avgaskoolaid

Chock it always amazes me how you manage to write multiple informative paragraphs when the OP's question could have been answered in as little as a single sentence. Not that that's a bad thing, of course. Quite the contrary Thanks for making these forums an interesting place to be.

Ah, ok, good to know I was wrong about how the LITE version works! Enjoy.

Well, the way I understand the 'LITE' version works is that the textures are resized from 2k to 4k. My textures are only 4k and were only tested with the normal, non-LITE version. I guess I should rephrase: my repaint will probably work with the LITE version, but it's untested and you won't get the full advantages of lower resolution textures for better performance. The reason I flat out said they wouldn't work is because I didn't even try and I foresaw potential problems with two different texture resolutions being used on the same repaint (My paint contains exterior textures at 4k, and when used with the LITE version would have the interior textures which are aliased and used commonly across all paints (in the textures.common folder) at 2k) By all means, give it a shot! Worst case scenario it doesn't give you the expected results and you can uninstall it.

Just re-uploaded the American Eagle paint with what should be all the necessary components. Keep looking and it should be in the library in the next day or two. Thanks for your patience everyone!

Yeah, sorry. I forgot to put a readme in my initial upload and it got denied. I'll upload it again today.

Seeing as how the Shorts seems easier to paint than other Carenado planes, with fewer weird curves along the fuselage (it helps that the fuselage is not curvy at all), I may consider doing a Pacific Coastal scheme. Key word: MAY. I have many other repaints in progress for both P3D and XPlane and would hate to delay them even more to work on something else. If any other painters who have more experience with this frame (hint hint Marius hint hint 😉 ) want to do this scheme instead I'd be really grateful; I want to fly it a lot but with so much else on my plate it might be difficult.

Hey Ed, it took a little longer than I would have liked but the American Eagle repaint is finished. I think it turned out pretty good but if you have any suggestions or notice any issues with it just let me know. I uploaded it to the AVSIM library and it's being processed. I'm not sure how long it usually takes but if you go to the library tomorrow and search 'shorts' and sort by date added it should be at the top of the list.

FSX/P3D= lots of highly detailed expensive payware airports all across the world, with comparatively few very nice freeware airports with custom objects XPlane= Not as many very highly detailed payware airports, but many more nice freeware airports with custom objects than what is available in FSX/P3D. Also, I find the default objects in XPlane to be more realistic. Finally, in XPlane scenery design is much, much easier. If you notice something missing at an airport you're flying around you can open it in overlay editor and add the appropriate object very simply and quickly.

Phoenix Virtual has all the current Delta, AA, and Allegiant MD-80 flights (substituting an MD-82 for an MD-88, for example, is allowed), as well as ones for very obscure airlines like Hewa Bora, Spanair, Air Uganda, and Cham Wings, some of which have since retired the MD-80. I just did a quick schedule search and came up with approximately 3,500 bookable flights of all MD-80 variants all across the world, all of which are either current real-world flights with real flight numbers and departure times, or were real world flights at one point in the past (some of the currently loaded schedules are a little old). The only sticking point is that there's a ranking system, and you need to have 100 hours in smaller regional aircraft before you can fly the MD-80 (I think they do hour transfers from other VAs though). I personally like this aspect of the VA but I can see why it might not work for your purposes. However, do note that after 25 hours flying small turboprops you are allowed to fly larger regional jets, including the 717, for the next 75 hours of the ranking.

Yeah, there are definitely ways I could have gone about getting more accurate data. Basically this is just the result of me asking the question to myself and quickly coming up with the poll. Still, 64% of respondents being pilots is a lot lower than I was expecting. Of the people who use any sim, those who take the time to go on forums, join, and answer polls are the most likely to be more 'hardcore' into their respective sim and thus may be more likely to have a general interest in aviation and be pilots or student pilots. And, of course, as you point out, pilots may be more likely to identify themselves as having that skill is a point of pride. I'm sure if you had a similar poll asking "who has 1 million dollars", millionaires would be enthusiastic to respond while the rest of us would be more likely to just keep our mouths shut and move on! Also, if I were to run a better survey I'd first have to deal with the philosophical question of what a pilot is, exactly! 😄

Hi Ed. Thanks! I'm enjoying it very much. As for the American Eagle paint, I just started on it by removing the titles from the included Skyway scheme. Now all I need to do is add the American Eagle logos and registration and put a little tiny blob of paint on the wheel fairing that's missing. It shouldn't take me very long at all- at the latest I'll have it uploaded by the middle of this coming week.

