armchairpil0t

Thanks for the replies, guess I'll have to shop for a new graphics card then

Hi, I finally got Prepar3D v2 and am not impressed with the frame rate at all - when I start in the default F-35, I get only around 13 FPS at the default start location, with a noticeable lag in responding to controls (as if P3D would render several frames in advance). In addition, the whole Windows system becomes very slow while Prepar3D is running - e.g. I get a lag when scrolling a web page while P3D is running in another window. This never happens with FSX. If I disable the virtual cockpit, the frame rate climbs to 24, which is is again not very impressive. FSX with max display settings runs at about 40 FPS. Isn't Prepar3D supposed to produce more FPS than FSX? It does look slightly nicer, but losing half the frame rate doesn't seem worth it... My system is: Intel Core i5 3470 @3.2 GHz (quad-core) 8GB RAM nVidia GeForce GT 630 with 2GB RAM Windows 7 64-bit I know my graphics card is not the latest and greatest, but it performs very well with FSX. Is it normal that Prepar3D is way more demanding on the hardware? Everyone seems so happy with the P3D performance, so it is quite puzzling why I am getting frame rates I last experienced with FS5 20 years ago... What kind of system do you need to run P3D with a smooth FPS (e.g. 40 FPS with the default scenery)? Thanks!

Did you make a screenshot? You need to make a screenshot containing the text (Alt+PrintScreen, just like they said on the forum).

There is a youtube video about making a simple sign posted in the support forum (http://www.simforums...topic42149.html)

Yes, Flight Unlimited is exactly what came to my mind too :)But there is a huge difference. The quality of scenery in Flight Unlimited was years in advance of what MSFS had to offer at that time. We got a high-resolution photorealistic scenery area with a 3D landscape (all MSFS was offering was a flat world covered with generic tiles and a couple of box-shaped buildings). So it was a breakthrough in flight simulator graphics at the cost of flying in a small area only.With Flight, we get scenery that has no revolutionary advantages over the 5-year-old FSX, and that is easily surpassed in quality by many add-on products for the 5-year-old FSX. Trees moving with the wind are nice, but they are irrelevant while flying. And on the ground, the graphics quality correspond to 10-year-old games like Grand Theft Auto III, only that in GTA, you had cars, people and trains moving around, and yes, other airplanes and helicopters in the sky!

Well how about this passage: I don't remember Microsoft (or in fact any company) ever suggesting that people who didn't immediately get their latest and greatest product were not open-minded enough.And another quote from the review: To me, this kind of suggests that users who don't see any benefit for them are short-sighted and their thinking is eclipsed by their human weaknesses.In my opinion, a review should just concentrate on the product and not contain any rhetoric denigrating its critics. Play the ball, not the opponent.Besides, I find it questionable to have a beta tester review a product, since beta testers are usually biased towards it - after all, they were a part of the team and it's the fruit of their work too. It's almost like letting a Flight developer from Microsoft write a review. I understand that it probably painful for the team to read negative opinions, but that's just life :)Or at least have it written in bold letters in front of the review: This review was written by a beta tester of Microsoft Flight. This would at least explain its attitude without people wondering why someone starts the review explaining why he is right and they are wrong just one day from the release of MS Flight.

I fully agree. My first thought after seeing this "review" was that it was a part of a paid advertising campaign by Microsoft disguised as a review.But on the second thought, MS would treat their customers with a little more respect.

Very interesting, thanks! Judging from the interview, there wasn't any specific plan to make it extendable by third party. What we are seeing in .pak files are probably just leftovers of FSX code.I wonder how Microsoft lawyers would react, should unofficial add-ons appear for Flight. Originally, the MSFS add-on industry appeared before any SDK was available, simply because back then Microsoft chose to tolerate third-party developments.

It's still a civilian flight simulator, so why not support it?And I agree that Flight doesn't preclude FSX. Many people still use FS9 alongside FSX. A decade ago we had two Combat Flight Simulator versions, which were derived from FS98 and FS2000 and were too "dumbed down" versions of MSFS.AVSIM has a lot more to lose from Flight than we users. If Flight gets real popular and Microsoft keeps producing good content while keeping it closed to third party add-ons, the add-on industry will die out and AVSIM will lose all advertising revenue. So I very much appreciate AVSIM keeping us informed (even though I don't like what I see in MS Flight myself) despite this risk.

