anthony31

Any IDE will do but the most common used is MS Visual C++ so most examples will use that as an example. I use 2010 version but compile with the 2008 toolset (as that is closer in time to the original FSX so usually means most users will have the runtime libraries installed). For example, here is a link to a tutorial on how to configure the SDK with C++ Express: http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?158992-Configuring-Platform-SDK-with-C-Express You can use C but don't. 99% of examples are in C++. You can use XML but there are limits to what XML can do which only can be achieved via C++ (for example, I think with C++ you should be able to control the transparency of your gauge as you wish but not with XML). You will need to get Dai Griffiths guide simply because it fixes a number of bugs in the headers that MS supplied (and also contains a tutorial on C++ programming for FSX). Search the avsim file library for Dai Griffiths for something like: sd2gau32.zip (I think 32 is the latest version).

Props scare me. I don't even stand directly side-on to a spinning prop. Jack Newton was a professional Australian golf player until he walked into a prop of a Cessna in 1983. He lost his right arm, an eye and had some severe abdominal injuries but managed to survive. He now does TV commentary and can still play a pretty mean game of golf one handed.

Here is a link to a PDF I found about the flight controls for the Electra. 27 pages of it with lots of diagrams and pictures of the flight controls. Lots of cables and hydraulic booster pumps used in the Electra. http://www.spruemaster.com/blog/wp-content/gallery/manual/Lockheed%20L-188%20Electra%20-%20%20Electra%20Flight%20Control%20S%20ystem%20Part%202.pdf Take the time to download it as it really explains the workings of the Electra rather well. If you want to know how an aircraft works it is always worth a search for the aircraft name + "illustrated parts". If you are lucky someone will have uploaded a PDF of the Illustrated parts catalog for the aircraft which really goes into the nuts and bolts of all the parts that put a particular aircraft together.

Mmmm Fish bladder Yummmm.

The quick fix for the sounds is to edit the wav file. Add some silence to the end and it will do as you require. For the tree scenery, is it autogen trees? If so then you need to set IS3 to "do not supress autogen". Been a while since I used IS so I can't tell you where the option is but it should be in there somewhere. Whenever you place a scenery object FSX will clear autogen automatically so you need to specifically tell FSX not to do this.

It is a peculiarity of FSX. There is no dedicated commands for opening individual doors. There is the TOGGLE_AIRCRAFT_EXIT command (pardon me for using the event ID) which appears as "Doors select (open/close)" in the FSX controls. This will open/close the main door. For other doors you must immediately follow the TOGGLE_AIRCRAFT_EXIT with a KEY_SELECT_1 command ("Select Item 1" to "Select Item 4" in the FSX controls). As Peter says, in practice this means pressing the "e" key and then pressing the 1,2,3 or 4 key depending on which door you want to open. Pressing "e" then "1" is the same as pressing just "e". If FSUIPC can assign multiple commands to a single key then you could assign TOGGLE_AIRCRAFT_EXIT and KEY_SELECT_2 or KEY_SELECT_3 or KEY_SELECT_4 to any key you like for one key door opening.

I like the one reviewer who wrote "it's the WarZ of plane simulators"

No. The weapons do not destroy ai or scenery.

Yep, I get them too. They are shadows being cast by the mouse zone polygon. For example, on the temp gauge gauge there are two triangles, mousing over the areas (even those not directly on the gauge) will show a tooltip (Oil Pressure on the left or Oil Temperature on the right). Usually the polygon should be invisible and the material should be set to "No Shadows = true". Near impossible for the end user to adjust this in anyway beyond turning off cockpit shadowing (or always flying into the sun). I suggest a bug report to P3D?

Hello Mr fuelpumps Here is the full list of the differences between the A, B/C and D models. - B/C and D has 1425 hp engine vs 800hp in the A model - B/C and D have 3 bladed prop vs 2 bladed in A model - B/C and D have a lower profile canopy - B/C and D have 6 weapon stations vs 2 in the A model - B/C and D available as payware only vs A available as donationware - B/C has a different panel layout with the location of many instruments changed - B/C has a different attitude indicator, airspeed, manifold pressure and engine rpm gauges - B/C has different cockpit and gauge lighting - B/C has different switch panel and exterior lighting system - B/C have a speed brake - C model has a tailhook for carrier operations - B/C has US Navy and Marines repaints, the D has Air Force, Fennec and COIN repaints, the A has US Air Force repaints The layout of the gauges (and some of the gauges themselves) are rather different between the B/C and the A/D. Not so much that it should worry you but it does make you stop and think if you have to swap between the A/D and the B/C. The operation of the switch panel is also rather different. In this respect getting the B/C would mean having to learn a few new things while transitioning to the D model would be a lot simpler as you would only need to learn how to use the supercharger. Most D models (although not all) were originally A models but modified with the larger 1425hp engine that was fitted to the B and C which is why the cockpits of the D and A are so similar. Really it comes down to personal preference.

