dho112

I know things like opinions about a UI can be very subjective, and yet their seems to be a heavy leaning toward the negative about Win10. I'm curious about what the initial reactions to Win7 were, and if they were historically similar? For me, wether Win10 and Dx12 is "the future" is a more troubling issue because a FSX install is not anything close to resembling an easy process for me, or the majority of others here who I assume use MANY third party applications with FSX as well; A complex installation instance that I think no one will argue is a very delicate balance that is especially sensitive to even minor changes in the operating system. I don't feel like 0-1 FPS performance increase "maybe" outweighs, "It works perfectly and is stable, now and for the next 5 years" If the performance increase was a confirmed 5-6 FPS, that would be a different story. I realize the change is inevitable, and it will bring certain significant improvements along with the flight sim and gaming communities ideas of "bad", but as is my traditional MO, I won't even look sideways at a new MS operating system until after at least Service Pack 1 Particularly when the change is barely evolutionary, rather than anything resembling revolutionary (despite the marketing hype)

Tried it with Sound Quality set to 1, then with Ultimate traffic 2 off, then with ASN off, Then with all of them off, no change, momentary freezes. Once they start, they occur at what seems almost exactly 2 min 30 sec intervals and when it freezes it lasts about 3 seconds. Oh well... Here's to hoping that the changes in SP1 will do something to help even though I don't think this issue was ever officially acknowledged as a bug? Till then 777 grounded like a 787... but NGX flies flawlessly

I'm going to try a few more tests right now with ASN not running and then with UT2 turned off and see what that does. I'm hesitant to run in DX9 because it took a few weeks to tweak it to get it running right and I'm afraid that if I go back to DX9 and then back to 10 I'll upset the mojo and have to hunt down some more things LoL! Addendum... Actually I'm going to try that sound quality change from 2 to 1 in the config file first to see if that does anything since its a simple change

Hi VLJ, I was in a rush to finish my post because I had a 3pm appointment to get to, so I wasn't able to put all the detail into my description, but I have the latest version of FSUIPC 3.93 I think? and I double and triple checked that the save feature was not checked. The really strange thing is that when I first installed the T777 I don't remember it having the freezes (it did stutter though noticeably) but it definitely freezes now. I also run all SSD drives and one of the things I was thinking is some kind of disk activity was causing the freeze, but at the times it happens, there is no disk activity (or at least the disk activity light is not on) I've even tried to set my CPU back down to 3.33Mhz (default speed) and eliminated any vestiges of overclocking completely but even that didn't ahve an effect. It's kind of maddening actually and I'm wondering if in an ironic twist, its something that plagues only the fastest machines while leaving the less fast machines alone Kind of in the same way that the top athletes can often be more susceptible to colds and flu compared to just average Joes

I've run about a dozen sessions to test this, just to make sure its repeatable. I'm not sure it helps anything but it might reduce a variable or two. I run a sequence where I start at the same gate at the same airport KLAX, same time of day (historic weather for ASN), I load the same flight plan, run thru the startup procedure and taxi to the active. Ultimate Traffic 2 is set to 75% traffic. First with the 737-800 NGX and then with the T777. I run an Intel I7-980x extreme overclocked to 4.5 Mhz with 12gig of DDR1600 and it is stable for countless hours running Prime. Video card is NVidia 590 GTX (2x580 GTX) I run FSX at 2560x1440 with all settings at max with DX10 except water is 2.0 low. At KLAX I average 25-30FPS limited to 30FPS with Nvidia inspector. With the NGX I have NO freezes or stutters, with the T777 using the same taxiways and weather and location and settings I get stutters and a freeze of about 3-4 seconds every 2 minutes plus or minus a few seconds. To recap. WIth NGX no stutters no freezes (doing anything and flying everywhere actually) and with the T777 I get the freeze every 2-3 minutes all the time. I don't think this proves anything conclusively that T777 causes the freeze, but it is repeatable (for me) constantly, and maybe its just that a third party program "reacts" to the presence of T777 differently, not that the T777 is actually "causing" it...

