usmc3073

I have an i7920 OC 3.6ghz with a new ATI 5870 1gig ddr5 running 10.1 drivers. FSX in dx9 enhancements done through the video driver via ATI catalyst. settings 8x AA filter wide tent 16x AF AA mode adaptive multi sample. the card is not overclocked. I landed at EDDF in snowy conditions with GEX. REX, UTX, FS Genesis, Zinertek airport textures, A2A 3D redux lighting. lots of clouds all the way down. I was doing this in the frame rate hungry PMDG 747-400X in the 747-8i configuration.First approach and landing was in dx10 and with fsx.cfg BP=2000000 TMB=70 stuttered all the way down to the runway. read this entire post with great interest so I decided what the heck worth a try changed BP=0 TMB=80 set up FPS limiter set frames in FSX to unlimited ran it again in dx9 same conditions. Jaw was on the floor! it was smooth. I am talking FS9 smooth even in the dang virtual cockpit which eats frames like a fat guy at a buffet. For me the fly by is a really good test because it always highlights those little micro stutters. I did the fly by at about 1500ft off the ground over Frankfurt and smooth as silk. Now I will do more testing for sure but this looks very promising...at least for me. Guthrie

I purchased VoXATC for FSX and I have two big problems. one is the taxi guidance system does not work at all. I have ran the indexer multiple times I use addons and I am not sure if these are known to cause problems or not I use trafficX, UTX, GEX, FS GENESIS, Zinertek airport textures. A2A 3d redux lighting. no matter what I do the taxi guidance system will not work if I hit 0 and choose the option for "show/hide taxi" it simply hangs up with "please wait"next problem and its a major one is that although it recognizes my SID and tells me to fly it no matter what stage of flight I am in it will not hand me off to other controllers for example last night I was on my way to EDDF I was halfway across the ocean and I was still tuned to a tower in canada. I got no instructions to change frequency and it just says "fly flight plan" the only way to get it to update is to disable voxatc and the re enable voxatc. It will pick up the correct tower but then as I progress it will not hand off to other towers. This is beyond frustrating and I am not happy with this product at all...It just plain does not work. A major ripoff in my opinion.I tried to email their "support" and I got no response. The only response I got from these crooks is when they took my payment. I know they don't maintain an official forum this should have been my first clue to how bad this product sucked. The only thing these criminals maintain is a bank account to stick your money into. live and learn I guess. I hope the makers of this addon choke and die on their next meals. That is all.

update I overclocked the ati 5870 using the auto tune feature in the ATI catalyst tool. it overclocked the card a good amount I turned up the fan a bit to keep heat down and fsx is running better and smoother than ever. frames improved and its smoother during pans and turns where before i got micro stutters. frames lock at 30 and the card crunches the frames fast right at the frame limit setting of 30.I love this card for FSX and I am sure you will too. If you are on the fence trust me don't hesitate on this card its worth every penny. one more thing...I learned in this process of upgrading that there is a ton of misinformation out there about how video cards dont matter in fsx blah blah...This is not true if you have an i7 system overclocked. Reason being if you throw that old nvidia 8800gtx on there that was the bomb before then it will completely bottleneck your cpu and then slow your whole system down. If you get yourself a higher end video card it will remove that bottleneck and your cpu will start to shine and you will see fsx for what it is...pure flight sim awesomeness.Guthrie

here is a link to a video I made landing in KSEA with my i7920 dell xps 730x and my new ATI 5870 video card. Keep in mind that the frames in this are cut by half of what I was getting in the game at the time. Even with that its pretty smooth. This is the pmdg md-11 I am using and also please go easy on me I am practicing manual landings this one although survivable wasn't very good. I was fighting wind came in too high, and flared too much. I use REX+GEX+UTX and FSGenesis. ASA provided the weather TraffiX AI traffic. all of these are running during this. in the game all they way done I was at 30 frames the whole time I have it locked to 30 in the display settings. This fraps vid I was getting 15 frames.I am running in DX10 preview mode with bloom on. I hope you enjoy it.GuthrieKSEA Landing

Hello,I had fatal errors as well for awhile. I then did some checking in my event viewer and looked at the errors. In my case it was windows defender that was killing FSX. Windows defender does this little mini scan of running programs and if FSX is running it will cause a fatal error and then restart. Once I shut off windows defender all has been fine ever sense. There is information on the web about how to shut off windows defender. I use vista 64 fyi. Hope this helps you.Guthrie Zuehlke

