fs4fun

FSX does come with some default photoscenery, St Maarten probably the most notable. Berlin Tempelhof airport is another example. I don't know of any comprehensive list though.

I checked both skyvector and airnav and 342 True is the correct runway heading, so FSX is accurate in terms of true heading. The current airport diagram shows a magnetic heading of 326.7. I'm guessing the approach chart (and I'm assuming you mean ILS 32R) is 324 because approach charts are not updated for magnetic variation very frequently.

Then you've come to the right forum.

FSX Mission Editor (FSXME) is a standalone payware program for creating missions (by standalone I mean it runs as a separate program from FSX). There is a new version of it just recently announced on the Avsim home page. FSXME doesn't really have anything to do with the Object Placement Tool which is another somewhat bare-bones mission editor that is included with the FSX SDK. FSXME does have a wizard that will quickly create a mission for you just be entering some basic information and possibly a flight plan. As a disclaimer, I've only used the version of FSXME that was included for free with Flight Sim World, but I believe the new version just released for sale works the same and supports FSX:SE. https://www.fsmissioneditor.com/product/fsx-mission-editor/

Reminds me of the JAL 123 crash which also involved loss of the rear pressure bulkhead and subsequent damage to rear stabilizers and hydraulics, though in that case the bulkhead failure was due to fatigue cracks following a faulty repair.

My first time messing with flight sim was Sublogic FS II on Atari ST, back around 1987 and also had MSFS 98 but was only a casual user in those days. In 2012 I got FSX and became really serious about learning all the ins and outs, eventually learning to fly the PMDG NGX and J41, but lots of other aircraft along the way. YouTube and communities like this one were an enormous help in learning the ropes. I've was bitten by the development bug some time ago and made some mods for FSX but now I'm spending most of my time developing on Unity3D (but still making airplanes fly, LOL).

POSKY is long gone. I posted some links in this thread: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/533682-models-of-project-open-sky/ I don't use these models so cannot provide any help but the links still seem to be working.

Yes the cherokee is quite good for a short VFR hop. I still use it from time to time. I know there are a few fanatics trying to get more airplanes into FSW but I'm not so keen as that. I've mostly moved on to other things.

You are quite right that Gmax is complicated. 😵 It is a very good and powerful program but it takes quite a bit of time and dedication to become proficient with it and I recommend beginners avoid it since it has become very dated compared to modern 3D tools. Your best bet for help and advice is to visit fsdeveloper.com. There are forums for scenery designs and the different modeling tools. For custom ground textures, the simplest option is to use Airport Design Editor (ADE). It has a built-in ground polygon tool. That might be a good way to get started. Though I have not used Sketchup, you can use it to make ground textures. You need to also get ModelConverterX (MCX) from scenerydesign.org to export your creations to FSX (make sure to download MCX from the Development Releases page so you have the latest version). Another option is Blender as there is a Blender-to-FSX toolkit available. One benefit to learning Blender (or Gmax) is that they can be used to create animations. You can then use SODE (SimObject Display Engine) to trigger animations in your scenery. This is much more advanced stuff but something to keep in mind. It could be that there are some extensions to Sketchup for animations that I'm not aware of. There are quite a few tutorials on YouTube for making ground polygons and other scenery design methods. Have a look at Austin Sass and SoarFly channels for starters (and also the fsdeveloper and fsdevconf channels). I'll also just mention this dated tutorial that is helpful mainly for background understanding (click Download link for the pdf file): https://iblueyonder.com/ground-poly-tutorial/

A2A and Milviz make very realistic addon airplanes. Mostly GA or military types.

I had this and it went away when I changed FSX to run as Administrator (and my FSX is installed in F:\FSX). I think I also changed my ASN to run as admin.

FS Global 2010 does use SRTM but an older release of the data. It's probably fine. You can also search for FreeMeshX, a free product that is based on a new release of SRTM data.

Just guessing but there should be VOR/ADF switches on the EFIS control panel, you might also need to push the CTR button to get the compass rose display. Try a google search for 737 FCOM if the documentation is lacking.

Never heard of it, but there are some links to English manuals in development here: http://www.ftw-sim.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1213

DTG's development approach was to modernize the sim's core engine and then incrementally replace or significantly upgrade each subsystem. FSW was still in very early days of this process and in the meantime large pieces of functionality were disabled, other parts were being redone but incomplete, and other parts practically untouched. What we were left with was a sim that was quite limited in the scenarios we could create, given only piston props, half baked weather system, VFR-only ATC and barely functioning AI, incomplete SDK and so on. The approach was too radical to be considered evolutionary, but without the freedom of starting from a clean slate. Still, it's software -- there are a lot of different approaches you can take but still get to the same end goal. I think the biggest mistake was releasing it too soon, they should have waited until development was further along and in the meantime used a decent size set of external alpha testers to give them feedback. In any case comparing it with P3D is ridiculous, FSW was never useable as a primary sim while P3D clearly is. I think if DTG could have stayed with their plan, eventually FSW would have been nearly unrecognizable as an MSFS based sim, but they didn't have the resources to get there. I suspect they badly underestimated the effort involved.