atco

Released. Orbx only at the moment. Marketplace to come later this week https://orbxdirect.com/product/skyward-citation-msfs2024

And just like that Orbx have now confirmed in discord they will not be moving forward with this DRM. The community has spoken loudly and forced change.

I flat out asked Aerosoft and they have confirmed it is not the same, and there is no kernel level DRM used in the A340-600

I posted it in the Orbx forum verbatim. I'm not a member of the Orbx discord. If anyone else is feel free to post it there.

Recent example of kernel level anti cheat software being exploited........... https://www.pcgamer.com/ransomware-abuses-genshin-impacts-kernel-mode-anti-cheat-to-bypass-antivirus-protection/ "Security skeptics and advocates have worried for some time now that exploits able to take advantage of anti-cheat kernel-mode drivers could wreak serious havoc on PC security. Now it seems to have happened: The anti-cheat driver used by Genshin Impact, the popular free-to-play RPG, has been abused by a ransomware actor to stop antivirus processes and enable the mass deployment of their ransomware." The fact that blue chip AAA companies even struggle with this and the potential dangers leaves me pretty stunned that FS developers would allow a college drop out with 5 semesters of experience and who used AI to code his app to have this level of access to anyone's PC. Honestly I'm struggling to find this believable. I really think as a community we need to take a stand on this and say no. I 100% believe devs should be able to protect their work and their livelihood, but this is not the answer.

On the Orbx forum a user posted this apparently information from the developer of this DRM module, and I'll post it here. You can draw your own conclusions as to whether this is someone you want to give kernel level system access to on your PC.............. "I did what you'd call "AI Assisted" coding. No "vibe coding". Formal training: I've studied computer science for 5 semester, but haven't finished because I changed jobs and had to move to another city, making continuing impractical. It included several security-specific modules. I'm part-time employing another developer who as a computer-science degree and he has reviewed the application. No personal data is being stored. The SimGuard client transmit only the activation key you enter and a unique device-id (from which no information about the users pc can be deferred, SHA256 hash to be exact). Optionally, automated error-logging via sentry.io is enabled, but you can opt-out anytime to that)"

Well one reason is it starts to become cumulative. There is a growing body of evidence that WASM crashes are heavily linked to the number of running addons, apps and programs you have running connecting to the sim. PMDG have an extensive thread and volume of research that shows a significant link. This is just adding yet another program on top of the mix. As others have said here already the concern will be this will keep spreading, and we will be forced to run more and more of these things. For example if you want to fly the PMDG 737 into KATL you will be running the PMDG program in the background, maybe the Boris sound pack, 3rd party livery, maybe you have the Fenix, Ifly and TDS programs running from your EXE.xml, probably GSX Couatl as well, most people run some kind of flight tracker like Volanta, lots of people have a VATSIM client or BATC/SI running and now a scenery DRM that has to be running as well. Before you know it you've got a dozen programs running away in the background leaving yourself more prone to a lovely set of orange screens. It would not surprise me if Orbx KATL becomes a bit of a WASM fest. Was going to be a day 1 purchase for me but now for the first time ever I am going to choose the Marketplace over a developers own store. History is littered with companies who impose overbearing DRM on their customers and it never ends well - Sony anyone? I guess it continues to be true that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Exactly the same for me, only started happening a few days ago, but the forums are essentially unusable for me now on Android. The workarounds mentioned above don't really work for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Cleared all cookies, site data, browsing data, then 5 mins later problem is back. It's clearly not on our end, the site doesn't currently work with Chrome on Android. It really shouldn't be up to us to jump through hoops to make our devices work with the site, it should be up to the site to fix the issue. I'm not faffing around with other browsers just to visit one site, I'll just stop visiting here instead simple as that.

Ah thank you, yes so it does.

I'm using PSXT 12.6.0. I cannot select the checkbox to scan addon airports. I press the box repeatedly and nothing happens, it never gets checked, the scan never runs. I've changed the airports in my community folder so I need to rescan them and I am not able to do so. Scan for liveries checkbox works fine. Any ideas?

Download for missing textures: https://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=46574.msg433063#msg433063

Like you I'm a busy family man, and have a full time job in aviation, I don't have time to spend 8-10 hours at my PC, and having it fly overnight while I'm asleep or jump ahead features hold zero appeal for me either - I'm busy enough in the mornings with the family or work as it is. I am really happy to report that the A340 on my hardware at least is flawless at 8x sim rate. I do have a beefy system (9800X3D, 64GB DDR5 6000 RAM and a 4090) so YMMV but I've just completed a trans-atlantic flight and it performed amazingly. Both laterally and vertically it tracked to perfection, just as good as the PMDG 777s. In every other Airbus (INI A330, A321LR, A350, FBW A380) to use 8x I have to pull the VS and set 0 to avoid the wild pitch oscillations, lateral tracking is always fine, but in the A340 I can leave it in ALT CRZ with no problems and it holds altitude perfectly. I'm well impressed. Fuel only burns at 4x, however once I reached the point at TOD where I wanted to go back to 1x sim rate, I just set the fuel in the EFB to what Simbrief had planned at TOD and it set the fuel with no fuss and I had a wonderful descent, approach and landing at realistic landing weight. Anyway just passing along if you have the hardware that can cope you can run the Ini A340 at 8x with no problems at all (except for the fuel burn, which can be worked around).

