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.

Comparing video games to film is not really valid. Film has innate motion blur that hides a lot motion artifacts. Even so, you can tell the difference between movies shot at 24 vs 48fps, just look up the Hobbit movie if you want to hear more about it. I've found that Flight seems pretty smooth at around 30fps, some games are different, but this one is pretty smooth. It would be nice to have a consistent 60fps, but I don't expect to be able to get that. You might get an improvement with a better processor, but you will probably need to overclock it a lot to really make a difference. An SSD would a help a little with load times, but probably not with in-game performance (on the other hand, they are great for everything else you do on the computer, and are definitely worth the cost of upgrading to). Have you tried using the adaptive v-sync setting in the nvidia control panel? It should get rid of that drastic drop off from 60 to 30fps, or 30 to 20fps. Some people complain about screen tearing when you go below 60fps, but it's worth trying.

Another day of my Alaska tour. Now I'm headed south from Fairbanks toward Denali. After flying around several of the airports near Fairbanks I picked up a passenger at LADD AAF and headed out to Cantwell airport, about 100nm to the south. Here I am after landing at Clear Creek, I'm looking back to the north. The Blair lakes are visible in the foreground; one last look at the Tanana River behind that, and a little sliver of Harding Lake again in the distance. I made an interesting discovery here. If you hit the 'glance' key while in the overhead look your view will swing out giving you an extremely high altitude look at the area. Zooming in just lowers your viewpoint. After landing at Gold King Creek I headed toward Totatlanika River. I ended up getting completely lost and overshooting the airfield by about 15nm. I eventually found Healy Creek and followed it to its junction with the Nenana River where Healy River airport is. After that I took off north again in search of Eva Creek and Totatlanika River again. This time I found a few landmarks to follow. On the left is the Nenana, and on the right is Jumbo Dome, a very prominent landmark, with Eva Creek hiding behind the rise just right of center. After an... incident, my passenger seems to have fallen out and died. Lucky for me I found my way to Eva Creek here. After flying east to Totatlanika River airstrip I headed south again toward McKinley Nat. Park airport. Here I am flying through a pass over Moody Creek with Dora Peak to the east; the weather has gotten much nastier, set at mixed now. After landing at Mckinley and Denali airports, I'm headed back toward civilization and Cantwell airport. Here I am over the Nenana again, with Cantwell in the distance. At last, down for the night at Cantwell. That's 30 airports so far. Next up I'll head down the river, then up through Denali towards Mt. Mckinley.

Starting out the next morning, I'm in the Icon now, taking off from Allen AAF. I flew around a few of the smaller airfields in the Delta Junction area. First to Rocking T. Ranch; I'm flying over the two rather harrowing little strips below. Up north to Remington Field next. I decided to take off from the little lake nearby since this was a small strip too. After that it was off to Wingsong Estates, Delta Daves, and Artic Angel Airport, then back to Allen to pick up a job. After switching to the Maule I picked up a cargo job headed for Clear Sky Lodge to the west. Here I am leaving the Delta Junction area. I followed the 107º radial towards the Fairbanks VOR station, flying above the Tanana River. Here I'm over the river; looking to north I can see Harding Lake, then the Salcha River behind that, and the mountains of the Chena River State Rec. Area in the distance. South of Fairbanks now, I'm looking out towards the Nenana River and Denali Nat. Park way off in the distance, although you probably can't see Mt. Mckinley (also called Denali) from this far. Another treacherous landing for my overloaded Maule at the Clear Sky lodge airstrip. The bugged prop speed on the Maule doesn't help either. After a successful landing. I switched to the Cub for a passenger flight from Clear Sky Lodge back to Fairbanks. That's right 4 people in that little thing. Even with all that weight I had no problem taking off. Here I am headed back up the Nenana River; the weather has cleared up now as the sun has risen a little higher. The junction of the Nenana and Tanana rivers, over Nenana airport, headed north. Back on the Tanana, approaching Fairbanks Int. After a successful landing. I love the new 'glance' button, I can finally find the drop off point without having to just skip to the waypoint after landing. I think I'll head down towards Denali tomorrow, then out west somewhere.

Well, I don't think I'll get to everywhere. I was thinking of cutting across the state in a few places, and probably down the southern areas, past Juneau. Follow a mountain range here, a coastline there, some valleys and rivers, that kind of thing. I was thinking of doing the job boards too, although I want to switch around planes a lot, so I'll only be able to do big jobs when I use the Maule. But that's a good idea, especially for when I don't have any specific destination in mind. And hopefully we'll have some new cargo or passenger planes to play around with sometime soon. As for Hawaii, I really like how familiar I've become with the islands. I was **uely aware of the layout of the islands before, but now, after 60 or so hours, I have a fairly good grasp on the area. There's no way I'll be able to do that with Alaska, not even with 600 hours, but I would like to get an idea for what the area is like. And I could see hanging around a few areas for a while, making short trips between all those little airfields. Some places are absolutely bristling with airfields, and I'm sure I could spend a while tooling around in those areas.

