stretch1365

Hi all, Someone out there in sim world did a lovely paint for the 747v2, I found it and did the whole world tour, usually within a week of the band doing the trip for real. I downloaded the flight plan for each leg from Flightaware and set it up using Aivlasoft EFB, and off I went...........It was brilliant. I was going to miss the Edforce one paint when the new 747v3 came out so I am delighted to see you have permission to do an official one for the v3. It looks amazing, and thank you everyone involved in making it happen. Guess I am now going to have to redo the whole tour again with the new 747v3 how cool. Oh just one question, is there any chance of some how including an official file with all the flightplans for the whole tour with the Iron Maiden paint scheme? I was missing a couple when I did my tour, and would love to do it accurately this time. Thanks again PMDG looking forward to seeing this new bird in the flesh.

Hi all, Nice pictures of the 747 Virtual Cockpit............ You asked at the beginning of the thread if anyone spotted the new feature................I guess it is some kind of landing aid, but is there any information on the forum yet as to how it is used? I am curious and would like to find out more, please. I was wondering if there are any pictures online yet of any airline liveries and paint schemes for the 747-400v3? One livery somebody did for the existing 747-400 and I would like to see redone for the new version would be an Iron Maiden, Ed Force One...........A great reason to tour the world again in the new 747-400............I flew all the world legs in the current 747 and really would like to redo them once the new version is out. Challenge maybe for someone. Anyway looking forward to the next updates.

Hi all, How are the test flights going? It does sound at first as if you have somehow managed to get a fuel cut off command and some other button connected. Donald you never said if you used FSUIPC, if you do maybe you have a "global" button assignment on the same button as an "MD11" button, which could cause issues. I am just in the process of redoing all my assignments in FSUIPC to remove any "global" axis or buttons just for that reason and making everything "Profile" only. You can also get fuel freezing on the MD11, as Adam said above, I came foul of this myself over Greenland one winter many years ago............Even with failures disabled it is something that is still modelled in the MD11 which didn't have fuel heaters like a Boeing. having said that you would see a "Low Fuel Temp" warning light before anything happens on the Fuel display. Oh one other thing, make sure you keep a copy of your MD11 download, I am not sure but as you can't buy it anymore from PMDG, can you still download it from your orders page, maybe someone else might know that question.

Hi all, As Tony said above just install both Xplane and keep FSX. I would like to mention my brief experiences with Xplane if that helps any. I have had FSX for about six years or so after buying a new PC, and spent a fair amount on addon aircraft and scenery, although not £5000. I use Windows 7 64bit and Steve's DX10 fixer which gets rid of OOM's..............I have a sim which works, and with AS16 and ASCA it works well too. I can fly around my local area and I see roads and features that I recognise in real life when out and about. There is so much variety we really are spoiled for choice. I just love it flying around and spend way too much time on it, it really is very immersive, especially if you use TrackIR too. I had recently been thinking about where the future for flight simming might lay, be it P3D or Xplane, or indeed with Dovetail games. I think it is a shame that the next improvement won't be able to still include our much coveted addon's, but then that is the price of progress I guess. After much thought I decided that Xplane would be the way to go and seemed to offer most development potential, it runs in 64bit which is good and the screen shots looked amazing. So I bought Xplane 10 and installed it as it comes out of the box or as downloaded. Yes the scenery looks a bit naf compared with what I am used to in FSX. The weather and clouds seemed ok but what really drew me to it was the night lighting and those crazy realistic sloping runways, you don't get those in FSX. I also liked the idea of the physics behind Xplane how it simulates an aircraft wing through an airflow etc...............I tried to install my local airport EGNX East Midlands but found you needed to install this and this and something else and a whole host a stuff so gave up in the end............I did install the freeware 737 which kind of works ok but what xplane does seem very good at, is GA aircraft. However what killed it for me in the end is this. Running Xplane on an older 6 year old system I couldn't get the required 21 frames per second and that meant that the sim was running slow, which meant the sim time ran slow too. Xplane if it can't maintain the visual scenery and other things from the GPU, just slows down so that it can draw in all those things. Well that's ok maybe just messing around the local airport but if I want to try a long flight of a few hours I might never get there! I once took off from Heathrow just to see what London looked like, I used the 737 and after half an hour still hadn't reached Stanstead, which surely isn't right, and just killed the experience. That is a real shame for me, but I think if I ever needed to buy a new PC I would maybe return to Xplane again and explore it further, although FSX is still my go to sim. I still have xplane installed and occasionally give it another go around my local airport, using the default GA aircraft, but for the time being I will stick to FSX, although I think as I said maybe Xplane is the way forward in the future. So it really depends on your system in the end. As someone said for the price of a few FSX addons you can have Xplane or wait until you see it on offer and then get it, and give it a go yourself..........Either that or just stick to what you have now and enjoy the many hours of flying it gives you.............We very often seem to spend hours and hours tinkering with our sims trying to get them better and better, and very often not enough time actually flying around and going on adventures within our virtual worlds. Sorry to be so long winded but those are just a few thoughts from an Xplane noob.