No I have not had the App installed since I moved to my new PC in February. I only have 2x FG selected and I use DLSS swapper to put the most up to date DLSS files in sim. I have since found I can get smoother performance with NVIDIA DLSS FG using the FrameRateLimiter setting in the Usercfg.opt

Thanks for the tip. I only run a single monitor and no head tracking, but gave it a try. My monitor is 144Hz native. Tried at 120 and 60 and no real noticeable change. Perhaps marginally better at 120Hz when resetting the cockpit view.

I'm finding some interesting things as I tinker around trying to reclaim my smooth performance from pre-SU1. I'm almost there again. Before SU2 I used MSI Afterburner and RTSS to stay locked at 60FPS with FG (so 30 native, with x2 FG). I had perfectly smooth performance everywhere, even when panning and switching views. Was beautiful. Running a 9800X3D OC to 5.4GHz, 64GB DDR5 6000MHz RAM and a 4090 with MSFS24 on a dedicated PCIE4 M.2 drive. Used DLSS Quality, and DLSS Frame Gen. With SU2 and no settings changed I was having terrible stuttering even when in a default aircraft at a default airport, no traffic just sitting there doing nothing. FPS would be steady and then suddenly start dropping and stuttering before going back to smooth again, before it would happen again and rinse and repeat. My DLSS and FG dll files are the latest, also installed the latest FSR dll. All shader caches cleared, and rolling cache deleted and rebuilt. Tried the latest NVIDIA driver and also rolled back to my previous one, and no difference so not a driver issue. Reinstalled the latest one again. I found that by switching Frame Gen to AMD FSR that I removed that stuttering I was getting with DLSS Frame Gen, and sitting there stationary I had my old smooth 60FPS back and it would stay there. I did still get some stuttering when changing views, ie inside to external or when resetting my view after looking at the overhead or pedestal. Also some occasional stutters while panning around, but certainly miles better than I was getting with the NVIDIA DLSS Frame Gen, where I would see FPS drops down to 35 and heavy stutters. Today I tried the Frame Limiter setting in the Usercfg.opt. I set it to 30 so that would give me my 60 with x2 Frame Gen. No real change with AMD FSR, was largely smooth except in the circumstances I mentioned previously. What surprised me though was when I changed to NVIDIA DLSS Frame Gen the horrible stuttering and performance I had yesterday was gone. It was back to being just as smooth if not slightly better than the AMD FSR. So I shut the sim down, reset the Limiter to 0 in the cfg and tried again. Sure enough the stuttery poor performance was back. Just to make sure, set the Limiter back to 30 again and fired up the sim and sure enough nice smooth performance like I was getting in SU1. With the view steady its exactly like it used to be, smooth, steady 60FPS with constant frame times. Again changing views and panning isn't as good as it was in SU1, still get some minor stuttering, but at least I have almost got back to where I was. Just posting my findings in case it might help someone else that is struggling with stuttery performance in SU2.

Yes they were changed but I had already replaced them with the current versions with DLSS swapper. I rolled back to my older driver. Little to no change. The biggest factor for me us the Frame Gen setting. If I use NVIDIA DLSS FG I get a stuttering mess with constant spikes and FPS all over the place. Using AMD FSR FG I am back to almost constant smooth performance. Only some stutters on changing view and with some panning. I have no idea why this is suddenly a thing, although someone did reply to me in the official forums that this happened in the beta as well and I wasn't the first to report that changing to AMD FSR solved a bunch of performance issues. I'm running in 4K with a 4090 with Frame Gen. I'd strongly suggest anyone else having similar issues give changing the FG setting to AMD FSR and see if it helps. The difference for me was massive.

Well interestingly I've found changing my Frame Gen setting from NVIDIA DLSS to AMD FSR has made things much smoother. Not at the same level I was at pre-SU2 as panning still isn't great, but its miles better than I'm getting on the NVIDIA DLSS setting.

Well for me this update has been a disaster. Was not in the beta so previously on SU1. Had glorious, smooth performance everywhere, locked at 60FPS with FG on. Was really enjoying the sim. Updated to SU2, deleted my rolling cache, deleted my NVIDIA cache and updated to the latest NVIDIA driver. Now I just get a horrible stuttering mess. Massive FPS drops, huge frametime spikes and all around horrible performance. Tried several reboots and still the same. Did not even bother trying to fly, the stuttering and fps drops have completely ruined things for me. Very unhappy.

