Nick M

Well, since fitting that 12VHPWR cable, my GPU seems happy for now Dave. No further shutdowns since my last post here at any rate. Of course, that doesn't help you much, especially since you've replaced your connector. Sorry I can't offer anything more encouraging. Thanks, Nick

Ah, glad to hear you seem to have found the cause too Dave. Your 4080 will be 2-3 cm's wider than my 4070 I believe, so can quite see how the power connecter could impinge on the side panel. I wonder if a few dabs of dielectric grease would help in your case too?

Hello Dave, Just dropped in to find out how you're faring with this issue, and with a small update from my end, and realised I overlooked your last post. Sorry about that. No, it's a Gigabyte MB I've got, as well as the GPU. For me the issue seemed to be increasing in frequency, and I was also able to reproduce it fairly consistent by stress testing the GPU. Typically after just a few minutes at 100% utilization (just over 200 watts in my case) the dreaded black screen with fans going to max would result. I experimented with undervolting too, but this didn't resolve the issue. Being a bit reluctant to go through the hassle of a RTM and not being too confident it would even resolve the situation, I decided to replace the power cable instead. This was based on some comments I read somewhere and 'only' set me back £18 (though I really thing something like this should have been included with the GPU itself). Although I'm hesitant to jinx things, this does seem to have fixed the issue. I've been able to run the GPU at max for over and hour on a few occasions and it's remained stable. For info, this is the replacement cable I purchased and it's a much neater solution than the NVIDIA adaptor going into for my PSU cable. 12VHPWR Cable | 600W PCIe 5.0 Power Adapter Cable (corsair.com) When the cable arrived, the box also contained a little sachet of dielectric grease which may also have helped. Anyway, will let you know if I'm celebrating too soon. I'll also stick with the undervolt for now too, at it reduces power usage by around 30-40W and seems pretty stable. Cheers, Nick

Unfortunately I haven't been able to diagnose or resolve the issue yet @regis9. It's very sporadic, sometimes the PC will run GPU-intensive software like MSFS happily all day and on other days, the lockup will occur at least once in the space of an hour. I had a little hunch it had something to do with the fan controller side of the software rather than a hardware fault (in general, I'd say Gigabyte's software is pretty diabolical) but I've been away from home a fair bit with the day job recently, so this has limited the amount of time I've been able to spend tinkering with my sim PC. Hoping I'll have a bit more time at the end of the month to investigate properly.

Thanks for confirming Dave. Yes, I've found a few other discussion relating to this issue such as this one. New RTX 4070 Ti will stop displaying and go full fan speed out of nowhere. HELP : r/gigabyte (reddit.com) I haven't contacted support yet, but an RMA may be on the card. However, I am going to experiment with undervolting the card beforehand.

Hello Dave, I'm having exactly the same issue with my 4070 GPU: fans run up to full speed and the video display is lost forcing a hard restart. (Resetting the GPU with Ctrl + Shift + Start + B doesn't work.) No apparent pattern as to when it happens, sometimes when the card isn't under load, although on other occasions it will happen when running MSFS or other games. Anyway, as you'll have discovered, it's rather annoying! Mine is a Gigagbyte GeForce RTX 4070 GAMING OC 12GB which was purchased around 6 months ago. I'm curious if Gigabyte is the manufacturer in your case too? For what it's worth, I've tried replugging/changing power cables, updating drivers, and most recently updating the GPU bios. Not sure yet if the latter will make any difference but we'll see. Cheers, Nick

Just a little note to let everyone know that we've just released the v1.2 update for the Comanche. 🙂 To install version 1.2, please click the "Comanche Check For Updates MSFS" shortcut in the "A2A Simulations" folder in the Windows start menu. Thanks Nick - A2A Simulations

Yes, just to confirm that we are aware of a bug where a sudden, huge spike in engine torque can, very, very, very occasionally flip the entire plane the plane in the air when using the starter or when towing (the prop is actually rotated a bit when you attach the tow bar, so it doesn't make contact with it). This has resulted in one or two funny moments on livestreams, and we would like to particularly apologise to any VR simmers who have been traumatized as a result. 😁 It's been hard to reproduce, but should be fixed with the first Comanche update which we'll get out as soon as we can. Thanks, Nick - A2A Simulations

