Macflyer

It doesn´t matter how one slices it. Any new version of P3D (aka FSX, be it a overhaul or "just" a service pack) is good news. At least in my book.

Who had thought some years ago that there will be a FS11 after all.

My biggest performance tweak just recently after years of simming: I finally convinced myself that autogen looks dull and is not really needed for the flying I am doing. Everything else is maxed. Gained around 40 fps right away.

In fact, MCE let's you also talk to PFE. I think either of the lot, Radar Contact, PFE, or VoxATC does what they say, all of them have their quirks, but lately I tend to use more PFE than the other programs (I own all three and sometimes being able to use a different ATC module is refreshing). Regarding workload on a jetliner, usually the pilot not flying handles the comms if I am not mistaken. So, you could set up PFE as handling the comms automatically (like through a co-pilot) and button pressing will be reduced to a minimum.

Well, the past weekend saw some PC building, mediocre results, running to the shop to exchange parts, assembling, unsatisfied customer, disassembling, exchanging parts at the shop......It was quite an experience. Things learned:1. It's possible to get a decent machine from parts at a price that won't brake the bank.2. Never ever again I'll go for the least expensive parts if it means to submit to lowish quality or just a bad user experience.The PC I'm running now, the only parts from the original order are Ram and hard drive. Everything else saw exchange, even the case and PSU.I ended up, so far, with the XFX 9600 GSO they had for an acceptable price. Somewhere in my heart I knew it's not a full blown 9600 GT but then again, this was never meant to be a perfectly tuned simming or gaming machine.I'm getting great (very subjective adjective) results on stock standard installation in both, FS9 and FSX. I'll have to see when addons kick i. I'm not there yet. FS9 looks more beautiful than ever before and at one point during testing I thought it can rival my FSX installation easily. BUT, I'm not sure yet if I want to stick with the XFX card. The fan is blowing constantly and considered that 85% or more on this machine will be work or not simming/gaming related activity - I just can't picture listening to a loud fan for long until I feel the urge to get something quieter. I had the system running without the card to see the difference and there is barely noise from the system's two fans, so the GSO is really a hairdryer.Maybe I should just fly heavy metal and imagine that's jet engine noise?Could anyone recommend a card that throttles down significantly while idle or just doing 2-D? Don't know if a custom fan solution really is what I want to do.Thanks.

Totally agree. My shelf is full with everything flightsim from the 90s up to a sealed copy of FSX Deluxe. Today, I'll be picking up my new computer parts and hope to be installing FU3, FS9, and FSX the latest on Friday. Maybe I even can be bothered to install Fly! I don't bother with X-Plane until they come up with believable ATC. Good times ahead, if everything works.

Hey simming folks,unexpectedly, I had to invest in new hardware. Instead of buying another budget laptop, I decided to go with a budget desktop. After some days I decided it's going to be cheaper and more satisfying to buy the parts and build it myself.I got a good deal on a combo. Nothing out of this world:Gigabyte G41M-ES2L Motherboard - G41 Express, Socket 775, microATX, PCI Express, Audio, Video, Gigabit LAN , USB 2.0, SATA1I69-5300Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 Processor BX80571E5300 - 2.60GHz, 2MB Cache, 800MHz FSB, Wolfdale, Dual Core, Retail, Socket 775Seagate 500GB LP Serial ATA HD 5900/16MB/SATA-3G1ULT40089Ultra 2048MB PC5400 DDR2 667MHz MemoryI know, the limitations might be RAM bus speed, Ram size, spindle speed of the drive, the integrated Intel x4500 graphics and 300W power supply.This is by no means a gaming rig. I needed to buy it because my laptop gave up and I'm on a budget. Nevertheless, I enjoyed FS2004 + addons on my laptop with a T5450 Core 2 Duo 1,6 Ghz, 3 GB Ram and Intel X3100.Now, there is a lot of room for upgrading the new rig (haven't received it yet). Naturally, since I'm on a budget, it will happen gradually.I ordered it without a graphics card because I found it hard to decide which card would run my FS2004 installation (plus addons) best on budget. For days I've been reading reviews and learned a lot but unfort. not enough to take an informed decision.I want to get a card that is around $100 or less, and doesn't require a better PSU right away. I thought first the ATI 4670 was the perfect buy. Low power consumption and it performed better in reviews of recent games than anything Nvidia of low budget. BUT, then I read FSX performance tests with budget cards and it seems that the 9600 GT is a fine card for FSX in general.I do think, a 9600 would do well with FS9 on a 300W power supply until I upgrade next year the PSU and then evaluate the market of GPUs again.Or, would a 9800 GT and an immediate PSU upgrade serve me better in regard that I could dare a FSX installation right away?Or, would you recommend anything ATI? My impression is from the reviews that in FSX the fps are always worse than with Nvdia. But maybe the new generation has changed that???Thanks a lot.

Ahhh...maybe I haven't updated from 2.10 it seems. I don't bother taxiing to the terminal after touch down. Well, good then and PFE is really great.

