Robert McDonald

hoping that if Skymaxx devs get active and work on 10.3x, we may see an improvement vis-a-vis heavy clouds... no word on the back channel on that as yet...

If you go into your x-Plane folder and find the x-Plane installer.exe program and run it - be sure the 'beta' tickbox is checked near the bottom of the screen, you will be asked if you want to update you 10.3b1 install. One of the dev's on XPlane site commented that beta1 got out the door with some silly bugs scattered in that should never have been in the public beta release. So if you're still flying beta release 1 of 10.3 Xplane - be aware there is now a beta 2 for you to try. I like it. Still missing the long-awaited horizon view at altitude enhancement (fix), but otherwise it's nifty, and the frames are GREAT.

Your analysis of Vatsim is spot-on. I pay $15 a month (based on 12-month commitment) to fly on PilotEdge. There are huge difference between Vatsim and PilotEdge and in a nutshell: Vatsim offers 'world-wide coverage' but chances are at any given time, you may have anywhere from NO ATC online to fully-staffed (during special fly-in events). One other thing I don't care for about Vatsim is the controller can 'close up shop' at any moment, with little to NO notice, and switch you to Unicom advisory frequency. In the RW that would NEVER be the case for a commercial jet flying an IFR flight plan. In plain language, Vatsim is a good place to 'learn how' to talk to ATC, but for ongoing flights I prefer PilotEdge, hands-down. PilotEdge offers 'point to point' ATC and you are 'handed off' from Clearance/Delivery to Ground to Tower to Departure, then various ATC 'centers' during mid-flight, then Approach, Tower and Ground at the other end. During flight you will be given the whole smorgasbord of ATC, including altitude & speed restrictions, visual, RNAV, localizer and ILS approach procedures, vectors to final, and impending traffic advisories. Pilot Edge operates 8am to 11pm 363 days a year Pacific Coast time. Their controllers are professional-grade, and there is no 'hi-jinks' as you sometimes find on Vatsim. The controller is watching your ILS flight, and if you wander off course or are at the wrong altitude, they will gently let you know. The more you learn about navigation and charts, the more you will enjoy the PilotEdge ATC. Pilot Edge primary coverage area is limited. Southern California plus San Francisco is it for 'now'. There is a possibility that they will open a New York hub, but that's not official. Major companies use PilotEdge to maintain pilot ATC currency, in lieu of extra wear and tear on the real airplane (plus related costs). No matter if you have a primitive joystick and a low end PC all the way up to a full blown simulator in an actual Boeing nose cone, PilotEdge to me is as important or more so than the very most expensive hardware a person can own, because now it's 'real' and not just the result of some programmer. Nothing against software engineers, but there simply is no substitute for a real human being watching your flight on his/her scope, and stepping you up and down as you go, all the way to your endpoint parking! You'll be busy all flight long with frequency changes as the controllers hand you over to the next ATC airspace. This is 'as real as it gets' imho. PilotEdge offers a no-credit-card-needed 14 day free trial. I was sold after two days. They have plans to fit any budget, including a 'per hour' plan if you don't fly much. Some people think 50 cents a day is too much and stick with Vatsim and are happy with 'sometimes' ATC. That's up to each individual pilot. I dropped a pay channel from my cable subscription, and thus PilotEdge has zero impact on my cash flow. And some folks are happier using a software-based ATC for a lot of reasons. This isn't 'wrong', it's just a choice. I flew Vatsim for about a year or so before discovering PilotEdge. I used to fly all over the USA, but find I truly enjoy shorter hops, where the workflow for the pilot is heaviest. Cross-country or trans-oceanic flights are in my view, unrealistic. I suspect a lot of pilots are multi-tasking when flying hours and hours over boring terrain at FL400. Again, though, it's a choice. Vatsim and/or PilotEdge offer you a degree of enjoyment that is an order of magnitude higher than even the most costly of flight deck setups. Without human ATC, you're just 'playing a video game' IMHO. When the controller says 'nice job' after a hairy landing, you really get a rush. They will ask you to speed up or slow down to maintain spacing, and issue hold-short instructions if you will be taxiing across active runways. If you have an emergency, they will clear the airspace and help you get down quickly and safely. The free trial says everything. If it's not for you, you will know inside 14 days.

