jlong

The only real issue I have run across is that I have to remember to be in windowed mode (Alt+Enter) when I start and end a session or else I won't see the loading progress page or ending buttons page.

At 18,000' you have already used up half the atmospheric pressure from 14.7 psi down to around 7.5 psi and it only gets worse from there. As stated above, turbocharging and turbines compensate for this to some degree but only for a while. So if you want to climb faster with altitude you're going to need a rocket.

Hi Chris, Glad to see you're progressing well. Something else you might also want to try. It seems from what you're saying is that you are having the autopilot fly you to the airport and then you are trying to set up for a landing. This is where preflight planning comes in to play. Figure out what runway you intend to land on (into the wind) at your destination and then instead of flying directly to the airport set a waypoint some distance, maybe 5 to 10 miles away depending on altitude, that will put you in a position to then turn to the runway heading and then start what should be a straight in approach. Remember runways are always magnetic to the nearest 10 degrees because if all those fancy instruments fail the compass will always work. This is also why it's an excellent idea to become proficient in learning to manually land an airplane. I know this is a simulation, and the failure rate is nil, but there is almost nothing like the feeling of getting the plane on the ground in one piece fairly smoothly and if you have set up any failures you'll know you can do it. You can try what Karol has said above about missed approaches which work well and once you have the site picture worked out you can try what is called a touch and go where you actually land the plane and then immediately retract the flaps and add full power and take off, fly around the traffic pattern and then set up to land again for another touch and go. This can be done in larger planes but works best in smaller ones. Remember flying is the second greatest thrill known to man, landing is the first. Johannes

I don't think you can change those values directly from within FSX, but you can in Airport Design Editor or a similar program.

Karol is right, just do some flying. You'll get a good feel for the controls, learn a few tricks and have a little fun too, which is after all kind of the point. Plus, creating flight plans usually comes after you've soloed and doing GPS and instrument approaches is pretty advanced stuff especially in a multi-engine plane or jet. The latter two are not even taught to private pilots. That stuff comes in IFR training. So do a little flying around, even pick a different part of the world and have a little fun it's not all serious and if you make a mistake, so what, no one will get hurt and you may learn something in the process.

ivatt asked about starting a flight in the air. It's not something I've ever done so I did a little digging. From what I can figure out, when you create a flight plan and save it one of the files in the folder is an .FLT file. This is a text file that can be edited and if you scroll down that file you will come to a section headed [simVars.0] This is the one for the Siska Approach flight: [simVars.0] Latitude=N56° 58' 51.69" Longitude=W135° 5' 22.12" Altitude=+004794.46 Pitch=-0.69584974752226136 Bank=0.4717823880402528 Heading=-59.446912965895905 PVelBodyAxis=0.0012079635943079174 BVelBodyAxis=0.00013124058182044533 HVelBodyAxis=-0.0014430447390568332 XVelBodyAxis=-5.0489005724763718 YVelBodyAxis=-1.156168802970005 ZVelBodyAxis=171.47668232607569 SimOnGround=False OnPlatformHeight=-9999999999 The lines that pertain to want you want I believe are the Latitude, Longitude, Altitude and SimOnGround=False. This should tell FSX where in the world you want to start, at what altitude and not on the ground but in the air. Also, maybe pitch to give an angle if on a decent approach. More information can be found here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc707071.aspx#[sim.n] Again, I haven't tried this but play with it and see what happens. And remember, backup you original first.

I'm a little late to this post but a lot of good comments here. A couple of points though. One, you have to remember that FSX was developed a decade ago so the included GPS is that old too and not up the the state of the art touch screens of today which makes it a little complicated to use. Garmin has admitted this and has switched over to touch screen GPS's. Second, as much fun as flying a hot airplane is it may not be the best to learn in. A Cessna 414 with twin engines, variable pitch props, retractable gear is very nice but you have a lot more to remember to do especially on landing and it is quite a bit faster so it could get ahead of you. For learning I probably would have gone with the included Cessna 172. It is faster than a Piper Cub with better instruments and has fixed tricycle gear and prop and is fairly easy to take off, fly, and land. Also, with a high wing you can see more of the ground which will help with VFR navigation. Cross country navigation will be a good mental exercise as there are true headings (the line you draw on the chart), magnetic headings (what you see on the compass or directional gyro) after including a wind correction angle, VOR's, etc. This is where a photo scenery package can come in handy as it makes the FS world look like the real world and makes pilotage possible. Finally, as you have found, flying is the second most thrilling thing known to man, landing is the first and in the real world take-offs are optional landings are mandatory so it takes a lot of practice to do it and even more to do it well and even at that they won't all be perfect especially with a cross wind. Anyhow, have fun with it.

