P-12C

I would call that a tip or a trick rather than cheating. Flying it that way I've seen times as low as 1:16 (but I don't have the proof)!

The legs don't take you directly to the yacht, they kind of go around it.The object your co-pilot saw is worth looking for. It's difficult to see unless you are close to it and it's also easier to see when light bloom is on (if you can afford the perf hit).

As far as I know the VC's that do have some holes are the VC's that came over from FS2004 and weren't updated. We wanted to fill the holes, but the amount of work wasn't trivial and we simply ran out of time.

There are several different color combinations in the textures which varies by the day you are flying. Try changing to a different day and see if it changes. Of course weather settings make a big difference as well.

The oil rig is one of the highest poly objects in the game as we wanted it to look fantastic when you are so close to it. Of course with all of the effects, perf is hit too.As for Tokyo and Paris, they are both very hard on perf (Seattle too of course). Other than being sprawling cities, Tokyo also has way more road data than others and if you have any road traffic it's really hard on perf (although I'm guessing you don't).

I'm far from an expert on this, but my understanding is that having 3GB allows the operating system to access the extra ram freeing up more for FSX to use.

There are several types of landing triggers, but based on your post it sounds like you are simply specifying the airport but not a specific runway at that airport. In this case as long as you never select a runway then it should just work as long as you actually land on a runway and slow to a near stop while still on the runway. IF you selected a runway and then changed your mind, you are probably hitting a bug that seems to break that trigger. The fix in this case is to delete the trigger and then recreate it without touching the runway attribute.We also occasionally ran into airport landing triggers that just didn't work for some odd reason. In those cases if we couldn't get it to work we would give up and use an area landing trigger with the area placed around the place where they are intended to land.One other tip, an area landing trigger can be used without an associated area and that trigger will fire no matter where you land.

I spent today at FSweekend in Holland, and had a great time. Instead of lobbing commentary back and forth via forums or blog posts I was talking directly to real users with real questions, concerns, and yes some anger.But I was there in the lions den and it didn't bother me a bit because I value each and every one of them as dedicated FS users and fans. They could see me as a real team member and talk about the issues with a dialog that gets past many of the assumptions and sterotypes of "M$."Although I couldn't hand out magic bullets on CD's to solve everyone's ills, I could at least calm some fears along the way.I'm not the only one making forays into person one on one (or one on many) discussions as team members have been traveling all over the world doing the same lately.

I shouldn't let myself get sucked into a thread like this, but I can't just stand by while you slander our developers. I've been working in the game dev business for a very long time and worked with some brilliant developers. The devs in ACES are very good and know their stuff. They know what the architecture is capable of, how much work it is to expand upon it, how much time we have to do it and make decisions on how many hours they can work in a day and still remain relatively sane. They are amazingly dedicated team members and I am proud to be on the FSX team with them.For your information I know at least 4 of the devs that do or have worked in the core have posted on Avsim and other forums with no attempt to hide their identity. I would point them out to you if I thought it was okay to open them up to further abuse by you.

You might be interested to know that the FAA notes for Yakutat specifically call out snow berms and bears on the runway as hazards to aviators.

It's been awhile since I did this, but there are a few things to check for.Don't use wanderboat, it's used by the AI system, but won't do what you want in a mission. Use groundvehicle instead and as long as it's on water it will behave like a boat.Do include AI waypoints and make sure no "next waypoints" are too far across the horizon. For some reason if a waypoint is too far away the AI freaks out.Be sure to select all the variables necessary to make the AI functional (I can't remember all of the details off the top of my head).Play with the values for cruise speed, turn speed, and turn time until the boat behaves reasonably. You can look at our missions to try some of the values we have.Be sure there is a sim.cfg for the boat you are using. The boats we used in missions or that move in freeflight mode should all have populated sim.cfg files, but if you are creating a new one, then the AI object will have to have one.

Sure you can move objects with the mouse in the object placement tool. However there are some issues with the tool when doing it.Sometimes it is difficult to get the object selected by clicking on it, especially if there are a lot of objects in the area. If this is part of the problem selected it from the list and then grab it. As part of the problem with clicking an object to select it, when you go to move it with the left mouse button selection could go away, so we created a work around and you can force the selection to stay with what you selected in the list by pressing and holding the SHIFT key.The left mouse key allows you to move an object laterally and the right mouse button allows you to rotate an object around all three axis (one at a time). The mouse wheel can also be used to raise or lower the object's altitude. If you use the SHIFT key in conjunction with the right mouse button or mouse wheel you can make smaller changes.Lastly, there is a checkbox that locks and unlocks the position of an object. be sure to check it so you can move the object. We had to do this because of problems where you might accidentally move the wrong object, so we defaulted to locking them in place.Hope this helps.

We didn't create a gauge to display the counter variable (we ran out of time to get that one done). Sorry, we would have liked to use it as well...

Okay, this is a shot sent from one of our testers where he is gloating (he put the text on the shot, not me :).The funny thing is that this time has been bettered since then, but I can't find the screen shot proving the time, so I won't post that time.As for the Jet Truck, with a perfect start you can beat it by several aircraft lengths. The key is finding a landmark where you start your run from. You can time yourself at maximum speed from a specific landmark at a specific altitude to the start line and from that figure out where you need to be and when you need to head for the line.Loopy Larry is really hard from the VC (as it should be). I've only done it a couple if times myself. It's pretty easy from an exterior view.

BTW, we are going to be releasing all of the attach point names soon which will probably help a little.

Exactly, and very well said :)We figured a small percentage of you would figure out how to solve the failure condition. In our play test labs using experienced real and sim pilots, only one in about 12 would figure that out.

Nice to see you enjoying the search... Maybe someone else will create some rewards for the community to look for as well :)

Actually although they do have landable platforms on them, I think there is a problem on at least some cruise ships that will make a landing result in a crash. I wouldn't assume it's due to poor landings.

I'm not aware of a way to change the font or screen position for the caption text.

We kind of dropped the ball by not recognizing a safe landing for locations other than the carrier and Santa Monica. Sorry about that...

You may have had a prop strike. The landing area is bumpy in places and it's very easy to hit the prop. Once that happens, the engine won't start again. Currently we don't have any way of identifying via the mission system if you've damaged the aircraft, so we can't play dialog to explain it.

The amount of lift you will get from the ridge lift in this mission is only slight when compared to the lift in the "normal" thermals over the farm land. But there is enough lift to get through all three hoops in one pass once you get high enough to get through the first one. Flying at the right glide speed is helpful and setting the flaps can be important too. Using full negative flaps wouldn't be a good idea and using too much positive flaps will cause problems too. I had good results with neutral or 1 notch of negative flaps. You can also dump your water ballast if you want to climb a little eaiser, but you'll be trading off speed by doing that.

I don't have many answers for you, but the default is .33 and not 1.0.

This XML is generated by the tool, so I don't know either.

Did the timer stop when you crossed the finish line? Are you using the mission compass or just using the GPS or the panel mounted nav gauge?You are supposed to cross the finish line in the air then land at Zell Am See, and there is no time limit (although your time is very good).I suspect that you missed a waypoint because the GPS system will assume you've reached the waypoint if you are anywhere past it relative to the next leg of the flight plan, but the mission system requires you to get closer to the actual waypoint. It's unfortunate that we have this mis-match, but the downside is only that you are forced to either fly to the waypoint via the GPS even though it has highlighted then next leg segment or refer to the mission compass.Of course my suspicions could be wrong and a bug is involved... I do know that save games occasionally do bad things, but I don't know if this is a case of bad behavior from the save game system.