rburke3608

No, haven't heard of Morton's AI planes. I'll check it out. Just updated to the newest revision and took a flight. Turned global shadows all the way up without a significant hit. But had clouds set at 22. Now that is way too high. I had to drop clouds to around 10 or below if there are any clouds nearby. Clouds look a lot better but have been cranked over for too big a CPU hit this time around. With no clouds I can crank everything up to max except HDR rendering (I have to keep this at FXAA) and my frame rates in clear weather range fro 40 - 60. Very smooth. Getting better all the time!

I like the way the environment appears with HDR turned on and all of the boxes checked in that section. And as I stated in an earlier post am able to get 27 + fps with it turned on. I also set my field of view between 70 and 75 degrees. That is just below the fish bowl effect and above flying with total side blinders. I do wonder what sort of computing power it would take to create a really close to real environment with lots of AI planes flying around and environment turned up to max in every respect. I can tell you from experience if you fly anywhere near a decent sized city there is a LOT of traffic to watch out for. Now I fly around in deserted skies because my CPU can't keep up with me and AI traffic.

I have an i7 2600, 3.4 GHz 4 core processor and an AMD HD 6950 2 gig video card, 8 gig system RAM. I purchased my machine in January of 2010 so my processor is 1st gen i7 2600. I use HDR at FXAA setting. Trees filled in, objects mega tons, roads tons, number of cars Siberian Winter, World draw distance medium, shadow detail overlay, water detail at default, Extreme Res!, and under Aircraft and Situations I set the number of aircraft at 01 which is just me I guess. The slider doesn't go to 00.I don't do ATC and like low and slow barnstorming approach to flying across the virtual landscape so each time I start a session I down load actual weather from that part of the country and fly landscape and weather. The northwest has lots of cloudy days and I played with the cloud settings a lot. The newest Beta just has one slider for Cloud Detail and I set it at 22%. If I go 23% I lose 8 - 10 fps when there is interesting cloud cover.So with all of the above settings and clouds at 22% The low end of my fps runs 27 - 32 with the highs in the mid to high 40s. I guess I don't mind being the only plane in the sky but putting more aircraft out there really tanks my fps. The clouds still look pretty good at 22%. Having a video card with 2 gig VRAM I think helps a lot and I am really interested in the new AMD and NVIDIA cards with 3 gig VRAM.I do use a Trackir 5 and that doesn't seem to have any affect on frame rates. Also, I can push Anisotropic filter to 16 (insane) with no affect at all on frame rate. I went with the least value and 16 and frame rates stayed the same. I cannot push the HDR antialiasing past FXAA as that takes me right down to 19 fps which I think is the default cellar. I did try Gamebooster 3 in Advanced System Care 5 and there was no net increase in frame rates. Also Vsync got messed up and there was considerable tearing. When I got out of Game Booster 3 the problem was resolved.Hope this helps.

Some pics after Beta 10.3R1. Seems much improved. Since I reformatted my hard drive recently I have been trying to decide if I am going to reload FSX and all of my planes and scenery. I am really not in much of a rush to do that now. I like low and slow in a taildragger flying downloaded actual weather and making my way from airport to airport. I thought I would cross the country from east to west since I live on the east coast but after flying by Manhattan and seeing bridges floating over the city thought better of it so amd starting in Washington State and heading east. Be interesting to see how much the sim changes by the time I get to the east coast. So far I am loving flying over this scenery in all kinds of weather.

You must have a fast machine if you can run decent frame rates with global shadows cranked to "melt your GPU". I use Overlay. The Global settings in bright sunlight will give all sorts of defined shadows moving through the cockpit and across instruments but so far they don't look great and like I said my frame rates bottom out at 19. I like to set up flights with some clouds in the morning or evening and HDR does a lot to improve the scene. I either turn the HDR antialiasing off or at the lowest setting. I tried 4x once and again fps = 19.I am using an ATI HD6950 graphics card with 2 gig of VRAM in a Dell XPS 8300 with a first gen i7 2600 processor (4 cores).

