torque2

I have a three computer network and they are all at least six years old. I turn them off every time I finish a flight. Only two of the three will come out of sleep mode properly anyway. In six years I have not had a single hardware failure with this practice. And no worries about electrical surges causing damage. I also believe starting a new flight from a 'fresh bootup' is less likely to cause glitches than beginning a new flight after a previous one.

Correction: That's where Navigraph's navdata is located. The flight plans are read from Documents\Aerosoft\General\A3XX Flightplans. David

In your Documents\Aerosoft\General\A3XX Navigraph folder. David

Until July 13th, X-Plane 12 is available on Steam for 33% off. I was planning to buy it from x-plane.com but now I'm in a quandary. With the favourable exchange rate Steam offers this is over 40% off for Canadians!

Yes, FSX, FSX-SE, XP11 and P3Dv4.5 all installed and enjoyed regularly, each with its benefits (and limitations). I also have MSFS installed but rarely use it as it doesn't suit my style of simming.

Unplug all your USB hardware flight controls before starting X-Plane then launch the sim. You should then be able to sit in the cockpit and enjoy what you're looking at (press 'W' if necessary). When you're ready to setup your flight controls plug them back in, launch X-Plane, and calibrate them via the settings menu. David

Welcome to the club! I bought the Blackbox A330 'prologue' V0.6 nearly three years ago. In three years it has progressed from V0.6 to V0.81. No sign of when the official 'V1.0' will be released, if ever. But at least there are signs they are 'working on it'. Buying an in-development product comes with no guarantees of when, or if, a final product will be released. David CYXE

Hi All, The mission compass display was designed back when monitors had standard 4:3 aspect ratio displays. Most everyone now has a widescreen monitor, so the mission compass appears stretched horizontally. With some detective work I have found a way to correct it. In your FSX gauges folder, look for the file "missionpanels.cfg" and make a backup. Open it in notepad and scroll down to the [Window00] section. Despite rather standard-looking entries, many are overriden by FSX internal code. For example, the 'window_size' and 'window_pos" entries are totally ignored. So no help in fixing the problem. I also discovered the "size_mm" value can be commented out completely with no effect. In fact, the easiest way to change the aspect ratio of the gauge00 in this window I found is to remove it (comment it out). Then I was able to change the compass display's aspect ratio simply by changing values on the gauge00= line. The third and fourth parameter then directly control the width and height of the gauge. For my 16:10 apect ratio monitor I made the following changes: [Window00] ;size_mm=98,123 // this line is commented out ... ;gauge00=Missions!POI, 0, 0, 98, 123 // original gauge00=Missions!POI, 0, 0, 82, 100 // My settings for 16:10. For 16:9 displays, try 75 instead of 82 I haven't tested this fully in other missions but in simple ones with just the mission pointer it looks much better. David CYXE

Thanks Mark, that was the problem. David

Problem solved! I discovered I have to re-select the radio button for my installation type (in my case FSX) after browsing to my FSX directory for the install to complete successfully. Now I just need to figure out how to keep the passenger and engine doors open (they reclose immediately) so I can complete my preflight! David

Hi all: Anyone else having trouble installing this product? I keep getting installer errors ("Object Reference not set to an instance of an object", "Access to path 'C:\users\...\Appdata\Roaming' is denied". This despite disabling any antivirus software and running the installer as administrator. The aircraft installs ok but the FMS hangs at the 'Loading Navdata' screen. Looks like the navdata is not being installed. I'm running Win7-64bit, FSX with Acceleration. Never had installation problems before. I have submitted a ticket to Carenado. David CYXE

Hi All: Thought some of you might be interested in a discovery I made today on loading times for FSX from a cold boot to the 'Free Flight' screen. I recently upgraded to an SSD for my OS (Windows 7) and FSX. I, however, have several hundred GB of scenery data that won't begin to fit on the SSD so I have it still installed on a hard drive. But with the rest of FSX and W7 on the SSD I expected to see a significant improvement in FSX startup times. I did not. Maybe 30 secs at the most (3 mins before, about 2.5 mins after). Why? The only data not on the SSD is the scenery data. That must be what is still slowing my startup times. I tried some things. As a first test, I substituted the default scenery.cfg file from back when FSX was installed for my current one, expecting a big difference in startup times: No! Barely any difference! FSX was still reading lots of scenery before the 'Free Fligh't Screen would appear. Next I tried an empty 'Addon Scenery' folder (moved my current one outside of FSX and replaced it with an empty one, just like FSX newly installed). Some improvement but still slow (2:22). I have lots of scenery installed in the FSX folders, not just in the 'Addon Scenery' folder. So next I moved all those folders (only my payware/freeware folders, not any of the default folders) outside of the FSX folder structure and retested from a cold start: Big improvement! Startup time a mere 0:20!! So it appears FSX scans all the folders within the FSX file structure for scenery on startup, even when there is no corresponding entry in the scenery.cfg file. So next I put back my scenery.cfg file, but modified it with the new locations of all my scenery folders outside of the FSX main folder. This was very easy to do, just needed to add a "..\" in front of each local= entry for folders that were moved. Shut down the computer, waited a minute or so then restarted. My new boot time, with my 'normal' scenery active: 0:35!! A full 2 minutes quicker than before. I will add that the load times from pressing 'Fly Now' until the cockpit appears, ready for flight, do not change with this technique. So if you normally fly with most of your scenery active this method will not help you. But for me, with hundreds of GB of scenery data, and only a small portion of it active at any one time, it made a very welcome difference. Almost as good as a brand new installation! The only scenery folder I cannot move in this fashion is Orbx. That has to stay where it is. FTX have not provided a way to move it elsewhere. I have 68GB of data in that folder (linked to a hard drive folder). It is costing me 10 seconds in startup time! I could move that 68GB to my SSD but that would nearly fill it. If anyone knows a way to move it so FSX doesn't scan it on startup I would love to know! David CYXE

I have done this merge and am very pleased with the results - CLS visuals along with Wilco's panel. In addition to replacing Wilco's model and texture files you also need to make several changes to Wilco's aircraft.cfg file, using the values from CLS. These include the [Views], [Lights], [Contact points], [TailHook] and [Exits] sections - ie anything that refers to the visual model. I also found the resulting model a little overpowered so I reduced the thrust_scalar from 0.98 to 0.90 but increased the fuel_flow_scalar from 0.6175 to 0.70255 to keep that aspect accurate. Hope this helps. David

Nope. If you click on any of these FS9 links you get an 'HTTP' file not found error, or a message 'this product is no longer in our catalog' David (CYXE)

I just came from the PMDG website where I wanted to review a possible purchase for FS9, only to find all their FS9 products have disappeared! No sign of them under 'Products' nor in their online shop. I hope this is a temporary aberation and not that they have stopped selling all FS9 versions of their products! David (CYXE)