Planeblogger

Hi all, The PMDG NGX for P3D and the 2.5 release have brought me back to flightsimming after a year. I am impressed by both packages, but I have this one phenomenon that I was wondering about if anybody else sees this behaviour. I took the NGX for a spin from Heraklion into the mountains, and switched on the terrain radar. Immediately FPS dropped from about 20 to 10-11. (terrain radar looks great though!) I of course switched it off immediately, but I did not regain my FPS back. :-( Is this a known issue? Erik

The textures show up with DX9 OK. With DX10 and the fixer, night textures at LGTS, HESH and LOWW don't show properly. I have tried adding a lightfield to HESH, but it didn't have any results.

Hi, I use UT2 with the latest Summer 2013 schedule, and some additional paints and models installed (FAIB 737 and A320, UTT 787 and 7478, etc.) ASNext, REX Texture Direct4 and the DX10 fixer are my other important addons. Erik

That is what I actually liked about this, and why I took the screenshot. Normally, FSX is way to light during the night. DX10 with the Fixer, bloom enabled and REX4 really made my night flights a lot more interesting!

Just one, after landing at OSL as flight AB8244 from TXL. Cold and slippery it was! Add-ons used: PMDG NGX Aerosoft Oslo 2.0 REX4 Direct Textures AS Next DX10Fixer 1.4 Bye, Erik

Good question, I am pretty sure that Vienna has nice night lighting on its apron textures, but I haven't ever tested Sharm el Sheikh with DX9. I don't want to go back, so why would I? ;-) I will see if I can test it later tonight. Erik

Hi All, I have searched around for this, but I could not figure out if there was a solution possible for this. Some of my payware airports have dark ground textures during the night. This is especially bothersome during winter, when contrast with the white surroundings is quite big. Two airports I have found that have this behaviour: - FlyTampa Vienna 2.5 - FSDG Sharm el Sheikh (Aerosoft) I have the latest update of the fixer installed, and the compatibility slider set to full left (scenery). Is there any solution for this problem? Erik

Thanks for the suggestion. Looks great! It seems this one is not AES-compatible though. Does anyone know if this is yet to come?

Amen to that. As others said, I investigate my purchases before I make them but this was one of them that I bought just because of the reviews. It gave me lots of errors, when selecting a gate or service the appearing vehicles made my FPS drop 50% or more and with pushback I often ended up being dumped in some ditch with the towtruck behind my nosewheel crashed in the fuselage. (those who have been there know what I mean) Also, the COUATL-engine acted very frustrating. Fact is, after removing all FSDreamteam stuff, COUATL and their AddOn Manager I didn't suffer any more CTD or stutters. I reinstalled AES with the 140 credits I bought over the last four years and wondered why I ever considered leaving it behind. My list of great purchases over the last year is way longer though. With PFP X, FTX Global amongst others. Erik Brouwer

Its default FSX. That is the nice thing about DX10 - using bloom without the slightest FPS hit. Last part of the Flickr-set is with REX4, the new textures are great for use in DX10. Have fun, Erik

Hi, All these http://www.flickr.com/photos/planeblogger/sets/72157636899353884/ are the NGX used with the DX10 fixer (various versions). I haven't seen any cockpit shadows, but the combination works great nonetheless. Hope this helps, Erik

Hi Paul, Thank you for the explanation. Any news on the 1.3 update yet? (Steve?) I run FSX on a sort-of dedicated laptop (Lenovo Y500) With an i7 Ivy (3,2GHz) and two GT650's in SLI. Fed by 2x 512GB SSD and 16GB of DDR3 RAM. Would you consider that enough for UsePools=0? I really don't know how to test properly.. Hope you have seen similar configs before.. Thanks, Erik

Also looking forward to this fix, it definately feels like a flash of the black texture! (this is btw an issue Dx10 suffers of more than DX9, isn't it? For example - looking in one direction, then quickly panning to the other, all my AI is black and needs some time to catch up loading textures. Is this normal behaviour? Why is DX10 suffering of this and DX9 isn't?)