Some anomalies after Beta 10:

For me clouds don't look good in beta 10. Cumulus clouds at any setting do not look like clouds any more. They are just hard edged smears across the sky. I tried moving cloud puffs from 20 to 60, HDR is on and all the realistic cloud softness is gone. The sky is a surreal mess. I am using an AMD 6970 video card with the latest 11.12 Catalyst version. I have been flying Washington State with real weather downloaded so lots of clouds. Up till now I have been able to set opacity and cloud size but those options are gone. I'll try playing with more settings but for now I just want to turn clouds off completely until this is remedied. What it looks like is taking an opaque gray paint and painting an S shape on white paper and there is some artifacting because the S shape has a few lighter echoes around it like it wants to soften the edges and grade it out but opacity is set too high. I'll get some screen shots and post them tomorrow.

Went to install the 12.1 preview driver and my graphics went haywire when I uninstalled the old AMD files. Screen went mostly black but could still see outlines of images. System restore couldn't fix the problem so because I back up frequently on a removable drive I reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled everything from scratch. It was time anyway -- I have been loading this machine down for a year now. So reformat, reinstalled windows 7 and all of my drivers and programs and installed x-plane with the beta 9 update. I set vsync to always on in my video card settings and all of the tearing issues were gone with the same AMD driver (the most recent release driver from AMD, not the preview driver). Must have been corrupted amd files. A lot of other general computer issue were solved too and the machine boots really fast now. I usually do a reformat once a year so obviously was due. X-plane seems to be running fine and it is VERY nice not having the aggravating tearing when I look around.Liking x-plane more and more...

Thanks, I will look for the preview driver, 12.1 and give that a try. I loaded the newest update driver from AMD just as I started working with the sim and honestly can't remember if I had the same issue with the prior driver. I am inclined to say no as it would have bothered me and I think I would have remembered. I have Catalyst driver 11.12 right now which is the most up to date driver through AMD. I can also roll back to he previous driver and see if that one worked.

Yah, I tried that. Are you using AMD or NVIDIA? I wonder if it is a graphics card issue. I had the same issue in FSX only if I had the directx 10 preview checked. All was fine if I left that unchecked.

I am having considerable tearing and have vSync set to Always On in my video card settings. I tried all of the other settings and still have tearing when I look around the cockpit. I am using an ATI 6970 card and have the latest driver. I did not have this issue in x-plane 9. Does anyone know of a fix for this?

I found an 8 - 10 fps increase dropping number of cloud puffs from 23% to 22%. That seemed a significant breaking point for me. My graphics card is an ATI 6970 (2 gig VRAM). I have number of cloud puffs set at 22, size at 40 and opacity at 60. I have been flying over Washington state terrain with current weather conditions downloaded, so lots of clouds and averaging over 28 fps around Seattle Tacoma international airport and up into the 40's in the mountains without a lot of roads and cities.

Does the MacBook have a solid state hard drive? I wondered how that would affect load times in sim start up. Every time I start the sim it takes a few minutes to load. That is with a 7200 rpm HD. Is a solid state hard drive practically instantaneous?

The x-plane creators have made it clear that the initial release is pretty bare bones with a lot more to come. If you go to Manhattan there are bridges kind of floating in the air... I am still having fun with this sim; and run the updater often to see what is coming next. I anticipate a lot of good things to come.

