DMagick

My suspicion is that at some point they will take all, or some, of the daily aerocaches and make them regular aerochaches. Maybe when they release the next scenery pack they'll do that and move on to having daily ones in the new area. It's not how they've done things in Hawaii, but it seems like a reasonable way of doing it.

Back to my tour, at last. When I left off before I was at Pitka, on the Yukon River just before it turns to head south. I followed the Yukon on its southward leg, on a rather long, uneventful journey, until it turned west. At that point I continued on south with a few passengers in my trusty Maule. I mentioned it in one of the other threads, but it's worth showing here; the pre-dawn hours can be a great time to fly if you are planning something more than an hour or so. In this screenshot I'm coming in for a landing at Kalskag airport, along the Kuskokwim River, just south of the Yukon. That growing glow in the southeastern sky is a fantastic effect; it's really best appreciated in the game. And flying in the winter time really draws out the effect because of the low angle that the sun is rising at. I followed the Kuskokwim river down its path landing at several of the airports, including Bethel, one of the bigger airports in the area. Here I am approaching Napakiak, just south of Bethel. The sun is just barely starting to come over the horizon now; low clouds are great for this time of day. Now I'm headed toward my destination, Nunapitchuk to the west. The sun is really starting to come up now, casting those great, long shadows. I switched to the Cub as I headed out south again, carrying cargo. This screenshot shows the pitiful December noon in southern Alaska, as I fly over the Kuskokwim Bay, toward the Ahkuln Mountains. A little sliver of Goodnews Bay, my destination, is visible just under the sun. I took a detour through the mountains so that I could line up and approach Goodnews airport from the northeast. Here I am rounding Explorer Mountain, just before turning southwest for my final approach. Success. I really like the Cub. I've found that flying in the fake cockpit works pretty well for this plane. I never cared for doing that in the P51, but this one seems more detailed and a little higher resolution than the others. I can't wait for the deluxe version to come out. To finish up the day I switched to the Icon and continued on south. Here I am headed towards Cape Newenham, with Security Cove off to the left. In the distance on the left is Bristol Bay, and on the right is the Bering Sea.

I don't think Steam's seasonal sales have much to do with how bad or well a game is selling. Skyrim has been at or near the top of their best seller list for 7 or 8 months and it's on sale. I think it just gives you multiple download codes, two for the planes, and one for Hawaii.

You can buy DLC from steam or directly from the MS store if you have the steam version. I bought the Hawaii pack, and the F4U from Steam, and I bought Alaska direct from the MS store. Everything was installed using only the steam version of the Flight. All that matters is the code, once you have that you can get everything downloaded from inside the game. If you buy from the MS store you can also use the 'Games For Windows Marketplace' program to download DLC though, in case there is some problem with in-game downloads. But that program is independent of which version of Flight you use.

I always pick up from the last airport I landed at. Usually I search for jobs with destinations in the general direction of where I'm headed. I still haven't quite figured out how to reliably reset the job board. Usually changing the season, then close out the flight conditions window, then changing it back to where I was will do it, but other times I seem to have to fiddle around more to get the board to change. And I am slowly cycling through the seasons as I fly, usually a few weeks or a month at a time. I usually have a general idea of where I want to get to, but that normally changes as I end up flying to ever more out of the way airports. Right now I'm at Cape Newenham, on the southwest, non-Aleutian, corner of the state. I've been intending to go to Nome since I was back on the Yukon river, but I keep on flying jobs that take me further south. I also intend to stop at areas with challenges and do those as I get to them. I think there are a few at Nome, so I hope to get those soon. I would also like to see aerocaches in AK, not just daily ones, but the regular ones too. I like flying at dawn and dusk too, but I've discovered that setting the time to a few hours before dawn is great too, especially if you are flying south or east. Turn on some kind of cloudy weather and you'll get a gradually brightening horizon, until the sun finally peeks over the mountains and the shadows spread out beneath you.

Does it stay stuck that way? Or can you push glance again to reset the top-down view? I can see being stuck like that being a problem in some situations.

For $4 I might just pick up another warbird. I don't spend too much time with the P51 (I got it free from the beta), but it can be fun every once in a while. And it's nice to be able to shoot up past 20k ft. without spending 2 hours getting there. Anyone have suggestions? How do they compare to the P51? I'm thinking the F4U seems the most dissimilar. On the other hand I've heard that the Zero is smaller and more maneuverable, that could be interesting.

I also don't notice much of an effect at relatively low altitudes, but when you get a bit higher, around 10k ft. for most of the planes, or 15k-20k ft. for the P51 (and I assume the other warbirds) you really have to lean or else you start losing power. While flying up to McKinley in the Stearman I had to bring the mix down to 20% when I was at around 20000ft. Below 15% the motor would start to sputter, above maybe 35 or 40% I would start to lose a lot of power, and the engine would cut out at really high levels. So there is a pretty narrow range of useful fuel mix levels if you get high enough. The problem is that most of the flights I make are way too short to justify getting up very high, and all the non-warbird planes struggle above 10k anyway. So aside from managing fuel flow for longer flights, or heavier loads, closely managing fuel mix doesn't seem all that important.