Now I think this is an advertisement channel overlooked by MS. You should be able to see the nice toys others have and get really really envious and spend your $$$ on getting those toys too :Idea:

I think when I installed Flight, I was asked about the installation folder, so I think it should be possible to install it onto another drive.

No, but after reading posts here about how much smoother the Flight experience is compared with FSX, I expected at least a similar performance to FSX.

Glad you are enjoying it, because I am not.I installed it on a 4 year old PC (AMD AthlonX2), and Flight produces a lower frame rate than FSX. I only get fluid movement with no discernible individual frames if set all graphics to low. With FSX, I get decent 25-30FPS with medium graphics settings, no chance for this in Flight. So I am certainly not getting a smoother experience than with FSX.Even worse, I see very little improvement in the graphics quality. Nice water reflections, ships and clouds reflecting in the water - we had all this in FSX too, and with DirectX 10 the reflections were as amazing as in Flight. It obviously looks stunning compared with FS9, so I wonder if those having a WOW experience are coming directly from FS9.I would say Flight has much less graphics improvements over FSX than any MSFS version since FS95 had over its predecessor - despite the gap between MSFS versions being 2-3 years only.With FS98, we got 3D graphics acceleration.With FS2000, we got realistic elevated terrain instead of a flat world.With FS2002, we got AI traffic and autogen scenery.With FS2004, we got a vastly expanded ATC, improved and climate zone-specific autogen scenery, weather themes and real-world weather.With FSX, we got stunning new ground textures, road traffic, a real abundance of autogen (at the cost of FPS), and in the DirectX10 mode, amazing-looking water. We got aircraft with bumpmaps, new reflections, flexing wings and shadows. Oh, and we got an SDK out of the box.With Flight, we got... the ability to walk out of the plane and a slightly better lighted autogen???I am just wondering if Flight limits the graphics features even at the highest scenery setting on slower PCs, so that I am not seeing anything. I remember a demo screenshot from 2011 that seemed to depict cloud shadows on the ground - but I don't see them in Flight.

It does have potential for our community, but the question is, does MS want to use this potential?The lack of an SDK says something about their direction. If you peek into .pak files with WinZip, you just see regular BGL files just like in FSX. There cannot be too many changes, so clearly, they just don't want to have independent add-ons.If this stays the same, the sim will probably be dead (at least for our community), just like FLY!, ProPilot etc. died without additional content, despite being more advanced in some aspects than the current MSFS version at their release time. Of course it will still have a chance in the marketplace for the general public.But X-Plane has a great looking SDK, so we are not without alternatives :) If Flight stays closed for most third party developers, there will be more content created for X-Plane.

I have to admit I am very disappointed by Flight, be it a free download or not. I knew it was limited to Hawaii, had almost no choice of airplanes, no support for add-ons and was mostly about flying missions and earning points. No problem, it is a different genre after all.But I fail to see significant improvements over FSX/Prepar3D in the graphics department, and over 5 years since the release of FSX I did expect some bloody new and absolutely stunning graphics.I see the same horrible default clouds as in FSX, I see the same autogen scenery as in FSX, a little improved water with the same reflections as in FSX (DirectX10). And where for God's sake is the AI traffic??? This reminds me of the lonely days with FS2000!So what are the actual improvements Flight offers over FSX? I sure overlooked something.Because the only really really cool improvement I see is the ability to walk out of your plane.

Is there a free flight mode in Flight?When I select to fly, I am put in a mission to fly around hot air balloons, which I fail, because I don't want to fly around balloons. Is there a way to just fly around, without any mission?Not impressed with the graphics so far, looks like FSX to me with small improvements here and there (e.g. water). I expected something much more stunning. Clouds are especially bad.

No, this program is for visual airport elements only (taxiways, aprons, parkings etc.) It will not let you add frequencies or airspaces. In fact is there *any* program out there to edit airspaces?