A few more observations as I've just taken her out for a couple of Astral cargo flights around Africa.................... 1: Performance is quite poor for a relatively basic aircraft in avionics terms. Lots of little hitches and micro stutters even in cruise. In this part of the World even the Ini A350 is smooth as silk. I think the model might be poorly optimised. Certainly no reason for it to be as stuttery as it is. 2: Ground handling isn't great. Very squirrely on the runway, and it taxies like its on ice. 3: Its a handful on approach. I suspect the flaps might be too draggy. I know these older jets were not very efficient, but at flaps 40 in the -30 (not even full 50 flap) you need an awful lot of thrust to maintain the glideslope. 4: So far I've found it pretty difficult to trim nicely on approach. Once you get below 200kts IAS I've found the altitude hold doesn't work very well, it will just keep descending even though the VS is set to 0, and even applying positive VS to climb does not arrest the descent 5: Landing is an adventure, it is very, very pitch sensitive. I have -25 set on my sensitivity but I think it needs even more So again, its getting there but there's still a way to go. I'm happy enough with it, fills a need for me but if this is the final version I'll be very unhappy. It needs more refinement, but certainly leaps and bounds better than the wreck it was on release. Hope this helps. My advice, if you want a top of the line, polished DC-9 then this isn't it yet. If you want a decent DC-9 that still has some quirks and issues to work out and will give you a decent enough simulation of a DC-9 then this will scratch that itch.

Honestly its not bad - Its by no means great or "study level" and price wise its a little high for what you get. I do find the system depth pretty decent. Systems all seem to work as they should and you can definitely fly it according to the book. If you are familiar with the MD-80 you will find the DC-9 very similar and in a lot of places identical. Autopilot also worked well for me, held headings, altitudes and tracked NAV with zero issues. I was able to use VS and IAS hold in climb and descent without trouble. HDG and NAV mode worked fine, tracked VOR and ILS no problem. GS tracking was a bit up and down but I suspect that might have been a thing in the real plane. Sounds are not great, but I use the FTSim+ sound pack which is much better. Model was good, possibly not to the highest standards of today and texturing is a bit of a mixed bag. In the cockpit I find it perfectly fine. Flying wise, using the figures from the loadsheet it flew fine. Rotation was at the correct speed based on the set trim value, have not experienced the plane rotating on its own. Hand flying was good, although at linear sensitivity its a bit pitchy. A nice adjustment to the pitch curve though has it hand flying nicely. The -30 seems to be a little overpowered Overall I like it. Biggest real drawback is that right now it can only be flown using VOR/NDB and there are so few of those navaids left around now. I love flying old school, but its tricky to find routes, especially in N America now where you can fly any realistic route VOR-VOR. Some kind of GPS function would be really nice to open up more routes now that we are in the era of RNAV. I'm glad I got it, the update was certainly significant and I enjoy it. It's fair to say that its night and day difference from the videos I saw of the release version. To their credit they've obviously done a lot of (needed) work on this update, and this is probably the version that should have been the initial release. I'll definitely be flying it a lot, and its likely the only DC-9 we are going to get for a long time. I feel overall they've done justice to the great airplane and I have no regret about picking it up. My view may also be biased because aircraft like the 727 and DC-9 (737-200, 1-11 etc) were the aircraft I grew up with as a child so I have an innate love for jets of this era.

First video review here: To be honest I think I'm going to take a punt and pick it up. It looks like its in a pretty reasonable state now, miles ahead of where it was at release, certainly looks very flyable and can be operated by the book.

A very significant update has been released for this at last. I'd really love to know if this is worth getting now, would love to recreate some flights from my childhood.

Yup I ordered within 2 minutes of them opening up orders from their Canada site. Seemed logical to me at the time, living in Canada that I would choose that option. They don't explain at all the relationship between the various sites and how you get stuck waiting behind orders on the global site. I has still heard nothing a week ago so reached out to them, and they still didn't have any idea when the Canada orders would be shipped out. Thanks to what I learned here I had enough and canceled entirely my pre-order and instead ordered from the global site. My Airbus MCDU and 737 FMS have both already been shipped and will arrive on Tuesday. It's going to work out more expensive than the order from the Canadian store, but at least I'll actually finally have my units in hand and not just be sitting around waiting for who knows how long.

In fairness to the OP, it didn't become apparent this was a beta issue until well over an hour after his post

It appears this is only impacting people enrolled in the beta program. I wasn't enrolled and had no issues either. In talking with other folks it does seem to be limited to anyone in the beta program still. I would strongly urge anyone still enrolled not to start MSFS2024 until MS confirms this problem has been resolved. the update is wiping all the MSFS24 AppData folders, so your LocalCache, WASM, Airplanes, content.xml, exe.xml etc etc Also multiple reports of people losing their entire physical Community folder contents