Jessica Bannister-Pearce

Will check.

I've been seeing issues with Xpx lately. Tonight having updated to b3, I loaded in to Cardiff and the carenado C340 and my FPS sat at just 1/2 a frame! Like the rest of you, I disabled various plugins, with SMP 2 Being the one that boosted my FPS back up. The thing is, the stutters remained. Know I haven't tested it yet, but I suspect the latest nvidia drivers are causing my stutters, or rather a particular part of the driver. With FSX I've been seeing bad performance due to a nvdsync or something like that was running and taking 25% of my cpu cycles. Ending the process solved the problem. Tonight, just before I switched off for the last time, I noticed the same process running with. Xpx running at the same time. Again it was taking 25% of the CPU. I suspect it's this that's causing the issue. I'll check later. Has anybody else noticed this?

That's what I'm guessing. Then I guess I shall wait.

I've found something weird with my machines. Two are running win 7, one home 64 bit, the other running prom64 bit. The win 7 home machine got its little 'reserve win 10' icon today when I switched it on. However, the pro machine hasn't got it at all. Both machines have the GWX update installed, but the pro machine shows no sign of getting the notification. Hmmmm Jess B

Email sent.

I haven't seen this posted anywhere, so apologise if it has and I missed it. It seems that FSX-SE is coming to a box near you. Sort of. Mad catz (Saitek) have announced that as part of a deal with dovetail to sell boxed versions of FSX-SE. There's no actual disc though. Instead as I've seen with a few other games recently, you get a serial key or download the sim from Steam. Either way, it's nice see fsx back on sale in boxed form, and regardless of how old the platform is, it could act as a gateway for a new generation of simmers, some of whom will look at other sims in the future. More info here. http://www.saitek.com/fsxsteam Best wishes, Jess B

In fairness to just flight, thier already looking into the autopilot behaviour. So they're definetly listening to us.

There are no words that I can offer except "I am so sorry". As other have said and will continue to say, thank you for all you've done for the flight sim community.

I like it. Great idea Tony.

Love this thread. It's so entertaining. I'm with Bimmercop, the plot twists, the double crosses, it's just awesome. Roll on the 18th. Jess

I did, but to no avail. In the end I did a fresh windows install and so on. Problem fixed, but not solved. I've no idea what the power outage did, but it really screwed up my install Best wishes, Jess B

Ok, I'm at my wits end here guys. Yesterday, I suffered a power failure whilst my pc was on. Several hours later, power now restored, I load up P3D V2 for a flight only to find 'sim connect can't init' error. My first thought was IP addresses, so I checked and changed them to the correct address, and nothing. The error remains. Next up, I check all my sim connect files. All good, but still no joy. So I loaded up fsx to see if it was suffering the same issue. It was. Reinstalled simconnect, all three versions for fsx. No dice. Issue still remained. Uninstalled and reinstalled fsx. No joy. Here's where things get odd though. If I run one of my client pc's with say, plan-g set to simconnect, it works fine. The client pc's can talk to both fsx and p3d, no problem. But the main pc can't can't seem to connect to simconnect at all, despite it being locally installed. Anyone got any ideas? Jess B

I have it installed Tony. I'll see what I can get a little later. Bare in mind that Scotland Isn't covered though, just England and Wales. Jess B

Steve, you may be on to something there. I got my first R6025 error today. I had the sim set up with low visibility, volumetric fog, aerosoft's twotter and Orbx PNG. Closing the sim down gave me the error. However, I think this is a nvidia issue, not a LM issue. Last week, I also got a R6025 error playing skyrim. Again the gpu was working hard and the program just quick. So I'm guessing something's off with nvidia/os as opposed to the program running. Jess B

thanks Rick.

Welcome Jessica, and those are some awesome shots.

Saw it yesterday and the level of detailing in the modelling and textures is just stunning. They've also got a lot of cool ideas coming for the cockpit. They're got a great EFB planned, and if it works as expected, it'll be fantastic.

