EngineRoom

Flying Stations do a Buccaneer S.1 and an S.2 which is pretty nice. Dave Garwood's freeware Hunters are not only better than the Virtavia ones, they also come in a lot more flavours, including the trainers. The Aerosoft Lightning is indeed a diamond... much better than the Just Flight model. The JF Canberra PR.9 was superb, but their Tornado GR.1 was a disappointment. Apparently there is still one last service pack in the works that I hope will save this aircraft from collecting dust for me. JF have also hinted that they may possibly have plans for a Jaguar. What I'd really like is a first generation Harrier. The Wilco ones are passable, but not great. The Iris Vulcan is getting a bit long in the tooth now... I'm surprised nobody took the opportunity to contact the people who were operating XH558 (final flight was today!) and collaborated on a new FS model. I'd love to see a Victor and Valiant too, but I know this won't happen. With the arrival of the Mil Viz F-4E and the other group making a really nice looking F-4B, my wish list would also include some British Phantoms, but again I know they are too niche for the market. I think a nice Jet Provost would also be a lot of fun, as would a Javelin or Sea Vixen done to contemporary standards. Don't even get me started on British airliners.....

There's a former USMC AV-8B pilot on SimHQ who says the Razbam has the more accurate and functional cockpit, but the SSW model has the more realistic STOVL modelling.

There are issues related to seaside airshows as well. As has already been mentioned, it's impractical to charge for admission, therefore all the costs of the airshow must be recouped via sponsors. Flying aerobatics over water where it is more difficult to judge one's altitude, especially on a hazy day where the horizon is ill defined can also be dangerous. This was cited as one of the major factors in the loss of an L-29 at a seaside airshow local to me some years ago. You lose the ability for static displays, which can also be an attraction for runway based airshows. What are you going to do about people who decide to park their boats right underneath the air display? I've seen this done when my own ship was used as part of the backdrop for the Bournemouth Air Show in 2010 (I got a much better view of the flying than the people on the beach did, believe me :wink: ). There were all sorts of pleasure craft dotted all around the water underneath the display area. Finally, overwater airshows would mean the end of extremely popular airshows such as Biggin Hill, Duxford, Fairford, Farnborough and many others. As I wrote earlier, Saturday's fatalities were the first ones to occur on the ground at a British airshow in sixty three years. That alone should stand testament to the safety of British airshows.

I've been discussing this with some people who aren't overly familiar with aviation. The general theme seems to be abject horror that people going about their business driving along a main road were killed when an antique fighter jet crashed on their heads. - "It's an old aeroplane maintained by some anoraks working out of their garden shed!" This "antique fighter jet" is operated by a very professional outfit that is regularly audited by the aviation authorities and the aircraft itself is insured to the tune of millions of pounds because it is a very valuable asset. It is not maintained by amateurs working out of their garden sheds, - "They shouldn't have been doing stunts with such an old aeroplane!" The Hunter was designed as a fighter. It was designed and built to do far more than what it was doing at that display. The manoeuvres performed at the display are specifically performed so as not to place too much stress on a valuable airframe. - "The pilot was showing off!" The pilot was a 51 year old ex-RAF Harrier pilot now flying an Airbus for a major UK airline. Not someone likely to be "showing off". He will have a special dispensation to display that aircraft, and to gain that dispensation he will have had to demonstrate to the aviation authorities that he is capable of safely and competently displaying that aircraft. The display routine would have been extensively rehearsed and will have been approved by the airshow organisers. - "The aircraft came down in a built up area!" Go and look at Google Earth. Yes Shoreham airport is sandwiched between two towns, but the runway and therefore the display line are aligned in such a way as to avoid these towns. The aircraft did not come down in a built up area. It came down on a road junction where traffic was queueing to enter the airshow. Pretty much the worst possible place it could have come down other than on top of the crowd itself. This incident was akin to being struck by lightning - extremely unlikely. - "The Red Arrows won't display at Shoreham because it's unsafe!" The Red Arrows are a display team consisting of nine fast jets. Their display footprint is huge, far greater than a single aircraft. - "Airshows are so dangerous they must be banned!" The last time anybody was killed on the ground at a British airshow was at the SBAC Farnborough Airshow in 1952 when the prototype DH.110 broke up and one of the engines came down on top of the crowd. British airshows are among the most heavily regulated in the world and have the safety record to prove it. The sad fact is more people have been killed at football matches in the UK than have been killed at airshows. So the problem is we have a sensationalist media running 24/7 coverage over the weekend, giving us a minute by minute updates on the death toll accompanied by all sorts of shocking pictures and videos. The facts are lost - even ignored - in the rush to put out the next shocking and hysterical headline. The CAA had its hand forced by the hysterical media coverage. To be fair I think the restrictions announced were the minimum the CAA could realistically do to placate public opinion and take the pressure off themselves. From what I've read the new restrictions will only affect a relatively small number of displays at the remaining airshows of the season. But hey-ho when did we ever let the facts stop a good public lynch mob in this country? Food for thought.... if BA38 had suffered its double engine failure just a couple of minutes earlier it would have come down on central London with hundreds left dead. Yet nobody went bananas over the hundreds of airliners flying into and out of Heathrow over the centre of a major metropolis every day.

