lzamm

Apologies if I wasn't clear. That suggestion was made by @SierraHotel. Just to clarify, not to continue the topic.

Interesting how challenges to deeply-held and unsubstantiated beliefs descend into attempts to discredit the proposer rather than critique the idea itself. Of course, there's not much else that holders of such beliefs can do, other than reiterate their blind faith in them. The suggestion has been made that the scientific community should drop its widely-supported hypothesis that consciousness is a physical process. This goes against the entire thrust of the scientific movement, which has explained practically everything else that was thought to lie in the realm of the gods as a natural process. That's basically what science does, and has done in spite of those who believed, and stood by their beliefs, in Thor's hammer creating thunder, a geocentric universe, non-evolution and the like. It's what the tools it has have been designed to do. I'm not saying that consciousness IS a physical process, just that it is the business of science to investigate how it can be explained as a physical process. Saying that "science [must acknowledge] that conciousness is seperate from mind" isn't any help, except for hand-waving apologists. For if it isn't a physical process, what is it? Contrary to popular imagination, scientists don't just go "looking for" something, they must have an idea - a working hypothesis, even if it's wrong - to look for. Perhaps one day those who know everything will come up with a concrete suggestion that can be investigated. Until then, scientists can only plod on along the only, and provably successful, path they know how to tread.

Seems to be the equivalent of X-Plane's Scenery Gateway.

VOR tracking has been missing from most airliners with a capable FMS since the 1980's - including the Boeing 757/767 and later products. The 737 has it only because Boeing wants the FAA to believe it's still the same plane it launched in 1968. There has also been a run-down of worldwide VOR stations, presumably to save costs in the presence of more modern navigation systems - with hindsight, a rather doubtful decision given the current rash of GPS spoofing events.

Although I had dabbled in flight simulation before, FS9 was the first one I spent any serious time upon. I just loved the Dreamfleet 727 and criss-crossed the world with it, enjoying every second on the ground and in the air. I held on to FS9 for an unconscionable time even after FSX came out, mostly because of that model (the fact that my PC wasn't very good helped), but eventually made the jump, and then to X-plane and latterly MSFS. I still have FS9 installed on my old machine and occasionally give it (and the 727) a spin, but I find the lack of a proper virtual cockpit and the clunky controls off-putting and quickly return to the modern world. So yes, I miss FS9 - like I miss most of my beloved childhood memories, that are better off for remaining memories and not being revisited.

The video is more about moving to haptic (motion feed back) sidesticks rather than yokes, which makes a lot of sense.

From its description:

Sorry, double post.

I tend to agree with this sentiment. I'm not too sure of the direction MS is taking with the level of detail it is putting in default aircraft. In the past that has been the realm of third-party add-ons, and in my opinion it should stay that way. Not that I'm complaining, mind you :).

I wonder how much Microsoft put up for its side of of the contract. To me, it sounds very much like take the money now and worry about the penalties later. But best of luck to them. It may not be impossible, but it certainly isn't easy.

I don't fly GA on MSFS much (and when I do, rarely above 3000ft) but if it's anything like FSX, and I suspect it is, leaning to the correct mixture actually increases the power (RPM on fixed prop, MP on constant speed). So just (incorrectly) lean for max power.

For the record, the latest on this is that installing the SU12 update has fixed the issue. Thanks to those who contributed suggestions.

It's called terminal velocity. After falling a certain distance (dependent on the weight and drag coefficient), drag equals weight and a falling object stops accelerating. Beyond that point it doesn't matter how long the fall is as the speed remains the same. Cats know this.

So after 2 years of faultless operation my trust in the MSFS store version has been betrayed by a requester coming up after the "signing in" and "checking for updates" phases, saying "Something went wrong launching your game - Error code: (0x80004005)" and the program exiting. Interestingly in the xbox app the program shows up with a frown-face icon instead of the play button. Did all the stuff I read about, such as updating xbox/store, logging out an in again, repairing the app and dism/sfc. Still the same. However the program runs fine if run as an administrator, I didn't even lose my settings. So it's clearly a permissions issue and all the files are still there and intact. However I'm not keen on running as admin, particularly if an update has to be installed (what permissions will the new files have?) Anyone seen this before and/or have any suggestions? If not I'm probably up for a reinstall before SU12 drops (I'm not on the beta).

