Wing

I want to get a mesh product for FSX:SE and I'm debating between FSGenesis's 19m North America product and their 10m United States product. Am I going to see much of a difference between 19m and 10m? Is there a notable performance hit between 19m and 10m? Finally, would the "airport on a hill syndrome" (not sure if it has an official name--I'm talking about when the airport elevation doesn't match with the surrounding mesh so it looks like it's at the top of a cliff) that seems to be a side effect of third-party mesh be less pronouced with 10m mesh vs. 19m? Google didn't really give me an answer for any of these questions. EDIT: I thought of another question. If I get 10m terrain and it causes performance problems, can I set the mesh resolution to 19m in FSX and get the same performance and visuals as if I had bought 19m mesh in the first place? (Which I know would make buying 10m terrain a waste but at least it would allow me an "out" if I'm not happy with the performance of the full 10m resolution.)

Are those 3D gauges I see?

From "Regulations For Operation Of Aircraft": Rule #9: No machine must taxi faster than a man can walk.

Disagree with what? As I said: "Everyone accepts that things can slip through during testing..." It sounds like we agree on that point. What I don't agree with is molleh being called "insulting" for questioning the thoroughness of a beta testing process that misses one of the primary flight instruments malfunctioning in a big way. That's not a minor "slip through," that's a colossal oversight, and his comment was entirely fair and valid. Good luck.

This looks awesome, listening to some MP3 audio transcripts now, sounds great. I am definitely going to give it a try (thumbs up on the free trial). You guys should advertise because I'd never heard of this either.

It didn't sound like molleh was being insulting, he as a valid point. Everyone accepts that things can slip through during testing, but the turn coordinator is a big deal. Verifying its correct operation is part of the taxi checklist every competent pilot performs before a flight, and it would certainly be a glaring issue during instrument flight. Sorry, but there's no excuse, someone dropped the ball on this one (pardon the pun). Isn't the point of "beta testing" to actually test things and make sure everything is working? If not it's just "beta playing around."

I just took a look at the screen shots and am so disappointed by that modern panel. For me the C177s have a distinctive looking panel and that's part of the appeal, just like the distinctive looking exterior. I realize these are 40 year old aircraft and there are probably very few that are 100% original, but Flight1's looks like something someone took to the avionics shop with $40,000 and told them to gut it and replace everything. The feel of the classic Cessna is gone. I didn't think I could imagine a scenario where a developer would release a C177 and I wouldn't buy it, but Flight1 has managed to come up with one.

For a light twin, the Just Flight Flying Club Duchess is something I never see mentioned anywhere but is one of my very favorites. The cockpit engine sound (done by Turbine Sound Studios) is the absolute best I've heard in any FSX add-on. The graphics are less than high resolution, but it doesn't bother me at all. It has a fake GNS430 that does nothing but tune the radios, but if you have the RXP GNS430 it swaps in perfectly; even the 3-D knobs line up. (You will need to edit the Panel.cfg to add the RXP GPS, but it's a simple process.) I did have to do some light tweaking to the Aircraft.cfg; for one thing they have the engines unrealistically set to turbocharged by default (a simple fix by changing the "turbocharged=" value in the Aircraft.cfg from 1 to 0). I also don't like that they have CGI passengers in the virtual cockpit (some people may like this but I find it a little creepy). You can turn them off by changing the payload for copilot and passengers to 0, but if you do that your aircraft will constantly want to bank to the left because of the way FSX works in this regard. What I did was change the third "station_load.0" value in Aircraft.cfg from 0.75 to 0, which is like putting the pilot's weight on the center line (I also set the first value of "station_load.0" to 360 which simulates having two 180 pound people in the front seats instead of just the pilot). After a few simple tweaks the JF Duchess has become one of my most loved and most used add-ons. The MilViz C310 has gotten a lot of praise for its flight model but it's not particularly one of my favorites (for one thing I'm not a fan of the way they did the virtual cockpit). You really need rudder pedals to get the most out of its flight model. The only Tomahawk I know of is the one in the Just Flight Flying Club. I bought it because I like Tomahawks but I was not impressed with it at all and never fly it. Carenado makes a Cherokee Archer and Arrow, but in my opinion they are the two worst offerings Carenado has in terms of flight model. I do like their Cherokee 180, but sadly its panel is not very well equipped and not appropriate for IFR flight.

Flight1 is supposedly going to release an updated version of the Cardinal; in fact in December Jim Rhodes said, "it's the next one out....and hopefully very soon." However, weeks go by with no news, and there doesn't seem to be any "buzz" about this thing so who knows what state it's in or what F1 is doing with it, if anything. I love Cardinals in real life, I loved the old Dreamfleet Cardinal, and I'm sure I'd love this one, but getting your hopes up about flight sim add-ons is a recipe for despair. http://www.simforums...topic37474.html

Carenado's C182Q is one of my all-time favorites. Like the real Skylane it is relatively fast for a piston single, will go pretty much anywhere, and flys like a Cessna. It's slightly dated compared to Carenado's newer offerings, but it's a good value at about $20 and is an excellent platform to practice VOR technique.

Count me among those scratching over what the administrators are thinking. The new Classifieds section is a flop, it makes no sense to stick with something few people use, no one likes, and everyone wants to see replaced.

What does that mean? I think it's unanimous that EVERYONE liked the old system better. Kudos for trying to improve things, but you took something that wasn't broke and tried to fix it. Maybe it was less "powerful" but it was accessible, people liked it, people used it, and it worked perfectly. It's time to put it back.

