Taildragger

Travis,I have had no trouble with overclocking, but do use a Zalman CPU cooler, and temps stay reasonable.:( Purchased v1 mesh CDs, preordered v2.If you have already submitted the bridge problem in the Flight1 reporting tool, just wait. It may take a few months until the next patch, but they are very good about responding to glitches. And with those I have reported, the result is far better than I could ever do.John

My system is similar to yours, Travis:Core2 Duo 2.4MHz -- overclocked to 3.4 and 1500 MHz FSB2 GB 800MHz RAM8800GTS - 768MBYou have lots of room for overclocking, if you need a bit more oomph.UTX has all sorts of customizing options to help frame rate issues. Yes, cities are killers, especially with heavy AI traffic nearby. If you primarily fly in the wilderness, your performance will not be a problem.But I agree with you that landclass is your best "bang for the buck" at this point.I ordered the mesh CDs -- the downloads are humongous, plus having the resolution loss.John

Travis -The GEX changes are more subtle than UTX -- most noticable in Fall and Winter, also in desert areas. You may have noticed the Sahara-like sandy appearance in the default FSX, even in areas with sparse vegetation. Steep terrain is also greatly enhanced -- cliffs appear more convincingly rocky and sculptured with GEX.Time permitting, I may try some before and after GEX shots, but changing is a tedious process of switching out thousands of texture files.UTX enhancements are like night and day. Both urban and remote areas benefit greatly, especially in VFR flying. Being able to recognize every road, stream, lake, etc. is great fun. I just finished flying the Wind River range in Wyoming, and could spot nearly every feature on the National Forest map.Questions:<1) Did you notice if FSGenesis, GEX, and/or UTX dropped your frame rates?">FSG and GEX had no detectable effect, and I carefully benchmark major addon changes. UTX initially impacts frame rates because of the greater density of roads and the fact that it enables traffic on more roads -- not just interstates. But pull the traffic slider down to 10% or less and you will be back to normal and still have plenty of traffic.<2) Which FSGenesis DVD(s) did you install and enable? I see there's "US Landclass", "North America Terrain Mesh", and "World Mesh".">US Landclass is what you want. The mesh files improve the terrain detail in mountains, canyons, etc. I use those as well, but the benefit is less obvious than with landclass and UTX.<3) Did you try other free or cheap alternatives to FSGenesis before settling on it? Did any come close to the coverage and accuracy?>I'm not aware of any freeware that covers the entire US. I chose FSGenesis based on prior experience with Justin's great product support and some comparison screen shots of landclass packages in an earlier posting. Sorry I did not save the link. May even have been another forum.<4) How much autogen did you have enabled? Have you installed any autogen tweaks (like the reduced trees, etc.)?>I keep the slider full right (Extremely Dense) in the boonies and sometimes back off to Very Dense in cities. No tweaks -- I like lots of trees at low altitude. If you have trouble, reduce the buildings first.<5) Do you usually fly w/ FSGeneis, GEX, and UTX all enabled? Or do you sometimes disable them either for performance or cosmetic reasons?>Always enabled, along with the FSGenesis mesh, which seems to affect loading time, but not frame rate.Good luck!JohnP.S. If you also want to add realistic AI traffic, I have been very pleased with the freeware World of AI packages.

Landclass is definitely your problem here.The first image is with default landclass and UTX disabled. Pretty much the same as yours, except that I also have GEXn and that is difficult to disable.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/187209.jpgSecond is with FSGenesis landclass and still no UTX. The forests seem to have been properly remapped as fields.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/187210.jpgFinally, FSGenesis with UTX enabled. Not much change, just a few more roads and streams. In other areas you will find UTX makes a huge difference.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/187211.jpgJohn

That's an issue of inaccurate landclass in FSX. In a rural area like that UTX probably does not change it, and GEX is textures, not landclass.You need a landclass addon. I prefer FSGenesis in the Pacific NW, but there are others.Post a screenshot, including the coordinates, and I will duplicate it with FSGenesis, so you can see the difference.John

