pbelb

I did a fresh install on a newly built machine.vista x64 + sp1 + whatever patches after that.installed fsx, then fsx-accellerationinstalled pmdg 747X, then the 2.1 update.now, here is what I found:after getting airborne for some time, using the 2d displays, (didn't bother checking the 3d/vc), I found that the aircraft was tracking a little left (perhaps 5-10 miles) of the intended fmc programmed path.after some time (perhaps 30 minutes) of total flight time, with the autopilot engaged with auto-throttle finally working (it didn't seem to want to behave properly initially - perhaps that was because I didn't reload the cold + dark initially?), something odd happened:the plane was still airborne, under autopilot (seemed to be tracking to the left of the expected path) was working, but all of the flight displays went dead.they just showed nothing at all. didn't make any difference whether they were 'expanded' or in-place in the panel.one saving grace was that by turning on the eicas and moving the selector for the eicas to pfd, I was at least able to see the flight plan and see where I was.any ideas as to what happened?I don't think I did anything that would cause the avionics to go blank.

did you install the add-on liveries with administrator rights?

yes, I'm using the pmdg fuel loader.I'll try and pay attention next time to what is going on next time I encounter it.given I tend to fly long distances (10 - 12 hours with holds on top of that) I tend to encounter it quite a bit.for example:one time, I landed with barely 4000lbs of fuel remaining.the aircraft had been on hold so long, that the fmc claimed there wasn't enough fuel remaining to reach the destination.indeed, if I had flown the remainder under power, that would have been true, however, I glided most of the way down, and used a spurt of thrust just prior to landing to get on the ground gently.

thank you for the responses guys!ah, tank #2. ok, so, same question:lets suppose I land and tank #2 is empty, but I have fuel in other tanks.how do I cause fuel to flow into tank #2 so that I can start the APU?the problem is not how to click the button, the problem is evidently the fuel level.I thought I read somewhere that there were pumps that were supposed to help ensure that the tank was able to get fuel from other tanks so that the APU would be able to be started and run.is this not correct?

ok, so I land at an airport with almost no fuel left in the center tanks, and none in the stabilizer tanks.I'm under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that the pumps are supposed to make sure that there is fuel in the center tank (the wings have plenty) so that the APU can run.However, having set everything the way I normally do, and tried to start the apu, the eicas status display shows absolutely no joy at all with the APU.what's up with that?I'm guessing it's because there's too little fuel in the main center tanks.how am I supposed to cause fuel to be moved to the center tank so that the apu will start?any help appreciated.

Hi Jacob,yes, just select the depart / arrive by hand directly in the fmc.the reason for this is that which one gets used is affected by a number of factors.a) wind direction:( your location at the airport (if departing)c) your course of travel when arrivingfor example: when I fly, I like to use VATSIM. in this case, there are live controllers to talk to who try and operate as near to real as possible.they take into account wind factors, and, which gate you might be at, if there are multiple runways to choose from.they also take into consideration the amount of traffic that might also be at the airport.so: it's not really practical to store all of these variables as variations on a single route that you can then choose from prior to departure, particularly as you don't know what the conditions will be like when arriving.the best thing to do is just to ask which approach to select as early as possible. I suspect they might also use the 2nd flight plan to pre-set the most likely alternative, so that they can just switch to the other plan if that turns out to be the go.did you manage to get everything installed and running smoothly with Vista x64?regards,peter.

thank you for the info.I'm doing what you suggest for the weather, but have a further question regarding the thrust limits.I know, using the fmc, that I can easily switch between thrust limits, as you've identified them, however, what has to be done to alter the parameters of a given thrust limit?Is the temperature the only variable available for tweaking?I say that with the understanding that the trust limit is also affected by the current weight of the aircraft.thanks in advance

I'm a newby at doing these updates, so, please bear with me...where exactly am I supposed to download these updates from?a URL would be most helpful...

Jacob,sorry for the slow reply.regarding the flight plans, it turns out that there is a very nice, easy solution.I use www.simroutes.comonce you can find / create a flight plan, they have an export capability, for which PMDG is an export option.if you save this directly to the PMDG flightplan sub directory in your FSX installation directory hierarchy, (make sure you alter the permissions of the directory so that you can download from the browser), you will then be able to use the name of the file, and hit the button for the 'airline route' on the FMC, and it will load all of the details directly.I believe there are also some other tools out there that can help with building flightplans, but I have not really used them.I believe for us based vatsim use, www.simroutes.com is pretty good, as it seems that a large number of the atc use this to figure out what is a viable route, so there will be a good amount of correlation between what the atc says they want you to fly and what is available to download.I hope this helps.how did you make out with the re-load of your system?

