Joe_Legander

Not to pick nits, but he asked about Windows 8.1, not Windows 8. There have been some reports of FSX problems with Windows 8.1. Anyone have data specifically on this new release? Joe Legander

Wow, that's interesting! I stupidly assumed that since 777 was a higher number than 737, and came out later, it meant newer or more advanced. But obviously, thinking it through, the 737 has had many upgrades, including the NG, and hence it might make sense that some of it's capacities (HUD, etc.) would be more advanced as well. Thanks! Joe Legander

Sure, I knew that almost never would anyone just let the aircraft be guided all the way down to landing that way. It just seemed an odd change. Even with the old system, intervention was always possible, and just as easy. Why take away an option? Also, after the 777 went down at KSFO, perhaps due to some variation in speed controlled by auto-throttle, I couldn't help but think how it seemed a bit confusing and different as I first approached it. Joe Legander

The subject line might be worded poorly. I simply meant that on the 737, the aircraft would follow the speeds set into the FMC on approach. Now, in the 777, it puts in that purely "placeholder" speed of 170 knots over the threshold, and requires the pilot to intervene via the MCP to set speeds as the plane slows for landing. The old system seemed much more automated; this seems kind of a step backward. I'm sure PMDG modeled it perfectly, but does anyone know why Boeing chose to do it that way? Joe Legander

The subject line might be worded poorly. I simply meant that on the 737, the aircraft would follow the speeds set into the FMC on approach. Now, in the 777, it puts in that purely "placeholder" speed of 170 knots over the threshold, and requires the pilot to intervene via the MCP to set speeds as the plane slows for landing. The old system seemed much more automated; this seems kind of a step backward. I'm sure PMDG modeled it perfectly, but does anyone know why Boeing chose to do it that way? Joe Legander

I too feel the similarities to NGX. Although the manual explicitly states otherwise, it does feel like the NGX on steroids, with a 2.0 upgrade to software or something. The MD-11, on the other hand, feels like a completely different animal. That's not to say that they're not all fabulous...the 777 is an amazing accomplishment on PMDG's part, and I'm glad to own it. But the very nature of the manner that Boeing builds their planes to make transitioning from one to the next as painless as possible creates the reality that once you learn one, the others might lack the "Wow" of that first one. I'm looking forward to the DC-6. That's going to have "Wow" in spades! Joe Legander

If that's the case, I'd rather have had a PMDG version of them. Honestly, producing a product with manuals that run hundreds of pages long, and then refusing to allow you to print them for personal use, instead charging you hundreds of dollars to do it for you, seems like a pretty raw deal. Game companies used to provide you the manuals FOR FREE with the game. Then they began only giving you PDFs, and asking you to print them yourself, at your own expense. Asking you to have THEM print them at great expense for you just seems too much. I'm very disappointed with that kind of decision. Joe Legander

Might sound really stupid, but are both engines running? Joe Legander

I'm sure the same was true of the manuals for the 737, MD-11, and Jetstream. All of them were printable. I've never seen PMDG release manuals that you couldn't print. The idea of having to read 1,000 pages on an iPad or something seems ridiculous. If this is their official policy, it would be nice to hear it. But it's certainly a big change from the past, and one I think would have been fair to notify customers of before their purchase. I'm hoping it's just an error. Joe Legander

You can only print the Introduction and the Tutorial. The other manuals are locked files which can't be printed. Surely this is a mistake? You're not intending to make us buy the printed manuals, or use them only on alternate screens? Joe Legander

Well, PMDG needs to release less aircraft then. If I own twenty of their products in 2020, the reinstall will be a nightmare! :) Joe Legander

Loyal customer that I am, I own 747-400X, MD-11, JS-41, and the NGX. I have all of them currently installed except for the 747. I'd like to reinstall it, but I'm worried about overwriting AIRAC or something else that has been updated with 737NGX or one of the other latest releases. Do I need to uninstall them all, and then reinstall in release date order, or can I just slap this on top and be done with it? Thanks! Joe Legander

Launceston airport in Tasmania (YMLT) is listed as having an ILT, not an ILS. It seems to work in all regards the same. Frequency, glide slope, yada, yada. I can't find any reference to it though. What does ILT mean? Does it differ from ILS, or is it just Australian for ILS? Also, don't try to auto-land using it if you're using the ORBX Launceston airport scenery. Brings you down neatly into some trees just at the runway threshold. Which is bad, it turns out. Joe Legander

I actually just reinstalled the old sound and video cards, and everything is fixed. Basically, diagnostics demonstrate that the GTX 460 generates DPC latency all over the bus, which causes the audio to fall out, at least in FSX. I'm back to no great thrills in the frame rate realm, but fine sound. The difference was only 5-10 FPS anyway, since the app is so processor-bound, so not a huge loss. But thanks for all your efforts. I'm good to go, at least until I get a new motherboard or something, and try again. Joe LeganderOne note though: at least for me, 737NGX performance is significantly worse than that of MD-11, and also worse than J-41. I had expected it to be the same or better than MD-11, so that's a disappointment. And oddly, no amount of reducing scenery really does much. The difference between every slide to the right and every slider to the left is maybe 10 FPS. It's as if something in the app is actually creating limits. Don't know. It's playable, depending on the airports I pick, and how much jerkiness I can tolerate, but MD-11 and J-41 are superior by about 10 FPS. Joe Legander

