Griphos

Well, as most everyone has said, A2A makes the best GA. RealAir are also very good and you can't go wrong with any of them. The Aerosoft Twotter is quite good. I have Ant's Tecnam, and it's nicely done, as you suggest. The only other one that comes to mind for GA is Sibwings AN-2 Colt. Slow, but what an incredibly well-done model. I second the vote for the v3 version of the C-47. Very well done. Payware quality. Actually, I don't really have much more than those install anymore on my sim. Why fly anything but the best? I don't have any of the newer Carenado planes, but I seriously doubt whether they are any better than they used to be. When it's ready for P3D, the Milviz King Air will be very good.

Johnman is referring to something not related to this release. The readme file in the package is all you need for this release, and the manual included in the aircraft folder, which is pretty complete. As I said, a correctly downloaded and complete package will include all the sound subfolders and cfg files in the main aircraft folder and all sounds will work in all versions of FSX and P3D without further work to be done. A complete package will have a "Sound" subfolder with 48 files and "SoundAI" subfolder with a config file. The "Panel" subfolder will also have a DGSounds subfolder with many, many files and a Checklist subfolder (also with many files) that is the source for all voice audio and cockpit switches. The engine sounds are in the "Sounds" subfolder. Just to be sure, have you muted sounds (Q key)? Cockpit sounds will play even with sounds muted, but engine sounds will not.

No, they do not have to be installed separately. There really should be no issue with sounds, since the install involves merely adding the folder to simobjects/airplanes, and all the sounds are present in subfolders of the main aircraft folder. Perhaps download again to make sure you got a fully correct package?

Yeah, I checked. Does appear to be the correct version, but still believe it wasn't an authorized upload, for whatever that is worth.

Should be available at avsim and flightsim.com soon. I don't believe the simviation package is the correct one. At least it hasn't been officially posted there, I don't believe (Jan hasn't mentioned that he posted there). Ickie has shut down access at SOH for the time being (1350 downloads so far has overwhelmed them).

I haven't noticed needing it yet at higher distances. I don't have PTA.

Don't need PTA to remove hard edges or add haze in the new version AS16.

It's worth reading the manual, if I do say so myself. The lights are a work in progress still, working in P3D, I believe, but not FSX (I don't fly at night, so haven't checked for sure). Gordon has the paint kit ready, I believe, but I suspect it's been hard to get on to SOH to post it.

A setting of 130 sometimes helped with the hard edge fog and haze in P3D with ASN. That's been fixed in AS16, so 110 or whatever you prefer is fine. Higher than 150 and your performance will suffer.

Well, I downloaded the trial version of AS16 (still using REX soft clouds). Looked at the map and picked a spot with overcast and limited visibility. Flew from Darrington (1S2) to Orcas Island (KORS). I'm very impressed. I don't have cloud density at maximum in P3D (in fact, it's left of center on the scale), but it looked pretty much like overcast to me. Beautifully rendered cloud intersections with the mountains. Looked very realistic. Flew into and out of clouds and the visibility transitions were very smooth. Just very realistic depictions overall! Lot's of cloud drift and spindle against the mountains and utterly convincing cloud layers. Sorry, I was too busy admiring the atmosphere to remember to take pics. I'm off to find some place with haze to test whether that ridiculous hard upper edge of fog and haze has been fixed. If so, I think the investment to upgrade from ASN will be worth the money.

The Milviz King Air is very good. It's still in Alpha, and they are re-working the FMC and some other things, but I enjoy it a great deal. When they finish it, it should be at the top of the list for twins. I don't have the B55, so can't advise.

EMT doesn't always work, though. I used it yesterday to install Tongass Fjords (and still had to relocate the terrain.cfg to the correct folder), and several older aircraft without current installers. It worked on some (Classics Hangar Taifun, Aerosoft Mitchell Wing), but not on others that really should work (Aerosoft Wilga and Huey for instance). I'm able to install most aircraft without current v3 installers without using EMT, just pointing them in the right direction. I prefer this method where it works (as it does for all RealAir and Sibwings aircraft). Scare posts about the tool messing up one's "system" and being outdated seem more partisan that informative. I suppose you could mess up your sim install, but I find it hard to imagine how using the tool would harm your "system," if that means your OS and other software.

Ouch. Yeah, a notebook with on board graphics card and Pentium is really going to struggle. And notebooks are hard to upgrade. You'll find a lot of info on this issue with a little searching, but, in general, FSX is CPU bound rather than GPU limited. Generally, you need at least 4 ghz to use higher settings in complex areas and still get decent FPS. Once you have a top end CPU, like an i7 that you can run at 4.5 ghz or better, then upgrading your GPU can help a bit with some aspects of graphics, but the CPU really has to come first. I run FSX on an i5 2550k I've had for a few years now that I oc to 4.3 ghz and a new GTX 970. I can do most areas at very high to high settings, but Seattle and San Fran and LA/San Diego still slow things down into the 20s, particularly when overcast or in more demanding aircraft. The FSX graphics engine just wasn't built for the kinds of architecture we have now. And most of our current addons are pushing that engine as far as it can go. Perhaps what DTG is doing with it will make a difference. Perhaps not.

Well....problem fixed, I think. I got to thinking. Missing wings is sometimes a sign of an addon that thinks it was installed illegally. I don't know why that would all of a sudden be the case, but I downloaded the Flight1 installer again, reactivated it and reinstalled, and tried again, and all seems to be working fine. Perhaps the new license generated at the reinstall convinced it that it was legit. I'm not sure this is what was going on, of course, but it does seem to be working now. Strange....

Yeah, always did for me too. Can't imagine what is going on, although I do seem to recall some issues with DX10 on the support forum. Too bad that's not available any more. What a shame. It's a great plane, but totally unusable for me now, and although I've gotten my money's worth out of it, when you pay a pretty penny for an add-on, you expect it to continue working in the same sim you bought it for.