This won't be much help if the Microsoft servers are the bottleneck. Microsoft has millions of customers and I'd be surprised if those who pay for a service don't get priority over us freeloaders. I get very patchy results here (southern Europe). Places I visit for the first time are sometimes fine on the first run and sometimes take several minutes to load through. The cache definitely works, though. Eventually even London ends up looking pretty good.

Yes. The specific heat of water is much higher than that of air, and so will rise in temperature much less (mass for mass, and even more so volume for volume) when carrying the same amount of heat. Heat flow is driven by temperature difference and the air quickly warms up as it travels along the fins, reducing the effectiveness of the heat transfer and requiring multiple, very large fins. Compare the frontal area of a Spitfire with the liquid-cooled Merlin (radiators and all) with that of an equivalent air-cooled radial-engined fighter such as the Wildcat. The responsiveness of water-cooled systems to changes in heat production is also superior to air-cooling because of the thermal capacity of the liquid. Thermal conductivity has very little to do with it as the flow over the fins is turbulent, which distributes the heat much more effectively than conduction. Both air and liquid cooling can be made equally efficient and effective, and the choice is mostly dictated by the application. Liquid cooling has the advantage of small size while air cooling is cheaper, simpler and potentially more reliable. The main advantage of liquid cooling for computers, in my opinion, is that you don't hang a couple of pounds of metal on the motherboard, and the heat can be dumped outside the case rather than warming up your RAM and SSD's.

I totally abhor GA glass cockpits in the sim but thought I'd have a look at the King Air after reading your post. If anything that experience confirmed my opinion. However after a few minutes of frantic button-pushing on the downwind I sussed it out and the plane made a faultless ils intercept and approach. So I think I know what happened to you - apologies in advance if I'm wrong and you already know all this. So, to tune the Nav receiver, as you probably know you SPLIT one of the screens, click the bottom tab to get to the menu, then click on NAV1 to get to the tuning screen (see why I hate 'em?). The gotcha here is that this is the STANDBY frequency not the ACTIVE one, so the frequency you see there is not the one being tuned. You have to click XFER to make that frequency active, and then the display will show what was previously the active frequency and is now the standby. I haven't read the manual, but I couldn't find a way to display the active frequency except by XFER-ing it back to standby. You should in any case always verify you're really tuned to and receiving a navaid before engaging the autopilot to it, the traditional way is to enable the audio and listen to the Morse identifier. The glass-cockpit alternative is to go to the PFD setup page - where you select the CDI Source - and set a bearing pointer to NAV1. Besides giving you a pointer (which I don't think it should for a localiser), there's also a little tab near the HSI with the station identifier and the distance to it. The Bearing Pointer selector, as well as the CDI Source selector, automatically show VOR or LOC depending on the station tuned - if yours was showing VOR you certainly weren't tuned to what you think you were!

Can we put the A380 at the other end of the list? Still the most comfortable plane I've had the misfortune to have to spend most of a day on, and that includes the 747 upper deck. Of course, Emirates may have had a hand in that.

It is a bit of over-sell, I think. All you get to see from the UK is a 747 take-off, nice enough as it is but hardly a "rocket launch" such as a shuttle or a falcon. Apparently 2nd stage failure (or should that be 3rd stage if the 747 is the first stage?) Nothing wrong with the "launch" itself.

Well, the company exists but their website contains only a lot of tree-hugger buzz-words and no hard facts. No numbers, no mention of battery chemistry. And an internet search didn't turn up anything more detailed either. They require your email address just so you can see a data sheet, and $100 plus shipping for an evaluation sample. Quite a way to promote a world-changing innovation, isn't it?

Not saying it's deliberate 🙂 but autopilots of that period weren't much good for changing attitude or, for that matter, heading. The aircraft had to be piloted into the correct attitude before engaging the autopilot.

"Flight" is Asobo-speak for a beta program. Really bad choice of words in a flight simulator. People have in the past had problems at the end of a beta, on the ms store version, but reading people's posts it seems to have been sorted. Having said that I don't participate, myself.

Thanks. I can wait 🙂

For those who don't do betas, when's this going mainstream?

It's not all wasted, that's 400W less heating you need in that room. Of course if it's hot outside that just means even more load on the aircon.