I really, really wish Carenado would go back and bring some of their older planes up to the feature set that the new ones have instead of just churning out one new plane after another. 3D gauges, better flight dynamics, easy RXP integration, etc. Particularly the PA28 series. Wishful thinking on my part, I know.

YES!!!!

I check their website about once a week hoping for something new in the "coming soon" department... been disappointed for a long time.

I agree. They tried to fix something that wasn't broken. I've bought thousands of items from Amazon over the years (I have a Prime membership I buy so much stuff there) and that's never once happened to me. You really should give them a try. Great service and, as someone else pointed out, really easy to return stuff.

They are more expensive than a regular rubber-dome-switch keyboard for sure, but compared to other quality mechanical-switch keyboards (like Filco or Das Keyboard) they are close price-wise. For the "it's just a keyboard" crowd these are not a contender, but if you do a lot of typing a mechanical keyboard is something you should definitely consider. Even with the customization and all the extras I got, it was less than the cost of my Saitek rudder pedals, and it's something I will use for everything, not just FSX.

In my quest for the ultimate keyboard I've done a lot of research and wound up ordering from WASD Keyboards (wasdkeyboards.com). I received my keyboard today and I have to say it's absolutely wonderful. I ordered the Cherry MX Blue switches, with the 40A rubber O-ring switch dampeners. I also ordered the wrist rest (the only thing I'm not 100% pleased with, but I'll get used to it).The Cherry Blue switches are just amazing; "butter" is the first word that came to mind. They are "clicky," but the O-rings take out a lot of the noise from the keys bottoming out. For me it's the perfect mechanical keyboard sound without it being overboard. (You can also get Cherry Brown switches, which are supposed to be much less noisy, but I like the tactile and audio feedback of the Blues as I do a lot of writing and the Blues are supposed to be the best for typing.)There are other keyboard manufactures that make comparable Cherry MX keyboards but what sets WASD apart is that, for a few extra bucks, you can custom design your own keycap set. I did this and came up with a design I thought would be nice for everyday typing and general computing. However, it occurred to me that you could also make a keycap set that was customized for FSX. The "G" key could have the word "Gear" on it (by itself or in addition to the "G" as you can put two lines of text on each key), the F2-F3 keys could have "Throttle -" and "Throttle +", and on and on. Each keycap can have its own color, so the person with a good imagination could really come up with a nice design tailored specifically for FSX. You can also buy just the keycap sets without the base keyboard, so you can potentially have multiple keycap sets without having to purchase separate keyboards (although swapping out 104 keycaps before every flight is not something I would consider doing).I don't mean to make this sound like an advertisement (I'm not in any way affiliated with the company), I'm just a very happy camper, and contemplating the potential for a custom FSX keyboard. If someone does take the time to do a custom FSX layout I would love to hear about it.

What I would like instead of a movie is to have a laptop on one of the virtual cabin's tray tables that I could run FSX on.

I haven't tried one of these, but I did recently purchase a Logitech G700 Gaming Mouse which is a fabulous mouse for use with FSX. A great feeling mouse with lots of programmable buttons which can be configured on a per-application basis (it automatically switches to my FSX configuration when FSX starts so it's completely transparent in this regard). I also love that the mouse wheel can be switched to work with our without "clicks" (the clicks are great for working with radios, especially the GNS430).I will give the G13 a look, sounds like a good compliment to my other FSX hardware (although at almost $70 it does seem a bit pricey).

It probably also depends on your definition of "perfect." It ran abysmally on my i7 2600 3.4Ghz. Where I normally would get 60+ FPS I got 17-22 in the Mustang. That was in a rural area with clear skies; I didn't even bother to try it at a major hub with the weather turned on. As others have said, it looks gorgeous and the G1000 is great, but what good is it if the performance is so poor? It'd be nice if Flight1 would make a "lite" version for those of us without liquid hydrogen CPU coolers.

Looks like you purchased the J41 already, but I'll add my 2 cents anyway. I tried the Mustang for a week or so, and then took advantage of Flight1's money-back guarantee. Where I normally would get 60+ FPS with the default aircraft, I was getting in the low 20s/high teens with the Mustang. Adding to the problem was that the FPS were not consistent; they would jump around a lot, so it never felt smooth.The J41 gave me better FPS but not by much, somewhere around the mid 20s. However, the FPS are more consistent which helps the smoothness factor a lot. There also appear to be more options to dial down the VC model for (hopefully) better performance, but I haven't played with them yet.I don't have much experience with the J41 yet; I spent a couple of hours goofing around with the VC switches, skimming the manual and watching YouTube tutorials, and trying to get the thing started without the engines catching on fire. I finally got it up in the air successfully which felt pretty good. I have a fondness for this class of aircraft; back before 9/11 I took several flights between Seattle and Bellingham in a similar class aircraft (don't remember the exact make/model), and the pilot would leave the cockpit door open so you could watch everything that was going on. Lots of fun. I have a feeling I'm going to get a lot of long-term enjoyment out of the J41.

Fine, but does anyone know what parameter affects this? Is it in the aircraft.cfg or the .air file, and what is it called?

I was contemplating starting a thread on this very topic but Jose pretty much said what I wanted to say. I just don't get the seemingly endless whining and "more more more" mentality that some people have. It sucks the fun out of visiting the forums and talking about the joy of simming. Nah, someone will find a workaround regardless of what happens. There are too many brilliant people in the flight sim world. You think they're all going to roll over and play dead because of a DX patch?

When an aircraft is in a bank and you take your hands off the controls, it should naturally right itself back to wings level. Where can I find the parameter to increase/decrease this tendency?