Hi, The next leg will probably be flown some time next week. There's likely to be an equipment change for the next leg.

Quick update, I reinstalled the driver, left out GeForce experience and performed a clean install. Weirdly, my surround is now working. Hmmmm

Yes. The Nvidia feature that allows you to turn three screens into one large screen. When I installed the driver last night, I clicked on surround and it refused to recognise my screens as being there, ready for action. Weirdly, I can set up multiple displays no problem. Hmmmm

I tried the new driver last night, but the surround feature wouldn't work. Rolling back to 337 did the job.

For those kissing the old Birmingham shows, this years big event is being held at RAF Cosford on October the 4th. Details at http://www.flightsimulatorshow.com As for Ariane, I reviewed it years ago and, well I was less than impressed. Jess B

First up, Apologise for letting this slide guys. When my Mother passed, many things seemed unimportant, but as life got back to normal, this blog just got forgotten about. Its a good thing Tom gave me gentle nudge Right, With that out of the way,, its time to pick up where I left off. Now as it happens, this trip report was written just a few days before my Mother passed, so, it's a little out of date. so don't expect cool cloud shadows and such. Getting on with it then..... XPX world tour flight 2 Inverness to Keflavik Flown 27/09/13 1215z With the fuss of the first flight over, I was determined to get the second flight right. So on a nice early afternoon in Inverness I got 'Charlie' (yes Charlie. That's the unoriginal name that suggested itself and she's certainly seems happy with my choice) ready for the four hour plus flight to Iceland. The first thing I did was to call for the fuel truck to make sure I had enough fuel for the trip. Topped with 1000lbs of avgas, I felt a lot better for the upcoming trip. In Theory this would give me 6 hours of endurance. My plans today involve a touch and go at Wick. Call it unfinished business. I also plan on breaking the trip with a bit of lunch at Vagnar in the Faeroe Islands. All that was to come though. With Charlie's engines running I taxied out to runway 23 and prepared to leave Scotland. The weather today is much nicer than expected with just some fluffy Clouds and a light wind to worry about. I'm hoping this stays with me for the whole trip, but I'm not holding my breath. Leaving Inverness I turn on course with Wick's VOR and settle into a cruise at 7000ft. The trip is only half an hour and the clouds cover much of my view. Every now and again I get a glimpse of the coastline off to my left. Soon enough I begin a slow descent for my touch and go at Wick. I turn onto final and perform a nice lick of the runway surface before its wheels up and a climb up to 15000ft. I want to get up as high as I can to enjoy a faster cruise. It'll be a few hours until I'll need to return to earth. With Wick disappearing behind me, I say goodbye to the mainland and start out to sea. This is where the real fun starts. Below me I overfly the various islands that make up the Shetlands. Kirkwall passes quickly and I'm off to the last Scottish waypoint. Lerwick marks the end of Scotland and I start my turn out to the west and the Faeroe's. This leg is a hour at cruise and Charlie and I settle in for the longhaul. The weather has continued to behave and fluffy white clouds sit below me. There's not much to see out this far north. An occasion island passes the window but little else. So I busy myself with instrument sweeps and checks. The hour passes and I'm soon descending towards the desolate North Atlantic Faeroe Islands, home to a big fishing industry, but little else. I'm feeling the need for a break and I'm more than pleased to see the airport off to my right. I continue downwind and Land at Vagnar. Its a surprisingly beautiful approach and in the bright sunshine I taxi to the terminal for a leg stretch and lunch. The Faeroe Islands are a place I've never been, but I so glad I landed here. The freeware xp9 scenery works perfectly. The weather however is blatantly wrong. Checking plan G as I approached the Islands, I expected 6000ft visibility and rain. Obviously XPX's weather downloads don't cover this area. Its a shame and I remind myself to install the noaa plugin to help with the weather downloads I Depart Vagnar I begin the longest leg of this trip. Leaving the Faeroe's behind, it'll be a full hour and a half until I see land again. For the time being I relax and return to 15000ft. The wind has turned from a nice tailwind to a bit do a headwind and all to soon, cloud returns beneath me, though gone are the nice fluffy clouds to be replaced with near full overcast underneath. At least up here the sun is out. The weather radar paints a picture of rain below. It's not to long until my VOR sparks to life and I find myself just 160nm or so from land. Up until now I've been on a heading only, so the reassurance of a proper navigation aid lifts my mood. My happy mood doesn't last though. Shortly after passing over the coast of Iceland, my left engine unexplainable coughs and stops. With last flights fuel cock up now at the front of my mind, I quickly check the gauges. This time, there's plenty of fuel in the auxiliary tanks and I'm puzzled by the issue. I try to restart the engine with no success. I check the electronic fuel flow gauge and notice that despite the fuel pumps being on, the left pump reads 0. I assume the auxiliary pump has failed and I switch back to the main tank where I was saving a couple of Lbs just incase. I retry the engine and this time she purrs into life. With a problem on board I look for my nearest airfield only to find Keflavik to be my nearest. The engine out has also cost me height. I'm down to 9000ft, but with the left engine running, things are not to bad. The broken pump though has left precious fuel in the left auxiliary tank, and I can't use it. So for the second flight in a row, I'm watching the fuel gauges hoping to make it. There's cloud all around me and below, signs of life, sort of. Vast glaciers cut through the landscape. Its eeriest beautiful. Soon Keflavik is on the nose and I've had to switch the left engine to the right fuel tank to get me here. The needles are still perilously hovering near zero. It's all ok though and I pass over the threshold and on to Icelandic soil safe and sound. I taxi to the apron and shut Charlie down. A quick chat with a local mechanic and I find my faulty pump to be little more than a blocked fuel vent in he auxiliary tank. Its quickly fixed and the mechanic promises to give Charlie a good clean once I'm gone. It's been a long day and I'll need a long rest before I tackle the next leg to Greenland. So off to the Capitol for a Bacardi or three and a some rest. The engine failure really threw me, and I mean that in a good way. It turns out that I have' random' failures set in the failures menu. It's very lifelike given that this aircraft isn't that new and from what I've seen, faults like this happen all the time.

