bandman

How do you figure it's misplaced? If you mean that you think the building shouldn't be there you are incorrect. In the real world their is a building in Brooklyn with a sloped roof owned by Citibank. It was located to line up with their similarily designed HQ in Manhattan.

All three with Carenado planes and Tongass Fjord X

Monitor proliferation wil help maintain the importance of desktops. I have a co-worker who has 8 monitors and every time I go by his office he seems to add another one. I have two and many other of my colleagues have 3.

Jim in fact implied that pictures alone where not enough to make any claim; presumably even by him. If Jim said something more along the lines as you suggest it would have been a much more civil way to counter any speculation. Facts and logic are always a better argument than calling people names and it would actually contribute to the conversation rather than detract. I do not see speculating based on limited information as narrow minded. In the end it hurts no one to speculate on what Flight might be based on the available information. If you look at anything that people are passionate about, i.e. take any particular sport, people will read a great deal into any little data point. The phenomenon is not restricted to this particular forum either. Look at any forum regarding any particular piece of hardware or software under development and you will see the exact same thing. Being narrow minded means holding on to a particular belief no matter the facts presented. What is happening here in this forum does not fit that definition.

I wonder why someone who is trying to help sell a product is being publicly critical of people who are the company's core target market and calling them names. I'm a big fan of HiFi products and think you guys have great customer service but you are cetainly generating negative goodwill for the company with some of your recent comments on the Fligh forum.

Yes. I can tell by looking that my FSX with ASE looks better than the weather in these pictures.

Still, its not much of an improvement over FSX with ASE. It looks like the clouds are still the same FSX 2D spinning puffballs that disappear when you fly into them.

I'd pay $500 no problem if it was a meaningful enough upgrade. Thus far however from the website I can't see how Prepar3D is that much different from FSX. Can you give us some more info on it Tim as to what the improvements are or will be? Addendum: never mind I found it here http://www.prepar3d....ient/#landclass. Looks like those spinning 2D clouds are still around.

Now that sounds like something to get behind. At least from looking at the Perpar3D web page it doesn't look like it's much beyond FSX but if it gets your stamp of approval John then it must be good. Maybe we should get a Prepar3D Forum up and running. That way we could start the process of speculating and making requests all over again! (Joking of course).

What I mean is that FSX is alive today as a relevant platform because of the payware upgrades. I doubt Microsoft sold very many copies of FSX this year. The casual buyers were gone long ago. On average there is only a window of about 6 months after a game title is released to take in the lion share of revenues. No I don't but the only reason there are six pages so far on this thread is because we have no information otherwise. This is simply an aftereffect of the cause. Any marketer worth their salary today would be telling a client that they need to engage with those customers who are most enthusiastic about their product: hence the rise of Twitter and Facebook as an advertising platform. The ACES team understood this a lot better. However, thus far with Flight, the MSFT approach is to do almost the exact opposite.

Microsoft has a history of abandoning products on a whim without consideration of customer goodwill. Especially with MSFS it would be very easy to cut as it is meaningless for the company as a source of revenue or profit. From a business prospective it’s hard to comprehend why they actually bothered to turn the lights back on. Bill Gates bought the flight sim franchise because he was, to some extent long ago, an enthusiast. However as he is less involved with day to day operations now he isn’t likely to step in to protect it. At least with X-Plane it is run by someone who is an FS enthusiast and X-Plane is (presumably) 100% of the company’s revenues. So Austin et al will be much more dedicated to keeping the franchise alive and relevant. So I think MSFT would actually be doing the hardcore FSers a favor by getting out of the market altogether. As it is they are hampering innovation by hanging this sword of Damocles over everyone that is Flight. I mean look at what it’s like right now. Counter to every modern marketing strategy they have almost zero engagement with the people who are the product’s true brand ambassadors. Is it cancelled? Isn’t it? No one really knows because MSFT is a thoughtless, godless bureaucratic monolith (okay I’m embellishing a bit). I don’t think they could do a better job pissing everyone off if they actually tried. It’s the payware guys that keep MSFS alive. Without them I as well as I’m sure many others would have abandoned MSFS years ago. XP10, or any other future alternative, in and of itself isn’t going to make me switch. What will make me switch is the day the truly innovative developers like Orbx, PMDG or A2A say that there is a better platform and that they will start making add-ons for it.

Since you are in communication with Carenado, if you can, I'd love to hear any insight you have on why Carenado maintains such limited interaction with the community and almost never responds to customer feedback or questions. For example, I fail to see why they won't issue a SP with your fixes to the flight dynamics. Seems like a no brainer to me.Most developers are pretty active in the community and interact regularly on the forums. With Carenado the communication is mostly one way.

I hope Carenado is paying you to fix their product.Why not put the file here on Avsim as well? Personally I never use Sim-Outhouse either, though I have an account.

Ideally you would want to have an integrated scenery package like Orbx that includes everything - custom landclass, mesh, etc. Buying stand alone mesh products you have to be careful. Although moutains look better they can get really messed up around airports and coastlines. Looks like FS Global includes a tool to fix airport elevations though. Also no matter the mesh product I've always been able to find errors in the elevation that leave artifacts. But I have yet to find any meaningful errors with the mesh data in Orbx products. I find that with mesh products the negatives outweight the positives. I was told FS Genesis is supposed to be working on a solution for the airport elevation problem but I don't know if a fix has made it to commercial launch yet.I live on the east coast of the US and I've found that the various scenery options discussed here are not very satisfying. At this point I'm just going to wait until Orbx get around to my area of the world and buy that. You would probably have to wait considerably longer than me until Orbx gets around to India however.