thank you for your reply..a) hmmm. ok. so I shouldn't use the vatsim weather. I guess I can disable their weather. have to look into that. I've just been using the 'real weather' with updates that's part of FSX, however, the default when connecting to VATSIM is to enable both weather & network. I'm using FSINN Beta 3, so I'll need to see whether I can alter that behavior.:( yes, the thrust limit. it seems to be relatively low at the beginning of the flight versus the end of the flight. perhaps it's something to do with the modelling of reality. ie: does the thrust limiter limit the max thrust the autopilot can command more at the beginning of a flight than at the end?

me too!wahoo!

hey guys n gals,I've got a query about two probably different things....a) VATSIMI'm noticing a huge difference in performance between flying without VATSIM versus with VATSIM.if I'm flying along on a previously not connected mode, then connect to VATSIM, it seems like the plane suddenly hits a wall of molases, and acts like the air density is being made to be much more dense, therefore more difficult to fly through.I'm mostly talking about the behavior when I'm flying along at .86M and perhaps FL330 or so.what I mean is that suddenly, the plane will have trouble maintaining a certain speed/altitude, and I end up having to settle for something less.eg, right now, I'm flying VATSIM, and the FMC says FL330 should be the ceiling, and the FMC is set to fly at M.86.Well, try and do that, and the aircraft barely manages to stay above the minimum safe flying speed for that altitude.by contrast, I *never* have trouble reaching FMC suggested maximum height and cruise speed.:( max auto throttle...also, the maximum throttle settings seem to vary quite a bit, even if I'm fairly consistent in pugging in an (in)efficiency number of 60 or so.I suppose it's true that a couple of hundred thousand lbs of weight difference could help account for that performance difference in the max thrust setting, but is that all there is that's going on here?please advise.

well, and here I was thinking this was some sort of condition they got in if you flew for too long without an oil change or some other form of 'maintenance'.

thank you for replying.>If you are talking about weather on VATSIM you can use several>programs not related to PMDG to get real, accurate weather on>the network.>such as? can you suggest some...?

ok, so I've been saving my last position and resuming from that saved situation a number of times, and I see that my engines are all belching black smoke.am I doing (or not doing) something that's causing this?if I start the sim out with a fresh start (as opposed to loading a previously saved flight), I don't see this.do tell.

the TFC button works great when I'm connected to VATSIM. very cool, very useful.how about the weather?or, is there something that already works, and I just haven't figured it out yet?

regarding the video, I wonder if you're just not seeing the message about the failure, but it's still happening?Not sure about the lessons.I know fsx has it's 'learning center' functionality, which is mostly about reading.There's also the hands-on scenario based mission flights where they guide you through everything with visual and audio cues.reading portions of the pmdg 747-400X manual can seem a bit booring at times, but it's the sort of thing you end up doing because you want/need to know about something.I would say that if you have a bunch of lessons based on a flight plan, then you should be able to follow those same instructions in fsx pretty much the same way, since the geography and beacons etc probably hasn't really changed a huge amount.ie: ksfo is still where it was in FS9.

>Asus Maximus Formula, Q6600 2.4 GHz o/c to 3.07 GHz, GeForce>8800 GTS, 4 Gig of OCZ 800 MHz DDR2.>>And everytime - it eventually stops working - 5-60 mins so far>- usually the screen goes blank.>>It might the GTS - since it is display that crashes - the sim>continues running. I don't suppose FSX/SP1/SP2 (which is mine)>should differ from FSX/SP1/Acceleration (yours ?) in terms of>performance ?>>One more question - what do you use to learn ? The lesson>files are only for FS2004 - no ?I'm using a Q6600 overclocked to 3.2, 8800GTS 512MB. memory is running at stock speed however, with cpu multiplier at 8 instead of 9, which makes one of the memory dividers match up exactly with the 800 speed for the memory.interestingly, I used to have a similar problem - screen would go blank, but you could hear the sim continuing.well, that was when I used an ATI based solution which I thought at the time might have been a hardware issue with the card - it was one of those passively cooled 2600XT jobbies, and I'd see a message pop up in the system tray saying that the video card had stopped, but that it had 'recovered'. sure, perhaps, but, the video for the game stopped from that point on.well, I'm unsure whether it was the hardware or software. either way, when I was researching this issue, it seemed to me thata) it was not exclusively the domain of ATI cards that caused this issue - I saw reports from nvidia users too.:( I saw some posts that claimed it was due to a cooling issue with the video cardc) I saw some posts that claimed it was a hardware issue with the card, and that it should be sent back to the supplier for a replacement.d) I saw other posts claiming it was a software issue.so, there's quite the range of possibilities out there.in the mean-time, ati has released the 8.x drivers (at the time, I was using the 7.x drivers - the latest available), and I'm unclear as to whether this situation has improved.have you seen any such indications about the driver having stopped but that it has 'recovered'?

