Jessica Bannister-Pearce

That’s so cool, but word not allowed, 1974. That feels awful close to recent history.

How about a new cockpit builders suite. I know a few builders who use the NGX as a base, but it’s a bit difficult as you need a single machine to run the aircraft and sim. Now imagine a full line of Aircraft suites for the builder, based on the systems fidelity we know and love from PMDG, but highly optimised for networked computers, spreading the load across two, three or more machines. They could take over the cockpit builders market in with the 737, 747 and 777.

This has been an issue for me since V4. I think it’s linked to heavy autogen areas. I figure it’s the autogen loading innahead of the aircraft. I’ve found it in London for example. As a BTW, I flew with friends on the weekend and we all experieced pauses in the same spot. This was in Orbx New Zealand.

It seems PayPal are at fault, not orbx. From JV himself. Hello everyone, I'll keep this as brief as possible. Firstly, my sincere apologies for removing PayPal as a payment option for now, but we had no choice as you will see below. I am on the phone to PayPal daily and working with them to resolve the situation. I am sure Orbx is not the first business in the world to face this problem but their timing could not be worse, right after our store opening and during a sale. We're as outraged as you all are, that much I can promise you. I love using PayPal myself, have done for years. It's quick, convenient and secure. It's also the first time we have been on the other side of the fence as a merchant. So here is the facts, although as you can understand there are delicate confidential business discussions taking place which would be foolish for me to disclosure until the matter is settled. On November 29th PayPal informed me our account was under review and limited. This limitation was restricted to Orbx not being allowed to close our PP account. Not a problem for us The reason cited was the sudden huge increase in $ and transaction volume since our store opened PP requested company documentation to clarify what business we are in - this was provided immediately We heard nothing more about the matter, but I thought this would be a formality and the limitation lifted On December 6th PP informed me our account was further limited This time we were unable to move any money out of our merchant account, effectively freezing our funds Extensive further documentation was requested and immediately provided I called PP every two days expecting the review to be concluded. Meantime the merchant account balance was growing; I normally do a transfer each Monday When the merchant account balance grew to six figures and with no resolution in sight, I made the decision to stop all PP payments We now have a substantial amount of our income held by PP until this review is concluded We have no promise this money will be released We have no choice then, but to protect both the interests of Orbx and its developers to ensure they are paid for their hard work If we fail to resolve the issue then many customers would have 'bought' and effectively gotten free products We will continue to call PP daily, as I have just done. I have been requested more documentation today which I provided. I hope, along with all our staff and of course you as customers, that PP can complete this review and allow us the confidence to use their service again. We did not feel it was appropriate to reveal this information to you yesterday because it is business confidential and frankly, we're not obliged to tell you. But after waking up to the furore on the forums this morning, and the rampant conjecture that has been going on at many forums, I thought I would reveal as much as I can without actually risking jeopardising the PP account review. So .... it appears some people like to think Orbx is doing its best to push customers away with V2 migration, OrbxDirect, FTXCv3 and now this PayPal situation. The truth is that we have had a vision for some years to make the way our customers interact, purchase and maintain our software the simplest and easiest on the market. Sure, there have been bumps in the road. Sure, there are bugs outstanding. But Rome was not built in a day and I believe we are heading in the right direction. We have closed over 2,000 Zendesk tickets since the store opened. We have hired two permanent support staff to deal with issues. Ben is working some very long hours on coding and other tasks. We feel your pain, but we know most issues will be resolved eventually. Orbx is not going anywhere soon. We have a lot of very exciting plans for 2017 and beyond. Plans that move us beyond just FSX/P3D and into some of the most ambitious projects we have ever conceived. We are spending many hundreds of thousands of dollars on R&D in 2017 and this is without any guarantee of success. But where there is no risk there is no reward. So watch this space! Allow me again to apologise for a situation that was NOT in our control, not planned, nor desired. I hope to have it end in a positive outcome as soon as possible but the matter is not in my hands. Thanks for your continued loyalty to Orbx products and your support in 2016, I hope you will give us the chance to grow into new ventures in 2017 and come along for the journey ... A great festive season to all of you! 1 Quote Regards, JV

Peter doesn't need much encouragement. He's spurred on by a strong desire for perfection. Wait until he's added the PBR textures to the model.