If it were me, I think I would have gone the April Fools route by saying that 3d modelled flight attendants were being added to the aircraft and that we could choose their measurements and hair and eye color via a new LSK choice on the FMC, and have the drill down choices like Flight Attendant 1: 1/12 <-- Female <-- Male <-- Single <-- Married <-- 35 <-- 24 <-- 33

Kind of a stinging April Fool 's joke I think if SP1 was on the books already, a lot more people would be laughing and laughing harder Right now I think I hear a lot more nervous, hesitant laughter Still, this isn't nearly as bad as the joke where a coworker changed the numbers on the lotto posting on the breakroom bulletin board to match the numbers of another coworkers lottery ticket he kept on his desk, and then waited all day until he told him. That was bad. I would have swung at someone for that

I think you might be in exactly the same phase in your FSX level of experience before I started using ground instructions and following the taxiway signs and ditched the progressive taxi command. I think that the progressive taxi feature in FSX is a cheat that makes one complacent and not realize that yes, getting to the right runway by the proper route can actually be part of the fun, immersiveness, and actually a skill that getting comfortable with may actually translate into real world awareness one day Once you understand the nomenclature of the signs, they are easy to read. I find that if I get confused at a taxiway intersection, I'll just slow to a crawl, or stop, and use the zoom to look at signs farther out and to my left and right and get my bearings or validate my position. Using my ipad and an airport chart makes things even simpler, and the most powerful tool of all? Being very familiar with the airport I fly out of LAX, SFO, JFK, and ATL very often, and those airports are so familiar to me that I can very often be at a particular gate, Have ground tell me to taxi to the active runway and I can recite the route to get there in my head and visualize what it looks like before ground says it. It's just like you knowing your neighborhood streets like the back of your hand and being able to drive to your local supermarket with you eyes closed Once you get confident that airports are typically clearly marked for taxiways, and how to read them, you can make your way about even unfamiliar airports relatively easily, and use the airport chart if you get lost instead of the progressive taxi cheat... If its any consolation, I was listening to LiveATC.net and a ground controller was talking to another pilot about how a southwest jet pilot aouldn't find his gate, was hopelessly lost, and "All screwed up" so it can happen to anyone I guess

I have no experience in the care and maintenance of any kind of aircraft, and I defer completely to others expertise in the fact that the equipment hatch on a 737 never gets opened 99.5% of the time during normal flight operations, but I have to say from what I saw with my own eyes I saw the hatch opened and a maintenance person, actually two, poke their heads up into the space, with a cart next to them and they did "something" in there All while the plane was sitting at the gate. I've always been fascinated by large jets and so I actually watched them the entire time while the wife was off buying coffee. When they were finished (about 15 minutes) they actually had some trouble closing the door. It looked like they worked at it for another 2 or 3 minutes scratching their heads until I guess they finally closed it. Most of the time I just saw their legs and lower bodies. They gave the other ground crew a thumbs up, and spoke to the pilot on the link for a long time after that... The funny part? After they were all done and had left for about 10 minutes, one of the maintenance guys came running back, crouched down while he looked up at the underside of the plane, ran his hand over something, and then ran back out with another thumbs up. I guess what I saw was the .05% occurence, but then again, aren't all fatal air crashes that .01% or combination thereof of unlikely, "never usually happens" events? I think I saw an Air DIsasters episode where two senior pilots, both with thousands of hours on the plane type they were flying, and they both overlooked the fact that the flaps were up at take off. The comedy of errors that would lead to the equipment hatch being open and taking off that way doesn't seem so completely implausible with that as a comparison :( Particularly since everyone on that plane died :(