Hi all, I had a similar thing happen to me recently. I only have an i3 and with GEX, UTX PMDG and Active Sky am happy with mid twenties frame rates most of the time, but the other day I too was down to 7fps if not lower. I thought my PC was on it's last legs. However I found a test program on the Intel site to check your processor for faults. It basically loads your processor over 10 mins or so and monitors the temperatures. Mine failed................Oh no. So I took the cover off the PC and found the Heat Sink had become detached from the processor after the last clean. Fixed it back in place after another clean, cleaned the GPU which was totally full of dust, how it ever worked I have no idea. Anyway, now I am back to almost high 20's to 30 fps...................So a good clean out of your PC to remove dust and stop it overheating might be something to try too. Hope this helps some.

Hi all, I downloaded your Air Atlantique repaint at the weekend Ron, what a beauty. I then put the new Black VC with your repaint and wow what a stunning plane it turned into. Thanks so much for your great work Ron. Best regards and

Hi all, I too had FSX crash on exiting with AS16. I don't know if this is any help to you at all, but I find that if I exit AS16 before exiting from FSX it doesn't always crash, but used to if I exited FSX first. Not sure that will help any.

Hi Oh now those screenshots do look lovely Ron. I'm glad you decided to do this paint scheme and not one of the other older ones. Looking forward to the weekend now, assuming you have the time to finish it by then. If not then when you do. Thanks Ron for what looks like a great job.

Hi all, Grabbed mine this morning first time, no issues, I guess it just depends if you happen to pick a quiet moment or not..............The Sim Out House servers have been struggling with the demand I think hence any issues people are having downloading this. I have to say a great big thank you to the team who developed this, it is truly wonderful and flies like a dream. I hope Ron is considering doing a repaint in Air Atlantique colours, as one of the last commercial operators in the UK. Hope you all manage to grab your copy soon.

Hi all, I don't know if the original post member is still reading this thread. On the off chance that they are, here are some interesting observations I have found. I bought ActiveSky16 and ASCA at the same time, within 24 hours of their release. The screen shots just won me over............Anyway I only run FSX boxed version on an i3 processor system, and also have UTX and GEX installed and various addons as most of us have. I also run it all with DX10 enabled and although my frame rates are only mediocre mid to high teens usually it runs silky smooth and I am happy with it all. Anyway after my new purchases the other day I find the weather and clouds much more immersive and now damn right scary, especially near the ground. The clouds were never that scary using Active Sky 2012 and REX textures. I now find myself going for flights just to fly around the clouds looking for all the variations in texture they now contain. I also noticed now that the GPU is now working more than it did before ActiveSky16 was installed.............I am wondering if the weather and clouds are now being drawn using the graphic card on the pc, leaving the CPU to run FSX only. Tonight I was flying the PMDG 737, usually an aircraft which works ok but kills my frame rates, and I noticed 20 frames per minute, with clouds all around the aircraft and the ground showing through at times.........This is much better performance than before, and really helps my older system alot, and makes flying FSX a real pleasure. So the purpose of my comments, well I just wondered if there was any chance you might pass on my sincere thanks to the team and developers of Active Sky16 and Active Sky Cloud Art ASCA. from a very happy contented sim flyer. Thank you.