What does your motherboard tell you? All motherboards have a bunch of onboard led's for various components to let you know what's working and what's not. eg VGA led for graphics card, CPU led and memory led (refer to your motherboards documentation for a description and location of these leds) . If your computer crashes or doesn't start one of these led's may be lit red which is going to help ID any probable cause. Of course, my case has a see through panel which makes checking the MB easy, you may need to remove the side panel to check yours. I had a problem a couple of weeks ago where the PC wouldn't start up (leading up to this were occasional "Display driver stopped working" messages). The VGA_led was red which indicated the graphics card was the issue. Turns out that the graphics card was a bit saggy in the motherboard so I propped up the corner with an old paintbrush and haven't had a problem since (except for my expensive Logitech mouse which seems to have worn out the left click button, note to self: Don't buy Logitech ever again).

Before buying something why not try a demo first? It will help you get an idea of what addons can do for your FSX setup. ORBX have a demo of their PNW scenery which you can download from here: https://www.fullterrain.com/product_demos.html And some freeware airports here: https://www.fullterrain.com/freeware.html

Quote: "Secondly, what is it about the flight dynamics engine which is flawed? As I understsand it, each aircraft has its own particular FD model. So if we look at Majestic's Q400 or PMDG's family, or A2A's 172, or Real Air's Duke, we would argue that the 'flight dynamics' are pretty accurate, because the developers made it so. That says to me that the methodology of creating 'the flight model' is unique and specific to each aircraft." It is important to understand that FSX calculates the flight model and it is FSX that determines how the aircraft will move based on the parameters the developer sets in the aircraft.cfg and .air files No developer (except for Majestic as far as I know) creates a flight dynamics model at all. In Majestic's case I believe they turn off the FSX flight dynamics model (which is easy to do via the command FREEZE_LATITUDE_LONGITUDE_TOGGLE) and use their own logic to move the aircraft in FSX. All other developers, when you get right down to it, are essentially using the FSX flight model. The differences are in what settings the developer is providing to the FSX flight model. The aircraft.cfg is mostly concerned with airplane geometry (ie wing size, dihedral, weight, engine type and size etc etc). The .air file largely consists of a bunch of tables (or graphs with an input in the X axis and an output in the Y axis) which FSX uses to calculate the aircraft behaviour and this is where most of the magic happens. For example, Table 404 is the Coefficient of lift versus Angle of Attack. Want to work an aircraft spin behaviour and its tables 451 (Scalar on Cl beta due to AOA), 456 (Scalar on Clp due to AOA), 460 (Scalar on Cn Beta due to AOA) and 464 (Scalar on Cn r due to AOA). (One limitation of the FS Flight model I can give you is that each of these tables only permits a maximum of 9 entries which means that the graph is rather coarse). You may also work on table 473 (Pitch moment vs AOA). As for flaws, well one I can tell you is that there is only one wing in FSX. There is no such thing as biplanes as far as the FSX flight model is concerned. The other problem with this is that you can't stall just one wing in FSX (ie the left or right wing). If you are interested in looking at an air file I recommend downloading the Aircraft Airfile Manager V2.2 (it's freeware). With this program you can load any airfile and check out the tables and settings it contains. Most table has a short description explaining what it does. You can get AAM to work with P3D files by simply opening the options and adding the P3D directory to one of the search paths.

In answer to Andreas question msvcr100.dll is the microsoft visual C runtime library version 10. The file is found in your Windows/System32 folder and is installed as part of the visual C runtime libraries which are available from MS. The error though is a runtime error (compiler errors start with C rather than R but users will never to see a compiler error) Here is what the C++ documentation say about R6025: C Run-Time Error R6025 pure virtual function call No object has been instantiated to handle the pure virtual function call. If you are seeing this from an application, contact technical support for your application. This error is caused by calling a virtual function in an abstract base class through a pointer which is created by a cast to the type of the derived class, but is actually a pointer to the base class. This can occur when casting from a void* to a pointer to a class when the void* was created during the construction of the base class. For more information, see the http://support.microsoft.com/kb/125749 That pretty much tells me that the problem is a programming problem and that would make it very difficult for end users to determine the exact problem (or even fix it). It may not be P3D though causing the problem. It could be a gauge in an aircraft or a .exe or .dll addon which is connecting to P3D via simconnect.

