simmerhead

We're doing fine, but could be doing so much better!

A simple e-mail? There are 100s involved and it is not doable I'm afraid. Contact info is sometimes missing or outdated, some have left the hobby and is nowhere to be found, and some don't want their work shared outside of their control. I tried when I made an AI package for Scandinavia. I didn't simply recompile files. I added new paints, corrected and converted textures for FSX/Prepar3D, made new and edited wrong flightplans, corrected outdated and wrong paints (Lots of bad repaints out there - some repainters seem to be colourblind!), edited and corrected effects and aircraft.cfg files. It took me quite some time. Sadly, because of the EULA of the freeware I was using, none of this work will ever be shared with anyone. In the end everybody loses.

The difference is significant. It's called damages. Other than a bruised ego, what damages have the freeware repainters and modellers suffered? I just did a youtube and google search one one of these pirate groups. Both places I found them they stated clearly that they didn't create any of the models, repaints or flightplans, just made a compilation of freeware to make it easy for anyone to install and use it. On youtube they also listed the websites from which the models were downloaded. It's not nice, but not a hideous crime either... I just don't get why some freeware developers insists on making things complicated and difficult. You can serve the cake and let people eat it too - it's all up to you. As for the thousands of hours spent creating freeware, what about it? It's a game and a hobby. It's not a bone in my body that understand how it can be taken all so seriously and why someone feel the need for accolade. Volunteer to the Red Cross, the Army or whatever and make a real contribution to the world and I'll pat your back. But having the luxury and privilege to indulge in a game, seriously? Anyone with money and free time on their hands spend their life creating something, and by far, most of them never get any credit or claim copyright for it. It usually takes all the fun out of it. The problem with payware offerings is that they might have legal issues to iron out with those companies who own the design, trademark and logos. That makes payware offerings a slippery and complicated slope to be in.

If they removed the credits that was lame for sure. The comparison to payware products however I can't agree with. Still I don't get why people need to have their names known. Flight Simulator is after all just a game. I just can't understand how some can take it all so seriously, especially in the freeware community. I quote Lamont Clark's famous last words: Despite real-life work commitments, the main reason for my lack of flightsim coding activities was a general frustration about the hobbyist creative scene. The global struggle for money, the shortage of collaborative freeware projects and regular personnal conflicts are annoying me because it's a nothing more than an hobby for all of us! There is a lot of friendly people around, and goodwill is not missing, but the result does not shape up what it could be with an united community. I spend most of daytime using and coding free software and I'm always amazed of the amount of work that can be accomplished by a community with strong ideals of freedom and sharing. That's why I'm too ###### off to continue to give most of my free time to the community when a minority is decided to kill the hobby spirit.

Sadly that is very true. The people behind the models, paints and flightplans should have been cooler about letting others improve, recompile and share their stuff. The guys behind ### AI and ### AI did just that, and made packages with bug fixes and easy installation that even novices could install and use. Sadly they weren't allowed to do so. I don't know why some freeware developers feel the need to "control" their freeware stuff, but as long as there are many freeware developers with that mindset I too would gladly pay for a decent payware offering. Sadly there is none to be found. For my own freeware I've always had a simple EULA: To be used, shared, edited or whatever as long as it stays free, and please, there is never a need to give me any credit of any kind!

Cool. I didn't know that. It will make things easier putting all the AI in a separate external folder system!

The traffic slider works, but most of the traffic bgls seem to have traffic active at 1% - meaning that they don't really respect the sliders in FSX/P3D. To work around that I suggest using this nifty utility: http://www.avsim.com/topic/451048-traffic-optimizer-for-p3d/ It lets you select the # of AC you'd like to appear in the sim, and even prioritize traffic at your departure and arrival airports.

Be aware that if you put traffic bgls outside of the "scenery/world/scenery" folder it will cause problems if you do changes in the scenery library as the traffic will be loaded twice.

Nope. You copy the aircraft to you "SimObjects/Airplanes/" folder and any traffic-bgl file to the "/Scenery/World/Scenery/" folder. Traffic-bgl files need to be in FSX/P3D format.

No reason it shouldn't.

Tim, you need to convert the traffic.bfl file from fs9 to fsx format. It's done in a flash with AIFP utility (freeware). Whenever you mix FS9 and FSX/P3D traffic bgl files, the FS9 files will take priority and kill off all other traffic.