Thanks for the reply............Now I am looking forward to seeing this when it comes out.

Hi Robert, Nice screen shots of this AS16 product................a well kept secret! I like the idea of the dynamic weather textures changing during a flight, how cool! Are you able to tell me if the weather radar in PMDG products, which requires AS2012 to draw a weather return has been tested with this new product and will it still work? I ask as many of us fly PMDG products, so it would be good to know in advance. Thanks. Happy Flying, David Phillips.

Thank you for all the answers to my original post. Spesiman, I found your answer especially useful as I do use Simbrief already, although mainly for planning the actual route, I haven't tried it for fuel planning as yet, as I have always used Topcat, but I think I will look into this aspect of Simbrief again. As my normal flights tend to only be a few hours max I haven't really had to plan in a wind factor on most of my flights before, and to be honest this long flight I did really caught me out with the weather, so something to take into account on long flights in the future. Skelsey you said you aim to arrive with 10000kg of fuel at your destination, which by coincidence is close to my made up figure, as I have been trying to arrive with about 13000kg so far on each leg of the tour. Anyway thank you for your information all, I think I might look into this fuel planning more closely for the next long leg of the tour.

Hi all, I have been flying the 747-400 alot lately, actually replicating Iron Maidens, Book of Souls World Tour, which is taking place at the minute, and thoroughly enjoying the experience. So I have a question and wonder if any of you fellow pilots out there might have an answer. The latest leg I have just completed was from Perth WA YPPH to Cape Town, South Africa FACT. A great circle distance of around 5400 sm, 8690km, taking 10 1/2 Hours, and it did too. Anyway I have been using a ZFW of 237.1kg for all my flights just to keep things constant and used topcat to calculate the expected fuel requirements, yes I know it is not 100% accurate but it is pretty close. Anyway I forget the actual suggested fuel requirements somewhere around 120 000kg which I upped to 140 000kg simply because there is no diversion airfields on this route, well there is no land so it is difficult to divert really, but I thought 20 000kg of extra fuel would be ample! Unfortunately I was faced with a 100/120kt headwind all the way across the ocean which used more fuel than expected and I landed with no more than 4800kg of fuel in total, instead of my estimated calculations of 20 000kg, which I think is cutting it very fine indeed. Now I realise that having started out with extra fuel means the aircraft was heavier, which means the fuel consumption will be higher to start with. After the flight I looked up on the net the true figures for a Boeing 747-400 which suggested 11.11kg/km which works out at a fuel load of 115 000kg roughly, far lighter than my 140 000kg in the sim. So my question based on this journey is what would be the safe extra fuel requirement or contingency required on this trip over and above the original 120 000kg fuel load? Also can anyone tell me what is the usual remaining fuel quantity upon landing at the destination? Thanks for any answers to my questions, sorry if the question is a bit long winded but there are alot of factors to consider. I had forgotten quite how much fun the 747-400 could be, and this tour sure has rekindled my interest in the 747-400 and I look forward to the new 747-400 v3 when it arrives.

Hi all, I found the Iron Maiden livery the other day in the library, great job whoever did the paint. I then downloaded the real flight plans from FlightAware and so far have completed the first two legs of the world tour...............EGFF to KFLL and KFLL to KTUL ready for KTUL to KLAS next time. I hadn't flown the queen for such a long time I had forgotten quite how good it is............Really enjoyed my two flights and clocked up about 13hrs in total so far on the tour. Nearly ran low on fuel on the Transatlantic leg in bad weather but eventually found some good weather en route and clawed some economy back. Thinking of trying to do the whole tour as time permits, should be fun!