I get it. I get the complaints and the let downs and the frustrations of flying a flight simulator on a home computer. I got my private pilots license back in '79 and since about 1998 have been buying every flight sim on the market; joysticks, rudder pedals, endless computers/computer upgrades/video cards etc etc. All in the vain attempt to duplicate climbing into any airplane and flying. Essentially I am chasing the "questing beast". Honestly I can't afford to rent airplanes enough to stay proficient and definitely will never be able to own a plane (I am 52 with an adopted 5 year old). So these days all of my "flying" happens at my computer. I am always basically disappointed with flight sims. There is the feeling of flying that can never be duplicated and it is like Captain Kirk in Generations when he jumped that gully on horseback. It always scared him to make that jump because the consequences of messing it up were real in the real world, but not the Nexus.Flying, like motorcycling across country, places you in situations with consequences for ignorance or stupidity. The joy comes from mastering a craft as much as you can master something that can throw curves you anytime. Curves that if not handled with practiced skill can swiftly end your life.All of the above is obvious. So why bother with flight sims? Until Kurzweils's Singularity, flight sim's on a computer are make believe. I am currently taking a single engine prop plane and starting on the east coast am flying "real weather," downloaded as I fly each segment as if it was 1926. No radio, using maps and dead reckoning to fly from place to place and plan to pop by Troy Ohio because if it was 1926 I would be begging Clayton and Sam for a job -- even sweeping the floors and taking out the trash at the WACO factory with the hopes to do more someday. I average 30 fps, have a Dell XPS 8300, i7 2600 processor, 8 gig of system ram. Upgraded the computer to a 650 watt power supply in order to cram an ATI 6970 with 2 gig of video ram into the chassis. I have Saitek Pro joystick and rudders. The power connection to the joystick is touchy and if it gets just a little loose my plane is all over the virtual sky. Generally I will see a couple of lights flashing on my joystick when the plug isn't making good contact. It really is touchy.I have the texture resolution set at "Extreme res!" My default monitor setting is 1920 x 1080 for my Samsung 23 inch LED monitor. Gamma at 3.5. Anisotropic filter level at 16x. Anti alias level at "none". All blocks to the far left of the next section checked. Trees at "filled in". Number of objects and roads at "tons". Number of cars at "Siberian winter". World distance detail at medium. Airport detail at high. Shadow detail at "overlay". I played a lot with this one and the higher level shadows kill frame rates and quite frankly look crappy. Water reflection detail at default. Next block, I do not need to check compress textures to save VRAM. Everything else is checked across this whole line. I can do FXAA for HDR anti-aliasing but my machine can't handle 4xSSAA. Cloud detail is set at 22% (some) for number of cloud puffs. 23% + hits my machine hard. 40% (normal) for size of cloud puffs and 60% (nice) for opacity of cloud puffs. I set my field of view at 75 degrees as Carenado recommends this for their aircraft.For the bigger picture I disabled hyper threading for my processor in the BIOS. I also turn as many background processes off as I can before I start the sim. I use Game Booster 3 which is part of Advanced System Care 5. I make sure all of Advanced System Care 5 is shut off because it has interrupted the sim with the Malware fighter and quick care both of which don't seem to care if you are writing an email or running a program. They will stop whatever you are doing for routine system checks. I have to look at the keyboard to type so when I type an email I only occasionally look at the screen. I know ASC 5 is doing something when I look up to see only half what I typed and my cursor gone. Frustrating. It will stop the sim to tell you it finished a quick check of your system.I also have a Trackir 5. This is not optional. Get one if you don't have it. Trust me. It is really cool.So, with all of that I can run real world weather and fly around in some pretty thick, rainy soup at times keeping around 30 fps. Much better fps if the weather is clear. That is enough to let go and make believe for a little while. Of course this is late at night when my daughter and wife are asleep. No flying once either are up. And also, I do not follow Robert Buck's weather flying recommendations. That is, in the real world there are more good weather flying days then bad so on the really bad weather days leave the plane on the ramp. Since this is the "Nexus" I have no compunction about taking off on a crappy weather day.No, nothing about flight sims are like the real thing. A real Cessna 150 is a VERY stable beast to fly. I have had some experiences with sim planes bordering on ludicrous with regards to flight characteristics. Any of you with kids know the SpongeBob episode where he and Patrick used their "imagination" and played inside a cardboard box. You kind of have to embrace that concept with flight sims. I am liking x-plane X. But I have liked every version of x-plane, Microsoft flight simulator, Fly, Red Baron, Red Baron 3D, Rise of Flight, IL2 all versions through Cliffs of Dover... You appreciate the parts that are close to real and the rest is imagination. It's 12:58 am and writing this is cutting into my Friday night flying time...Cheers!