As for dreaming of one great big AI package, I sadly believe it will never happen. It isn't a one man job, and whenever a group of people get together someone's inflated ego will start to kill the community spirit at some point. For payware developers there's the issue of copyright, trademarks etc. getting in the way of making "realistic" packages. But then you'll have a mix of AI-files and all the other files that occupy those folders - and you're missing the effect and sound files.

Yep. I just use the P3D-folder structure in a dummy folder called AI Traffic like this: \AI Traffic\Effects \AI Traffic\Effects\Texture \AI Traffic\SimObjects\Airplanes \AI Traffic\SimObjects\Rotorcraft \AI Traffic\SimObjects\Boats \AI Traffic\Scenery\World\Scenery \AI Traffic\Sound \AI Traffic\Texture Then you can just copy and paste the content of the AI Traffic folder to FSX or P3D.

That is true - some are even based on FS2002 models I think. Still, I am willing to live with the negatives. It's free, and I have a much better variety than any of the payware packages offer. Also, once you've made a collection (I never install directly into the sim - I make a dummy folder first, then copy everything over after installing) it will take you seconds to install it. No passwords, install bloatware - Just copy and paste! Whenever you upgrade or reinstall the sim - or get a new one, it will take just seconds to have it all back up and running.

For anyone interested, here are some links to get you started: Military AI: http://www.owlsnest.eu/# Airliner AI: http://www.world-of-ai.com/index.php Default individual aircraft type AI Traffic files: http://www.flightsim2004-fanatics.com/uploads/DefaultGA/Def_GA_DL.htm Ships: http://library.avsim.net/search.php?SearchTerm=Global+AI+Ship+Traffic+V1&CatID=root&Go=Search Utilities: http://stuff4fs.com/open.asp?Folder=AIFP&JS=TRUE With these sources you should have your collection 80% complete.

I've donwloaded most of the models and flightplans from UTT, WOAI and Military AI Works. I had My Traffic for FSX way back then but never liked the quality of the models. Most of the freeware stuff is way better, and strike a nice balance between fps and looks. I also found some neat flightplans for the default FSX aircraft (I've copied all of them from FSX to P3D) that lets you select the types of default aircraft you would like to use as AI (I have disabled all the "fake" airliners, and only use the C172, PA-28, C208 and B58 and B350 as AI). Using AIFP I've recompiled all the flightplans to FSX/P3D format. It does it as a batch job, so it's quick and easy. So now I have busy commercial airports, GA airports and Military Air Bases. As long as there's parking spots there's traffic.

I have given up on the abysmal payware offerings. I just caved in and made my own custom package. It took 3 days of work, but hey, it's free and far above anything any payware developer has to offer. I made it a couple of years ago, and once done it takes seconds to install. It's all a matter of "drag and drop" it into any new installation of any version of FSX or P3D. Combine it with the FSX-P3D Traffic manager and you will have a happy experience. I have zero need for updated schedules as the AI traffic system isn't able to handle large volumes of traffic in a relaistic manner. Before I would want any new payware package for P3D I would like to see a complete overhaul of the AI traffic system in P3D.

Haven't used FSX at all since Prepar3D v1.2...

Great move by DTG!

The folder called "Shaders"

It is the current gold standard of desktop flight simulators. The best thing about it is that they've modernized the graphics engine to take advantage of modern hardware. The bad and ugly is that they haven't upgraded much of the graphics textures, landclass system, airport and nav data, so the sim, despite HDR lighting and shadows, doesn't look much different from FSX.

I did a clean uninstall/install and it works great. The sim feels a tad more fluent, and the increased LOD for buildings looks great. The wave animations just look stupid so I hope there is a way to disable them. As for sutomer service I have been very happy with LM. I ran into activation problems in v2.5 after upgrading my computer, but LM fixed it within an hour after I emailed them. Happy to see further upgrades and improvements, but I hope LM will now concentrate less on engine improvements and more on graphics improvements. Would be nice if they did an upgrade of the default textures so we had less need for 3PDs and addons.

Great news! I've been waiting for this one for bush flying in Alaska and Canada

Thanks. I have always been running with HT turned off, simply because it has been of little use for flight simming. I'd like to keep my old 2700K running for at least another year as I don't want to upgrade until I know the specs and roadmap of the new NVidia and Intel chips.

Thanks a lot Martin. Seems like you know what you are talking about. Thanks for the tip about ROG RealBench. I'll certainly check it out! I'll be running Prepar3D v3 at max settings for a while - might be a good stress test as well