IUBrian

I stumbled on this on Netflix yesterday; I saw someone posted about this movie a couple of years ago. It's actors recreating several famous plane crashes based upon the cockpit voice recordings. It is macabre, but as a makebelieve flightsim airline pilot, I found the dialogue very interesting, seeing how the flight crew interacted, sometimes tragically missing vital clues, other times acting with amazing calm and competence. The "cockpits" used are crude, but the point of the movie was the people. It also made me realize that thanks to products such as the PMDG NGX and FS2Crew, I actually had a fairly good understanding of what the flight crew were doing and saying. It's sort of an airline pilot horror movie - I have to admit there was at least one time I jumped. If you watch it, I'd suggest not googling the content first. Although I remember two of the crashes, one because it was about 60 miles away from my home and the other because it's quite famous, it was interesting watching it "blind," not knowing what was happening or what was going to happen.

I recently looked this up; in terms of video signal, no difference - both are digital. HDMI can transmit audio as well, but no difference in picture quality.

As a fan of both developers, the ice having been broken, I hope a few frosty libations can bridge the divide.

Needing to do a full re-install is my major concern; like many of us, I have a TON of aircraft and scenery add-ons, and have reached a point where besides an occasional defrag I've squeezed all of the performance out of FSX that I can, and now have a stable and enjoyable platform where I can simply spend my time flying as opposed to tweaking. The thought of having to go through and reinstall all of my addons, plus remember all of the miscellaneous file modifications I've made was not something I was looking forward to. Granted, I'm sure the performance purists will always insist that a clean re-install of FSX following an OS upgrade is the only way to go, and not unreasonably so, if the breadth of the user experience is that it is unnecessary I'll be one happy customer.

"Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of my Years at Lockheed" by Ben Rich.

I think Abrams will do a good job, as long as he doesn't interject time travel as he did in his otherwise excellent Lost and Star Trek. Star Trek in particular kept the characters true to their original nature, as opposed to a director's ego deciding to put his own "fresh take" on it. Abrams has spoken with reverence about the original Star Wars - I get the feeling that he wants to create the Star Wars universe as he would have imagined it when he was a kid. I too remember seeing the original Star Wars in the theater with my father, as a kid. I think there were still lines a week after opening. If he were alive I'm sure he would be just as excited to see it now as he was then.

I'm no expert, but given the unexpected problems that pop up with "just" developing add-ons, causing their releases to be postponed, I would guess the same would hold true even more so for something like re-writing the code for the flight simulator engine - even for someone with the resources of LM. So, assuming they are actively engaged in developing a 64 bit platform, it's difficult for me to imagine we'd be seeing anything for at least 2 years (and I'm prepared to be ripped for having no knowledge and basically just pulling a time frame out of my rear based upon my gut feeling). Assuming my optimistic and purely speculative guess of 2 years, people wouldn't instantly switch, having invested heavily already into FSX - you might be looking at at least another 2 years before the balance starts to shift. Even then it would only be it there is a compelling reason to do so. Take someone like myself - I have invested quite a bit in add-on scenery, aircraft, weather, etc. I have a system where the sim runs smooth, even if not at the highest settings or frame rates. I'm pretty comfortable with what FSX provides. To switch to another, and essentially throw away the $ I've invested, a new sim would need to be not just a little better, but significantly better - not just graphically but with the number and sophistication of aircraft, airports, and scenery in general. I suspect in terms of a market for developers, there would be quite a few like me - people who may eventually switch, but only after the newer platform is somewhat mature. Because of that I assume there will continue to be development for FSX for at least several more years.

Prayers for you and your family. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I have used these commands without any problem with SP1D.

My question is if I have FFTF set at .1 in my cfg, will this program make a difference. I know it makes adjustments on the fly but I've reached a point with my set up where I'm pleased with my performance - or "how I stopped tweaking and reached a satisfactory compromise between visuals and performance."

I think the issue with creating your own panel states is with the long, short, and cold and dark panel states some users (myself included) have reported fuel and anti-ice warnings when using anything other than the default panel state - it's a apparently a bug that's being looked at. The suggested short term work-around is using the default panel state and then creating your own long, short, and cold and dark panel states manually. I believe the issue may be that of the panel states that came with SP1D, only the default was created with the current service pack, while the others were older files. I'm not speaking for PMDG, but I believe that was the difference between the buggy and non-buggy panel states, therefore the suggestion of replicating long, short, and cold and dark manually from the non-bugged default state.

I uninstalled FS2Crew, the 600-700, and the 800-900 base pack, then installed SP1D in reverse order, FS2Crew last. Ignored the SP1C warning and it has worked fine. Others have reported the same.

I second that thank you. I've said this is several posts over the years, but I've been fiddling with flight simulation off and on since the early 80's on my Commodore 64, but the NGX completely invigorated my enthusiasm and transformed the way I "fly." In the midst the noisy masses clamoring for "more, more, MORE!!!'" there is, I'm sure, a largely silent majority who appreciates the original release and is immensely thankful for the free update. Thanks again!

It works for me as well. Granted I haven't done every possible scenario, but I've done two flights startup to landing with two different voice sets with zero problems.