Yah, it was disappointing to get the January 2012 issue and not a single line about x-plane 10. I figure the writers want the released version to explore and comment critically about. If there is no article in the next issue I will begin to wonder.

Does anyone know of a really high quality vintage biplane made for x-plane 9/10? I like the Stinson that came with x-plane 10 but want to do a virtual barnstorming flight from the east coast to the west with real world weather dialed in at each waypoint. It would be cool to do this in an old WACO or TravelAir biplane. I really want super high quality (Carenado standard quality). So far what I have found has been cartoonish in the cockpit. I haven't started the flight yet but if I can't find a really nice open cockpit plane I will go with the Stinson. I will request Carendo to consider making one really detailed vintage biplane. For me the fun in a sim like this is not in flying blind with electronics and GPS, but rather stick and rudder flying with weather challenges and navigating by sectional map and a stop watch and basic navigation tools. What I hope to experience is something I always wanted to do -- fly across he country in an old plane without even VOR and avoiding controlled airports. Maybe pretend it is 1935 and make a side trip to Troy Ohio. I guarantee if I was a teenager in the mid 1920's I would have beelined to Troy Ohio and would have swept floors and taken out the trash to be part of the WACO factory.I am a private pilot and can't afford to fly anymore. Even if I could air traffic is much more intense these days than even when I got my license back in 1979. I suppose the first farmer's field I side slipped to land at I would wind up on CNN and be destroyed in a media circus. I have had about 4 sessions with x- plane 10 so far and am really amazed, especially my last flight set at night. All the cars on he road have headlights! So far I am very amazed at the immersiveness of x- plane 10.I think sims have lent themselves to instrument flying making flying heavies and using highly complex electronic equipment in those cockpits very interesting to a lot of flight simmers. I have been after an immersive flying experience, feel of the airplane, weather flying, challenging airports and simple flight with my head out of the cockpit more than in. Am I in the minority? There are certainly more "heavies" being produced and few to none really interesting stick and rudder planes that are a challenge to take off and land and more of a challenge in really interesting weather.

I use saitek x52 pro joystick/ throttle and saitek pro rudder pedals. I noticed in x-plane 9 and now 10 that no matter what plane I am flying the plane eventually wants to bank right and I have to use the keyboard aileron trim (8,9,0) to level the wings for extended flight. I assume this is a physics effect. Real aircraft I have flown (Cessna 150, piper warriors, citabria decathlon's) never had pronounced issues like this. These planes only had a trim tab control for the elevator anyway, not ailerons. I can only assume that if real world pilots and instructors noticed a stability issue with roll that a permanent fix would be applied to overcome whatever force is causing the roll when the stck is neutral. I haven't tried to save a situation but assume I can set a particilar plane up to overcome the roll issue and can park the plane on the ramp then load that situation to start and fly and not have to worry over aileron trim again.

Next step is to reload my Saitek drivers and check for updates. Maybe it is a purely joystick issue. All I can report is that one time I can start the program and fly a Stinson off the run way with no problems; then quit the program, restart at the same airport and parameters, everything identical and once I put in throttle the plane swerves out of control wildly to the left or right. I didn't see a "tailwheel" lock command so am assuming it isn't a real world issue with flying a Stinson. Also, if I do manage to get the plane off the ground the joystick is still not able to stabilize the plane. Usually it just slews wildly and crashes the plane.