After flying there IRL last month I'd say you should have the virtual Darwin award for flying there in that weather! ;-) Being curious - do you have any mountain flying experience? Did you do any preparation for the flight, and what were your means of navigation? I would like to do some mountain flying in the sim as well, but so far I have not succeeded in creating a good immersion of what it its like in reality..

Hi all, Just some shots I took over the last few weeks. Add-ons used: - PMDG NGX - D-ABKC repaint (on Avsim) - DX10Fixer (Legacy slider full left) - REX 4 Texture Direct (partly) - ActiveSky NEXT - FTX Global - and more.. The new REX combined with ASN and the DX10 fixer offers incredible immersion IMHO. All are highly recommended. ASN with REX and DX10 really shine here, on approach to runway 19L at Aerosoft's new Oslo Gardermoen: Hope you enjoyed this series. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask! Rgds, Erik

If only that was true. There is no application to manage the installation, and the entries in the Scenery Library cannot be unchecked as FSX won't work properly without them. Seems you are stuck with FTXV once you install it. I am very interested in their reply to this matter, as this is not the first time they did this. This could very well be the last ORBX purchase from my side, just because of this. Erik

I am really disappointed with the fact they 'forgot' to include an uninstaller AGAIN..

Depends on what you call expensive. I have FSX running on a Lenovo Y500: i7 3630QM 3.4 GHz 2x GT650m SLI 1920x1080px 15/6" 16GB RAM (Kingston HyperX) 2X SSD (1x Samsung 840PRO 256GB, 1x 256GB Crucial m4) With FSX in DX10, using the fixer, all sliders maxed except of roadtraffic (=0) and whater (2.x medium), I get about 18-22 FPS at OMDB with 100% traffic in UT2 with the latest schedule while flying the NGX.. Temps reach about 88 degrees C, using a laptop cooler. Erik

Nice shots! This. How can I do this? I am afraid of reducing traffic in UT2 because of exactly this - flying to smaller airports which are then deserted..

29Palms SKiathos it was indeed. Fabulous addon, great airport to fly to for practicing your radio navigation and manual landing skills. Thanks all, will see if I can upload some more tomorrow.

Hi guys, I recently came back to flight simulation after a pause of almost three years. Bought myself a Lenovo Y500 with a fabulous full-HD screen and a SLI videocard setup, which comes to its full potential using the DX10 fixer. If you have any questions with regards to addons used or settings, just let me know. Herewith just some shots I took over the last week while flying or testing. Enjoy! Kind regards, Erik

All, I use Ultimate Traffic 2, with some additional repaints installed. I only add FSX-native models to the UT2-line, e.g. the UTT 787, 748, FAIB A32S and 737 series. I found that all the native FSX AI textures were 1024x1024, 4MB in size and in DDS format. In UT2, a mix of DXT3 (non mipped) and DXT1 (with mipmaps) are used. My question is - what is the ideal texture format for AI-traffic. Should I convert all textures to a standard format? If so, which one? Is mdl able to handle any texture, regardless of format or compression? Basically I am asking if there are some FPS to be gained by having all my AI textures converted to a certain format. I could not find a conclusive answer anywhere else. Hope to hear from you, Erik Brouwer