Apologies, I meant "HD MESH", for some reason I had a brain-fade. Your mesh upgrade is a game changer, and belongs as standard' within XPlane IMHO, it's THAT NICE and THAT important. Thank you for building it!

i hear rumors that Skymaxx is coming out in version 2.x soon - which might help things at altitude and remove the muddy view at the horizon. Still, the frames have gone up, way up at the complex airports, which for most users is a clear victory. The OSM scenery (from Sim Heaven is astounding, teamed with the AiPilot HD Textures - and be sure to put everything in the correct order in your Scenery Packs.ini file (Sim Heaven has instructions for this). It -does- make a big difference!

Yes, it is missing afaik. Sorry - I guess I 'thought' Ben threw it in (He said he was) - but I dont notice any "IMPROVEMENT" at the high alt view to the horizon vs. 10.25 (stable). A buddy thinks 10.25 is better. I'm still testing.

Meh! :lol:

A long time waiting, and so far, holy goodness- she's a BEAUTY! The scenery, the new default USA airports... the weather (and yes, works just fine with Skymaxx Pro 1.3.3 thank you) and the FRAMES, Da Frames! Even Tatoo had to point to the screen refresh rates in amazement! Thanks, everyone on the team at Laminar! And the view from FL370 LA to Las Vegas? Priceless! Superlatives fail me, but you throw the new 10.3 artwork, and team it up with OSM North America and HD Textures - and you'll think you died and went to heaven. This is FAR FAR FAR superior to any flight experience I ever had on the competitors. And the frames are insane! Throw the new EADT x737 up there and ka-boom!

The download speeds from SimHeaven are far from heavenly! Also, you can only get one file at a time. You can NOT use a download manager program at all - their servers are set up to detect and block that. IOW, no "FlashGet" or anything like it! Try a different web browser (Internet Explorer / Chrome / Firefox) other than the one you're having troubles with. Also, try turning off your Internet Security software briefly to see if that's causing the trouble. Finally, you may need to flush out your cached (stored) Internet pages. Finally, your download will take a very long time to complete, even if you have a high speed Internet, because I think the SimHeaven website must be very overburdened. Makes sense, because their scenery is THE BEST 'add' I've put onto X-Plane 'lately' by far. Just sayin...

Hi Andy- We must be related... I started with the basic Thrustmaster Joystick/Throttle and eventually upgraded to the Warthog Hotas Throttle/Joystick. Now flying Saitek Combat Rudders and Radio Stack. I applaud the fact that you are taking your PC to the store to 'see it all work' up close and personal - I can't imagine a BETTER way to do that! Best of luck with your new setup! And X-Plane 10. Be patient- you'll enjoy it once you build it up a little.