Ok, I'll try and help you.when you say it's not running 'properly', would you mind being more specific?also, it seems that the people who run this message board get their knickers in a twist if you don't say who you are.regards,peter belbin.

Hi, It's me, Peter Belbin again.ok, well, I think I've figured out that the problem I was having was in fact not PMDG's fault!thanks guys for your help (NOT!)I found that there was an update to FSUIPC available that was very recently released, which I installed.I also re-downloaded the VAFS3 update installer, and installed that.the add-ons for VATSIM (FSCopilot and FSInn) both seem to be working just fine too!so, what are your problems? perhaps I can help you!one thing I noticed is that it may pay for you to tweak the FSX / PMDG directory so that you have full rights from that directory onwards, otherwise it gets problematic to save flight plans using the www.simroutes.com downloads.I expect that even though I have 8GB of memory, 4GB should be sufficient, so I don't really see that as being a major issue.not that it should matter, but, what motherboard are you using?is your cpu overclocked?regards,peter.

Well, that's weird.I've been running FSX + Accelleration with the 747-400X / FS2Crew without much trouble at all.I've been running an Q6600 with 8GB ram, Vista x64, NVidia video.I did have some trouble with the machine initially, but, after dumping my ATI video card and the 7.x drivers, the pc has been very stable.I frequently set up my pc for 10 hour flights, and confidently arrive back after having taken off, and find the sim is running just fine, and is ready for a landing.I haven't done a lot of tweaking, except perhaps to turn off the superfetch and readyboost caching services.I'm pretty happy with Vista x64, aside from the lack of certain manufacturer's support with device drivers, but it is improving.I use a microsoft force feedback joystick, and CH usb pedals, and they work great!sorry to hear that you're having problems.I basically started off with a fresh install of Vista, then installed FSX (with the DirectX 9 drivers on the media), then install Accelleration, then the other bits and pieces.works great for me, until I did the Vista SP1 install.

first off, my name is Peter Belbin.Ok, if you've read my other post about FSX+Accel and theinability to fuel the aircraft.....since I have not heard anything as yet about that from thisforum, I thought I'd try the nasty uninstall/reinstall.well, I bought both the 747-400X and the FS2Crew add-on, and,installed the 1.01 update.so, now, I've managed to uninstall everything except theinitial FS2Crew.it appears that having added the 1.01 update to FS2Crew hasmessed up the uninstall of the 1.0 part.here are a series of images that show what I'm experiencing:1. this is how it looks before I ask to uninstall:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185748.jpg2. yep, that's what I want to do, but, notice the 1.01 versionnumber? that update has already been uninstalled. thisshould be uninstalling 1.0...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185749.jpg3. ok, now it's complaining...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185750.jpg4. and again....http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185751.jpg5. success (or that's what I'm lead to believe)http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185753.jpg6. until I look at the list of apps, and IT'S STILL THERE!!!http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185752.jpgthe process can be repeated as many times as you like - itmakes not difference.

it's me, Peter Belbin again....ok, so I did the uninstall of FS2Crew (just deleted everything in FS2Crew and the uninstall app in the FSX directory), and the 747-400X.I then just installed the 747-400X.now, I am still unable to alter the fuel load.even the FMC seems to think there's an issue.what is up with this?please advise.regards,peter belbin.

first off, my name is Peter Belbin.Ok, if you've read my other post about FSX+Accel and the inability to fuel the aircraft.....since I have not heard anything as yet about that from this forum, I thought I'd try the nasty uninstall/reinstall.well, I bought both the 747-400X and the FS2Crew add-on, and, installed the 1.01 update.so, now, I've managed to uninstall everything except the initial FS2Crew.it appears that having added the 1.01 update to FS2Crew has messed up the uninstall of the 1.0 part.here are a series of images that show what I'm experiencing:1. this is how it looks before I ask to uninstall:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185748.jpg2. yep, that's what I want to do, but, notice the 1.01 version number? that update has already been uninstalled. this should be uninstalling 1.0...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185749.jpg3. ok, now it's complaining...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185750.jpg4. and again....http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185751.jpg5. success (or that's what I'm lead to believe)http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185753.jpg6. until I look at the list of apps, and IT'S STILL THERE!!!http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185752.jpgthe process can be repeated as many times as you like - it makes not difference.

I should probably also mention that it's FSX with the accelleration add-on installed, which implies SP1 and SP2, I suppose.also, sorry guys, I forgot to put my name on the original email.I'm Peter Belbin.