Discovered another issue. My joystick and rudders began behaving erratically again and I noticed the joystick was not centering proper. I went into the Saitek properties through Devices and Printers on my desktop and when I got to the joystick properties noticed it was not centered properly on this screen. Then lights started flashing on my joystick buttons and the cross hairs for the joystick moved around erratically for a minute -- then it all stopped and centered. I went back into x-plane and everything was centered properly, then took off in the Stinson with null zone set back to zero and all was fine. The plane tracked normally.I use this joystick and rudder in Rise of Flight and have no issues at all. So now I am going into the device properties for my joystick prior to every x-plane flight and making sure everything is centered there and before I fly in x-plane I check to see everything is centered there.It seems like a random thing. I can go in 2 times and no problems and the third time I try to take off in the Stinson and once I give it some throttle the plane veers wildly, and if I happen to get the plane in the air it is all over the place,No idea what is causing this but have to assume it is a problem within x-plane. As I said I do no calibrations at all in Rise of Flight and there has never been an issue with controlling planes on the ground or in the air. But when the joystick goes out of center in X-Plane it stays out of center outside of x-plane. Weird.

See attached pic of artifact that occurs at startup. Does not affect flying in the sim, just the load screen.Using an ATI 6950 video card, all drivers up to date.

I have been using flight sims since '97. I got my private pilot's license back in the late 70's, flew for a number of years then the hobby just got too expensive so I REALLY appreciate flight sims. I trained in Piper Tomahawks, flew Piper Warriors and an old Cherokee, also had quite a few hours in Cessna 150's and Citabria Decathlons. I have a wife and a 5 year old now (yah, I am 52 and have a 5 year old) so most of my simming is in the middle of the night on Friday and Saturday. I have the Saitek X52 Pro joystick and throttle and Saitek Proflight rudder pedals. I also have a Trackir 5. For me using flight sims a few hours a week is a quality of life booster.So, I was all over X-Plane 10 and got my discs this week. I used the installer sent to me via email and immediately ran the X-Plane 10 updater just after installation. When I started it up for the first time I had the X-Plane 10 desktop manual PDF pulled up on my ipad and followed the recommendations in the manual for setting up equipment and rendering options.I have a Dell XPS 8300 that I bought really cheap at Best Buy last January. It has an i7 2600 processor, 8 gig of system ram and a 1.5 TB hard drive. This computer with the i7 processor was on the shelves at Best Buy for less than a month and were all pulled due to a processor recall by Intel. Dell sent out a tech a few months later and swapped out my MB with an updated i7 processor for free. I have since updated the power supply to 650 watts (from 450) and installed an ATI 6950 video card with 2 gig of VRAM.Not the fastest rig on the planet but works pretty well for under $1500.00 total. I also have a Samsung 23" LED monitor that I got on sale.Every 4 years or so I buy a new computer then upgrade it as much as I can reasonably afford in order to run flight sims -- and, as I explained to my wife, to keep up with the technology for internet use and photo editing. Before my daughter came along I could actually do some simming during the day. Today is a rare day to devote to simming and writing about X-Plane 10. My daughter is sitting next to me drawing and dipping popcorn into chocolate pudding as a snack. She did eat all of her lunch.I guess flight simmers who have been at this for a while are not strangers to hardware and software problems. For us, using flight sims is an exercise in persistence -- and I think on a much grander scale it is the same for flight sim and airplane creators. Since MFS X stalled out X-Plane 10 is the biggest new evolution in the hobby -- taking advantage of new processors and video cards to produce more interesting and immersive effects.X-Plane 10 has just been released and The X-Plane creators have always been good about releasing updates often (I have been using X-Plane 9). No program this large and complex is going to be problem free right off the bat and I think the developers are still working on major elements of the program which will be released soon I am sure.For now I can start the program, use my equipment and fly around with no problems.So to get steady 30 + FPS I have the following basic settings:Number of airplanes set to 1 (just mine)Extreme Res16x aniostropic1920 x 1080 32 bitTrees: PopulatedObjects: defaultRoads: defaultCars: noneWorld distance: highairport detail: highShadow detail: overlay. I simlply can't use the global shadows without driving frame rates way down.Water relection detail: defaultHDR: on with all functions within special effects checkedHDR antialiasing set at FXAA. my machine can't handle the 4x setting. Remember to set the anti aliasing at thge top of the rendering screen to none. I think HDR is one of the major improvements so I want to use this even if it costs some frame rate.I have "file compression to save VRAM" unchecked and the amount of VRAM used indicated at the bottom of the screen says 1098.35 MB. My card has 2 gig of ram available and I wonder if the visual quality of texture is better without compression. I'll have to play with this.I also set number of cloud puffs to 25%. I like to see scattered clouds but they really cut into the frame rates. I may have to reduce this even more though.When I start the program, just before the airplane appears on the runway I get this weird silver block that covers half my screen and looks like a 3d image of a cone looking down from the top with reflection and shading. It goes away when the airplane appears on the runway. Not sure what that is all about but doesn't seem to affect the sim.Like every other sim I have used, I roll up my sleeves and persist to get it to a place I can fly reasonable well, then forget about what I can't change and enjoy the sim. My goal now is to take a Stinson into the Northwest and just fly in all kinds of simulated weather and terrain. I am not really into flying heavies -- not that I don't want to try but I just don't have the time. After a few hours this weekend of goofing with settings I think I have everything set optimally. Now to wait and see what future updates will provide -- and what new airplanes there are I can purchase. I'd like to virtual barnstorm in an old WACO biplane from one side of the US to the other (taking a special trip to Troy Ohio of course). And see if I can download real world weather as I go and flying if I can, not flying if weather is socked in, from way point to way point. Sort of a Richard Bach thing. Maybe I will run into a virtual Donald Shimoda on the way.I have learned to embrace a bit of philosophy -- there are no problems in the present moment. There are only two things you can ever do in the moment: either work to solve a problem/do something about it -- OR completely accept that there is nothing you can do. Acceptance is a powerful thing and necessary sometimes. Otherwise you create pain in your life. Eckhart Tolle explains all of that really well.So, change what you can -- improve your hardware as you can afford, provide feedback to the developers but if you simply can't run all of the renedering options maxed out then accept that and find a configuration that works AND FLY. Have fun.Off the soapbox.

