WarpSpider74

Dave, great post. You and I seem to think alike in terms of settings and use of Gamebooster, CCleaner, Defraggler etc. I run the same .cfg settings, minus the affinitymask as I find it does nothing on my system in FSX or P3D. I use RadeonPro for all the driver settings and fo its included frame limiter. I've been getting fantastic performance even with my older 2GB 6970 (but then again, I've had great performance in P3D since v1.0...) Going to upgrade to a R9 soon and am eagerly awaiting more P3Dv2 ready addons! Cheers, Derek

Those dark patches are indeed the cloud shadows. If you look carefully you can also see them on land at the bottom towards the right. And like I said, they're far from complete or ready for use... but there nevertheless. Gives one hope that we'll see them properly implemented come v2.1 B)

Correct. They're incomplete and don't work properly, but they're definitely in there. I was just demonstrating that it can be done, not that it should...

Nope, it's cloud shadows. They can be enabled in the .cfg file.

Oh, you mean these cloud shadows? They're in there now. They're crap, and need a lot of work, but definitely there...

LOL!! Good stuff Fr. Bill :lol: Sounds like it'd go great side-by-side with my idea for an upgrade to PMDG's 737NGX which I call Button Simulator 2012, in which you spend a massive amount on artificial hardware buttons to press, to simulate pressing buttons in the software, in turn simulating pressing buttons in a real 737NG. There is no actual flight involved, just the pressing of buttons. Just like a real 737!

Pretty sure they've done away with the DX9 rendering pipeline completely. Backwards compatibility with old aircraft formats can't be maintained forever...

Yep, see here for the skinny on it... http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/68089-orbx-products-and-p3d-20-compatibility/

That kind of situation leads to this kind of occurence... http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/67139-so-stupid-it-is-frightening/

Alan mate, that is hands down the best P3D post I've seen anywhere to date. To quote the great HJS, "It's funny because it's true..." Best laugh I've had all weekend. Cheers, Derek

Unless you're privy to the terms of ORBX + Sim720's contracts, which you're not, how can you comment on what ORBX paid for the agreed regions? Also, I'm pretty certain that the Sim720 guys would be more than a little insulted by your comparison.

Yes he did. His dependent variable was groundspeed, his independent variables were indicated airspeed and altitude... Matt is still correct is his statement that 330kt at 40,000' is a higher groundspeed than 330kt at 25,000'.

Eh? Methinks you misunderstood Matt's comment, he was comparing airspeeds not groundspeeds. 330kt IAS at 40,000' is about 595kt TAS whereas 330kt IAS at 25,000' is about 495kt TAS, and for your other example 330kt IAS at 1' is 330kt TAS. With no defined wind component, Speed over Ground equals TAS, so there's a 100kt difference between 25,000' and 40,000', and a 265kt difference between 1' and 40,000'.

I don't know how I only just discovered this now, but thanks Dave!!! Cheers, Derek

I've never seen a pair of Polaroid's that WEREN'T polarised... but my personal preference is for Mako polarised glasses, with glass laminate lenses. They block some of the blue light coming in and the polarisation cuts down on the glare, great for bright sunny days on the water or in the air here in Australia. For my purposes (gliding) a good pair of polarised glasses are essential, as they help you pick out some haze domes on top of thermals in non-cumulus producing conditions. Thanks mate! Was a pretty normal landing... they look pretty steep if you're used to a nice stabilised approach in a powered aircraft. They have to be steep, normally made with half spoilers deployed, as you can't let an undershoot situation develop - no engine to perform a go-around :wink: Also, the damn things just want to stay airborne, so flare is typically only a couple of feet off the deck. Cheers, Derek

You mean like this? Check from about 8:50 onwards. Definitely no sun shade in the cockpit :lol: It's pretty easy really (in a glider), at least I find it so. When I'm on final, I'm not looking up at the sun, I'm looking at my aiming point on the runway and don't notice the glare from the sun. It's much different to driving a car where you may be looking up close to the horizon and hence more directly at a low sun. Looking towards the sun can be a PITA in other phases of flight though, especially on aerotow. Cheers, Derek

Oh wow. I used to have so much respect for Nick... when I built my FSX machine I made extensive use of his guides and used GEX for areas outside of the ORBX regions I had. Sadly, he doesn't seem to be taking having a competing product on the market very well at all. His last few posts - his "Bible" and these anti-FTXG posts, as well as his past comments on P3D border on some sort of religious fervour that I find extremely unappealing, and detract from all the really good work he did in the past. I really hope he comes to his senses soon, before he alienates the community further :(