In brief,PFE gives you taxi instruction: "Taxi to runway and hold short XY via taxiway Alpha, Charlie, Foxtrot...."A voice tells you to go straight, turn next left/right to guide you to the active.You can't use the built-in ATC to communicate because PFE controls the keyboard shortcuts.Arrival is different. After touch down and leaving the active, you are told to taxi to the terminal. That's it. I can check if that can't be change.

I'm a happy user of ProFlight2000 Emulator. I was in the same situation a year ago, fully aware of Radar Contact and Vox. I guess, Vox for FS9 isn't further developed, I'm maybe wrong.I would say with either you couldn't go wrong. I'm very pleased with PFE. The voices are top notch, nothing artificial to them. I get detailed taxi instructions to the active and the built-in co-pilot guides me there. I could use it for VFR and later change my mind and file IFR midair. Or vice versa. FSS is always there for weather and airport advisories. They have managed to interact with the AI traffic around you.The only drawback is, you first mus compile an "adventure" from a flight plan and load it into the emulator. Then connect to FS. From there, everything is a piece of cake if you follow procedures correctly. The co can handle a lot of workload or leave it up to you - your choice. In any case you get rewarded with great ATC, as far as I can judge.You could read the related subforums here to get an idea what people think and where the shortcomings of either software are. PFE seems to receive updates rather often and always free. So, no need here to wait and to buy a major release.

Me neither! Unless someone else knows better, but I think FS9 is just like this. Most likely you're now spoiled by FSX resolution and textures.

Sounds all really great and I'll be checking this one out. I remember I got very excited when Cargo Pilot was released. The only problem, I was on the "wrong" sim platform back then.When I got into FS9 I tried the demo. I liked it, but I thought it got quickly very repetitive. No motivation for running it as a "business" type of games. Got hooked on FSCargo for for other reasons.But Air Hauler seems like a game to get into for long time.

Sounds all really great and I'll be checking this one out. I remember I got very excited when Cargo Pilot was released. The only problem, I was on the "wrong" sim platform back then.When I got into FS9 I tried the demo. I liked it, but I thought it got quickly very repetitive. No motivation for running it as a "business" type of games. Got hooked on FSCargo for for other reasons.But Air Hauler seems like a game to get into for long time.

I've made up my mind a long time ago: Any day I prefer a good 2D cockpit over shiny 3D. 3D doesn't work for me. I need the most critical instruments and devices in front of me, crisp and clear, no head turning nor zooming in and out involved.The same goes for quick changes of view. I need instant view change to look out of the side windows rather than the head turning in 3D.The best workable cockpits ever I found in Fly! and Fly!2. A shame we won't ever see this in MSFS.

Just my 2 cents: Flight simming in general as proved to be one of the biggest successes in computer games industry, and if not in sales number at least in longevity. Add to this hundreds or thousands of people having put a lot of effort in tons of first grade freeware and payware addons because of their love for this hobby.Look, esp. here on the avsim forums, what kind of support long forgotten franchises in the flight sim universe still receive by dedicated folks. There is even a reverse engineering project going on for Fly!2 to expand it and give it new life. One design group released in 2007 a new payware quality plane for this sim as freeware.Look at Flight Unlimited 2/3 (which I still have installed and enjoy flying once in a while). Still folks here tweaking it, heck, even having produced new scenery for an actual "closed" program.Not to mention the efforts in the x-plane universe. Give x-plane another 2 years and we hopefully will see some additions that have made MSFS a great platform.As for MSFS: if it weren't, someone had to invent it!!!!!! I bet my lower back part that, if MSFS ceased as a franchise (which we don't know yet if and how it will make a comeback or not) there would be people around the next 10+ years to expand, maybe even reverse engineer,making it an open source sim and such.Or, the former dev. team or some other dedicated and talented people pull off a new franchise, as it happened with the train sim market. Don't really know if the two are very comparable but my guess is, if they could do it in such market, they can do it in our's.While this all not necessarily means that FS9 will see such kind of dedication beyond everything, I also do bet that because of its already longer than intended life span by MS and payware contributors, a non insignificant numbers of individuals will keep it running. It could even become the default sim for a new generation of low budget laptops since many people seem to buy rather cheap laptops than desktops and there should be folks who want to run a flight sim even on the barest minimum config. Having said this, any new low price laptop by now should run FS9 all sliders maxed. What a joy!

