Frank Racis

There are about 100,000 files across the 3 disks. A bit of repacking could get this down to the 30-40,000 range, but that's not really any easier to deal with. The CDs are divided by region, but because some parts are on the "extra" CDs, this means most people will would need to download 3 CDs to get started.If you host by individual file, I could make a new version of ScenCopy that would download from Avsim instead of reading from the CD drive./Frank

I think it's a different story for 8800 and 7-series cards. The 8800 was designed for Vista, and it seems like that's where nVidia is putting their effort right now (note that only the 8800s support SLI so far). In my experience, the XP drivers for the 8800 were very unstable (crashed every 1/2 hour in FSX), so the bar was set low for Vista. The Vista drivers certainly have their issues, but I haven't had a hang or crash playing a game yet. In contrast, the XP 7-series drivers were mature and stable, so the Vista drivers look bad in comparison.I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Vista for 8800 owners, but it looks like the 7-series folks might be better off on XP for a while./Frank

Thanks for checking. After another week of fighting this thing, I think I've got two separate crash issues. The STOP 7F DIVISION_BY_ZERO in flour bombing really is the audio driver - turning off acceleration or muting the audio on the first bomb drop clears things up. The STOP EA THREAD_STUCK_IN_DRIVER after 30 minutes of flying is the one coming from the video driver. I was just mixing up my crashes and the dumps. I haven't noticed any floating ground textures, but I'm turning on the AA through FS, not the nVidia panel. I've had it take a minute or two for the textures to load at full resolution, though (probably because I have the frame rate unlimited).When it's actually working, I've got no complaints - it looks great and has good framerates. I'm just so sick of the crashes I don't feel like playing anymore.Dropping those flour bags one at a time is just too hard. Assign the drop action to a joystick button, set repeat to medium, and drop in ripple mode :-)/Frank

Anyone out there with an 8800 and FSX want to try a flour bombing mission and tell me how it goes?More often than not, as soon as I pull the trigger to drop the bomb I get a blue screen. This happens both in Flour Power and the "Fly-In" mission. If it doesn't happen on the first pull, the game will run for a while, then pop up the "Loading Textures" screen, make a rude noise, and crash. I haven't had any trouble on the missions where I don't drop a bomb.The crash dumps are about 50/50 in listing n4v_mini.sys and the Realtek HD audio driver. Because of when it happens, my suspicion is with the video driver, though. /Frank

I did a search on "Cannot initialize MSOE.DLL" and a most of the suggestions point to your local e-mail databases being corrupted. These files wouldn't be overwritten by a reinstall (you wouldn't normally want to lose all your e-mail).Here's a link that looks like it might be helpful:http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/problems/errors.htmI'm not sure if it will solve your problem, but it's worth a shot.-Frank

I haven't used Fly in a long time but I still stick my head in here every now and then.I've got no problem with anyone sharing the CD's. It was all free stuff to begin with.I looked in my CD pile, and I've also got a 13-CD set I made for myself that fills in a few holes in the original set (Verizon was having some issues when I made the first set). No Alaska in this set either, though.If someone wants to make copies of these for the group, I'd be willing to throw them all on a few DVD's and send out one copy.I've also got the original TS2 HITW textures (think I'm a bit of a packrat?). I know Jak stopped distributing them, but the license seems to say it's OK to redistribute them as long as they're with the original Terrascene release. If it's not going to start a copyright debate, I could throw these on the DVD as well.-Frank

On the VS7.1 complier you can use the /showIncludes switch to list what include files are being pulled in, indented for nested #includes.I tested with VS7.1 and VS8Beta2, and the "bundled" Platform SDK. In both cases, winioctl.h was not pulled in if WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN was #defined. The best way to deal with this might be to add a bit of self-defense to flylegacy.h: #ifdef SEARCH_ALL#undef SEARCH_ALL#endif[/code ]This would avoid the conflict with winioctl.h while keeping source compatibility with Fly headers. -Frank