I've given X-Plane a few different tries. I just couldn't stand it. The UI was horrible. Other than that though right out of the box X-Plane maybe a better simulator than FSX. But with all of the scenery and aircraft add-ons that are available for FSX there is really no comparison between the two.The day after Orbx, A2A, RealAir and PMDG all get on board with X-Plane is the day I switch.The only developer that I regularly buy from that has been willing to support X-Plane is Carenado. But then Carenado is not necessarily know as an innovator in terms of flight dynamics. I just buy from them because the developers building more complex models don't seem to be too interested in making the more common GA right now. I'm still waiting for a good C172 that has more advanced features such as more realistic spin and stall characteristics, visible icing and cumulative damage modelling. With the majority of the flight schools still using C172s it seems like there should also be a real commercial market for something like this.

I found this 1994 review of a Washington DC scenery add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator v5.0..."I bought this scenery enhancement primarily for VFR flights to see the sights and landmarks around the area I live. So with that in mind, I tend to fly with the maximum details set. The problem with this is that the PC has to process data more quickly than at lower settings. With Flight Simulator 4, I was getting 10 to 15 frames per second on my 486SX/25, which I found to be a reasonable frame rate. I had previously installed Mallard's SAN FRANCISCO SCENERY ENHANCEMENT shortly after it came out and found that the frame rate for that scenery was about 1 to 2 frames per second and the joystick control was so bad that I couldn't control the airplane. When Washington DC was released, I expected to find the same problems I had with San Francisco. I wasn't disappointed (or maybe I was). With 640x400x256 SVGA graphics and maximum details set, I experienced about 1 to 2 frames per second while using the Washington DC scenery. I tried using a 486DX2/50 and found the frame rate improved to about 3 to 4 frames per second. At that point, I felt that I couldn't get enough performance even from one of the new 66MHz Pentium systems so I removed the FS5 and both scenery enhancements from my system. A few weeks ago, Microsoft released an update to Flight Simulator 5.0. I heard on Usenet that this update significantly improved the frame rate and also improved joystick control. I downloaded the upgrade, reinstalled FS5, applied the update and reinstalled both scenery enhancements. The upgrade was definitely worthwhile. The frame rate jumped(??) to 2 to 3 frames per second on the 486SX/25 while the 486DX2/50's frame rate improved to 4 to 6 frames per second. The joystick control was also improved, making flying FS5 a lot more fun. While I'm still disappointed by the frame rate, the software is now back on my PC and those Pentium system prices are falling.."http://www.ibiblio.o...s/washingt.html

I think that having MSFS add-ons on Games for Windows Marketplace will increase exposure and increase overall industry sales. I have to admit, until FSX I only had limited awareness of what was available for payware. I believe the only upgrade I had previously purchased was a scenery package of Washington DC for FS 5.0 produced by Mallard. Now I'm spending around $500 a year on software and hardware upgrades. Unfortunately the developers that will benefit the most initially will likely be the ones that churn out a lot of low quality eye candy. But eventually it should increase the awareness of those buying Flight about the add-on potential.Aerosoft has always poo-poo'ed the download market. Seems they are getting the lion's share of their revenues from physical disc sales in Germany. Yet others like Orbx seem to do fine with that distibution model and seem ready to welcome Flight.

This hasn't been my experience. But I think it depends on the age of your instructor. I was recently flying with an CFI that was furloughed from AA who told me MSFS was how he started out. Seems like a good first question to ask a potential CFI is their attitude towards using a flight simulator. If they are hostile to it don't hire them. Find someone else who is. I find that having a CFI who understands that using a simulator is a valuable learning tool help make the learning curve that much shorter.

They are without a doubt the best plane developer on the market. There is really no one else you can even compare them to. I just wish they would do some more GA planes.

Harder to see things at night. It's never really black.Waves like Ship SimulatorAllow float planes to bump up against docks.Eliminate how the ocean looks like a bunch of tiles, especially at night.Persistent cloudsWake turbulenceRain/Snow that doesn't look like your making the jump to light speed in Star WarsVisable icingImproved flight dynamics/more realistic landingsAt least one default high-quality trainer like a C172 on par with an A2A Accu-simmed plane

This is a "bug" in FSX and has nothing to do with Carenado. All planes, whether payware or default, have this issue.

It's not an all or nothing proposition. Having minor things modeled like damage from a poor landing does not mean you also have to model total annihilation.

A2A Simulation models prop strikes, tire wear, blowouts, and cumulative engine damage. I find that these are very much additive to the immersion of the simulator and wish that all the planes had these features.Just as when A2A introduced cumulative engine wear many people learned that things they were doing in the sim was not correct and would result in damage to the engine, having some damage modelling, I think, would help people get a better feel for landing a plane that is one step closer to the real world.

I'm using a Macbook Pro running Windows XP. It has a Core 2 Duo @ 2.4Ghz, 3g RAM and Nividia 8600M GT

It is likely the issue for me then as my graphics card is only 512MB.