Very interesting read about the thermals and how FSX handles them. Never doubted that FSX is a major step forward in some areas.So, to me, FS9 is the sim with the most fun to have for now and a while to come. I'm always behind from a technical point of view and I couldn't enjoy FS9 before I bought a new lappy in 2008. I'm even considering picking up one cheap Pentium 4 desktop to make it a dedicated FS9 platform. I spent some serious money on nice add-ons I want to enjoy to their fullest. Albeit FSX is better in the grafix department I found satisfying settings and scenery upgrades to enjoy bush flying and haul cargo with that little gem of an add-on, FSCargo.If I'm not in the mood of stressful flying, some circuits anywhere in the world (preferably at nicely modeled small airfields) are always a blast.Getting out my paper charts and planning a cross country in any of the MegaScenery add-ons is always fun, hand dialing and tracking all VORs or NDBs rather then using the GPS or not using them at all and just rely on maps and checkpoints "down there".If I want to spent some airtime IFR, a flight around 1 1/2 to 2 hours together with ProFlight2000 Emulator is always a satisfying experience. All this is done preferably with one nice add-on plane from Carenado, Dreamfleet and the likes.Just looking into the MD-11 from PMDG....looks like a whole new world for me to explore. Never have fiddled much with airliners so far.So, the fun is there and to stay for a while until people throw out their nice quad core desktops in some years and I can get cheap airtime on FSX....

I've heard before of cars and cows in FU3. And I'm not spending too much time flying with it, but now it happened to me.While on final vor runway 19 at Bremerton, everthing seemed to be fine. A smooth approach in the Renegade, vis greater than 5 miles.I was about to touchdown, when all of a sudden an airport vehicle came into scene from the left crossing number 19.The only solution would have been to put in power and pull back immed., and only then plus a double portion of luck could have prevented the loss of my left wing.The margin of taking the decision was maybe around a second. I failed to react, cauz in all years of simming that incident was a first timer, so I thought I would be safe at least in the simulator.While I do blame this reckless a@(#)! I also have to blame myself for being too slow.So, this incident was something I call the most realistic enviroment experience in any sim, since I can imagine you run into these kind of adventures out there in the wild of real world aviation.Hats off for FU3, having taught me a lesson to be alerted while in the cockpit, all the time. Even in simming.

another observation:whenever I enter default scenery during a flight, I freeze after a short while.I had this test flight, KSFO-KLAX. I am using a terrascene file around the Bay I rendered myself 2 days ago with terrascene. No probs here. but when I leave tthe terrascene file during flight I had said problem.Trial & error showed that I have no problems with freezing anymore when I turn off mipmapping in the vcf file.While terrascene doesn

>>Included with Fly! 2K are the following items: Sky! and>>Infometar. Load these programs - they are excellent! Both>Sky!>>and Infometar have new versions out - you'll find them right>>here at Avsim.com.>>I would be remiss not to mention that NOAA apparently changed>their FTP site address recently, which unfortunately has>broken the automatic METAR download feature in InfoMETAR. I>have not yet been able to do any work on an update to address>this, although I intend to. The current version of InfoMETAR>can still be used for now, if one is willing to take the extra>step of downloading METAR files manually.>>David SandbergWow, good to see that a developer of a great tool is still around. I immed. fell in love with infometar and its random feature. Therefor I am not missing much the download function for now. I also like to be able to thin out the data to not have too drastical changes every few miles.To Randall: I set the cache to 32 MB. I don

Sorry Randall,I didn

Thanks for the list Randall,I only updated the Cessna so far, I got .88 and I updated some of the other stuff.Let me tell you:the feeling of flight is back again!!!The air is moving, the plane is riding on it; it is fantastic.There is a lot of potential in Fly2k and I am digging for it.But I have to optimize my texture slots still to see if it makes a difference.Thanks so far for your help

Randall, the magic works!!!!!!! :-)Of course, I couldn

Thanks Randall, I will do this step-by-step later tonight. I just have had enough time right now to download your TS tile of Knoxville.What shall I say: the up to 4000 ft I get 55-62 fps with the cessna ifr panel mainview, later it drops around 42.With external view the textures in the distance are less flickering, with cockpit few it is very visible although the closer textures are enjoyable without flickering from around 3000 ft.Let me report the differences once I set up the file.Side note: because you made me looking in my Bios, I saw, that it can be toggled between AGP and PCI.A short research reveiled that there is a docking station available for my ThinkPad (sometimes sold for around 50 dollars on ebay) which offers a PCI full height slot and many graphics cards are reported to work well with this setup.So, spending around 250 bucks should get me the port, a decent card for Fly! and MS2002 plus a TFT.Then again, memory is still not upgraded, another 100$$$, and for this money I already could get a naked basic DELL desktop which would run Fly! and FS2002 like a blast with my very old copy of Win98SE.Personally, if I could get Fly! to work at around 30 fps with sharp images, I would be pleased and just opting for the memory upgrade since it does good to Win XP anyway and with this plus my Mac I could stay happy for another 3 years or so. Then I could also abandon FS2002 because Fly! still offers more realism (engine start, flight model, aircraft weight & balance editor, c4to).I will report back later.

I took some time today and I discovered the VCF folder and I opened different files in textedit. Of course, I have not much of an idea what improves graphics quality, fps, etc.I also found some other config files within Fly! for the texture slots, etc.I would love to get a step-by-step instruction.My "card" is 2xAGP. If any details are needed about the chip, etc. I found some stuff.Right now I booted up and entered the Bios. Display is set to AGP. But nothing to adjust here.

Thanks Jon for the update. I didn