If I click the link in iTunes, it just takes me back to the "iTunes Preview" browser page with the "this app is only available on the App Store for iOS devices" message. I guess it knows I'm trying to download it on a PC or Mac which won't run the software. Perhaps the app store download restrictions have changed recently? Nick

Are you accessing iTunes via an iPad Jean-Luc? I can't seem to download the app using iTunes on Windows or even on my MacBook. Nick

Hmm! "This app is only available on the App Store for iOS devices." How very - Appley! Nick

Thanks Jean-Luc, I'll give that suggestion a try. Bert - thanks for your post too! Regards, Nick

I understand from this topic that one of the advantages of the RXP GNS products is that the aviation database ("worldwide.bin" file) can be updated with the corresponding file from the Garmin GTN trainer (which will just need to be renamed). However, a recent change to the GTN trainer means that these files are no longer compatible (i.e. they can't simply be interchanged any more) and I'm unable to find any download links for previous versions of the GTN trainer. Therefore, I was just wondering if anyone still has a copy of the most recent version of the GTN trainer which does include a compatible aviation database? If so, would it be possible to share just the relevant *.bin file (something similar to "006-d0170-00.bin"), to avoid hosting a large download? Thanks, Nick P.S. I have already updated the GNS "bmap.bin" file with the corresponding file from the current GTN trainer.

Thomas, I can recommend Scan (though I haven't specifically bought Saitek stuff from them). They do the ProFlight rudder pedals for around 90 quid at the moment, and the yoke for about £116. However, looks like no stock until next month. Delivery would be about a tenner by the looks of it. Nick

Pe11e - just wanted to make you aware that leaving "high-resolution 3-D virtual cockpit" un-ticked will cause visual artefacts (enlarged LCD digits) on the radio stacks in the A2A Skyhawk, Cherokee and Skylane. It will also tend to cause some issues with cockpit lighting. Cheers, Nick

Just a brief note to add that there's currently a small glitch with the control panel installation with v1.014 (missing bitmaps). A fix can be downloaded from the link in this post on the Majestic forums and I gather the installer will be updated within a week or so. Cheers, Nick

Hi Keven, Thanks for the reply. Hope the touchdown smoke does make it into a future product: I'll certainly keep my eye out... Cheers, Nick

Hello Guys! Have to confess I'm not a PrecipitFX customer (yet) but I'm certainly interested for the modest price. I have a quick question though... Does the package enhance the existing FSX touchdown tire smoke effects? As far as I can tell from the website and video, it doesn't. If this is indeed the case, is there any chance that this is something that would be considered for a future update? Maybe I'm a bit of a narcissist, but I tend to watch my landings using the replay function from time-to-time. Typically I fly GA stuff, and I've always noticed that the default FSX "fx_tchdwn_s.fx" effect is a bit odd. Specifically, the puff of smoke generated on tyre contact with paved runways seem to rise vertically whilst actually keeping pace with the aircraft (i.e. matching its forward speed) which is a bit disconcerting. Any technical insight from the FSFX experts would be very welcome. Do you guys also see the effect rendered in this way? I'm also not terribly keen on the touchdown smoke effects for larger aircraft either as they seem a bit overdone; a general overhaul of the three paved runway touchdown effects in FSX would be very welcome! :wink: Thanks, Nick

Christopher, It's not a video, but I can recommend the website Flight Simulator Navigation by Charles Wood as an accessible and entertaining way to get to grips with the subject. The Duke v2 may be great, but it'll be a testing platform as a basic instrument/navigation trainer. Something with a little less performance would make your life easier. Cheers, Nick

Yikes indeed! Actually, I'm not sure whether A2A's simulation of carb heat itself takes into account EGT. Maybe it's a question I should raise over on their forum. From what I've seen, applying full carb heat in the Cherokee is a rather quick and effective remedy, so probably not. Cheers, Nick