According to my flight website stats: Total time: 79:47'39 XP: 880,943 Distance traveled: 10210 Total cargo (lbs): 18317 Clandestine (lbs): 5894 It doesn't seem to show it at the website, but the airports landed at is: 98 A little more time and I can break 1m XP, and maybe get up to 200 airports while I'm at it. And a few more big clandestine trips and I can break 10000 lbs for that, and 20000 lbs for total cargo. But the only stat I'm really proud of is my highest landing: 20268. That one was not so easy. I have some pictures of my landing on McKinley in the Stearman in my grand tour thread. As far as I can tell that's about as high as you can get, maybe a few more feet, but I'm not sure when the altitude measurement is taken for that stat (when you first touchdown or when you reach some certain speed?), and that peak is pretty small; there's not much room up there for a higher landing.

It's probably been asked before, but is there a way to back up your stats file? Is there some location with your profile, or is it hidden in some GFWL black hole?

Back on my tour after a few days off. On this trip I'm headed south out of Cantwell, flying to Talkeetna with a few stops along the way. Here I am flying over the Middle Fork of the Chulitna River, looking down towards Honolulu, AK. After taking off again from Talkeetna, I stopped at Nugget Bench to pick up my Stearman for the trip into the mountains. Here is my ultimate destination, still hidden in the clouds, with my path up the mountains just off to my left, the Tokositna Glacier. Still struggling to get the altitude I need. I'm at about 19k here, looking at McKinley from the east. I managed to get the Stearman up there, about 21000 feet at the highest (prop set at 15% by the way, that doesn't seem right), and after approximately 97 tries I managed to land on the peak. I tried out a few weather settings, and eventually decided on 'among the giants,' coming in to land from the east with a 23kt headwind. The peak itself is very small, and it's easy to overshoot and fly off the other side. It's also tough to land on such a steeply sloped area without crashing, but it is possible. I spit on Mauna Loa and it's weak 14000 ft landings. Taking off again was surprisingly easy, I just rolled down a relatively smooth looking hill a flew off the edge. After heading down from the mountain I started north again towards the Yukon river. Here I am getting tossed around in the wind and rain in my poor Icon while flying from Art Z to American Creek, just north of the Tanana River, near its junction with the Yukon. After picking up some passengers at Ralph M Calhoun Mem. airport I headed down the Yukon. Here I am headed into the sunset; it's October now, and everything is starting to freeze over. I'm over the curly Nowitna river here, with the Yukon off to my right. At last, the lights of Pitka airport, tucked in next to the frozen Yukon river. I'm getting close to the west coast now. More to come soon.

You should know that there is a reason why reflectionquality skips from low to max. One of the threads in the Beta forum says there is a bug with the High reflection setting that they haven't got around to fixing. I haven't noticed any problems with it set on high, but you should keep that in mind if you have any weird problems after changing the setting. Also, about FXAA, you can turn both options on, in-game and FXAA from the control panel. I have in-game sharpness set at high instead of max and FXAA on. It seems to work pretty well, and FXAA has almost no performance penalty. Another thing I noticed last night is that adaptive v-sync doesn't seem to work like it's supposed to. With the in-game v-sync on (and the control panel set to adaptive) the game still gets stuck at fps that work with your refresh rate (15, 20, 30, and 60fps). If you turn off the in-game setting it works like it should, activating v-sync at 60fps, and turning it off below that. I don't think it's supposed to work that way, the in-game setting shouldn't matter, but it does here.

There is a program called Maxivista that seems to do this. It uses your laptop as an extension of your main display. It looks like there is a free trail version so you can try it. If you have a macbook there is also a simple program to make this work, Air Display (there is also an iOS and I think an Android version of this). It also has a free trial version, and I can confirm that it works with GMap while running Flight in pseudo-fullscreen mode. You just have to be connected to the same network, wireless or ethernet.

I tried out Air Display for my macbook air and it works fairly well. I followed the tutorial for setting up flight in pseudo-full screen mode. Clicking on the map still cuts the sound off, and the macbook's screen is a little choppy, but once you get everything set up it's not too bad. I also found that I could fit in a small browser window alongside GMap, which could be useful for skyvector, google maps, or something like that. There's a free trail for the OS X version of Air Display (it works for 1 hour, and the full version is $20), but I think I might try out the iOS version for $10. I like being able to seamlessly use my macbook to tinker with skyvector, look up airport info, or check google maps. If anyone has tried the iOS version on an iPhone I'd love to hear how it works. Does GMAP fit on an iPhone? Does anyone know exactly what the resolution is for GMap? I'm thinking it should fit, or almost fit, on the fairly high res. iPhone screen, but I'm not sure, and I don't think there's any trail version of the iOS version to test.

I don't think you have to disable the in-game v-sync, the control panel setting will override it. You should be able to notice when it's on; dropping below 60fps won't be produce such a sudden stuttering effect. You could also run FRAPS just to check if it's working properly.