Yes, you can. I passed a fictional checkride on a 737NG sim (real sim, real examiner, real MCC) without problems, all memory items checked, with 'only' about 2800hrs logged on the PMDG 737 for FS9 and the NGX and about two yours on the moving 737 simulator before doing the checkride-stuff. I must admit it wasn't easy at first. Especially the speed at which everything happens and the pressure this puts on you is much higher than it occurs to you while sitting behind your desktop. But I, and many airline pilots with me, consider it doable. That said, William is right it doesn't help you much while doing PPL. The perspective at first is completely different, and the most important difference for me was that in flightsim, one flies by the numbers. Your instructor on the real world C172/Pa28 will teach you to fly with nose pitch and so forth, something you don't learn in the sim and that might actually make it harder to learn proper VFR flying, at first. Furthermore, the hours spent on the Carenado SR22 helped me nothing the moment I actually flew the aircraft for the first time. So I guess it doesn't work for all airplanes. But for the 737, while not having a rating on it, I am fully confident I will land a 737 NG safely in real life, especially since I know how to set-up for autoland ;-). EDIT: I want to add that the difficult part is the landing of course. Remember the 9/11 hijackers who flew the airliners to their targets with only cardboard mockup training. The landing is the most tricky part. Flying a Cirrus or a 737 isn't difficult. Doing a difficult approach with turns short before final and touching (not bouncing!) on the numbers is what makes your armpits wet.

Ah, nice, we're getting personal after the first post already. Must mean my post made some sense. Ey, ey, easy on the guy who has a bachelor in journalism. (yep, that's me) This is not about free speech. It is about the free market. You get what you deserve. Offer meets demand. You know, the basic stuff. It goes for cars, airplanes, but also for newspapers and other media. In which case PMDG could say: We never published any delivery date on said project, and refrain from further comment. That is how you deal with trashy tabloids. You don't actually call them that. Because they have customers who might be offended, and that might be your customers as well. Since he is in the DEV-team as said by his signature? I just wanted to make clear that as a part of the PMDG company, anything he says in public (especially with the signature attached) is seen as official PMDG messaging. Yeah, because they are not my customers. I, however, am one of theirs and expect to be treated as such. I know, but that doesn't mean you should lose basic skills when it comes to customer treatment. They are still your customer. Whatever kind of moron they may be. If you offend them, you may offend many others as well. Especially when you are so stupid to do it on a public forum. It has been building up over the last weeks. AirDailyX played a big part in getting updated on the latest flightsim developments in the last few weeks, as I tried to catch up with what happened the last three years. Just getting back into all the flight-sim-stuff and I am amazed every day by what happens in the forums. It stops me from buying. Important reason of spending money on flightsimulator addons was contributing something to the community. Coming back to that community, I more and more ask myself if a. I want to be part of it and b. if I want to spend money keeping it alive. Erik I am not a contributor to AirDailyX, where did you get that from?

I am sorry, but how is estimating a release date on a flightsim product irresponsible in your view? Does it bring the world to an end? Get back to reality, please! If we would be talking about a tabloid putting a story on the front page that the POTUS has been shot, or that HSBC or Citibank is on verge of collapse, that would be irresponsible. We are talking about a flightsim addon for ***** sake. One major rule about media in the free world: Every nation and every community gets the media it deserves. So if the one of the most accurate and informative blogs about flightsim on the web is a trashy tabloid as said by mr. PMDG, that actually tells a lot about mr. PMDG and his customers. I have been involved with Flightsim in the past, and have just come back after three years where I had no time for flightsim because I was bizzy doing real flying. Coming back, I am amazed by the total lack of customer friendliness of most developers. At ORBX, they are arrogant pricks as they showed in the whole FTXG-DX10 debacle. Every bug report at FSDreamteams' is always approached with the greatest scepticism and mr. Virtuali is never at fault. And now this from PMDG, it all amazes me. I have spent thousands of euro's on flight simulator software during the last ten years. I have bought sceneries I only visited once, just to try. I have bought planes that only left my virtual hangar once. I used to buy addons from certain developers, just to support future development. I would be willing to spend the 90USD on the 777, however I would most likely never fly it. But for now, I have given up. Screw this. Erik EDIT: Come to think of it: I am going to announce the imminent release of the 747 v2 on my Facebook and G+ streams. Lets see if the world comes to an end. It just feels so good to act irresponsible now and then. It's just like drunk driving. Oh, wait..