Thanks Rafal! I've added a long disclaimer clarifying what I mean. And I chose the P3D forum specifically for this poll as I'd like to get a rough idea of the proportion of real world pilots among the P3D users here. I'll clarify that as well. Just to be clear, this is less scientific and more of just an informal poll to satisfy my idle curiosity (and hopefully get a conversation going among the pilots and non-pilots here) If I actually wanted to collect some "real" data I'd probably use a more carefully crafted poll via a specifically designed polling site.

Just want to collect some data for some very informal research I'm doing- by 'real world pilot' I'm including both student and licensed pilots. To jumpstart the discussion beyond the poll, it would be interesting to know whether or not everybody started flight simming before or after you started training. Thanks! EDIT: To clarify, I'm defining 'pilot' and 'student pilot' as anyone who has a license to operate or is in active training to get a license to operate any type of manned or military unmanned aircraft. If you fly 747s for a commercial airline, took 3 flight lessons in a 172, fly a glider, or even fly a blimp, please select 'yes'. RC planes/drones don't count unless you fly them professionally for the military in your country (because a military drone pilot needs to have extensive flight training in aircraft systems and aerodynamics while someone who flies drones or RC planes casually or professionally for photography purposes usually does not, or at least is not usually required to). If you're an edge case, tbh it doesn't really matter as this isn't hardcore research, just a casual assessment of the people who use P3D. Thank you :) EDIT #2: My focus is P3D users at this time. Thanks again!

It's the Rotate MD-80 for XPlane. The plane had a rocky release but has since developed into an extremely accurate and enjoyable simulation.

The two are compatible. FSEnhancer alters datarefs (via LUA files) and includes sky, cloud, and water textures, as well as lighting file modifications. xVision alters shaders and has the option for you to also install cloud, sky,and lighting mods. You can de-select the xVision's texture/lighting mods and just install the shaders to ensure the mod compatibility with FSE, or you can install some of xVision's texture/lighting mods, or mix and match the two however you like (or even use other texture and lighting mods you find). Once you start the program and give the manual a quick read it should be pretty clear. Bottom line is that xVision alters shaders while FSE does not. Right now I have a Flight Sim cocktail of xVision shaders and clouds, FSE water and sky Lua mods, 'Cloud Art' LUA files for clouds, and sky textures that are half UltraweatherXP and half default. It all plays nicely together and looks superb IMO. Once you understand the remarkably simple XP file structure it's easy to pick and choose the resources you like the best to make your sim look great.

Sorry, I just moved house and have been very busy these past few days. Rest assured that I'll get started on it very soon! As soon as I release it I'll post the download link here and tag you.

Simply can't wait! I've been waiting patiently for this scenery for years. I'm wondering- after release have you guys considered an XPlane port?

That will be nice for those who mainly/exclusively use P3D but I'll admit that as someone who uses XP 80% of the time I'm a little underwhelmed as we already have a just about perfect DA62 from Aerobask. With the Shorts 360 and Saab 340 released I'm not really looking forward to anything new from Carenado besides the XPlane ports of those planes. It would have been good to see another turboprop airliner instead, such as the Embraer 120, Beechcraft 1900C, Dash-7, etc...

Unfortunately I doubt they will. DD always makes scenery for both FSX/P3D and XPlane. As there are currently 2 Las Vegas sceneries in development (from FSDT and Flytampa), a 3rd KLAS from DD would face intense competition and isn't really a safe bet. For XPlane, I would be very surprised if MisterX didn't make KLAS in the future (many of his airports seem to focus on the popular PilotEdge coverage area, which includes Las Vegas).