I hardly think one can accuse RealAir of "using the simming community as cash cows". In fact I wish more developers would take a leaf out of their book and offer older products at a substantial discount. For example, the RealAir Legacy currently represents the best value pay-ware that can be had in my opinion. That being said, I've yet to go for the updated turbine Duke. That's largely due to the fact that I'm trying to improve my instrument flying skills is lower performance aircraft - I really don't need any more distractions! I always preferred the piston Duke as well for some reason... Cheers, Nick

No - I'm with Great Ozzie on this one. The symptoms described by Elaine sound most like carburettor icing. I must admit I didn't know much about this phenomenon until flying the A2A Cherokee, but I learned a great deal from this thread on A2A's forums. As well as the temperature 'danger zone' for carb icing (well illustrated by the graph in this post by 'ft') one other thing I learned from the discussion was that carb heat should be either fully on or off. Partial carb heat application can actually make carb icing more dangerous! I'll confess I've been deliberately flying the A2A Cherokee in conditions conducive to severe carb icing (e.g. temp and dew point of around 5 to 6°C) to experience some of the simulated 'Accu-Sim' effects. For example, carb icing with high (cruise) RPM as Elaine describes is certainly possible, and it can start of as quite a subtle and insidious power loss. On the other hand, selecting full power after a descent at idle can result in... Well absolutely nothing - no power at all - until carb heat is applied. Of course, improper leaning on the ground can foul the spark plugs, but this will generally be cleared up by running at reasonably high RPM for a while. In other words, if you survive the take-off and climb out with fouled plugs, you'll probably be okay. I couldn't agree more! :smile: Cheers, Nick

I'd love to think so! However, I recently reinstalled my copy of FSX and the frame-rate drop with complex add-on aircraft was apparent from the outset. While my system is not that recent ([email protected], EVGA GTX570) it's generally pretty adequate for running FSX, and I have't got a host of other add-ons. I think it's likely that the increasing complexity of internal MDL files is the culprit. Perhaps the way that click-spot functionality and animations are encoded into the MDL file? However, some of the add-ons that I use seem to suffer the problem more disproportionately than others. I've noticed the frame-rate drop is more noticeable when the sim is being worked hard, and I wonder if the explains the OP's post? i.e. If Glenn's PC is now having to work harder (perhaps due to an additional add-on), the mouse cursor effect could be the 'final straw' that's pushing his FPS below the locked value. Cheers, Nick

Yes, although oddly it's still seems to rather poorly understood and documented. I say 'oddly' because on my system it's very easy to reproduce and I'll typically lose around a quarter to a third of my FPS due to this 'bug' in the more complex add-ons. I don't think it is a rendering issue as such Martin. Instead, I reckon the FPS drop is caused by the fact that the simulator is performing calculation based upon where the cursor is and how the it interacts with switches and buttons in the VC. I'm basing this idea on some observations in this thread in the A2A forums. It's generally noted that if the cursor is visible but it's superimposed over either a 2D window or the FSX title bar, FPS are unaffected. I've also noticed that if you view the VC in 'cockpit' mode rather than 'virtual cockpit' view (I have to glance to the side to actually see the VC in this mode) FPS are unaffected whether-or-not the cursor is visible. Crucially, in both of these cases, the cursor is visible in the VC but without the click spots being 'enabled' and (on my system anyway) FPS are unaffected. This seems to suggest that it's a 'VC clickspot interactivity issue' which is causing the FPS hit. I'd certainly welcome any more input on this topic - particularly from add-on developers. It does seem to be one of the last great FSX mysteries! :huh: Cheers, Nick

Yes - that's very true as well! I'm no purist and will quite often exit the sim with the Cherokee parked-up with the engine running, flaps set and so on. When I next load the aircraft, everything is remembered, so I can basically just carry on where I left off. Accu-Sim certainly isn't all about damage, wear-and-tear and pesky maintenance. For me anyway, it's more to do with convincing behaviour of the instruments (instruments which are actually worth bothering to monitor), immersive sounds and the feeling that the aeroplane has a bit of unique character. Cheers, Nick