geoffco

I've got a pair of CrossOver 30 inch 2560x1600 screens. They are like Yamasaki etc in that they are the same panels as LG but without the LG brand - you can get them /really/ cheap but that's a bit of a lottery. If you pay a little bit more you can get them certified as not having dead pixel clusters or bad backlight bleed... The colour correction needed a bit of work but once that is done they are pretty decent screens - I got the pair for £1500 including Import Taxes from Korea in January. I run them as a 5120x1600 EyeFinity display with my ATI HD7970. FPS is ok with reasonable settings - I actually find that my limitation for FSX settings is the dreaded OOM error, rather than FPS drops... Setup looks like this: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/368608-pictures-of-our-fs9fsxxp-10-computers-and-cockpits/page-29#entry2578564 Geoff

A quick (and probably daft) question about the shader 3.0 mod in FSX. Is the use of this mod expected / likely to change (increase) the VAS usage. ie. Does the use of different shaders have any potential impact on OOM difficulties? Thanks, Geoff PS. I really like the effect of this modification on the water and it seems to help the FPS on my AMD graphics setup too.

Unfortunately FS9 does not have a 'default' APU, so it is not possible to have an APU sound linked to the normal sound.cfg. If the PA developer has included an APU simulation, you could ask them to include a sound for it? If you know your way around coding XML gauges, there is a nice add-on available from Doug Dawson that lets you control sounds with XML variables (this is how the APU sound works in my own setup). Link: http://www.douglassdawson.ca/ dsd_fsx_xml_sound, v4.3.3, February 10,2013 - actually this is also good for FS9, despite the name! Cheers, Geoff

A small update about the clouds not moving: I have discovered why this is happening and it is really odd: For each cloud layer, there is a 'slice' of air where the wind is set to zero. This surely is a bug, and it causes some nasty spikes in airspeed - not cool if the autopilot is in a 'pitch to hold aispeed' mode! Appliance, do you see the same or is my sim doing strange stuff (always worth checking)? Geoff

I wrote to the developer about the wake turbulence idea and they seemed keen to have a look at the idea. Also, they are looking for solutions to the rapid visibility change... One other thing I have noticed is that the clouds are static - ie they do not move at all, regardless of the wind conditions... I would prefer them to move, but I guess this is the secret behind the seamless updates! As for the icing, unlike in real life, some developers have failed to equip their aircraft with fully working anti-ice and pitot heaters... I'll just have to be careful about that (as in real life) Geoff

What aircraft are we talking about, or is it all of them? I have seen similar before, however I think in most cases it has not been the loading of the tyre-smoke effect but rather the loading of the touchdown and ground-roll sounds. Also, at that touchdown point, many of the panel gauges will do something when the 'sim on ground' flag gets set - it can all lead to a small lag... To remove the smoke effect, you'll need to edit the aircraft.cfg [effects] section to change touchdown= to an effect that doesn't do anything (or that does not exist, although then that might also cause a problem if your system is looking for excuses to lag)? Geoff

Very interesting add-on... I have had a quick play with the evaluation version and I have seen good points and bad points... Good: Weather depiction of clouds, temperature and wind seem to be very good. It is ahead of ASE here I think. Clouds are displayed nicely 'into the distance' and I didn't see any 'popping'. Interface is simple and I was able to get it working on my two-machine wideFS setup really quickly. Bad: Visibility switch on climb is very sharp, and at higher altitudes there is no vis smoothing. I can do this from FSUIPC though. The basic sky texture that the program came with looked very good at low altitude, but it is just too washed out and light at higher alts. From the product site screenshots I was hoping that there would be a nice transition with altitude to the sky colour, but perhaps that is an FSX thing or they did their screenshots with different sky textures... Also, I don't like that they installed a sky texture in setup without saying so (or did I just miss it?) I might miss a couple of options available in ASE, namely the visibility and icing options and also the wake turbulence effect (this was pretty good, but only when turned down quite low). I think this could be a 'winner' once I've set the visibility to work better with FSUIPC and found a good 'all round' sky theme in REX. I have a feeling that using REX 'WX influenced' could sets and this WX engine could yield really nice results... PS. Any users, what more does one get when the product is registered? Assume you just get the ability to refresh the weather every 5 mins... Geoff

I have an iPad 2 WiFi, so no inbuilt GPS or data from the mobile network. I have got myself a BadElf GPS module and then use that with the MemoryMap app into which I have downloaded the world basemaps. I have successfully tracked several of my flghts, including Dubai-London and London-Glasgow quite recently. You will need to have a window seat to maintain the GPS lock... Geoff

Sometimes there can be a lag on touchdown as the sound files for the rollout etc are loaded. Also, a the point of touchdown, all sorts of code in complex aircraft is likely to get activated as the "sim on ground" flag is set. The combination can cause a stutter... PS. I thiink there is a skidmark effect in FS9 too. Geoff

I've seen this too, althought in FS9 rather than FSX, an example is the vegetation at EKCH. I have asked about it but I don't know if there is a good solution. Do you also get the problem where some more distant clouds are visible /through/ the nearer ones. I think that is related. Geoff

Time and money (but mostly time)... I have had FS9 since it came out, I have spent hundreds of hours fixing and tweaking things, installing scenery and custom AI, building my own small sceneries and aircraft panels. As time gos on and I get older, I just have less time to do all that /and/ actually fly in the sim! I'm sure that I'll install FSX one day (I have had the DVDs for years) but it won't be all that soon. Geoff