Hi Noah101, It depends on how much realism you want really. The Quality Wings 757 is as it say's on the tin, "complexity simplified" and some of the systems are quite simple but it will get you started with commercial jets if your new to them. The FMC automatically fills in some details but it does follow a flight plan fine and you can do SID/STAR routes too. The external model is nice too and you do get all versions of the 757, 200/300 freighters, C32 the lot for one price which is nice. It is quite easy on your PC too, which is something to consider. The Captain Sim 757, is just the one version the 200. the freighter and 300 versions are add on purchases for 9.99 euro's each. Unfortunately you just missed the 24 hr sale that Captain Sim hold where everything is just 9.99 euro's. I only bought mine in this years sale and still getting used to it. It does have a few issues mainly with the FMC and autopilot, but I am finding work around's for those. The VC is lovely and everything appears to be clickable and work. Considering it has been out a number of years now I think it is still pretty good. I really like some of the animations, like opening cockpit windows etc. You also get a full virtual cabin, which seems a bit much for me, but it is something unusual although nice, although the frame rates aren't as good for me as the Quality Wings 757, I have flown my Captain Sim 757 into some FlyTampa, and FSDT airports and I was quite happy with the results. It might be worth checking out Youtube as there are a few nice video's showing you some of the differences between the two so you can compare them both. So unfortunately I am not alot of help, both are good products, both have fans who like one not the other. The quality Wings 757 is the simpler of the two, but how realistic the systems on the Captain SIm 757 are I am not sure of either. Having just started flying the Captain Sim one, I am leaning towards the Captain SIm version at the minute it does seem more immersive with a nicer Virtual Cockpit.

Hi all, Just wanted to say great job on finding that smaller memory footprint thingy while developing the 747 and including it as an update on the 777. I installed it a few days ago but didn't have time to try it until today flying Sydney YSSY to Perth YPPH and I have to say the 777 flew lovely and seemed so much smoother...................I don't tend to look at figures and stuff, just does it work well or not, and is the view nice and smooth while I am flying...............I have to say with the new update YES it's very smooth and a pleasure to fly. Thank you PMDG.

Hi all, Mourning the fact that the MD11 is no longer available. It almost feels like the real thing being retired. I will just have to cherish the ones I have flying around my virtual world, what a great quirky wonderful aircraft. My go to airliner most of the time. I wonder how much website space it takes to leave the poor old bird available as a legacy item, just for old times sake, and those folks who wish they had bought it when they could. I guess space is needed in the PMDG hanger for the 747-400v2 and the DC6...........Oh well!

Hi all, I too was looking for a more realistic Ai traffic package than the default one. I decided after reading some posts on here that I would try World of AI "WOAI" as it is freeware, if it didn't work nothing lost. It took a few hours work to get the hang of installing the files and then converting the flight plans from fs9 to fsx, but I have to say it works very well and with very little impact on my fps, which is important on my mid range system, especially as I like the complex addons in fsx. I am not too bothered that the schedules may be old, it is just nice to have some realistic looking airlines flying around instead of the default ones. If you decide to go this route, you will need to install the World of AI installer from their website to install the free airline packages you see in the library here, and point it at your fsx folder. You will also need a small program called AIFP3 which will allow you to change the WOAI flight plans to fsx format. You have to do this because any fs9 traffic files in your fsx scenery folders will prevent any AI traffic showing up, not just aircraft but ships and road traffic too. These files are found in "fsx/scenery/world/scenery". World of AI will install the fs9 traffic files to that folder in fsx by default, so highlight them and use AIFP3 to convert the World of AI files to fsx format and delete the original fs9 traffic files. Sounds complicated I know, but once you have done a couple it only takes seconds to install WOAI packages and they are very good. I was bored with default traffic and World of AI provided what I wanted which was perfect. However I soon made another tweak, I didn't want default commercial traffic to appear but did want default GA traffic, so I made a couple of folders in "addon scenery", "World of AI", being all my new AOAI traffic files, "default AI" the original fsx default traffic files and "Default GA", which is a copy of the original default traffic files with the commercial airlines all deleted leaving just the GA aircraft. Being in the addon scenery file, these files appear within fsx, in the scenery library, just like addon airports do, so you can tick them on and off as you wish, so flexible, I have it set with World of AI commercial traffic and default GA on and default commercial set to off. I'm sorry if this post is a bit long winded it wasn't my intention, but I wanted to briefly explain the process if you use World of AI, it is great but does require a few minutes work to make it work properly as it was originally made for fs9. I like it and will stick with it I think. Hope you find the package that suits you too. Happy flying.