Well, you're getting grand frames on 1 monitor in FSX from what I can see. Triple monitors appeal to me, but remember I have yet more monitors, 1 of which is a dedicated all-in-one to run the glass cockpit software ("Sim-Avionics" by FlightDeckSolutions of Canada) and another 1 to run the Sim-Avionics server, and also power the MCP panel and FMC units (hardware by FlightDeckSolutions). Actually the frames you got on the Asus monitors (3 of them) were quite acceptable for FSX IMHO. You're quite right, the PMDG NGX hits the frames quite hard. The new 777 by PMDG is supposed to be less harsh on frames, but that's an open question I cannot help with as I have left FSX behind for XPlane 10 (and limited testing on P3D v 2.2), In my opinion, flying with triple 27 inch monitors is a complete joy in XPLANE, no fish-eye effect to speak of in normal view, and I have 180-degree Field of View, which is obscenely grand when you are flying a pattern and turning base and final... you can look out your LEFT or RIGHT windows and yes (drumroll) you can SEE the airport/runway/traffic!! Flying with just one monitor, most pilots get involved with with TrackIR which is a royal PITA compared with the look and feel of triple-monitors. To each their own... you want to increase your immersion - and let's face it, you have a GRAND PC! Very high end. You have to realize that a LOT of work is going on to render everything particularly since FSX is NOT designed for Direct X 11 (P3D and X-Plane both use today's high end graphics cards). Sadly, PMDG does not YET offer aircraft for XPlane nor P3D, although their have been public statements made about both XP and P3D in terms of PMDG's possible 'future plans'. Of course, until they actually RELEASE something, it's all just vaporware. The hard money says sooner or later, you'll find your 'balance' in XPlane. You may toy with P3D as well. To each their own. I recommend FDS gear - it's pricey but its built to RW Scale, (their ProMax line) and their JetMaxx is a great way to dump the flying desk and have a mini-cockpit. I started with a mediocre PC with a low-end graphics card and FSX. Eventually I recognized that I loved eye candy (still do), and the hard limits of a 32-bit software world kill the benefits you intended when you built the monster system with a ton of RAM. The Virtual Ram deck in 32-bit land is limited to just 4GB. XPlane has already announced that upcoming versions will be using ALL of your system ram, 16GB and more! That is simply astounding. The advantage of the Sim-Avionics glass cockpit is that the complex "virtual cockpit" of the PMDG (which slays your frames) is gone, the Glass cockpit (on my system) is powered by a separate PC running the Sim-Avionics "server". The exterior of the plane is the EADT x737 (free download from EADT site). I removed the x737 plug-in (a single CPL file) and use the Sim-Avionics XPlane 737 flight model. You can run the entire plane off the Sim-A virtual software until and unless you elect to get 'real' hardware (I started with the FMC, then later the EFIS/MCP). The virtual controls are mouse-able (like the PMDG), and you can additionally assign keyboard commands to common functions like gear up/down, TOGA, fuel cutoff, APU start, Landing/Taxi lights, etc. Like you, I wrestled with the expenses involved in multiple PCs and then buying the FDS stuff. If you are serious about your hobby, you can justify the expense by averaging the costs over 3 or even 5 years. Taken that way, the expenditures are less than some other common hobbies I could mention. No reason to lock yourself in a dark room and bump your head on the 4GB hard-deck of FSX or P3D. Throw XPlane on there and see if it's for you. There are lots and lots of freebie software adds for XPlane - as well as some fine payware. Visit Sim-Heaven and look at the OSM scenery. It's mind-blowing. Very ORBX like, and yes - the OSM stuff is donation ware. (Free). Oh, I would stay with 27's. If you elevate them on stands (available at office supply stores) or you could possibly purchase the articulating wall-mount or desk-mount VESA monitor stands if your space is limited- that's a great solution and you pull the monitor base off completely. You mount the monitor via VESA holes on the back of the monitor to a vesa-compliant desk or wall mount stand. NOT ALL MONITORS have VESA HOLES! You need to read the specs or look at the back of your monitors to 'see' if they have the 4 mounting holes for VESA compliant stands. Given the better views, I think 3 main view monitors (27s) would be a good way to go. You can then consider a tilt-up all-in-one like the HP ROVE to run your instruments. The BIG HDTV monitors are simply "TOO BIG" if you're going to sit right in front of them. You'll get a neckache from looking up - and remember, a 1080 image on a 55" tv is nowhere NEAR the sharpness of that exact same image on a 27" at 1080 (or even higher) lines. Why? The distance between the vertical pixel rows is much greater as the monitor gets larger and larger. Remember how great 13" TVs used to look? And that was at 480 horizontal lines (standard def TV)! Same thing when you're building a cockpit. If you were going to put your flight console many feet away from the monitors, you could consider the gigantic HDTV screens... but for your setup, I think you'll be happier with some flavor of a 27" to maybe a 30" x 3 monitors.

+1 on this. My bud has a real 737 Boeing Cockpit in his garage at his home, and same deal, the real deal on all the electronics and hardware. He is struggling with the graphics, waiting to buy large LED screens to replace his overhead projector and movie screens and Matrox triple-head-to-go splitter. But sitting on the real Boeing sheepskin, and pulling back on the twin Boeing Yokes and moving the actual TQ levers and fuel cutoff switches, yada yada yada? PRICELESS! For everything else, there's XP 10 (or P3D). He's put in a buttkicker, and every switch and dial on the overhead works, has twin FMC's, brand new comms console... slurp, drool, slurp... oh, and it was a quick project, only took 18 years and 160K. Now THAT's GAMING!

Well, Outerra is certainly an amazing simulation - but as been written, is too small an area to 'work well' as a flight sim environment. The ortho-photo city sceneries from Sim-Heaven for X-Plane are HUGE, 2 and 3 GB per city, and of course, they only have 'major' cities thus far (S.F., New York, Miami, Chicago, many in Europe and other places like Dubai. I have previously suggested a hybrid remote 'power server' platform where all the 'horsepower' of the sim could reside on a huge 'server farm' and the user would have monitors and hardware going to that farm via the web... sort of like MS Flight "on steroids". Don't think that's going to happen either. To me, it's about the flight model coupled with eye-candy scenery. Right now, taking scenery, flight model, and FRAMES spread across 3 monitors / 3 pcs, the 'answer' (for me) is XP 10. It's still got some real warts, and the promised 10.3 release has yet to materialize. Tom Curtis has built a Winter Weather World for XP 10 but is awaiting the stabilization of the scenery platform, I think he's waiting for 10.3 as well. I have very high hopes for P3D - and I've put 2 items on my 'wish list' for it. 64-bits, and better networking support for the multi-monitor/multi-pc cockpit builders. Of course both of those 'wishes' are as yet just that...