That would be very good indeed. I have boxes and boxes of matchsticks available... Geoff

In Windows7, there is no way to change the sound acceleration - it was dropped when they moved to DX11 (or perhaps even earlier). I see you are using an AMD graphics card - I am too, and with some drivers I am getting very similar ATC sound stutters... I rcommend you get RadeonPro. This may or may not help you, but the situation with my setup is this: Catalyst Drivers 13.1 and later without RadeonPro - Smooth sim but ATC sound stutter Catalyst Drivers 13.1 and later with RadeonPro - Flickering sim and no ATC sound stutter Catalyst Drivers 12.11.beta6 and earlier without RadeonPro - No flicker or sound corruption but awful FPS performance Catalyst Drivers 12.11.beta6 and earlier with RadeonPro - Very slightly 'stuttery' sim, reasonable FPS (20-30 on 8.19 million pixels resolution) and perfect sound. I have asked about all this on the ReadonPro forum, but the developer does not know why RP is helping here. However, it clearly has an effect. Based on that, I would give RadeonPro a shot. If you are lucky enough to not get the bad flickering, you can try the latest CCC drivers... EDIT: PS. In my case, I strongly doubt that it is an issue with having enough memory or 'grunt' on the processor. It pretty much has to be drivers at some level or another. Good Luck Geoff

Cool topic. A319, A320, A321, A332, A343, AT43, AT45, AT72, AT75, B712*. B733, B734, B735, B737, B738, B752, B763, B77W, C172**, DC10,DC93, DC95, DH8C, DH8D, F27, F70, F100, E145, E170, E175, E190, E195, MD80, MD81, MD82, MD83, MD90, RJ85, RJ1H, SF34, SB20... ...as far as I can recall just now... not including any air show displays etc. * Ridden jumpseat ** Flown Geoff

I don't think there is any way to do it... I'll keep an eye on this thread though in case somebody has a method to do it - I'd certainly be interested in increasing my autoger range as well! Actually, going back to the original point, I stopped using the UT lights layer some time ago because of the daytime problem of lack of autogen houses / trees etc. Since there is a hard-coded maximum for the number of autogen per cell in FS9, the presence of the UT lights, even in daylight when they are not visible, removes a significant proportion of the buildings you would normally see. I find the overall effect of using better night ground textures to be the better compromise in my FS9 setup. (I'm using a custom set that I made in the texture editor or GEPro - something in between the pale yellow and the orange ones it comes with, and then slightly tweaked for contrast.) Geoff

I think the answer is no, assuming you have set autogen to "very dense", because the UT lights are actually autogen objects and so they are controlled by the autogen visibility range like all other autogen... Geoff

Open the fs9.cfg file. If there is an entry for "Location=xxxx" in the [MAIN] section then delete it. Save the cfg file and restart the sim. I have a multi-monitor EyeFinity setup and I find that the splash screen position drifts over time (ie a little bit with each sim restart) so I sometimes have to reset the position with that method. Geoff

Yeah, I found that, but those links all point to some BS downloader service that I would have to pay for... If nobody really has these files in use then I'd rather make a couple of AFCADs myself than pay money to some site that has no relationship with the developer for something that is now freeware! Geoff

Unfortunately it is not possible (or at least not worthwhile) to convert FS8 txt AFCAD data to FS9 bgl files. What I'm really looking for are bgl files... I even know the names of the files that were once available: PAI_AF2_ESNN_Swedflight.BGL PAI_AF2_ESNU_Swedflight.BGL PAI_AF2_ESPA_Swedflight.BGL Geoff

Hi folks, I have downloaded the Swedflight Pro Pack3 (ESNN, ESNU and ESPA) which is now freeware. However, there seem to be no AFCAD files available anymore. I am sure that there were some released as a separate download (when Swedflight was up and running still) but the only one I can find now is for ESNU. If anyone has AFCAD files for the other two (ie ESNN and ESPA) and is able to send them to me, please contact me by PM for an email address. Thanks! Geoff

Currently I am using two of these: CROSSOVER 3020MDP 30" S-IPS 2560x1600 - they are Korean monitors using LG panels. The picture quality is not quite as good as Dell Ultrasharp or Apple Cinema but it's a lot better than my previous HannsG 28", and for the price of one of the other 30" offerings, you can have two of these and perhaps some spare change! There are plenty on eBay and similar. Look for the ones marketed at 'Perfect Pixel' and contact the seller to ensure low / no backlight bleed and zero dead pixels. If you don't care about a few defects then you can get them even cheaper. Colour quality 'out of the box' is not great but a bit of tweaking with a free online calibration chart got mine looking good and reasonably matched in an hour or so. Geoff

Thanks! Of course, what it also shows is that the direction of lighting on the moon is not right in FS9! Geoff

One FS9 screenshot showing the sun, the moon and a star Geoff

Ahaa, see. Sorry I misunderstood the question. It might still be related to the same problem though - if the add-on aircraft use a custom autopilot (and let's face it, the default one is rather limited at times) then they might still be relying on iterative scripts that are not 'happy' when the movement per cycle is very high, as could happen at accelerated sim rates. Say if the AP lateral mode was using the average movement over the last second to predict the required correction, this could go badly wrong since the movement in the last 'real' half second is actually 8 seconds at 16x..! Geoff

Update to that - 13.2.beta5 does not flicker if the FPS lock is 24 or less. Above that it flickers like hell! Very odd - seems to be something to do with the 2D gauge refresh rate fouling up with VSync... Geoff