It really is fun James! I have several friends who fly for VA airlines and I've noticed that many of them are all about how many flights and how many hours and flight miles they can accumulate in the shortest amount of time. They start flights from the active and end them at wheels stop at the end of the runway. There is nothing wrong with this of course, but for me, that connects you mainly with the flying , whereas using all of the add-ons for ambience and aircraft detail, you become connected more not only with flying, but with the aircraft itself. For me specifically, that makes the experience far more real and engaging. Listening to the first officer rustling thru paperwork in the cockpit as I'm programming the FMC, Having the flight attendant knock on the door and ask if its ok for the agents to start boarding the plane, hearing the people actually getting on the plane, Hearing the "beep beep beep" outside of the ground equipment moving around the plane. It just kind of does it for me LoL! At every step of the flight, there's ambience that makes it more of an "adventure" from start to end, and makes one feel more like a real part of the flight then just a actor monitoring instruments until hand flying the descent. It's almost like a flightplan within a flightplan as well as you try to keep in mind the particular steps that happen on the ground before and after you're actually in the air. WIth GSX Ground Environment you have a Marshall guiding you into the gate position, and hilariously enough, some of the most anxious ridden moments of the "flight" are waiting for the crossed sticks at the end of the taxi and hoping the marshall doesn't inform you that that wasn't a very good parking job LoL! As the plane is deboarding, I also get a kick out of the little kid that says suddenly "bye bye!!!" One thing that FS2Crew definitely has to fix though is an awareness of day and night flights. Listening to the flight attendant making an announcement that the inflight entertainment is about to start and it would help for people to close their window shades for better viewing by all, in the middle of a redeye flight, just kind of kills it LoL!

I've incorporated a new step in my departure procedure in FSX; I begin every flight with a particularly detailed flight planning phase, including of course the route, scheduling, fuel loads, weather (with AS2012), notams, metars etc etc... Since I use FS2Crew and GSX Ground Environment software this also includes the boarding of passengers, loading of cargo, fueling trucks, catering service, tow vehicles and more... The new step is a virtual walk-around. I understand that it's the first officer that normally performs this, but with EZdok, walking around the plane outside is easy and very graphically impressive, and adds just another aspect of realism to the whole flying experience While outside, you can hear the motors of the power unit chugging away if connected, the whine of the air conditioning unit, and when planes taxi by while you're outside, you get a visceral rush from the sound of their engines as they pass. You'll hear the roar of a plane taking off in the distance, look over your shoulder and see a Southwest jet climbing into the sky. I realize that this step is nothing more than a additional graphical cue, but If I had done this walkaround prior to the offending flight in the original post, I would have seen the potential problem, or at least had it in mind before it became a problem An actual walk-around incorporated into PMDG or another add-on would be very engaging! They could incorporate service based failures generated in PMDG for things like "Hey! Why is there a puddle of hydraulic fluid under the left undercarriage?!" or "Why are the right flaps partially deployed when the left flaps are stowed?" or "Does the APU normally make that much smoke while it's running? Is it overheating?" My walkaround, and the clearly evil, equipment hatch! The walkaround is also a wonderful way to see all the great detail PMDG puts into its 3D models...

Thanks again for the info guys. I'll have a read about TCAS too, thank you for the link Dave! And thank you for that video Tebin, interesting stuff! I guess my little flyby was nothing then! LoL! I'm assuming that was not on a landing approach given the high altitude contrails So it was just a "howdy! I'm going your way too!" kind of moment

True true, but I was thinking it was a situation where proximity might have been an issue had one of us altered our trajectories. The other aircraft actually had made a course change while in my vicinity, and I was thinking what if it had been a course or speed change that might get us closer together in a matter of seconds? Too soon to react? Instead of the one he made to veer away from me... TCAS in FSX (PMDG) has often given me a first level annunciation "Traffic!" and when I identified the source either visually or on TCAS radar I've often said to myself "Really? He's a danger? That far away?" and in this particular case I was reading logos on the side of the other plane I suppose it must have something to do with closure speed, or if the courses are reciprocal within a certain window... This particular incident did sort of unfold in slow motion, and it was interesting to watch, but the whole time I had my hands on the controls just waiting for him to do something odd