My main concern with FSX is smooth flight...IQ stands for image quality. I can tell a very slight difference with IQ but its barely and I mean barely noticable. I do not force aa and af in dx10 mode i just use the game as far as the zbuffer issue in dx10 mode i havnt seen it yet but I am not 100% sure its totally gone. Ill check it later. the jumping airport lines dont typically bother me as I spend 90% of my time in the air flying heavies. I personally like DX10 mode because the water and clouds look awesome! and its worth it for me. I can also run bloom on in dx10 mode. DX9 looks good as well and i didnt notice any loss in frames between the two. the only thing that makes the game stutter that i have found is turning on supersampling i dont use it. ill get some screens up later.there has also been critcisim of the ati 5870 shimmer i dont notice it with the current drivers.Guthrie

I have a different opinion than most of the people here. I had a Nivida GTX 280. It looked awesome with nhancer but the frames always sucked with the payware aircraft I use and other payware in FSX. I have an i7 system clocked to 3.6ghz turbo mode on. For me i liked the eye candy but couldnt stand the lower frames. I recently upgraded to a sapphire HD 5870 and I am so happy I cant even express it. I have consistently high frames. Flying into Lax with mostly maxed out sliders 500 ft up flying onto 25R over heavy scenery it was smooth as silk even in the VC on a pmdg plane. This card just blazes. Smooth flight in FSX for me is a reality.I always fly in DX10 mode because REX clouds and water in DX10 mode are just awesome. Now there is a slight and I do mean a slight loss in IQ compared to the nvidia cards but I would gladly sacrifice this for the massive increase in frames resulting in a smoother flight. Vsync doesn't appear to be a problem on my system or I dont notice it. There is also a vsync work around option in ATI tray tools if vsync is a problem. ATI tray tools is similar to nhancer. I do not use it though so I dont know all the ins and outs.I can highly recommend this card for FSX DX10 mode i can guarantee you wont be let down.Guthrie

Thank you so much PMDG!for fixing the logo light in dx10 mode...it works nowGuthrie Zuehlke

Not sure whats going on here but i wonder if an addon or something is causing this. I have uninstalled/reinstalled the md-11 these pictures were taken right after i reinstalled I also dumped my fsx.cfg had it rebuild a new one. Whats causing this I know this isnt the way its supposed to look. Any ideas???Guthrie Zuehlke

Does anyone know of a cheap soundcard i could put in my rig that would allow the setting of the lower sound settings?Guthrie Zuehlke

I humbly request this repaint for my PMDG 747-400X http://www.southwest.com/images/photo_gallery/shamu1.jpgThanksGuthrie Zuehlke

I left my credit card in the cockpit then the anti icing system broke and I had to scrape the wind screens off with my credit card...Then the FO began to start the engines while I was scraping ice, and my credit card along with my shirt got sucked into my GE turbines...I tried to pick the pieces up but then a major cross wind came across the runway and the pieces got blown away...Is that a good excuse? Guthrie Zuehlke

With the fact that I didn't purchase it earlier...Hi JD Guthrie Zuehlke

I love my PMDG 747X its my favorite plane no matter what planes come out or even if they are better with less bugs I still cant leave my 747-400. I have to run FSX in DX10 mode because I have the issue with missing cockpit textures and I cant turn down my audio resolution. I would prefer to run it in DX9 mode but unfortunatly its not an option.Since I have to run it in DX10 mode my logo light doesn't work. the lights are on, but the logo itself is not illuminated. Is this a known bug in DX10 mode and if so are there any type of workarounds?Thanks.Guthrie Zuehlke

This is not a problem with HIFI sim. I am sucessfully using the latest beta for ASA with the level d 767 and there are 0 problems with shifting winds. This is a specific problem for PMDG products which PMDG is not willing to admit nor fix. For that I will never purchase another PMDG product because what they do is kind of like Microsoft. They get all your cash for their one project and then they pour it into their next project "improving" it while not fixing or acknowleding bugs in their previous simulations thus creating a situation where if you want the best of the best of the best of their simulations you have to buy the latest and greatest one thus keeping their revenue stream going. This is only my opinion.PMDG has pretty much stated that they have "moved on" from their older projects ie the pmdg 747x etc...and will not be offering any updates in the near or possibly distant future. I cannot fly a PMDG plane with any turbulence setting whether its from ASA, FSUPIC, or even FSX real weather, or it will go crazy and s turn all over the place. I can fly similar jet simulators ie Level D 767 with ASA with 0 issues and very realistic winds and turbulence. I have even taken off from an airport while listening to the real air traffic control and been assigned the same active runway and nearly the exact same wind conditions as is reported live. Bottom line ASA is a phenomenal program and the support HIFI sim gives is second to none. I have no doubt this product will be nearly perfect by the time they are finished with it. As for PMDG admitting its their planes that have the problem with this simulation well...Guthrie Zuehlke