Travis -I spend gobs of time with bush flying and for me the most useful single add-on was UTX. It adds minor roads, streams, lakes and towns, which greatly enhances the backcountry visual experience. The resolution is amazing -- finding even tiny mountain lakes at the right location and being able to recognize their shape on a topo map makes for immersive realism in wilderness flying. It used to be such a bland, featureless forest.Just keep the road traffic at 10% or less and you will have no problem with frame rates away from cities.John

What's the latest on your blurry issues after switching to the large LCD display?Hoping to see a resolution of this before shelling out the big bucks for a 24" LCD.John

Hi Al,You said you clicked the poly line, but did you right-click it to bring up the menu with the Properties option for editing?John

Excellent explanation, Holger. The mental picture is getting pretty clear.Hopefully, I now just need to read a bit more and experiment with the tools and procedures to see if everything clicks.Many thanks for your kind and patient tutoring!John

Thanks, Holger -- that's a wealth of info. Let me make sure I grasp at least some of it.Your "easiest approach" sounds like the inverse of what I was planning. That is, instead of using aspen polygons to override the default landclass, it would first replace the default landclass with custom aspen landclass. Then I guess any necessary adjustment of the 1.2 km aspen groves would be done with polys filled with conifers, grass, rock, etc., as required.OK -- then the first step is just whatever bgls I need to create by modifying landclass using the default Olson table choices (and BTW your spreadsheet is an enormous help in working with those). No aspen yet.The second part I'm unsure about. To create the custom landclass, do I assign it one of the unused numbers in the table? How else would the sim distinguish it from the defaults? The SDK paragraph on custom landclass is not very enlightening.Finally, the autogen. Yes, without Luis' excellent tutorial, that would be a complete mystery. But how does the agn file I create with the editor get associated with the custom landclass? And does it go into the sceneryworldtexture folder?Again, your help is much appreciated.John

Problem: For a southern Rocky Mountain project in FSX, how to create a landclass poly fill with say 90% aspen, 10% conifer autogen vegetation.The default poly fills with mixed evergreendeciduous all seem to use larch trees. While these give the correct Fall coloration, the percentage is not high enough and the models do not well represent aspen, when viewed in the texture dds files.As very nice aspen models do exist, one option would be to use the Autogen Annotator to change the vegetation mix in one of the default poly fills. However, this would mess things up everywhere else that fill is used, such as in the northwest where larch is appropriate.The ideal solution would seem to be creation of a new custom poly fill. But the SDK, tutorials, and forum posts I have seen do not make clear to my feeble mind how to proceed or whether this is even possible.Any advice would be most welcome.John

Moderators, is this sort of abuse now tolerated at Avsim?John

Hi Steve,Bill Lyon's outstanding Tri-Pacers work well in FSX, although some of the external textures do not display properly. I'm sure there is a fix, but have not had time to delve into it.Search for cc13p22f.zip in the avsim library.John

Some basic info here:http://homepages.mcb.net/bones/04fs/tutorial/fltsimcf.htmIt's for FS2004 and earlier, but will get you started.John

Laurent,Many thanks! The combination of deleting the ini_serv_file.xml and setting the IPs to 127.0.0.1 for a single PC did the trick for me.Nice piece of work!John

Arry, did you disable firewall/antivirus during the installation? Sometimes these interfere with the proper placement of files and overwrites of existing files.Also, is your dll.xml in the same folder with fsx.cfg?Beyond that, assuming you have gone through all the troubleshooting tips in the manual (starting p.26), I am at a loss.John

Hi Jim -Yes, it works like a charm, but I suspect the installer may not recognize FSX. If you already have it installed in FS9, FSX will find it, even in another partition.Be sure you have FSUIPC v4.11 or later (unregistered is OK).Also, it will not intgrate with the kneeboard, as in FS9. So ignore the setup option "Install in FS9 kneeboard".Still, it works fine as a separate window. Just remember that FSX must be run in windowed mode, not full-screen.Also watch the launch sequence -- FSX first, then MMLauncher.exe. You can reverse this, but then you will need to click "Reconnect" in the FSMMM setup menu.More info here:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=searchJohn