I'd much prefer just keeping it to flight simming. There are many games ("The Sims") where you can emulate human interaction. My .02

PM me if you have questions about X-Plane 10. There is a little time needed for setup, but once you do - it rocks!

Sure. My center or 'main' pc is the i7 2600k Overclocked to 4.70 ghz stable on Noctua DH-14 air cooling, with GTX Titan GPU. The Two 'wing' pcs are i5's 3.20 ghz from membership club with upgraded power supply and upgraded 4GB msi GTX 770 OC video cards. Frames on center monitor generally stable at 30 fps (locked), the two wings can go as high as 180 fps in sky scenes to a low of 28 or so in extremely complex ground scenery at HD resolution with most sliders near their max. Most of the time, the wings are ranging between 30 and 60 or so, which is plenty fast! I would say average of 40 seems about right. Remember, these numbers are for XPlane 10, which handles a situation like mine much better (so far) than P3D's Multi-Player solution. I really wound up going back and forth between X-Plane, FSX and P3D. The thing that keeps bringing me back to XPlane is the frames and smoothness. New HD textures (free) and Aerosoft's OSM North America Scenery (free) have added to my long term commitment to XPlane 10.2x. No, Xplane is not 'perfect', but it seems to keep making quantum leaps, and now that I've accumulated a bunch of free and some payware airports and such, it's very competitive in my mind with it's 32-bit cousins, FSX and P3D. If flying with multiple monitors is important to you, I suggest long-term you'll be well served by considering XPlane as an addition to your sim stable. The XPlane demo is too time-limited to be practical, I bought XP on faith, and took my time setting it up.

YES, Norton 360 CAN and LIKELY IS slowing you down! Norton doesn't recognize flight sim as PC in use, and so tries to perform "background tasks" - look at your hard disk activity light! If it's blinking a lot during flight, indicative of disk thrashing (typical Norton 360 behaviour). You can right click on Norton 360 icon in your taskbar and choose TURN ON SILENT MODE, will stop the background Norton tasks, I typically turn it off for 1 day. It's really annoying. Second, at the risk of becoming unpopular on this forum, recommend you watch my videos (see link in signature block) and compare performance in P3D triple-screens vs. X-Plane 10 triple-screens. Clearly you have some financial means, so I'm going to crawl out on a limb and let you also know I bought a pair of "happy meal" (inexpensive Dell 8500's) from a membership club, they ran about $700 each with no monitor. Yanked the discrete (stand alone) base model nVidia video card out, installed msi 4GB GTX770 and upgraded Corsair 750 watt PSU in each PC. Frames and graphics performance in XPlane 10 are insane, and I'm completely satisfied. Caution: Many of the pre-built PCs do not offer a 'discrete' video card (they use motherboard graphics). That would not work for you if you want to put in an upgraded video card - because the motherboard may lack the proper slot for your add-in video card! So make sure if you're buying a 'pre-built' that it says "discrete graphics" on the box! That means there IS a plug-in video card slot. The stock video cards typically are 1GB of VRAM and the very lowest end of the performance curve. If you're going to buy a better video card, I suggest the 4GB (NOT the 2GB version) msi OC (overclocked from the factory) GTX770 (about $299 street). MSI has very nice air cooling (TwinFrozr) which is key when you're putting an upper end card into a tiny off-the-shelf PC case. Recommend IPS-type monitors for triple view. XPlane supports multiple PCs via network connection - and that's the heart and soul of great sim performance if you want more than one screen. Asking just ONE box (PC) to render everything including moving views spread across three monitors at 1080p, plus weather (clouds) and shadows - plus render the aircraft and perform all the in-flight calculations - well, it took me 2 years to realize but this was simply TOO MUCH WORK for one box, forget about 4.73ghz i7 overclocked and the fact that I have a GTX Titan (6GB)... I still got less than stellar frames with only ONE monitor after piling all the ORBX global, vector, NorCal, and every payware airport I could find on top of P3D. I love the 'look' of P3D - hands-down it's the prettiest girl on the planet right now. Unfortunately, it's not optimized for multi-monitors (Lockheed chose to remove multi-channel [network] support, though there is 'multi-player' which DOES permit triple screens [choose 'share aircraft'] but its not smooth enough for me. The views lose synchronization on the horizontal plane if you pitch the nose up and down suddenly in P3D. This is NEVER an issue in XPlane. Back channel efforts to have multi-channel put back into P3D have thus far proven fruitless. If LM brings that back and can make it work as expected, I think P3D (fully networked) would be the killer - especially if they also move to 64-bits so we can use every ounce of system RAM. Note: XPlane really needs a lot of VRAM on the video card(s), it's designed to use every drop of it...and does so with HD texture and scenery rendering. IPS-monitors look great regardless of viewing angle, and that is a factor when you have a 180-degree FOV (Field-of-View) on triple monitors. Also, there is a color balancing device called ColorMunki which does a wonderful job of matching up the color, contrast and brightness of ALL your displays - so colors are consistent on multi-screen views. Available at the rain forest website. Cheers and best of luck.

