Maccers

Hi Gatesession There's a pair of freeware programs you might want to try to help you out there. The first is AISmooth. What this does is issue ATC Instructions to approaching aircraft to make them separate further for finals, and this value (in nm, of course) is completely adjustable from its menu. It not only helps your AI space out more but issues orders to AI to enter holding patterns if it sees a conflict with you (as in, if a bloody Ryanair decides to jump the landing queue as used to happen to me :( ). This won't help with aircraft on the ground but the second application will do something about that. it's FS9 Configurator. There are a lot of options with this one, but the one you'll be interested in is "AI Taxi Speed Editor", which can increase the slow crawl of AI Taxiing to something a bit more realistic (from like 15 to 30 kts). You can change the runway roll-off speed too if you're landing at an airfield where aircraft will need to backtrack along a runway to turn-off or where the high-speeds are fairly spaced out, and the quicker they can get off the runway, the less often your newly spaced AI will go-around. As for the 'start-stop-wait-full throttle', I dunno if I can help you with that as I believe it's to do with the in-built ATC, but the above should ease your headaches somewhat :(

I've installed everything to their defualt location (c:\Program Files or c:\Program Files(x86)) and I've not had any issues with nag screens, registries or permissions.Do you not have administrator rights on your FS machine?

Sorry to hear about your bad experiences with Dell. Personally I hate them, and some of the other pre-built manufacturers because (to me) it seems they are trying to pass off under-geared systems (mainly laptops) as being beefy supergamers with itty-bitty price tags. I'm also fiercely territorial about my hardware and dislike the saturation advertisement of Intels. I'm just glad I have a HTPC in the lounge and can fast-forward the bloody Lollypop adverts Dell run on the telly. This may seem like a pretty big jump if you were willing to pay for a technician with your spare parts, but have you considered doing a self-build? Buying each part individually, screwing them together yourself and forgoing warranties and call centres? Contrary to popular belief, it's fairly straight forward. If you already have some parts from a previous computer (which unless you've sent your XPS back to Dell, you should have :( ) you can use those and save yourself a bit of money, or spend the savings on better hardware. Most motherboards come with a manual that instructs you on exactly what type of hardware will work with it and how to install the lot together. The downside is when something goes wrong... There's nobody in an Indian of Philippines' call centre that will help you, you're on your own. If you can't find the problem, or the solution it can mean days with a headache. However there is Google which may not be 100% guaranteed help, but is able to provide answers most of the time. I can't speak for the US version of this site, but as a benchmark I use This before deciding to buy anything.

Well... I normally try to limit myself to freeware scenery, but after seeing this (and being incredibly satisfied with their rendition of Gatwick) I think I will be splashing out on this.Especially like the Trident-3 :(

I've been running on the 64-bit version of Win7 since May. I was running the Pre-Release candidate on a dual boot with XP until October's release, when I ditched XP and migrated to the retail version and transferred FS to it. All I can say is, I've never looked back! It depends on the rig you wish to buy though, if you are going to skimp on hardware than your FS and your videos are probably going to look better on an XP rig. Like Vista, 7 needs much hardware than XP to be effective, but unlike Vista, once you pass that barrier Windows 7 is a very capable OS. My hardware looks like this: AMD Athlon X2 5200+, 4GB RAM, GeForce 9600 GSO 512MB and a 500GB hard drive, and I keep FS windowed at 1280x1024 and all the sliders up to maximum. When parked at UK2000 Xtreme Gatwick in my PMDG 747 with a lot of WoAI traffic I get about 20-25 fps. When it gets very busy it can drop as low as 15. I've not tried it with FRAPS yet but when I was recording videos at that res on Warcraft (I know, I suck, I don't do that anymore) I didn't get any reduction on fps at all. To be fair the performance is only slightly better than XP, but the 64-bit architecture is most welcome. Windows 7 isn't without faults, I have to keep FS in a maximised-window because hitting alt to bring up the menu in fullscreen can sometimes cause the screen to go black, and you cannot select anything from the menu's while blind :( I've also had problems leaving the sim in the VC for long periods too, but I believe that's to do with FSPassengers and i need to do some testing on that. The cursor can go a bit funny too, but if you're frapsing that won't be a problem :( Windows 7 is well worth the money. Easy for novices to get used to and not annoying for us power users, easily tuneable to any level of IT competence. I would recommend that you invest in a 64-bit multi-core processor to go with it, that way you can open the taps on the RAM. 32-bit OS's are limited to 4gb, and any video ram you have will eat into that limit, 64-bit's can go well into the terabits.