I don't really have an answer but it seems a common problem with Windows 10. http://www.avsim.com/topic/480970-all-dark-when-loading-aircraft-in-fsx/

All was well with me (Win7) until I installed Win10 and then I had the same problem with "Fly Now" and "End Flight", a black screen. Everything else works normally (Settings, and flying). those screens will appear if I use DX10 preview, but my computer can't quite handle that, or if I use Control-Alt-Delete and pick Task Manager it will appear briefly and then disappear. As long as I can still fly it is more of and annoyance than a problem but it would be nice if it could be figured out.

My computer has i7 2.8 Mhz not overclocked, 16 Gb of RAM, ATI 5000 series graphics card with 3 monitors and Windows 10 that replaced Windows 7 64 Home and with quite a bit of scenery on it. Your computer should be able to handle it since you have most of the settings set to low and medium. One thing I do, though is allow it several minutes to load the background stuff before I fly. When the hard drive light stops or slows down then I give it a go. One thing you might try is starting at some small rural field with less scenery as I have trouble with dense city scenery like New York, Los Angeles, and I suspect London and Paris too.

I purchased Southern California a couple of days ago because I liked Orbx's freeware airports and I live I Socal. The photo scenery underlying the urban areas is a little blocky and irregular and not quite real if you know an area, but not too bad at altitude. If it weren't for the lack of autogen I would use Megascenery as it looks better, fills the area underlying the airports, is real world imagery and the road traffic seems unchanged. Because the stock FSX version of my home airport, KSEE, is so off I spent quite a bit of time redoing it in ADE and though it's not perfect it's better. The same can be said of Orbx version which is better but still has some glaring flaws (KSEE has no tall light poles for night lighting for instants) and really could use a proper Orbx redo to make it right.

Thanks, guys. I didn't think it would be too big an issue, but you never know when going from one FS to another. One question though, did you place the aircraft in a new Aircraft folder, a Scenery folder or the SimObjects Aircraft folder?

Just curious, about the location. Most of my 32bit stuff (CFS3, FSX) has ended up in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\. Though I do have some things that have loaded onto the C:\ like your sim.

I'm certain this can be found in another thread somewhere (though I haven't found it yet). I spend most of my time flying around small airports where small Cessnas and Pipers fly. I would like to download some of these to add to my sim, but there are almost none to be had in FSX (a lot of Boeings, Airbuses, and bizjets though). There are quite a few to be found in FS9 though, so, I would like to know if it is possible to use FS9 AI aircraft in FSX? I have read an article, where by you can fly FS9 native aircraft in FSX by creating an Aircraft folder and editing the FSX.cfg file, and I have even done this. I would just like to know before I spend a lot of time on it, if it works for AI planes too. Yeah, I know I could try it once and see, but someone out there might have already done it and knows the pitfalls to watch out for.

I recently started playing around with ADE9X to modify a local airport. I also have Megascenery X Socal and noticed that it has the same airport identifier bgl file in it. This is the file I have used to do my changes as Megascenery has done most of the heavy lifting of changing the taxiway alinements and moving the signage and buildings to match the photo scenery. I have done some minor tweaking of a runway and some PAPI and VASI lighting and it looks really good. One thing I have noticed though is that Megascenery's bgl file contains only the items that Megascenery worked on, but does not contain any of the buildings, execpt the tower, and is missing one runway that are in the FSX bgl file though the buildings were obviously moved to fit the photoscenery. Since I would like to do some more tweaks I would like to know how the two bgl files relate to each other so that if I do something in one I won't end up messing up the other?