Flight from KMCO to KSEA and I was reading while keeping one eye on the screen, and an aircraft drifted in from the left about a mile distant and above. I watched as it continued to move directly across my nose always above while I checked TCAS, which was on, normal and monitoring. The aircraft clearly appeared in the display but was neither flagged with an audio warning nor red warning color. I was probably doing 20 knots over his speed and catching up very, very slowly... After moving from left to right, it then descended suddenly before making a course change away from me until it disappeared behind. During the entire maneuver our speeds were nearly identical, and there was no danger of collision as long as everything continued as it did. It seemed extremely close though and I was surprised since TCAS is usually VERY good at warning me, or getting my attention when appropriate. Is this particular incident a failure or shortcoming of the simulation, or are planes on nearly the same heading and speed allowed to fly this close without TCAS warning? I would think when you can clearly read the livery on the other plane, it might be too close?

lol! You can't do that on a sportbike, you get this painful digging sensation in your chest as you're laying on the tank and its stabbing you in the sternum

Thank you for all the help and information Kyle, I appreciate it! I've never flown on VATSIM because to be honest, I'm incredibly intimidated at being the the guy on there that's screwing up constantly and destroying the suspension of disbelief for everyone else. I always listen to LiveATC.net and the proper ARTCC in the background while I'm flying the 737 for the ambience, and the information flies by so quickly and sometimes in such a garbled way (to my untrained ear) that I find it overwhelming. I am getting better though at discerning what's being said and how, but very slowly as time passes. I know that from the VATSIM information I've read at the website they say they're welcoming and very helpful to people who are new and I totally believe that, but I just want to make certain before I use it that feel more comfortable with operating the NGX so its not a constant challenge at both ends of the spectrum; flying and communicating Again, thanks for your insights! p.s. Oh! by the way, I think the reason that I open and close the equipment hatch is because of one flight years ago out of Long Beach where the 737 was delayed for mechanical problems and they actually deboarded us and as I was watching from the gate windows a maintenance person came out and opened the equipment hatch (I don't know why) did something, closed it and then we all were able to get back on board and didn't have to switch aircraft. I think that experience just stuck with me for some reason

Kyle, That shows you how little I know about real world flight operations! I'm not a pilot at all and so my laymen's assumption wasn't taking when the clock REALLY starts, into account :( As far as the equipment hatch being open. I always do that as a sort of worst case scenario thing at the gate (that there was something to be checked) and that it was something for me to keep track of as a sort of challenge. I figured that if I could remember many steps, then I could remember fewer, but that didn't work out in this case :( Now that I know when the clock starts, I can breathe a little easier from now on about being on time It's funny because I know quite a bit about the operation of the simulated aircraft and I think that talking in the proper acronyms and terminology about it at times might lull other simmers into a false sense that I'm not a moron about most flight operations, still learning with a lot to learn, and still filled with quite a few misconceptions about how it CAN work in FSX, and how its SUPPOSED to work properly. p.s. James, I was an MSF motorcycle safety instructor for 5 years and trained hundreds of people how to ride safely. I'm much better at that then flying a 737 LoL! Besides, I ride a ZX-10r with a solo seat