Hi Arry,I just started playing with the demo version. So far it seems to be working as described in the manual.In your Microsoft Flight Simulator XModules folder, do you have a subfolder FSWidgetsEFBFSX with the file EFBFSX.dll, dated 3/2/2007 size 471kB?If so, at what point in the attempted opening of EFBFSX does the error occur?When you say "several trials", do you mean reinstallations?Have you tried disabling your firewall and/or antivirus?John

Sorry Ray -- I misunderstood the level of detail you want.But no problem. The beauty of FSMMM is it accepts custom maps, as long as they have lat/lon tics for calibration. I often use AAA highway maps.If you have one you like, just scan it to a jpeg. If it's too big for a desktop scanner, and you don't want to pay the $1/sq ft or so that the copy shops charge, scan it in pieces. FSMMM will automatically switch as you move from one map segment to another.Follow Rana's importing and calibration procedure in his user's guide, and you are done. With small map segments, two point calibration is enough. If you have the whole UK on a single jpeg, you would want to do multiple calibration points -- otherwise the convergence of the longitude lines and uneven spacing of the latitude lines would introduce large interpolation errors.Let's hope the new yamm map is even better.John

A new moving map specifically for FSX using SimConnect just posted in the library yesterday. Search on yamm_v-1.1.zip.John

Ray,Sounds like FSM Moving Map does exactly what you are looking for. Using a sectional as the map base, in addition to the navaids and airports you have towns, roads, railroads, rivers, lakes, mountain peaks, and a host of other geographic and cultural features on display.John

Don't sell FSM Moving Map short. Besides it being free, IMHO there is nothing quite like having your flight displayed on a real aeronautical chart. Or for those low and slow lazy jaunts, an ordinary highway map.John

Bill, having only a single monitor, I cannot be of much help there.But I can confirm that the FSMMM window-on-top display works only in FSX windowed mode. To get it in full-screen, I suspect integrating it into the kneeboard is the solution, as Rana did for FS9.Whether this is possible is probably beyond my expertise. The FSX kneeboard now has a file with an .xzp extension, which did not even exist in FS9, and googling it has not shed any light so far.I will keep digging, as I too prefer full-screen.John

Bob, I've noticed that FSX objects are often not exactly where the map shows. But I have never found more than a 0.01 minute discrepancy between the lat/lon coordinates in FSX and in the map.As this is less than 100 feet, it seems the map projection errors are minor (although near the poles that may not be true). My guess is the displacements we see are the result of errors in the location of scenery features in FSX versus in real life.John

Surprised to find that although Rana Hossain's FSM Moving Map has not been revised for FSX, it still works fine. Not even necessary to reinstall or reconfigure in any way, if you have it in FS9. Just install the new FSUIPC4, v4.11 for FSX SP1 and go fly.It does not integrate with the new-style FSX kneeboard, but there is an even better way to get an in-flight map view. Download one of many free utilities to toggle a window to be always on top (example http://www.fadsoft.com). Use it to set the FSMMM window on top and it will provide a kneeboard-like dynamic map display that is still visible while FSX has focus and is running. Unlike the kneeboard, the map window is resizeable. When it still gets in the way, it can be minimized or toggled to the background.FSMMM also shows the positions of nearby AI traffic. But the real beauty is that it works not only with sectionals, WACs, enroute charts, and terminal area charts, but with road maps, topo maps, Forest Service maps, overhead photos -- anything with lat/lon markers for calibration. Maps can be switched in flight or set to automatically switch, as from sectional to terminal when entering a terminal area.IMHO, FSMMM remains one of the most useful and enjoyable freeware add-ons ever. The documentation is excellent and many pre-calibrated map files from Matt Fox and others are in the Avsim library.Here's to a job well done, Rana, if you are still in touch.