The first plane I flew after loading x-plane 10 was the Cessna -- just to get my bearings and play with rendering options etc. I had a devil of a time tracking that plane straight down the runnway for take off. I could do it but it was not like the real thing. I am a private pilot and flew Tomahawks, Warriors, Cherokees, Cessnas and Citabria Decathlons (taildragger). A Cessna with no violent wind gusts should track down the runway to rotation pretty smoothly. I tried the Stinson and that was a wild ride getting that thing off the ground. The rudder inputs were way too sensitive and the plane was all over the runway on takeoff.So I went through the calibration process and checked off the far right block in Data input and output, setting number 8: Joystick ail/elv/rud and all of my joystick/rudder inputs were right on. Finally I went into Settings/Joystick & Equipment/Nullzone and pushed the Nullzone from zero to 15. That did the trick. I still need to play with this setting but now the Cessna tracks fairly realistically and I can get the Stinson off the ground fairly realistically.I have Saitek Proflight Rudder pedals and Saitek x52 pro stick and throttle. I don't know if the same issue applies to all equipment or if it is just a sensitivity issue with Saitek equipment but per the flyout info when you hover your mouse over Nullzone -- my equipment must just be somewhat "noisy".

I have Trackir 5 and it works. You have to check it off in the Joystick & Equipment menu under Equipment tab/Accessories then go into the View menu and check off 3-D Cockpit Mouse Look. I think the Trackir takes over the ouse look. I tried the PilotView plugin and it worked at first then started having weird problems so took it out.