Having followed this topic since it started, and having seen everyone offer an opinion, I thought I'd add mine to the mix. I state at the beginning that this is just speculation or 'spit ballin'. First off, I'm looking at this as a great opportunity to get some fresh blood in the hobby, because we need it. Delivering fsx to steam gives it a huge shop window that could help get new people into our hobby. In my opinion though, fsx is not the big story here. The 'can't update the graphics engine or make big changes to the source code' clause is very interesting. To me, I feel its Microsoft protecting its backside from being sued. How's how I see it. DTG buys fsx, makes some changes to the core engine and 99% of all addons stop working. Companies like pmdg, A2A and orbx see sales dry up to all most nothing. Who are they going to blame? Microsoft. So they sue for loss of earnings. Now whether they win or not is irrelevant. It's a huge distraction and headlines like 'Microsoft crushes businesses in game deal' aren't what their looking for. So by more or less locking fsx 'as is' is MS way of protecting itself. The big story is the flight engine. Yes MS screwed it up with poor content and bad management, but the core of the sim was very good and the improved code and lack of existing 3pd developers with products for flight mean it's more or less a blank slate for DTG to work with. For now though, fsx provides a bit of quick cash to bid up the flight sim devision coffers and gives DTG time to dig into flight, hire the people needed to develop it and get it ready for a release next year. Finally, elitism as some call it will kill this hobby stone dead. Remember, we all started somewhere and even these days, where I can fly a T7 or A320 'by the book', I still find time to screw around with a good twin, throwing it under a bridge that's just a bit to low, or doing barrel rolls with friends whilst we fly at each other on opposite approaches. Pilots come in all shapes and sizes, so do simmers. Just because you can fly 'by the book' doesn't make you a better pilot that the guy who use wants to throw an aircraft around for an hour after the kids have gone to bed. Jess

It's very odd, I just downloaded v2.3 a few days ago.