1- Graphics card: get a GTX Titan or Titan Black if you can afford it. 2- Plan "B" Buy a msi 4GB GTX770. Great performance and quite reasonable price. Requires DECENT power supply 750w or better recommended. 3- VRAM on the Video Card - long term, 4GB min, 6GB is better yet. AVOID 2GB and even 3GB. Monitor: IPS is best call, if you ever elect to switch to 3 monitors, you'll be glad you bought IPS! I have had great luck with HP 2711ix IPS monitor, very very THIN and very very small 'bezel'. Long-term, consider a 64-bit sim. Possibly P3D will go 64-bits in the not-distant future, you should buy XPlane Global and play with it. You'll be amazed. Both XPlane and P3D take advantage of the newer Graphics cards, FSX does not. P3D is designed for an requires DirectX 11. That's very important. Until P3D gets to 64-bits though, I personally think XPlane is better, with the caveat that you'll need to hunt around for airports and such. There is a wealth of free scenery floating around for XPlane, as well as some very good payware. If you're a tubeliner person, the free x737 EADT plane just got released in 32 and 64-bits in early May 2014 for XPlane 9 and XPlane10. It's quite cool.

You will see an improvement, sure. However, you would gain considerably more by considering a triple-PC setup with GTX 4GB 770 (recommend msi-brand with amazing TwinFrozr air cooling pipe system) and then go try X-Plane 10 with network setup. You will benefit from having the workload split up between 3 PCs instead of ONE PC driving three monitors. I've been where you are now, and honestly, the fish-eye effect was a buzz kill. Take a look at my videos (see link below my sig) for X-Plane 10 w/ 3 27" screens on 3 PCs. Frames are always 28 or higher, even at complex airports. Another side benefit: 64-bits - no more OOM errors. Video Card VRAM is critically important in XP10, which is designed to use ALL the GPU ram. 4GB or more is recommended for max textures and graphics. HD Textures (Free) plus Skymaxx 1.3.3 (clouds- payware) are both must-owns for XP10. Best of luck. Plan B might be Prepar3D with Multi-Player.

It's interesting that so many different members experience such wild variations in performance. Rob is right, when you start doing the high-definition graphics and anti-aliasing, a single PC, even a strong one, can have hiccups. That's why I have been trying so diligently to pursue a way that those who might wish it could somehow have multiple PCs and split the work and the graphics loads between all of them. I can testify that this theory indeed holds water on a competitive platform, I have flown it. The frames and smoothness are amazing. So while I'm likely the ONLY guy on the planet who wants it, I'm beating the drum hard on the back channel, hoping L/M might yet bring back "Multi-Channel" support to P3D v. 2.x

That's hysterical! Very very funny! Thanks for the chuckles. I'm speechless.