Haha, it's a simple answer but probably not too helpful. The option turns on DD's own photographic scenery for the area (in case you don't know- it's ground textures derived from 'satellite' photos.). This option should be used if you want to see this photographic ('ortho') scenery and don't have your own installed. If you have ortho scenery that you either downloaded from elsewhere or generated yourself using ortho4xp, you don't need to check this option. As for your scenery conflict issue, can you post a screenshot? By 'haze' do you mean actual atmospheric haze, or are the buildings simply not rendering far away? I'd recommend completely disabling your Boeing Country scenery package (and any other scenery or mesh in the area) to make sure it's a conflict issue and not an issue with DD's Seattle City scenery itself.

Carenado included a Skyway Enterprises livery, which is basically an American Eagle scheme with different titles. I've asked Carenado for permission to use their Skyway paint as a basis for an American Eagle one- once I get the OK from them I should be able to finish it very quickly. So, rest assured that AE is coming.

It turns on/off the photoreal scenery that comes with the city/airports.

I really like it. It's expensive but for the price you're getting 5 very nicely detailed airports. The quality is fantastic and the airports look as good as one could hope for in a sim. Also, the terminal interiors are very realistic and look much better when sitting at the gate before a flight than staring at a painted wall made to look like a window. (I'm not sure what everybody is talking about with MisterX- he doesn't have any Seattle scenery and hasn't announced plans to make any. While his freeware stuff is amazing DD's Seattle, being payware, looks like it has much better quality and is on par with his payware stuff). There are, however, issues: 1) Performance. This is a pretty heavy scenery- I'd say the performance is on par with what you'd get in New York. I have an i5-8600k Overclocked to 5.1ghz, a 1080Ti, a great cooling system and DDR4 Ram and I get about ~25-30 FPS at KSEA with the FF A320. So, this is a taxing scenery and you should stay away from it if you have anything less than a high end system: after all why get a beautiful scenery if you can't fly into it without bringing your sliders all the way left. 2) Terrain. With forkboy's ortho package there are several issues with terrain plateaus and floating buildings around all the airports. I've heard there are similar issues with self-generated Ortho4XP tiles. However the scenery hasn't been out for very long so hopefully there will be a fix in the future (it's the main topic of discussion in the DD forums right now). 3) Static planes are an all off or all on deal. You can't turn off static planes at KSEA (to use AI traffic) but keep the planes on the assembly line at BFI or PAE. So, overall, if you have a weaker system and rarely if ever fly into Seattle, $40 for this package will be way too much for you. But if you like the area (it is a good match for Airfoillabs' KAWO, Propstrike's sceneries, and a whole bunch of good freeware airports in BC, Canada) and have a powerful system you might like it quite a bit.

About the only good thing about the BSS is the external model. Otherwise: - Interior VC modeling and texturing is very bad. Just compare it to the Aerosoft or FSL A320 and you'll see that BBS's artwork looks outdated and far from realistic. - The flight dynamics don't feel right. Although I've never flown an actual airbus I've flown several high-quality simulations across the big 2 sim platforms and I know how an airbus should behave. I find the BBS a struggle to fly as it doesn't behave predictably and realistically. - The sounds are very bad. TSS' soundpack is required to make it sound acceptable. - The FMGS only operates semi-realistically and from what I can tell doesn't support loading a pre-saved flight plan. This makes inserting waypoints on a long haul flight a pain (and is not realistic as real pilots usually don't input each waypoint manually anymore) - It does not behave nicely if you restart a saved flight, meaning you need to keep your sim running for an entire long haul and hope it doesn't crash. Very annoying. - As already stated, BBS has a history of letting their projects go stagnant to move on to the next new shiny beta release they can sell. - And with all of this they charge premium-level prices. A pretty external model isn't everything (and honestly it isn't even that pretty, it's just 'decent'). At least Carenado, who also has high prices and mediocre systems/flight models, gives you some of the best visual and texture work you can find in sim addons.

It's a Ukraine International (Airlines) 777-200ER