Haven't seen any opinions about the new Airport Studio here on the forum, so here are my impressions from the first hours of use. As a happy ADE user, I wasn't sure what to expect from this new product. Given the low price, decided to give it a go.It is an airport editor like ADE, AFCAD or Flight1's AFX, but it runs inside FSX instead of being a standalone program and pretty much works as advertised. When you load an airport, you see airport elements in FSX - kind of the AFX preview, but fully editable with the mouse, no need to switch back and forth between FSX and the airport editor. Very helpful when you need to take into account buildings, terrain and other 3D stuff when positioning airport elements, especially parkings.There is a small FPS impact when editing the airport (compared with just flying in FSX), but it is still pretty much as smooth as editing the same airport with ADE.What's great:Before moving a parking spot, you can attach any installed aircraft to it, so that you see how an actual parked aicraft would be positioned, not just the parking spot.When using ADE, it gives ADE the single most important feature ADE lacked - a quick preview of the airport in FSX. Now you can load the same airport into ADE and Airport studio, and when you save, airport studio automatically loads the changes and displays them in FSX.Just being able to tweak airport elements from Flight Simulator is very very cool!What's bad:The single biggest problem is the handling of taxiway signs. They depict actual 3D taxiway signs, but sadly, this also means they are pretty much invisible in the top-down view. If you know where exactly they are, it is easy to point with the mouse. If not, you are lost. You can manipulate them from the usual cockpit view, but I find it much less convenient than from the overhead view.The default color selection is not great, especially borders of apron polygons are in a very bland gray color, hard to discern from terrain. But colors can be changed in options, so after changing a few colors I like the color scheme.It's also a pity that they didn't jump on the opportunity to draw actual VASI and ILS beams in the air - obviously this is not needed for airport editing, but would be cool to see this stuff.My verdict:A must have program, the live preview for ADE alone is worth it. But it will not replace your standalone airport editor.

I saw the news on the AVSIM front page about Repaint Wizard and downloaded the demo from flightsimtools (limited to the default C172 and B737 planes).It's basically a helper for repainting aircraft that does all texture conversions for you and immediately displays the updated model in FSX. It isn't an actual texture editor, but can be pretty seamlessly integrated with every image editor out there. I have to say I like the demo very much - it's really great to see changes in FSX as you are editing, really speeds things up.Before I shell out the money, has anyone tried the payware version? I wonder how well it works with addon airplanes, because the free demo doesn't let you repaint them.

I posted a question on the auction website about the email database, but it got deleted.An anyway, Phil sadly seems to have recovered from the heart attack and announced on the SimFly.eu forum that he will be working on a new project. So expect more spam from him too, regardless of what happens to SimFly.eu

They didn't collect our information "out there", but used email addresses stolen from AVSIM forums. They continue using these same addresses for spamming even after complaints, and any complaint on their forum about these practices gets deleted.So it isn't a random unrequested advertisement you find in your mailbox. It is rather the case of someone beating up your mom, stealing her mobile phone with contacts and then repeatedly calling all these contacts either selling products, or simply begging for money. I certainly hope the guy dies soon, but I am afraid the "heart attack" is just another lie from them to extract just more money from the users.

Finally, some good news in their new spam :( Let's hope it's true and that Phil never recovers!

I think your best bet is to get the payware tool "Contrails Pro" (www.flightsimtools.com)Their contrails look great from a far distance, and you can customize the visibility and contrail length. The default contrail effect in FSX never worked well for me; the contrails were only visible when the AI plane producing them was in the field of view.There is one limitation though: if you are flying very close to a contrail, it begins looking flat and not that great at all. But to just see great looking contrails up in the sky, I think there is nothing better than this product, and I am loving it.

I think FSX will rotate gauge images only by an integer amount of degrees. You can easily see this behavior on default gauges if you zoom in in the virtual cockpit mode.You may be able to get better results by generating a custom-rendered bitmap in your gauge (thus doing the smooth rotation yourself), but it is quite a bit of work...

There are two very different kinds of business labeled as "donationware":1) Payware product where the author pledges to give the proceeds to a worthy cause (usually with no way for customers to verify that).2) Freeware product where the author is begging for money.For me, supporting authors of FS addons IS a worthy cause, so I never pay for either of these "donationwares". After all, if I pay for something, I want the money to help the development of quality FS addons.