Sadly, many people posting on this forum are not experiencing the joys of 200 fps with a lot of third-party detailed-scenery and complex aircraft rendered in high-definition on P3D. If you're flying at high altitude with mostly sky and clouds to look at, you may see very high frames on a single monitor. On the ground at FSDreamteam KLAX in a complex airplane, with Orbx FTX global and vector 1.x? Not so much. P3D is a product that Lockheed markets to professionals and government for use in high end simulation and training missions. It's not designed as an "entertainment" platform (see the EULA). So 5-PC support on a cockpit build is not 'dreaming' when they are marketing to end-users like the U.S. military. Lockheed is a defense contractor, not a game company. If the highest-possible rendering and smooth stutter-free performance are important, offering a robust multiple-PC solution for those willing to build one seems prudent. Looking at some of the projects over at FlightDeckSolutions, you can see the glass cockpits and many screens wrapped around the aircraft on a full-scale cockpit build. That is easy to accomplish with some other flight sim platforms (think brand-X) and you would expect a company the size and means of LM to build something equally scalable. The fact that P3D at present has such a "hole" (lack of multiple PC support via a high speed network) seems like an oversight. Multi-channel was part and parcel of v 1.x of P3D, but they pulled it from v 2.x, I don't know why. You shouldn't be surprised that people who are avid simmers are willing to invest in gear that actually DOES solve the problem, or hardware that is full-scale. I wouldn't say things are overpriced in this hobby. Check out the prices for real aircraft parts, you'll learn the meaning of 'overpriced'. Someone suggested that Boeing could give their planes away for free, and live off the replacement parts sales. Every rivet, nut and bolt on that aircraft has to meet F.A.A. standards. And you can't buy real Boeing parts from Wal-Mart. But I diverge. Many of us started out with a single monitor and joystick, and used the keyboard for many of the commands. Just like some folks start out with model railroads with a simple oval track, no switches, and a generic model train. You have undoubtedly seen the high-end of model railroading, why should flight simulation be different? The advantage of model railroading is that the scenery is static, while the trains and a few other objects are animated. In a PC flight simulation, EVERYTHING is moving, and the more stuff you throw into the rendering, the lower your frames become. I'm talking about $1000 video cards and 4.7 or greater Ghz overclocked PCs and STILL the frames plummet. That's not surprising, it's simply a fact. The PC isn't just rendering graphics. It also has to compute the physics of the aircraft, taking variables like gusting wind, turbulence, icing conditions and more into account, along with inputs from the control surfaces, all at the same moment. P3D is a great platform with a tremendous amount of promise. Hopefully the two improvements I am suggesting will happen in the near future, for the benefit of all.

Well, hats off to Lockheed-Martin for TRYING. It cannot have been a simple matter, and P3D 'as it ships' from L/M is a nice sim platform, no question. The 'troubles' start when we the model-railroaders start piling all the additional eye-candy onto P3D - and of course the SIM gets blamed if ORBX (as an example) or FSDreamteam (as another example) are offering converted FSX products for installation onto P3D that are NOT optimized for it. One thing I wish L/M would do is to restore Multi-Channel support in addition to Multi-Player. I for one would like to take advantage of triple pcs driving triple monitors and have it 'natively' supported within the sim itself (as it is in the brand-X sim from Laminar.) Multi-Player simply doesn't synch-up well, and WideView doesn't either. Requiring three licenses of P3D in order to render the same flight situation across multiple monitors on multiple PCs, is pricey. Yes, I know you can split all the views off one "master" PC, but then you run into slowdowns because of all the heavy lifting being done by a single computer. More PC's are always going to perform better than just one. It's like the idea of multiple-cores. You can divvy up the tasks and get each PC to do a portion of the total job. Ultimately, that's the 'ideal' approach, IF the sim platform is designed for networking. Running it all off one PC is simply asking more than a system, even a GOLIATH system, can do. All-at-once expecting the sim to: render extremely high-def graphics and textures across triple monitors calculate the aircraft systems' flight and navigation data render additional add-on global scenery and texture packs render NOAA weather/clouds render a complex airplane like the iFly 737NG or a PMDG-equivalent ALL IN REAL TIME - That's a great concept, but the simple reality is - too much for just ONE computer! It's possible that someday L/M will release P3D in a 64 bit version, and restore the multi-channel support back into version 2.x of P3D. We can continue to dream...

I can tell you that SSD's can have issues with Marvel Sata 6 controller chips - e.g. those found on some Asus MOBOs, like the P8P67 Pro I own. I had all kinds of strange behavior until I simply moved the SSD to an INTEL Sata 6 "blue" plug on my motherboard, and stopped using the 'additional' 2 Marvel Sata 6 connectors. Just FYI. Added bonus, once on the Intel controller, you can easily update the SSD firmware if needed.

I think many 3rd Party Developers (3PDs) are sitting on their hands waiting for XP 10.3 to debut. The big goal at Laminar is to increase the hooks that the 3PDs can use to build on to bring XPlane up to the 'next level'. I am optimistic that when 10.3 leaves Beta and 'goes final' we likely will see a marked 'uptick' in X-Plane Scenery offerings along with some airplane models.