Thanks so much everyone for all the great insights! You may all laugh, but I actually feel pretty bad and embarrassed about my error. I might take the sim a little too seriously than I should :( But you may all laugh again because as penance, I've imagined that the review board has slapped me with a pretty harsh reprimand and a notation on my permanent record, and that my airline has bumped me down in seniority and now for the next month or so I'm flying a J41 on the shuttle run back and forth from LAX to SFO. (Another PMDG aircraft, that I don't like as much as the NGX) More specifics of the comedy of errors that I allowed myself to get complacent about. I completely wrote off the idea of any door or hatch being open because on the second phase of the FS2Crew pre-flight checks the FO will bring it to your attention if there is a doorlight on, but only the passenger and cargo doors, not the equipment hatch because he allowed me to continue with checks when he would have said "Hang on, we have a door light, we need to check that" if it had been a passenger or any of the cargo doors. Still not a justification for my not checking, but just another reason why I let things just "go" Also, I actually DID get a master caution light light on the taxi to the active, but it was right in the middle of 1) FS2Crew pre-takeoff checklist (flaps and stabilizer trim) which I was performing while taxiing to save time, and 2) my concern about an Eagle flight that was on a crossing taxiway that I HAD to get in front of or lose even more time :( The master caution light went off, I cancelled it with quick looks over the engine operating stats, the hydraulic pressures, and electrical stats. I did look up quickly at the overhead to check that altitude pressure was set to auto, and inexplicably I must have again not seen the equipment hatch door light. I have no idea how other than to imagine that I was so overloaded with doing things correctly "too" quickly that I saw it but it did not "register" :( So now I have a blemish on my on time record after 60 consecutive on time departures, a permanent blotch on my flying record, and the virtual flight attendant I was going to dinner with this weekend called and she cancelled our date :( *sigh* p.s. My virtual cousin is the virtual Director of Operations with Delta Virtual Airlines who I fly with. Thank God for Virtual family!

With my luck SP1 will be released right in the middle of a long flight from KSFO to LFPG and I'll have an issue 30 seconds before the release that is corrected by the Service pack :lol:

I was at Gate 40 at KSAN and struggling to keep my on time record. I use FS2Crew with the NGX and I typically run thru the entire Pre-flight procedure including listening to the briefings and trying to adhere to all steps. This particular day, I was running 7 minutes behind schedule and not looking forward to a crowd at the departing runway and so in what I recognize as a stupid oversight I was rushing thru the procedures and trying to combine steps in order to save time. at 18 minutes behind schedule I climbed away from San Diego only to almost immediately see the master warning light come on with no indications on the annunciator though. I quickly scanned the overhead and to my horror I noted that the equipment door warning light was on. I could have sworn I scanned the whole overhead for things like this, but now I think in my haste, my mind considered the orange glow as the Altitude and landing pressuruzation setting readouts. I use TrackIR and actually look and manipulate almost all the controls from the left seat eyepoint for realism; including looking at the overhead, which as a consequence is at a fairly sharp angle so that you have to move your head around to see the far side of the overhead. Anyhow, justifications aside, I was also lulled into a false state of readiness because in FS2Crew, part of the voice package clearly has the ground crew say "All hatches and doors are closed ready for pushback, release parking brake" I know ultimately the responsibility is mine, and in this case, I declared an emergency (virtually) and returned to KSAN where I landed successful (though a bit hard) in order to do the taxi of shame back to the gate. All ended well, but I was curious at the time; what would be the real world consequences to me as a pilot if this were a real world event? Suspension? Disciplinary action? Fired? Just curious...

It says they were two weeks away from the BEGINNING of the final test phase. Which is a little like directing someone to the entrance to the exit But there is no elaboration on how long the "final test phase" will be, and what if that lasts months? For me the 777 is flying more than adequately enough for some very engaging flights, so the upcoming SP1 (Whenever it arrives) Is like frosting on the cake for me

It isn't actually a theory, but a confirmed fact stated many times over in the past by both 3rd party developers and FSX programmers. It's one of those intrinsic "fsx issues" that's fixed within the fabric of the original programming. An FSX issue In the same category as when you switch to the cabin view in a PMDG aircraft and you get a giant clipping bubble that prevents anything in a sphere of about 6' diameter around your eyepoint from being rendered; So if you place the eyepoint in the window seat thinking you can get a nice view out the window graphic, what you actually get is a giant hole in the side of the aircraft and no seats around you. The issue isn't if PMDG causes problems like this and the frame drop in VC, but if its possible for them, or anyone, to fix the problems like this that are not their fault and actually inherent in the original FSX programming. I think its appropriate for us as customers to be critical in a constructive way, and to be discerning consumers as this is what I think drove/drives PMDG to create such wonderfully detailed products, but at the same time we should be informed and saavy enough to know what is a PMDG shortcoming, and what is an FSX "built in anomaly" that can't simply be coded around. With these perspectives in mind both sides can more easily recognize that there would be great value in product that could be sold to address these issues, and that people would gladly pay for. Why spend $1000 dollars for new graphics hardware when you can get literally twice the potential benefit of about 10fps increase with a $39.99 PMDG add-on/fix? And yes, there is a huge difference between 15fps and 25. ...and yes Mr. Randazzo, I am officially begging for you to please do this lol!

