Longranger

Hmm, it sounds as if something major fails in your system, like the Gizmo plug-in. There are already some t6hreads in the X-Aviation forum and several complaints in the german aerosoft forum. This is the reason why I didn't install the update yet (there was a new Robinson Helicopter and the Boeing 757 anyway as well as the A320 Neo update to 2.0 and a Siklorsky S-92 so it is more a question of time. It sounds as if we would need another update from the update...

The flight model of both of then is quite good, but the BK-117 is IMHO much easier to handle (since it is heavier). The AS350 is in fact for autorotations better but it can be quite tricky to control it. The AS 350 has more features and modes but I must admit I prefer the BK-117.

I would say beta GPU drivers and such an issue? Did you try a non Beta driver?

No. But the METAR weather report simply doesn't go very high. That's where NOAA weather forecast comes into play.

For the installation and activation of SkyMaxx Pro?

Really? Ok, I am in Germany but my GTX 770 that I bought 3 weeks ago wasn't much more expensive than this GTX 760 (350 Euro incl. salers tax (19%)). And it has the maximum number of CUDA cores on this chipset for the case that X.Plane really makes better use of the computing power of the GPU than at the moment.

At least at the moment this card makes no real sense for X-Plane. Its primary advantage at the moemnt are its 6 GB VRAM, but X-Plane has nothing to use the brute force computing power that this card brings. From a price perspective I would say a GTX 770 is the best candidate at the moment.

That's easy. You simply don't have a system that is capable of using X-Plane 10 with maximum settings! 2. The View System is no problem you simply have to bind the 4 axis buttons to the Pan View (left/right/up/down) controls.

This is probably your problem. If a mesh or a phototexture has a higher priuority in your ini file, X-Plane won't use Airports in the same location but with a lower priority.

Wait a moment. Did I see it right and these limited versions cost exactly the same as the complete version?

Well, in fact even in this department the HD Mesh 2 is a big leap forward since it has a much better grasp what an area is, where it starts and where it ends. And this simplifies the job for the autogen.

At the moment, but the swituation is a lot more complicated. This version is more styled for compatibility and only offers a few bug fixes and the DX11 engine. But it also offers an updated SDFK and this SDK will probably break compatibility in several places! And if they would ever decide to switch to true 64 bit it will break compatibility again. So they don't have 2 but at least three different plattforms! FSX, P3D v2, X-Plane.

I'am not really surprised by these feelings and I expect that this is also something Laminar expected. If they would have continued the development direction of the first few versions, this probably wouldn't have happened, but in my opinion they in fact made the right choice. They more or less decided don't target the surface, where we could fix things quickly for the useres, instead they followed the requests of the developers: More, bigger resources, better guidelines but this also meant: OOM problems so they had to reschedule 64 bit back into X-Plane 10. This more or less derailed the complete normal development but now they start to gather up the pieces. Finally the tools that were badly needed from the begining finally arrived (WED, update capability of DSF files). While I don't expect huge jumps IMHO they and the 3rd party developers finally get some road under their wheels. And that's what they really needed. I don't quite expect that they will be able to fix all interfce problems within XP10, some things will have to wait for X-Plane 11, but they now have their foundation. But P3D V2... Well, once I realized that FSX had an OOM problem, I stoped all investments in Scneries and aircrafts, since I knew: A deadly problem: The less memory you have the higher your development costs are! But P3D V2 doesn't target this problem, since they don't need it for their real target group, but since it doesn't bother with my mainh problem, I don't feel any need to bother with them.

Well, not necessarily Black Friday, but in the last few years there was always a sale around Xmas for older Carenado planes.

I agree. That is the main problem in my opinion too. While in FSX they even added for smaller regional airpoirts some special landmarks most of the payware Airports didn't offer any suitable surroundings. There are exceptions like KSFO ( http://store01.prostores.com/servlet/x-planestore/Detail?no=331 ) and KLAS ( http://store01.prostores.com/servlet/x-planestore/Detail?no=483 ) but he doesn't use high quality textures for his airport buildings. TruScenery on the other hand makes beautiful airports but they don't do anythoing for the surrounding area. And Aerosoft first had to learn that a conversion of an existing FSX Airport doesn't necessarily result in a good X-Plane airport. I use these city sceneries too, as an example in Washington DC together with Tropical Sims KDCA.

My favorite would probably be Madeira ( http://www.xpfr.org/?body=scene_accueil&sc=253 ). While there are other good locvations they normally profit from a combination of multiple elements like an HD Mesh, OSM + Airport.

No, probably most other countries took up the german regulations where only gas stations are allowed to open 24 hours. So they earn most of their money with food, drinks and DVDs...

Not quite. The real solution is in fact available look for a NOAA plugin. But you have to install the python interface too.

Since B2 crashed the sim you don't want to switch back to this version anyway. Furthermore the symptoms you describe can hardly be the result of the additional artwork of 10.25b3. But you can try to switch back to 10.22. Simply rerun the installer and disable the beta flag.