I've been browsing through the file library at the Org in the last few days and have picked up some really nice airports. Can anyone recommend some good airports, or some authors who have good stuff? So far I've been really impressed by the airports made by MisterX6, FoxThree, Xwind2406 and RikNilsson. Does anyone have any other recommendations?

Thanks, I never knew about Mir being a console dev.

Remember a few years ago now when the Lotus Sim L-39 was released for FSX and many of the users' comments received were how such a high quality model could have so little impact on framerates? If I recall correctly the developer had a lot of experience in developing console games. He was used to having to achieve maximum optimisation in order to work within the console's hardware limitations. Therefore he knew how to properly optimise his models and textures and achieve an excellent model with no framerate impact. Now compare this to the recently released Just Flight Tornado GR1 which is bloated beyond belief with its 100MB+ VC model and ridiculous number of draw calls. If anything, the flight sim development community could learn a lot from the console developers.

Indeed. Rockstar made an entire city with hithtero unseen levels of detail, utterly immersive and got it all running on the relatively modest hardware of a console. It's an amazing achievement in software coding, even if the game itself is of no interest to you as a "hardcore non-entertainment totally professional and not having any fun on my $5k PC flight simmer." It's kind of disappointing but perhaps not surprising that there are still quite a few people in this thread who look down their noses at consoles and console titles. It's obvious these people think consoles haven't moved on from the days of Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario Bros. Landmark titles like The Witcher 3 or the upcoming Fallout 4 seem to totally go over these peoples' heads yet they fawn over an old code base that struggles to maintain 30fps on a $5,000 PC and OOMs with anything more than a few additional addons or modules installed. Even on page one of this thread somebody asked if flight sticks were coming to consoles... http://www.amazon.com/Saitek-Aviator-Flightstick-Xbox-360/dp/B001EYU1W8 This was available over five years ago. A flight stick. For a console. Gents, if you're going to engage in elitist snobbery directed at consoles and console users, at least try to have a clue about stuff.

If by unusual you mean "off the path beaten by so many developers" then I can recommend the Sibwings An-2 which is a work of art. The Just Flight Canberra PR.9 is also very good. There's a freeware Tu-144 on the Russian flightsim sites, as well as the very highly regarded freeware Tu-154. Flying Stations did a freeware Westland Wyvern, and there's also a freeware Edgely Optica available too (I forget the developer). I don't have it, but I understand the Xtreme Prototypes X-15 is also pretty good if you're into that sort of thing.

For those that aren't familiar with the UK judicial system, the majority of convicts only serve half the sentence they are handed by the courts. I very much doubt anybody is ever going to serve ten years for software piracy. I could go and get steaming drunk now, jump in a car and run a child over, killing them... and get a lot less than 10 years. But hey-ho.... corporate lobbying is a wonderful thing, isn't it?

- A totally new engine written from the ground up. No backwards compatibility, a clean break and a fresh start with no legacy code or technological limitations. - 64bit - Written to properly support multi-threading from the outset. - Better atmospheric effects (see Real Terra Haze for XP10). - Better lighting to reflect time of day and weather conditions. - Proper, dark night time. - Better support for instrument and panel lighting configurations. - Better modelling of turboprop engines. - More convincing precipitation, including rain drops/streaks on the windshield like FU3 had all those years ago. - More convincing ground handling including friction dependant on runway conditions. - More convincing water handling for floatplanes. - Runways that follow the terrain contours. - Easily updateable nav aids database. - More realistic and flexible ATC that is good for both VFR and IFR, and supports both FAA and ICAO phraseology. If we're going to get carried away let's also have the accents of controllers and AI aircraft reflect the part of the world. - Better support for aircraft damage or mishaps.... hard landings, burst tyres, etc. - Visible airframe icing in the relevant conditions, and which realistically effects aircraft performance and handling. - Make weather conditions actually matter. - Support for vectored thrust (and finally Harriers that don't rely on trickery to make them fly like the real thing!) - Better modelling of helicopter flight dynamics with stuff like ground effect, translational lift, retreating blade stall, vortex ring, etc. - Better tools within the sim for managing large numbers of scenery entries or addon aircraft.