Can you still get SP1 and SP2 from Microsoft? AVSIM hosts SP1 and SP2 (english versions only though) under file names: fsx_sp1_enu.zip fsx_sp2_enu.zip Links to the downloads are: http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=170823 http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=170824 Note that you need to update to SP1 first and then update from SP1 to SP2 (you can't go straight to SP2). The FSX versions are: RTM: 10.0.60905 SP1: 10.0.61355 SP2: 10.0.61472 XPack: 10.0.61637 (Acceleration) An application made with simconnect SP2 will not work with earlier versions of FSX.

Try downloading each of the parts. And then use a checksum util to verify the downloads are OK Only then should you try to install. This forum post contains some useful info including a suggestion on which checksum util you can use. http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=5795

Would you like to be a survey creator? A. Yes please B. No thanks C. No way, I don't need the abuse from disgruntled flight simmers. D. What's the pay? E. What? No pay! But there must be free beer and pizza right?

You know, if you stopped constantly posting at AVSIM you'd have finished that Flight Simulator by now :lol: .

Also, most of use have assumed the OP needs to create airport buildings and the like. If the OP just wanted to add some generic buildings and trees to the photoreal scenery he has then maybe all he needs to use is the Autogen Annotator. This will allow him to load each piece of photoscenery and draw autogen trees and buildings onto it rather easily. The Annotator is part of the FSX SDK.

You will need some sort of graphics program (to create textures). Top of the line is Photoshop but that is very expensive. Cheaper options are Photoshop Elements or Corel Paint Shop Pro (both have demo versions). Cheapest option is a free program like GIMP. You will need DXTBMP to convert the textures to the special DXT format used by FSX. You can use Imagetool (part of the SDK) to do this but DXTBMP is easier to work with. You will need some sort of modeling program. Gmax is free but very complicated. Sketchup and ModelConverterX (from fsdeveloper.com) are good free alternatives and should be good for most simple scenery. You will need to be able to place the models. Instant Scenery is great for this as it does it in game which allows you to see exactly what you are doing. You will need a program to create a bgl that contains your model files. Instant Scenery has one but there is a better free one called LibraryCreatorXML (from fsdeveloper.com) You will need ADE. This can allow you to place models but it won't do it in game. You may need SBuilderX. This allows you to create excludes and flattens to get rid of existing scenery objects (ADE may do this as well so depending on what you are doing ADE may be all you need here). You will need to install the FSX SDK,

At the risk of being accused of self promotion: 1950's era two seater trainer: T-28A Trojan (free and compatible with P3D V2 and FSX) www.antsairplanes.com

Nope. As far as I am aware you cannot exclude photoreal scenery. You can only overwrite it with new photoreal scenery. Excludes are vectors and really only work on other vector scenery (ie roads, airport boundaries, water polygons, streams etc) If there was anything worth trying it would be an Airport Boundary with Flatten + MaskClassMap + ExcludeAutogen although I would be surprised if it did work on PR. Of course, if the PR scenery is something you made yourself then you can just put a hole in your Blend tiff.

Here's a couple of possibilities you make like to test if you are still stumped. 1st step would be to pull out the bgl and restart FSX. FSX should rebuild the scenery library. If it doesn't then your scenery folders aren't setup properly. If it does rebuild then quit FSX and stick the bgl back in because your scenery folders are setup right. 2nd thing is make sure you have all seasons and months covered in your .inf? If you missed April and, well today is in April, then your scenery probably won't display.

Second Paul's reply. FS Water Configurator is the tool you need. And it's free! Adjusting the Base-Texture Color Intensity on FSWC is a quick way to adjust the brightness or darkness of the water

I'll back up what Brian says. Checking the textures in Scenery/World/texture (that's the folder that contains all default landclass, road, railway and water textures) using the browse function of DXTBMP against those same textures in FSX I couldn't find any that were different. A comparison of the .agn files (autogen data) also seems to indicate no difference between FSX and P3D. Autogen files will change in size depending on the amount of data (ie trees and buildings) they contain. If the texture files were different then the autogen files would also likely be different. Texture files are the same filesize as long as the texture is the same size (ie 1024x1024 pixel textures are 683kb in size)