It still has to render the VC "behind" the 2d popup, what it no longer has to deal with is calculating the position of every "hotspot" that your mouse pointer could hover over in the VC cockpit while your pointer is in the 2d window. Those calculations I am told are complex and not well optimized in FSX (think, "my view just shifted 35 degrees left and 12 degrees up and 14 inches in the x, 2 in the y and -8 inches in the z direction in space, where exactly on the screen is that knob right now" ), and as your view is slewing around the VC cockpit, the program has to continuously plot the position of every visible hotspot you could click on. These coordinate calculations are very CPU intensive and how they effect performance can easily be demonstrated by running FSX in a window view and noting the difference in FPS with the mousepointer both in the window, and when you move it out and the calculations no longer need to be done. Alternately you see this same jump in framerate if you don't move the mouse pointer for a few seconds and when the pointer disappears and the calcs no longer need to be made, Voila! Huge jump in frame rate. When I am running in full screen, and on something like an approach and I need decent FPS flying into a 3rd party airport, I will quickly select the things I need to with the mouse (or keyboard hotkeys) and then "park" my mouse pointer in the extreme upper left corner, which is the same as moving the pointer out of the window if running in windowed view. This gets you your higher FPS back instantly without having to wait the 4 seconds for the pointer to disappear. When you popup a 2d window like the FMC, the hotspots are less dynamic and literally just static hotspots and so no calculations are necessary, hence the large jump in framerate. If someone released a 3rd party program that somehow greatly optimized how the hotspots in the VC cockpit are calculated, I do believe that that would solve 99% of complaints about low frame rate in VC cockpits, and make that programmer rich overnight, because I would pay $50 for that

It looks like its a universal issue, and for me, it seems to be as bad with the NGX as it is with the 777. It's really more annoying than anything else. I figured though that it was better to light a candle then curse the darkness What I do is on my joystick (CH Fighterstick) I've mapped one of the hats to the VC cockpit eyepoint controls, so as I'm taxiing and make turns, I constantly adjust the viewpoint to keep the view correctly centered. In the NGX, I taxi with the HUD down and keep the HUD data centered in the glass. I've done this for so long that it's almost second nature, and I hardly notice it anymore. It would definitely be nicer if there was some built in compensation for this though... It seems odd to me that some third party hasn't dealt with the issue as an addition to an add-on like EZdok... With all the wizardry they do with viewpoint manipulation to synthesize aircraft motion, you'd think they might also do something like write code to perhaps keep two datum points in line to keep the view centered... But you know what they say about the difference between a computer person and a non computer person; A computer person will tell you what you think should be simple is impossible, and what you think is impossible a computer person will tell you is actually very easy

Scandinavian, Thanks for clearing that up about GSX causing the trouble about recognizing if doors are open or closed. I use GSX and I customized the T7 so all the stairs, catering trucks, loading trucks were lined up perfectly and everything was being recognized for what door it was Passenger 1, 2, 3, 4 cargo fore aft, service door 1, 2 etc... When it came time to load passengers, all the vehicles pulled up to their correct positions but even though I had every single door opened including the EE and forward access doors, I still kept getting a "bleep" that I was supposed to open Passenger door #2 even though It was wide open (actually EVERY door was wide open ) Inside the plane I can hear the passenger loading sounds, so the logic of boarding is proceeding in that regard, but the cargo containers aren't being loaded thru the cargo doors I assume because that particular logic is not allowed to proceed without the "door 2 is not open" issue cleared. Which at this point I can't clear no matter what I do. I guess I have to wait until GSX addresses this issue :( David