The MSFS vs XP flight model debate has been going on for years now. Yes they do both approach flight modelling differently but neither has the upper hand. There are examples in both sims of very good flight models, and examples in both sims of very bad flight models. Tony rightly points out probably the best flight model available in FSX/P3D is the Majestic Dash 8, which runs some (all?) of the flight dynamics external to the flight simulator and injects them into the sim. I think the main reason for this approach was MSFS/P3D's notoriously poor modelling of turboprop behaviour. For what it's worth, probably the best flight modelling available on desktop computers is DCS.

No problem Tony B) For the record I believe XP10 with HD mesh base, G2XP with good high quality source imagery and object placement from your superb W2XP produces the best scenery available in any flight sim.

Cue P3D zealot outrage in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1............

This is good news, albeit not surprising. Steam have made exceptions to their "no refund" policy in the past when developers released games that were clearly unfinished, very buggy or broken. However, these were isolated examples and often only after a large outcry from those who purchased the title. Given the large amount of Green Light titles appearing on Steam now and Steam's lack of quality control (as opposed to say for example, the Apple Store) it was only a matter of time before they implemented a proper refund policy. Besides, this is also much more in line with Gabe Newell's pragmatic approach to combating software piracy - i.e. provide a better service than the pirates. The no refund policy flew in the face of this philosophy and I'm glad it's been dropped.

Actually due to US sanctions over the recent escapades in Eastern Ukraine, Blizzard (World of Warcraft, etc) have suspended all player accounts from that part of the world, and I believe Paypal have also stopped doing business there as well. So yeah, if anybody is going to flick the switch off it appears to be the US side.

Thankyou Christopher. I'm sometimes left aghast at the attitudes often displayed on these forums. You could bring selected third party developers on board during development so they have content ready shortly after release. You could also go the extra mile to develop and provide the kind of development tools and documentation that allows third party devs to do their thing a lot faster and easier. It all depends on the context, circumstances and target audience for which a new sim is developed.

You'd better tell that to the over 900,000 people that have funded Star Citizen to the tune of over $83m. That's a title in a niche genre that was supposedly dead. https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals You also better tell it to the developers of Project Cars and Elite Dangrous who managed to secure millions through crowd funding and private investors so they could bring their titles to the market without the backing of traditional publishers. Just in case you weren't aware: sym·po·si·um (sĭm-pō′zē-əm) n. pl. sym·po·si·ums or sym·po·si·a (-zē-ə) 1. A meeting or conference for discussion of a topic, especially one in which the participants form an audience and make presentations. 2. A collection of writings on a particular topic, as in a magazine. 3. A convivial meeting for drinking, music, and intellectual discussion among the ancient Greeks. A symposium =/= business proposition or project plan. The OP is trying to gauge interest in such a title and provide the community with a central place to discuss it, and hopefully attract the attention of the kind of people who can bring a new flight simulation platform to us. Incidentally, in those 8,103 posts of yours over more than eleven years, have any of them been anything other than negative, argumentative or contradictory? Do you have anything at all positive or constructive to contribute to the discussion? Indeed it would. @OP - Please do continue with what you are doing. Ignore the naysayers and stuck in the muds. You only have to look at Star Citizen to realise what is possible in a supposedly dead genre with no publishers interested.

Thanks B)

I'm looking through the list of European W2XP sceneries at SimHeaven and they are all named by country, execpt for one slightly ambiguous one called "D+A+CH". Would I be correct in thinking this is Germany, Austria and Switzerland all in one package?

I've been checking out flight sim sites since I first got online in 1997. Without a shadow of a doubt the "community" is a lot less friendlier and less inclusive than it was 18 years ago. The only thing I can put this down to is the growth of payware and the monetisation of the hobby. It's fundamentally changed how the community interacts with itself and whilst it's provided us with a glut of incredible addons, it's also sucked a lot of the fun and community spirit out of the hobby.

I've had GTAV on my PS4 since it was released last year. I've been reading all the extremely positive stuff about the PC release so I managed to pick up a digital copy of the PC release at a reduced price last week. I can tell you downloading 60GB on a 2MB connection is painful. It was good on PS4, but is a masterpiece on PC. It's a tour de force in game design and showcases what can be done with modern hardware and graphics cards. It only reinforces my belief that The Future is not a platform built on legacy ESP engine, but needs to be a totally new platform built from the ground up. BTW, I'm running it on a laptop with an i7-4710HQ, 16GB RAM and a GTX970M. All settings maxed out and it's smooth as butter.

Nick Needham certainly is one of the "personalities" of the FS community. Whilst I'm not qualified to comment on the veracity of the information in his "bible", I will say I don't like the manner in which he takes many swipes at Orbx (perhaps because they produce a competing commercial product to his own?), he takes a swipe at Bojote, he takes a swipe at a great swathe of developers, and generally has a very scathing attitutude towards the rest of the community. Given Nick Needham is elevated by some members of the community onto a pedestal reserved for the technical guru, I would hope he had the decorum to publish his "bible" without such unpleasantness towards other parts of the community. What's more, does anybody remember the very interesting thread on the Estonia Migration Tool support forum last year? The one where a user reported EMT had wrecked their P3D2 install when they had used EMT to install GEX?