I like to do DIY stuff when I have time :smile: Unfortunately, with kids, a job that requires a fair bit of travel all over Australia and a serious gliding habit that needs a regular fix, I don't have as much time to enjoy making things as I would like. I used to be quite into RC Aircraft and made a lot of parts myself out of fibreglass or carbon fibre. I've tried FreeTrack with both a webcam and the WiiMote and find the refresh rate on the WiiMote makes for a much smoother experience. A lot harder to get set up though. If you like the wire model and want to do your own, here's the bare version of the one I did to base your template on... Enjoy! Derek

Great stuff! I've been using FreeTrack for a few years now, mostly for flying in Condor but sometimes in FSX as well. Made my rig out of heat-shrink coated coat-hanger wire with IR LED's and power supply via USB. Tracking with a bluetooth connected WiiMote. Cheers, Derek

CumulusX is definitely a must for soaring in FSX. The Aerosoft Discus that Dave linked to above is pretty good, but I actually prefer the freeware gliders provided by Wolfgang Piper here - http://www.fsglider.de/p_e.htm Another couple of good ones can be had here -http://virtualsoaring.org/flight/downloads/aircraft_fsx.html Cheers, Derek

Sounds like a browser issue to me... have you tried the usual fixes? For example, clearing your browser's cache and forcing a full reload of the page by pressing [CTRL]+[F5] Cheers, Derek

Yes, it certainly did that. A bit different to the old Cessna 152... The PeeWee is a great trainer to learn in, lighter than an ASK-21 or Puchacz and its performance isn't at all bad. The controls are simple and effective, well laid out too. I've done a 100km FAI triangle in it with one of my instructors already. I've loved flying in it, but now that I'm moving onto single seaters I'll probably only get into it when I need a checkflight or when I go for my outlanding endorsement. Cheers, Derek

Welcome to the greatest sport in the world Anthony, definitely the best way to waste time that there is. Beware of the addiction, once you start heading down this particular rabbit hole you'll find a desire to follow it all the way to the bottom :lol: I'm also in the learning process, having recently gone solo in a PW-6U trainer at my club, the Gliding Club of Western Australia. Just this Sunday past I graduated from the trainer to my first single seater, an old Pilatus B4 that I'll be flying next weekend. If you get into it and want any encouragement, check out my blog or my YouTube channel where I've started posting some vids of my progress. Heh, you know you want to get back up there Howard, come on mate! Cheers, Derek

While I look forward to the OR kit reaching consumers (I funded them on Kickstarter a long time ago), there are some fundamental, well lets call them problems, with the way Virtual Reality works and why it may be unsuitable for use in FSX. That's of course assuming you could get it to work in FSX as the developers have said from the outset that support for the hardware has to be coded into the game. Initially that was only Doom3 although as mentioned above there's a couple of others now like TF2 and Doom3 now won't be available for the OR at launch. Some of you are dancing around the idea that you'll be able to get by with using the mouse to manipulate controls to compensate for not being able to see the keyboard any longer, but you really need to have a good think as to how you would achieve rendering the mouse cursor in a 3 dimensional space. The mouse in progs like FSX only works in a 2d overlay of what you are viewing in a 2d representation of a 3d space, as soon as you add depth to the picture things get iffy. There's no simple way to render the cursor as it will move differently relative to each eye. You can possibly render only on one view and use that, although you may find issues with the cursor fading in and out as the brain swaps data from each eye, and also if the cursor resides in a blind spot. You also need a high frame rate to prevent lag and induced motion sickness. The OR gets around the issue posed by current 3D screen implentations by rendering each eye's view on a separate part of the screen, so 30fps is 30fps unlike running on a 3D monitor with glasses where to achieve 30fps you actually need to render at 60fps (30fps for each eye.) Rendering on the OR will be speedy due to it currently only being a low resolution display - the goggles contain a single 1280x800 screen divided in the middle for two effective rendering spaces of a maximum of 640x800 (less actually, due to the greater than zero thickness divider in the middle.) The way the image is rendered is also non standard, requiring lenses to focus a larger portion of the screen into a smaller area to allow an effectively higher resolution right in front of your eye (taking advantage of the higher resolution of receptors in the fovea) and lower resolution out towards the edges which would ordinarily be in your peripheral vision and hence the lower res would be undetectable. It's a neat solution but tricky to describe and I can't be arsed making diagrams. The inevitable downside to this though is that you then must remain with your eyes fixed on a single point directly in front - as soon as you move your eyes to glance around you're shifting your focus to a lower resolution part of the screen. I'm not trying to rain on everyone's parade here - this is a very exciting bit of kit; just not likely for FSX. I'm speaking from experience here, I spent several years working with commercial simulators for the mining industry here in Australia and we looked long and hard at VR solutions without being able to overcome their shortcomings before going back to very large projected displays.

Flightsim Store are having a sale, not ORBX...