I have the same problem as wellGuthrie Zuehlke

Eventually I also began to get the S turns again most noticably it occurs when I am descending through different flight levels. I was able to complete a full 9 hour flight with my 747x with 0 problems as soon as I started to descend at around transition altitude my plane started banking to the point of stalling. I was not happy with this as I thought the new HIFI sim recommended setting had in fact cured the bulk of the issue enough that the plane was flyable again with ASA.I completely disabled ASA reloaded a new flight. Turned on FSUIPC weather wind smoothing pressure smoothing etc...I started up a flight and after awhile same old s turns started occuring without ASA enabled. After further research i discovered that the PMDG planes in particular are extremely sensitive to turbulance. I read that if I was to turn off all turbulance settings in FSUIPC this behavior would stop. I turned off all turbulance settings in FSUIPC and the plane immediately stopped s turning and straightened out and did not s turn again for the duration of the 9+ hour flight.After this I disabled FSUIPC and turned on only real weather in fsx I reloaded a flight and waited and waited and then....you guessed it same s turn behavior re occured. I turned off turbulance in fsx and plane straightened out with 0 problems for the duration of the flight.Only thing I can figure is that simconnect is still a mess and Microsoft has retired the people who could possibly fix it. Microsoft will not open source this game so the many geniuses in the flight sim community could fix it therefor when I fly PMDG I do not fly with turbulance. My hope is that someone will come into the market and offer a new flight simulator that is actually worth the price they stick on the tag.Guthrie ZuehlkePS X-Plane is not the answer...

As a last ditch effort to be able to fly my 747x on my new i7 system I have purchased a copy of windows xp 64 I am going to partition my drive and set up my sim and addons the same as my vista setup and see if the problems go away. If so, then I will abandon vista completely for flightsimming. I have read that none of these issues are problems with xp 64. I will update once I have everything set up. I purchased a full copy of XP 64 for $60 hope its not money wasted...Guthrie Zuehlke

I found even with the turbulence disabled my airplane was still reacting to the winds, updrafts, and downdrafts. Wing flex happening all over the place. In fact I had to adjust the wind settings in ASA a little. I think you will be happy.Guthrie

I continued to have the S turn problem both with ASA and without it in my PMDG 747x. I had it with FSUIPC even with wind smoothing on and also with FSX real weather. This was very frustrating! I discovered I needed to do some additional steps that I found in the beta download read me file. I did exactly what it said. I did the fsx.cfg tweak and disabled turbulance on aircraft in fsx settings. I am running ASA with DWC on and FSUIPC with weather settings off. Finally...ASA is working and it seems very realistic.I find that the winds jump around and the plane will adjust itself according to the winds...sometimes gently dropping a wing into the wind and then straightening out. DWC seems to be doing a good job of preventing major shifts but it doesnt elimate them entirely creating too sterile of an environment. To be honest it makes the whole experience much more realistic. I find I have to pay attention more to my plane and my systems in gusty situations.I can't wait until the full sp1 is released. Guthrie

Since I am unable to lower my audio resolution settings beyond "CD Quality" I have decided to abandon the 747x and fly the PMDG MD-11 exclusively in DX10 preview mode since this is the only way to avoid the dx9 corruption. DX10 mode is a compromise because there are z buffer issues and flickering as well as no progressive taxi. I really enjoy the pmdg products and I wish that I could fly the 747x since it is my favorite add on. But for now this is my only choice...On a side note I really hope that someone takes on the task of devoloping a new flight simulator that utelizes current technology. Since Microsoft is out of the game now it seems that this is a great opportunity for a company to capitalize on this niche.Guthrie Zuehlke

I am very curious to find out if anyone figures out a way to lower the settings when it appears you cannot...like others here I can only lower my settings to "CD quality" sometimes that works sometimes it doesnt. I am very interested in finding a solution...I know there must be a genius among us...Guthrie Zuehlke

I cant record in xpax. I always get the "no event selected" message. open the tree go down to cruise highlight it then hit record and always I get the "no event selected" Is there a way to select the event that I am not aware of? I am simply clicking on it and its not working?????Guthrie

when I am boarding the passengers it tells me that the TOCG and ZFWCG are out of range. I have made a custom cabin that matches the pmdg md-11 cabin I have read that I am supposed to adjust the weight numbers. I am not sure how to do this.Does this mean I adjust the weights within the md-11 or is there a way to manipulate the weights in xpax? Once I figure this part out looks like a really cool addon!Thanks,Guthrie

Hmmm I think i am seeing the problem for you....I think you need to refresh yourself on the whole setting the Barometer thing. I notice you are established on final and your Baro is set to 29.92 this is the standard pressure above transition altitude usually 18000 feet...so you are not setting the proper pressure beneath transition altitude if you listen to the ATIS report usually about 50 miles out while on descent it will give you the pressure underneath transition altitude.If you do not set it correctly your instruments are indicating an incorrect altitute. So although you think you are only 500feet above ground its highly possible that you are in fact only 300 feet due to pressure differences. I am not a pilot so I am not the most knowledgable about all the ins and outs, but I think that is your issue. Hope this helps! Guthrie Zuehlke