It's potentially a can of worms. There was a mod in development for Skyrim (or possibly Oblivion) that transformed the whole game into a Lord of the Rings setting. Warner Brothers lawyers put a stop to it - because they have plans for their own very similar LOTR video games. Conversely, there is a very popular mod for Medieval 2 Total War which turns the game into a LOTR setting, and actually uses a lot of the artwork, imagery and sounds from the movies. The mod creators got permission from Warner Brothers, and permission was granted as long as the mod remained freely distributed, and we can also infer Warner Brothers have no plans for a LOTR strategy game. If you look at the game "Sins of a Solar Empire" there are mods out there that convert them into Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc. Again we can infer they are permitted because the IP owners have no plans for similar games. However, you can bet if the creators started charging for the mods the lawyers would be all over it. You're also correct to point out once money starts changing hands the user - who is now a customer - expects a lot more and the mod creator maybe doesn't factor this into their equation. This is partly how the whole dynamic of the flightsim community changed over the last 15 years or so when freeware began to give way to payware.

The situation is somewhat different to selling addons for FSX-SE. Games like Skyrim have a huge and very active modding scene. That scene worked on the proviso that modding the game and distributing those mods was fine, as long as they were freely available and nobody was making any money off the back of Bethesda's IP. So you had sites like the Nexus - which were not unlike Avsim - which were built around very large file libraries containing all sorts of user created mods. It's entirely reasonable to say these mods played a big role in ensuring the popularity and sales of an almost four year old game. So a few years ago Steam launched the Workshop - a mod repository integrated into Steam, where users could upload their mods and they could in turn be browsed by other users, downloaded and automatically installed by Steam. This was a welcome development and the Workshop became a very popular and thriving part of Steam. Now all of a sudden Steam and the games publishers try to monetise it. It would be akin to Avsim allowing authors to charge for stuff in the file library here... and it's retrospective so stuff that's been in the library here for years now can now have a $4.99 pricetag slapped on it. What's more the cut of the money was quite interesting. It's basically down to an agreement between Steam and Bethesda, but the mod creator would get 25% of the revenue, and the other 75% would be split betwee Steam and Bethesda. Under the terms a mod would have to make $400 before the creator saw any money. So the first issue is Steam attempted to monetise a modding scene where previously there was no money involved. People were naturally pretty upset that yesterday that mod was freely available, but today it's $1.99 The next problem is one that anybody with more than two braincells to rub together could have seen coming a mile off - plagiarism. It was only a matter of hours before the first claims of paid mods on the Steam Workshop containing the work of others without their permission. The next problem is the total lack of any quality control. Steam famously has a strict "no refunds" policy. They've been forced to make some exceptions in the past when games have been released on Steam that were so broken, buggy and dysfunctional the customer outcry resulted in them giving refunds. Steam's Greenlight is also a good example of how their lack of quality control has earned them the ire of users who are fed up being bombarded with reams of shovelware when they browse the Steam Store. The final problem is one of fallout. Once this move to allow charging money for Skyrim mods on Steam Workshop was announced literally overnight hundreds, if not thousands of mods disappeared from the Nexus as their authors sought to make sure they were only available on the Steam Workshop. This resulted in a lot of angst and bad feeling amongst the Skyrim modding community. What's more those mod authors who sought to have their work removed from the Steam Workshop in protest at the move to monetise mods were met with obstructions from Steam who wanted to make it needlessly difficult to have one's work withdrawn from the Workshop. Gabe Newell has gone on the record as saying the move to allow mods authors to charge for their work was meant to facilitate an improvement in the quality of mods available. I think it's quite clear the way this process was implemented was primarily meant to turn the thriving modding scene into another revenue stream for Steam and the game publishers. It was cynical, greedy and quite frankly stupid beyond belief. However, I doubt we've seen the last of it. Steam dipped their toes in the water this time and got them burned. They'll be back to try again with another implementation sooner or later. It's a shame really because I think Steam have done wonders for PC gaming in recent years, but with the mess that is Greenlight and this pretty transparent attempt to create another revenue stream off the back of mods leaves a bad taste in my mouth. On a related note, the main reason I am opposed to the charging money for user created mods is down to the changes have seen in the flightsim community over the years. I was around when payware addons were few and far between. The explosive growth of the flightsim payware addon industry has given us some extraordinary content for our sims, but the price for the community has been a high one, with developer set against developer, developer set against customer, questions over the editorial integrity of many flightsim websites, and a lot of the fun and community spirit being sucked out of the hobby in the pursuit of money.