Hi McCrash, thanks for the reply Unfortunately I'm unemployed right now, so buying any payware meshes is out of the question. However tempting it may be, and however bulging my wallet could be it would make no difference. I did a bit of searching around for another freeware mesh file and found Simviations world mesh. Normally I would avoid Simviation with a colossal barge pole but desperate times call for desperate measures. Same as the other two meshes I have, this one crashed in exactly the same manner. So doing all that defragging overnight was somewhat futile, but at least my hard drive is nicely organised now :( What I've tried since then is compatibility modes for all versions of XP and Vista, but I'm wondering why Microsoft continues to include this feature, I've been trying it since XP and it has never been of any use. I've updated the aforementioned MFC70.dll, installed the C++ SDK and VStudio redistribute and again, no change to the sim. :( I guess for now I will have to have Europe looking very flat and bland, and my alps looking more like the Yorkshire Dales... :( I was wondering though, if anyone else running FS9 could try this for me, go to Simviation (/spit) and download the file EB44 (the file I tried and caused the same error) and run this in their sim, then launch FS9 at Sion (LSGS) and tell me if they crash while loading the scenery? Cheers

I was wondering if anyone was able to give some insight (or help me understand) a problem that has cropped up since I started running FS9 with Win7 x64. A bit of background information first. I've been running the freeware 13-part mesh of Europe since I first saw it available on Avsims' library (not long after FS9's launch, I believe), I've also been running a higher-resolution mesh of the Alps over the top of this mesh for a long time and never had problems with this setup on Win XP. The problem in question is around Switzerland specifically, or somewhere like Austria where the sim loads the scenery at around this point when approaching from the south. I first noticed it on a flight from LIRF - EGKK. Flying from Gatwick to Rome wasn't a problem since my route went around the French Riviera, but on the way back to London my route went right over the alps, and it would crash almost exactly at the point RC4 would hand me off from Milano to Switzerland Controls. Similarly to the route past the Riviera, flying from the UK north east (to say, Finland) or on a NAT route wouldn't crash the sim. I spent hours enabling and disabling various scenery files, flying the same route with aircraft ranging from the default 747, Dave Maltby's VC10, iFDG ACJ and PMDG 738. Eventually I came to the conclusion that both the Europe and separate Alps meshes were causing the same error, even with one disabled, the other would cause the crash. The only way to fly over this area is to have both meshes disabled. But here's the catch, and one that nearly threw me off course into a texture problem... The error only happens during the day! Set the sim time to night time hours and you can jump between Sion and Helsinki as much as you want. For the record, I also have a freeware mesh for South Africa, I can fly FAJS - FACT (Essentially one end of the country to the other) without problem. So I'm thinking this might be because either Windows 7 doesn't like the Swiss (or at least placing a mesh in the neutral state) or because I have had the mesh files saved in a zip file for a few years just in case Avsim ever lost them (which happened in the hack, unfortunately) and the files have become heavily defragmented over time. As for the latter, I've done a defrag with Win7's default tool to no avail, so I've downloaded another off the net and am going to leave it doing a deep-optimise overnight. Without being able to download a number of the original files from here I can't just delete and start again. Not sure how hardware can effect this, since my rig could handle the area with the same hardware under XP but I have Home Premium x64, AMD 64 X2 5200+, 4 GB RAM, Nvidia 9600GSO 512Mb, SB!Live Audigy2 and a 500 GB Main Hard Drive. And here are the error messages that get thrown up when it crashes. I've studied computing at degree level, but even this is gibberish to me. What I do understand is MFC70.dll is installed with FS and isn't part of Win7, but it does contain Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) functions for Visual C++.