens that with projected display. With what I know now I'd pick a 21" monitor with a nice big fresnel lens over a projector everytime. Much cheaper these days too.Another thing to take into account is that you can't use fresnel lenses on a 2-man cockpit unless you give each person their own independent display because of the viewing angles.To sum up then... If you're going to use projection I would say 1024x768 is minimum, but with the new graphics cards that do multiple monitor spanning, projection may not be the best solution these day. Consider 1, 2 or 3 monitors or lcd panels with fresnel lenses. If you position the lenses right you can eliminate the borders between the displays. Don't know how hard this is to get right though. That's why I went for the pre-built BugEye solution (Well, that and the GBP/USD exchange rate at the moment!). It could be done cheaper if you make something similar yourself and use monitors instead of LCD planels.Of course it all depends on your budget and personal taste. I would suggest you borrow a projector before buying to test it out and see if you like the results.Paul

The spanning option is a fairly recent development with the newer cards. WideVieW has been around since FS98 days. Spanning is what I'm going to be using. The WideView option is too expensive for me and it's more complicated to setup - espiecially with synchronising weather and date/time between the views.You're right about the panel in 2D Mode - if you pull it accross the 2 montiors it won't be pretty. If you use the virtual cockpit mode it'll be fine.If you want to run 2D cockpit, a cheap PCI graphics card with XP Drivers (GForce 4 MX or something) and another monitor will let you run the panel on a seperate monitor. When in the sim, be in windowed mode (not full screen - Alt-Enter toggles these modes) - right click on the panel and select 'undock' from the menu. The panel will then be in its own window which you can drag onto any monitor.This works for any view or panel.For 2 montor outside view you will need to adjust the view angle otherwise you'll just have the one monitor view but stretched. In FS it's the Zoom setting you'll need to adjust in the view options. This is really just personal taste - I suspect somewhere around 0.50 - 0.60 would work well. Note that decreasing the zoom will lower frame rates but it's not too bad a hit.Paul

Marcus,As David said on 1 PC your frames will suffer - unless you get a graphics card that has monitor-spanning support. An example is the Matrox Parhelia card that supports 3 monitors. http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/home.cfmThe difference with these cards is that Windows sees the 2 or 3 monitors as a single display device (just with a really wide resolution like 3072x768). This way Flight Sim only has to render 1 3d window on one DirectX device (just like normal) - the card just spans it over 2 or 3 monitors.I read another forum post somewhere that nVidia has something similar but I can't be sure - maybe someone who knows can chip in.The alternative is indeed multiple networked computers - you need WideVieW (which is by Luciano Napolitano - www.wideview.it). The 2004 version is still in beta at the moment. Last time I looked there were still a few problems that needed sorting.With the graphic card method the horizons are not going to match up in a bank because of the gap in between the image caused by the borders of the monitors. The image does not continue on 'behind' the borders of the monitor like your brain assumes it should. LCD panels can lessen this as they have thinner borders. It's probably livable-with though.DeltaFlight (www.deltaflight.com) use converters to CRTs with hardly any borders at all (and the Matrox card). They just use the tubes without any casing. OK their setup is a bit special, but it's an idea.WideVieW however, when setup correctly, can compensate for this gap. The image looks like it carries on behind the monitor or lcd borders.Be aware also that with only two monitors the gap in the image in going to be on the runway centre line (unless you land off-centre). Three monitors solves this but it's obviously more expensive (especially the WideVieW route as you need 3 PCs).WideFS by Peter Dowson will not help in running multiple views - it's for running FSUIPC programs on remote machines.Paul

You are probably in full screen mode. Undocking only works in windowed mode. If I remember right Alt-Enter toggles between window and full screen mode.Paul