Great Peter. We ran into a few issues connecting today. Two of us couldn't host a session, despite having port 6112 open. The other weird issue is that my system isn't broadcasting on the 6112 port. According to my friends, my system broadcast around the 25036 area. (It changed twice during seperate sessions). Otherwise, a fair success.

Try opening the aircraft box and selecting 'broadcast' on your aircraft. That might help.

Peter, I trials this with a friend and you sir are a genius. Super smooth, lightweight and simple modelmatching. I love it. I'm hoping to do a much bigger test on Sunday, but after issues using FSCloud and DafSIM, this fits the bill perfectly. Jess B

Peter, this could just be what we've been looking for. The cross platform support is huge. If it's as smooth as a direct connection to host session, then this will be a winner. Also, looking forward to X-Plane support.

Confirmed its down. Database error.

Hey Martin, Hopefully more than just importing and exporting. The current P3D sdk for example has support for 3DS Max from version 7 up to 2015. There are tools for amination in fs, along with cloud tools, attachment points, shader tools and Export LOD stuff. If that could feature for blender it would be fantastic. As for other modelling programs. Support for Sketchup would bring an army of new modellers in as its so easy to use, and it's easy to expand with thousands of plugins to enhance the basic package. AC3D would be great as well. Easy to use, cheap at just $90 iirc and X plane developers love it. Then there's unity which is free to non enterprise users, and could like Sketchup encourage new creators into the system.

Up to date modelling plugins for not only 3DS Max, but support for blender as well. That'll make sure bedroom modellers will have access to a powerful, but free 3D modelling package. No expensive subscriptions to 3DS Max required.

I'm looking forward to that version as well

Guys, it looks like preview copies are coming out for some. Mutleys hanger has some cracking shots from flight school. Take a look. http://forum.mutleyshangar.com/index.php?/topic/20165-dovetail-games-flight-school-new-preview-shots/#comment-154154

Love it. Now off to buy more memory.

Beautiful shots as always Tony. Hopefully you can find a host soon, though I still maintain you should be marketing you're sim stuff as pay ware.

True, but win 7 has never shown this problem. I'll chalk it up to MS screwing something up somewhere. Actually no. The panel came from Hispanels in Spain. The acrylic backer had all sorts on it. Anyway I wasn't happy with the look so I've replaced it with my own ECAM panel. Hopefully it should be ready for the next edition of the mag. (Around may/June issue)

So am I Rick. It's turning into a real saga. Ive got to move it all in a few months as well!

Thought I'd post this as a 'hmmmm, interesting' note. I'm currently flying with my home cockpit setup, with the main sim running on Windows 10 pro 64 bit. I'd prefer to run Windows 7 here, but for some reason the cockpit suite of software I use doesn't like win 7. ( the author and I figure it has something to do with the way multithreading works with win 7 that was screwing up) Anyway. I did a test flight today and found that input director wasn't win 10 compatible when it overloaded the PC, leaving the CPU stuck at 100%. So I removed that and tried 'mouse without borders' from Microsoft. It works pretty well, albeit with a drop in Fps if you move the mouse to a networked system. I thought I'd check my CPU usage using task manager and was surprised to find my CPU running at almost full pelt. It settled around the 85% mark, and that's fine. Thinking I'd check the temps, I loaded up realtemp 3.70 and found the temps to be fine, all below 70°. Interestingly though, it read my CPU usage at just 65% on average. I compared the two next to each other, and sure enough, task manager is around 20% points above real temp. Anyone else seeing this kind of behaviour? Jess B

Personally, I'm just hoping for the day this isn't even a newsworthy event.

Got to admit, I've been very tempted by NE. I may pick up some of the European packs to give them a try. Nice work Chris.

Freelance journalist/writer/playwright/novelist. The pay is rubbish, but I do love the work. In my spare time, I work with my partner for her business. Usually driving and providing IT support.

Sent my request off at around 18.30 uk time and got my activation code at 21.05 worked first time, no issues.

Yes, uninstalled everything from the control panel, cleaned out the program data, user data files left over. Completely clean install.

Yup, getting the same error. Licence is correct, but it won't activate. Mind you, I'm performing a full fresh install (only to problem solve for a separate issue )