Instead of popping around from place to place using the map or doing random jobs as I've done in Hawaii, I decided try out a different way to explore Alaska. I'm going to make one big, continuous tour, deciding my next destination along the way, and stopping in on random airstrips as I go. I don't plan on landing at every single dirt strip or seaplane base, obviously, but I figure that I can hit most of the major stops. Some trips I'll use VOR stations to navigate, others I'll just try to fly visually, some of those dirt strips are pretty small though, and I'll have to use the overhead view or the map. Yesterday I flew around Anchorage, then up to Wasilla (does everyone have their own private airstrip there?). After that I went through the mountains to the east and ended up landing at Lake Louise on a tiny, hazardous strip along the southwest shore of the lake. Today I took off from there and headed east to Gulkana, then on north to Allen AAF. Around this time was where I actually came up with this tour idea. So I decided to stop at a few airstrips on the way, while following the flight path from the Gulkana VOR station to Allen. Flying north from Gulkana towards Paxson Airport, I'm above Paxson Lake here. The airstrip is just visible above my airspeed indicator. After a successful landing at Paxson. I switched to the Carbon Cub and headed northeast again. Now you can start to see some real mountains. I'm flying in the spring with the weather set to 'among the giants.' I like the low level clouds and how they stack up against the mountains. Coming in for a landing at Black Rapids airstrip, now about 30nm south of Allen AAF. I like this weather setting, but the poor Carbon doesn't seem to handle the wind very well. You can see the tiny airstrip on the right. I'm pointed about 40º left of the runway, but I'm more or less headed straight for it. And it only got worse as I came in for the landing. Luckily the Cub can take a few bounces of the ground while going almost sideways. Here I am after a successful, if harrowing landing. Now in the Stearman headed for Allen. I took Roboray's advice and flew through the pass. The river that I'm above (Delta River I think) stretches from Black Rapids all the way to Allen where it joins with another river (maybe that's the Delta, google maps isn't too helpful for rivers). Coming in to Allen as the sun is setting. And I'm down for now. Next up I think I'll head to Fairbanks, a short distance to the Northwest. From there I'm thinking I'll head all the way out to Nome, on the west coast of Alaska, stopping a few places on the way. I'll see if I can't see Russian after that. And then, who knows, I could spend weeks just making 2 or 3 hour hops all throughout Alaska.

Well the flight website is sort of down right now, but who knows what that means. The post on the beta forums doesn't really explain anything. Also, weren't the previous DLC releases announced beforehand? Something like "Buy the P-40 next Wednesday" and not just dropped on us with no advance notice.

4GB makes sense for the total; it's the 600MB base pack that I said seemed small. I guess everything depends on what these separate packs mean. If they are separated for some logistical issue then fine, but if they are separate purchases that might be a bit of a bummer depending on pricing. Of course, MS could just tell us what's going on instead of doling out cryptic hints in their news updates as if everything is some big secret.

The only info I can get out of those entries is hard drive space required, which could actually say a lot. In the same order as listed above they are: 593MB - Alaska Wilderness 414MB - Alaska Shared 1.3GB - Cold Climate Wilderness LC 371MB - Gridded Urban LC 189MB - Shared Resources 414MB - Temperate Climate Wilderness LC 704MB - Universal LC Compare this to the 862MB for Hawaii, and around 30-40MB for planes. The base alaska pack seems small, especially compared to the cold climate and universal LC's (I guess land class makes sense there as LC).

Does anyone know if the changes to prop speed and their relationship to total power is more or less realistic than the previous behavior? I haven't really had a chance to play around with it since the update, but my understanding is that this is closer to the way CS props should work. As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, full RPM does not mean max power. At higher RPM the prop pitch will be lower, generating less lift, at lower RPM (but still at max throttle) you'll get a higher pitch, producing more lift and making you go faster. There was a thread here a while ago about manifold pressure and prop speed that linked to a really detailed lesson on this (and fuel mix). I don't know which thread it was but the lesson is here: http://www.advancedpilot.com/downloads/prep.pdf. It would be nice if they would just tell us what they changed in the update, but it's also a bit fun to try puzzle these things out for ourselves.

For those of you that use the XBox controller I've found that remapping the prop and fuel mix controls to the 4 right hand buttons (A,B,X,Y) works really well. You lose the gear control, cycle through views, brakes, and enter/exit (the dumbest control to be given a dedicated button) controls. Putting the brakes on the back button (which is the map by default) works ok, it's not ideal but it seems good enough (I don't think you can remap the start button, which would have worked better for the brakes), and the keyboard works fine for the other controls. Overall I think it's a huge improvement; no more keyboard shortcuts, or being forced to use the mouse for the push/pull controls, which I always found awkward. They move in 5% increments, but you might be able to change that.