Hello Maarten, You mentioned moving my mouse over the AI aircraft, I didn't think to try that, I will try later when on the PC. You mentioned the aircraft.cfg files. I was going to say that I have the AI folders in the Addon Scenery files, as I altered the default AI to remove the commercial flights, but leave the GA ones. I wanted only World of AI commercial traffic............I wonder if this might cause my issue, however thinking about it, then the default AI wouldn't show either as I moved that to the same scenery addon file, so that I could turn all AI traffic on/off easily. I will keep trying new things but it is nice to know that World of AI aircraft should show up on the map. Regards.

Hi all, I have only just started using SimlauncherX and have had a few problems with it disconnecting from SimConnect although today after the latest update it worked very well, so all good so far. So after my first real flight today where SimlauncherX stayed connected all the time, I noticed on landing at my destination that some of my AI traffic didn't appear on the airport diagram. I have a combination of default AI GA aircraft which do show up and Commercial AI from World of AI, which do not show. I know that World of AI is based on FS9, which might be the issue but I have changed all the flight plans into FSX format and the AI does show in the Aivlasoft EFB, but not on the airport diagrams in SimLauncherX. Can you tell me if there is a setting to get these AI aircraft to show, or are they just totally incompatible with each other. Thanks for any help. Regards.

Thanks cmpbellsjc, I wasn't sure, but the idea of going through 32000 flight plans kind of made me pause before making a move!

Scott I have AIFP as I used it to convert the World of AI flight plans to fsx, I was looking at the default AI traffic files earlier to see how you turned off the default airlines but left the GA still in place. Was it as simple as deleting the AI airliner aircraft so that the flight plans couldn't find the info or did you have to delete all the flight plans too? I quite like the idea of doing that myself.

Hi Dave, Thanks for the reply, I had a feeling that was the case, but you know how finicky fsx can be and I wanted to check I wouldn't cause an issue somewhere else. Thanks again for the reply.

Hi all, I just wanted to run this past the forum and see if anyone can find a reason why I shouldn't do this. Recently I installed World of AI and some airline packs too, I just wanted something a bit more realistic than the default ones. Anyway after installing and finding out that all my default airliner and GA traffic had vanished I did some searching and found that you have to convert the "Traffic.bgl" files to fsx, which I have now done using AIFP3, and lo and behold I now have both default AI aircraft and World of AI aircraft happily existing side by side, brilliant!. One of the many idea's I picked up was to make a new folder and install all of the World of AI traffic files into that new folder ie "Addon scenery/ AI/scenery................this worked a treat and allows you to turn off the World of AI traffic easily by unchecking the "AI" folder in the scenery library if I don't want the World of AI stuff to show up. This got me thinking that if I made another new folder called "Addon Scenery/Default AI/Scenery" and put the default Aircraft traffic.bgl from "Scenery/World/Scenery" file into it I could then turn off the default traffic to by unchecking it in the scenery library in the same way. Does anyone know of any other consequence that might happen in the sim as a result of moving the default traffic file in this way and being able to turn off the World of AI or the default traffic in this manner. I would be interested to hear about anyone's thoughts on this. Thankyou.