It's honestly embarrassing how little information I contribute to Avsim compared to how much I get from it from people far more knowledgable than I am, and who so generously take the time to answer questions, provide advice, or donate free add-ons. I'm in court frequently, with a lot of dead time - during the course of the day I probably check the forums via my phone more than a dozen times.

My first experience with flight simming was on a Commodore 64 in the early 80's, and I've been involved off and on since, depending on school, family, and work commitments, as well as having a computer capable of running whatever the current version was. On the contrary, I believe this is a golden age of flight simulation. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the lack of continued development by Microsoft has unintentionally been beneficial; as opposed to having a new platform every few years that potentially breaks add-ons, the relative "stability" of the platform has enabled devopers to devote the amount of time to create sophisticated add-ons without the fear of then being obsolete by the time they reach the market. Yes, I'm sure everyone would have preferred that the "stopping point" have been a 64 bit platform, but still, I think there may be an inadvertent benefit of FS no longer being developed as a commercial venture by Microsoft, where Microsoft, in order to make money off every new version is required to make just enough changes to render the prior version obsolete. It was either that, or attempt to corner the add-on market, which is what I suspect the tried to do with "Flight." Flight Simming has, I think, matured into more of a hobby than a "game." In that sense, it will be difficult for it to compete with first person shooters in terms of an enthusiast base, but frankly, the more realistic flight simming becomes the less likely it is to interst the instant gratification first person shooter crowd anyway. Let's face it - for someone who isn't interested in flight to begin with, flight simulation can be boring.

If you're going to use legal analogies, your "case" would have aready been dismissed for failure to state a legally cognizable claim.

The flight sim community isn't alone when it comes to having a subset of its community that have a sense of entitlement, but it seems to stand head and shoulders above other groups when it comes to that subset's lack of self-awareness when expressing it.

PMDG isn't obligated to even update the NGX, let alone provide any information about when one might be released. And when they do provide information about a potential new product or update they repeatedly say to not consider any potential date as a commitment to a particular date. Most of us are appreciative for the heads up about potential changes and take PMDG at their word when they say not to consider an estimate as a commitment, because we prefer an estimate to no information whatsoever. What's aggravating is when PMDG says any discussion of a timeframe is an estimate and some people choose to act as if it were a commitment, which it quite specifically was not.

"Honor their word"!? I'm not even affiliated with PMDG and this comment is infuriating. Most of the rest of us are just appreciative of PMDG's willingness to offer enhancements to a product that already sets the standard.

Putting aside comparisons, analogies, and licensing agreements, when PMDG sells you a T7 for FSX, they're warrantying a product that will work in FSX, a static, non-evolving platform. EVEN IF P3D were today identical to FSX, requiring nothing from PMDG to make it work in P3D, it is a continually evolving platform necessitating not only a continued commitment in support, but in development to ensure it will continue to work in P3D. Without engaging in a specific pricing debate, I think that fact alone means that in terms of total overall development, P3D is a completely different platform in the long term, justifying a different price - you're not paying just for today, you're paying for tomorrow, an entirely different proposition from FSX from a business perspective. I'm also not a programmer, but I suspect the commitment required to ensure aircraft continues to work versus scenery is completely different.

As others have alluded to, I think the other side of the coin is given the depth of their simulations, PMDG's products are underpriced to begin with, from the perspective of sophisitcation, complexity, development time, and support. Developers churn out airports that are about 1/3 the price of the T7 that are probably at least a 1000th as complex. Given the talent required to produce their products as well as the opportunity to apply those talents in other more lucrative directions I'm thankful that not only does PMDG continue to develop products for the flight simmer hobbiest market, I'm thankful that they charge what they do. I'd guess more than a few times during the development cycle of a complex aircraft they ask themselves, "And we're going to sell this for how much?" I'm also glad PMDG seems to be thick-skinned when it comes to ingratitude and entitlement.

Interesting; I noticed the same thing about the old UTX lights - I'd deleted it, and FSX searched for it, that's when I noticed it was still listed in FSX. Good to know about DX10. I believe it may be a shader files issue, downloaded new files and will try again. Original UTX lights killed my frames, so I always had them disabled. Hopefully these are better performance wise for the same visuals.

It's listed in the FAQ - I agree it's not self-evident that you would need to uninstall the prior version first; I ecpexted it would be in a README file when I downloaded it if that was the case, which is why I went ahead and installed over the prior version.

I was going to ask about the lights with DX10 as well - I enabled them, and had problems as well as a 50% reductions in FPS. I don't know if it was because I had installed over the prior version as opposed to uninstalling first (a problem I've since rectified), but when I disabled them the problem was gone. Figured I sit back and observe others' experience with the lights and DX10 before I gave it a go again. I was going to ask about the lights with DX10 as well - I enabled them, and had problems as well as a 50% reductions in FPS. I don't know if it was because I had installed over the prior version as opposed to uninstalling first (a problem I've since rectified), but when I disabled them the problem was gone. Figured I sit back and observe others' experience with the lights and DX10 before I gave it a go again.