I don't think that you can really say it X-Plane 10 had several pretty severe changes in its life cycle till now. In fact they changed t6he whole development process in the beginning of X-Plane 10 to make the process better organized for 3rd party developers. And in a way they really changed everything. They reorganized the whole process how surfaces are organized, they made several imprortant fixes in the weather and flight dynamic and then thex decided to t6ake the main problems head on with the 64 bit version (a switch that they wanted to delay till X-Plane 11. While this made it clear to developers that X-Plane is their to stay for a long time, it made also a lot of developers a bit mad. So they will try to kimit API changes as low as possibel, and there are alredy several requests for changes in the APIs. We now that they are in fact already developing for X-Plane 11, but I don't think that even Laminar knows exactly when they will switch to X-Plane 11. The difference won't be as big between the two versions. While they changed the complete rendering engine for X-Plane 10 future changes won't be as dramatical, although they will change the complete shader model (they are still in Open GL 1.x/2.x and they will go to OpenGL 3.x/4.x but a lot of these changes will happen in the background without any need for the developers to constantly update their planes and sceneries. You could say: In x-plane 9 there were few people they had to look out for, but this changed, so they now tried to fix the basic things first, so that the developers get a more stable perspective. In a way X-Plane just now really starts to lookj interesting for developers, while everything till 10.20 was happening in a kind of panic mode.

I agree. People who don't believe it should take a look at the europe library ( http://simheaven.com/?page_id=14 ) its foundation is rather surprisingly simple It is simply a result of the work of two guys. Most surprisingly: The excahnged autogen doesn't contain any completly new objects instead it uses only modified default objects or modifications of objects in the R2 Library! But it looks totally different. Mqany things can be changed by simple text files and it is even possible to limit these changes for a small area (1x1 degree)

I must say: This is a request that will never reach their bug database. You want something different, but what? They will improve their autogen (and I don't believe that they need any special request. In fact we know due to alpilotx that there will be several changes), but who should tell if these changes fullfill your expectations? There is simply no real value in such a request. But this is a very good example why they mustn't listen to their customers! The customer doesn't really know what he wants and if a change might be an improvement or not. They are simply in no position to really reinvent their whole autogen! It should be obvious that Laminar itself won't be satisfied with their autogen at the moment, but WE are in no real position to determine where the problems are!

It is less a question of handholding of workflow integration. In the beginning you can give to new members only small projects without any heavy interaction with other internal modules. IUt can be really quite tricky to find such projects for new people. They need time to get a feeling for their environment till you can give them real problems that have to be fixed as fast as possible. In fact it would probably be easier to give them a project for X-Plane 11 than for X-Plane 10. But it would be hopeless to simply tell them : Improve our ATC system, or fix our torque problem. This simply can't work. But that's what many people imagine. I see several important things that they have to improve, like memory consumption or scalability of graphic features. Solutions for torque are more of a hit and miss feature. Do you really find a solution for these problems, or do you only add another layer that hides the real problem? As you recognized yourself. It doesn't really matter what happens in the short term. Some rather technical improvements in the background might mean that an external developer might release in one year a killer feature. Does it really matter if many people looked in the meantime at P3D? There is a simple sentence: You can't fullfill every request and if you would be able to do so, you would be bankrupt.

How long did X-Plane stayed the same? Instead this time they managed a complete redesign within a version: The switch to 64 bits This was a totally dramatic change tha6t most people don't realize at this time While for P3D there is no demand for this feature in their real market. The probability is pretty high that Laminar will release in the next 1 or 2 years an X-Plane 11 but I am not so confident if there will be an open accesible P3D version. It doesn't depend on the developers but on decisions of the LM Management. While the Microsoft Flight Simulator offered a decent market for smaller independent companies, this market si simply to small for any bigger actions by LM. Furthermore it is a market on its decline. It is rather difficult to get new players in this environment. If I would be a kid and interested in flying a real plane P3D would be so far away that it would be unreachable. X-Plane is a different question. Ge4t X-Plane for Xmas and the rest is more or less free. Laminar as a tiny company can survive and even prosper in a tiny market. The main argument for P3D is the capabilitya to use the old add-ons. For LM this has no real priority. Laminar by itself is in no real position to decide if 50& of the FSX users switch to X-Plane or P3D. If people demand seasons: I don't think that they could deliver seasons this year anyway. They are changing to much of their basic environment and these things have to be more or less fixed to really add decent seasons. This will either be done externally or with X-Plane 11 at the earliest. There is simply no fundamental difference if 5, 10 or 30% of the FSX users switch to X-Plane.

The number of plattforms isn't such a big problem. The use of OpenGL and its different use under MacOsX is a slight problem but everything else works more or less by itself in a suitable workflow. And in fact their small number of programmers simply mean that they don't need much money to operate. If you want to really compare X-Plane to FSX You would have to install FSX without any plugins, otherwise it would be ridiculous. Simply look at the amount of money that you have to put into FSX to reach this level!, especially since X-Plane was never build to compete with FSX. Instead the real problem for4 P3D will be how many plugins will remain compatible now and in the future? Every big improvement will more or less mean that you loose compatibility to FSX and you can bet that the plugin designers will charge youz for these changes! The real business of P3D is in a military environment. P3D isn't such a huge project for LM either. While the enduser licences are a small bonus I am not really sure if LM is interested in the entertainment market that is rather small. In fact one of the problems that X-Plane 10 really had was that they changed with X-Plane 10 many fundamental features so that they lost several capabilities of previous versions To make a useful comparison you have to look at what you get for your money if you start new. And in this case X-Plane is in a much better swituation with its free HD mesh, photosceneries and OSM maps.