Thanks. I'm using some older, Analog input LCD's, so I doubt I've got such a port, and certainly no built-in speakers. But perhaps a monitor upgrade is in order, particularly since they aren't supporting 4/3 with this one at present in 2D. Thanks for the input. The key seems to be you can't use a separate sound card with this video card, at least with this MB combo, without running into problems. Thanks! Joe Legander

Wow, I just installed Windows 7 64-bit clean before purchase, so I sure don't want to go through it again. Also, the performance boost isn't much. I don't know if it's that the GTX 460 isn't worlds better than the 7950 GT I began with, or (more likely) that FSX is so processor bound that beyond a certain point, the graphics card doesn't improve things much. So John Drago, I've never thought about this. How do I connect a set of computer speakers to the HDMI port you mention on the GTX 460? How do I direct the sound from FSX to said port? Joe Legander

I'm afraid that nothing resolved this issue. I even swapped out the X-FI for an old Audigy 2 ZS. It reduced the crackling a bit on some planes. The performance gain from the GTX 460 just isn't worth the endless sound hassles, so I'll pull it and go back to my old system. Sadly, this means NGX performs like a dog in most circumstances. I can run MD-11 just fine, and J-41 (with a little adjustment) as well, so I'll have to make due flying those and A2A products, which don't produce nearly the frame rate hit 737NGX does. Thanks for the attempts at help all, and happy flying. Joe Legander

It's a 3.2 GHz Pentium (D) Duo-Core with 4 GB of RAM, Soundblaster X-Fi, and a GTX 460 card. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit. My old card, which was slightly slower in frames but had no sound problems, was a nVidia 7950 GT. Obviously, the new card is giving me a fair amount of hassle. I'm only seeing a 5-10 FPS improvement in FSX overall at present, which is no big deal for what the card cost. If I can't resolve it, I'll swap the old one in, and lose the FPS for reasonable sound.

I do indeed have a dedicated Soundblaster X-Fi sound card. My motherboard has Realtek audio built into it, but I've never used it. I suppose that's worth a try. I'm not even sure I installed the ports to that when I built the thing. I'll give it a shot. Joe Legander

I used the clean install feature, which completely stripped the old drivers out before installing the new ones. I did not do it in safe mode, however, as the installed claimed this procedure would clean out the old drivers. The computer rebooted into basic VGA, 640x480 during that process. I did indeed delete my fsx.cfg, and then rebuild it, and reapplied the various tweaks and settings one by one, to see if any or all would help. No luck, I'm afraid. Joe Legander

I have both updated and reverted my sound card drivers to no effect. I have been unable to find a way to disable hardware acceleration in Windows 7 64-bit as far as sound goes, although i can disable it for video. If anyone knows where I might find that option, it would be helpful. I've been all through the sound menus without result. Joe Legander

Due to the terrible performance I was getting with my nVidia 7950 GT, I bought and installed a new Pny Overclocked GTX 460. This has only improved visuals marginally (a 5-10 FPS increase in general). However, my sound has gone all to hell. There is a constant popping and crackling sound whenever the game engine is rendering in 3-D. By this I mean that if you're at the settings screen when the program loads, the music plays fine. But as soon as you click on the Free Flight screen, and a plane is rendered and spinning, the distortions begin. And once you're in the actual flight engine, they become much worse. I've tried all the recommended fixes, including: Bufferpools to 512 and various other choices; updating sound and video drivers; reloading older sound and video drivers; making various changes to visual settings; altering FSX config, etc. I have the whole Highmem/TextureSize/Bojote thing done, I've disabled the nVidia sound drivers for HD, and re-enabled them. Nothing has had any effect. If Autogen is high, or there are a lot of buildings around, it's worse. But it never goes away completely while anything is being rendered. And thus far, only FSX has the problem. No other game, not iTunes, etc. Nor have I been able to find anyone on line who has solved this. It seems related to latency in the bus, but I can find no command to increase sound buffer size in FSX. Without the new card, the frame rates on 737 just fall too low at times for enjoyment. With it, they are passable, and the other aircraft are quite nice, but the sound is intolerable. Does anyone have any suggestions that I haven't tried yet? Thanks! Joe Legander

Aborted take-off? Joe Legander

You know, an ultra-easy fix for all that would be any PMDG employee taking five minutes, logging in here, and typing one of the following sentences: Release will not be today. We'll post more information when we have it.Release will be later today. Keep watching these forums. Why keep so many people in suspense so pointlessly?Joe Legander

I thought this was a thread about Richard Simmons... Joe Legander