Kevlar01

Hello, thanks for the reply. Okay manually editing the axis info as you described above did finally get it to work. I thought I tried something like that but maybe not with those values. Anyway thanks again for the quick response and support!! Kevin

Hello, I'm just starting out with LAAO (already found many features that I really like!) however when trying to create an LAAO template for the PMDG 737's using my HC Bravo quadrant I'm finding I can't get the spoiler (or speed brake if you prefer) axis to work correctly if at all. I'm not trying to do anything fancy or complicated with detents, etc.,,,I just want it to reflect that moving the HC Bravo spoiler lever through it's full range will be reflected by the virtual lever in the PMDG cockpit moving through it's whole range. I've tried the SPOILER HANDLE (axis) and AXIS_SPOILER_SEt (event) assignments in LAAO but they don't work no matter what parameters I use. the flap lever on the HC Bravo works perfectly with the AXIS_FLAPS_SEt assignment with no issues so I can't figure out why the spoiler axis isn't working as well. I can easily get the spoiler axis to work normally in FSUIPC7 and in the base MSFS control assignments without any tweaking or fuss, so I don't think there's anything "broken" with my sim or HW setup. I would prefer to have everything assigned in LAAO so I have a single app and profile for each type of aircraft which is the whole point of having it. Is there something basic I'm missing here? Appreciate any insight you can provide. Cheers, Kevin.

Just to be a bit more specific with what was or was not observed on Matt's (Chewwy's) stream yesterday with this issue, what occurred wasn't wing/engine flex during flight when passing through turbulence or cloud layers; I assume this behavior is just due to PMDG's usual attention to detail. But after Matt had landed and was very slowly taxiing, he showed a wing view and the engines were quite visibly "shaking" or "wiggling" even though the wing was stationary. Then later, he showed the wing view again while he was parked at the stand and the engines had started shaking again. I don't think he was even refueling at that point so their was nothing 'dynamic' going on; the engines just seemed to want to dance to the beat...of something. I haven't had time to investigate this myself, but it pretty clearly matched the OP so I wanted to bring it up as an example. Matt may have a VOD up on his YT channel by now that shows it all. Cheers, Kevin Stalcup

FYI, Chewwy noted this same behavior yesterday during his twitch stream (P3D) with the -8. Sitting on the ground during servicing the engines were noticeably shaking, so it does appear to be a 'thing' at least in some circumstances. Cheers, Kevin Stalcup

Yup everywhere all the time. Not just smoke stacks but radio towers or anything else that has a narrow long pencil-shape does the same for me. I've been seeing this behavior for a long time and no one else seemed to be complaining about it so I just started ignoring it at some point. Kevin

Greetings all, For anyone looking for a new European airport I happened to notice in the FB Manager tool this evening that EDDN Nuremberg is now available for purchase through FB. From the manager app there's a link to the info and purchase page. From that info page it looks like this was actually done by a different team than the usual FB guys, but it looks seriously good and it will install and be maintained via the standard FB Manager. My apologies if this was already announced by someone earlier...I did a quick search but I didn't see anything recent in the forums and as it was a big surprise when I noticed it tonight I thought I'd pop in and post about it. Sneaky Mir...I don't recall him mentioning anything about this one when I spoke to him at FlightSimExpo in June!! 😉 Cheers, Kevin

Btw there is a two page (and growing) thread over on the P3D forums for this exact issue, so a lot of people are encountering it with 4.2. So far LM says they haven't been able to reproduce it; their only suggestion so far is to uninstall ALL of your addons and then reinstall them one at a time to see if one of them causes the problem. Um...no thanks. I mean they may be right in that it's a conflict with an addon somehow, but that's quite a lot of pain to go through to find out for something that was working before. Besides, in the same thread several have reported that they are having the problem even with a fresh install of 4.2 and before they've done any addons to their installation. Stay tuned as always.

+1 Yes exactly. The flight control adjustments still work with the num pad if Num Lock is off, but with Num Lock ON I don't think it matters what assignments are made because the num pad buttons appear completely unresponsive in that mode. They've apparently been making a lot of changes to accommodate VR functions in the last few builds, I wonder if that somehow messed up this function. (Btw I haven't read that anywhere it's just a guess...but it's my own Internet Conspiracy Theory until proven otherwise! ) Cheers, Kevin

Since updating to v4.2 it doesn't appear that any of the num pad keys have any response in the sim...at least on my system. In spot view the perimeter number keys (7,8,9,6, etc.) no longer cause the camera to rotate around the exterior view of the a/c either. Dave - To answer your initial question, I believe the entry you are looking for is under controls - views - Look (reset to forward view). The default assignment shows that Shift+Num Delete should work, but it doesn't in my case. But maybe if you assign it to a key other than a num pad key you'll at least get back the function you want. Cheers, Kevin

Hi Erich, I used the quote above to hopefully generate a notice to you next time you're on the forum so you'll come over to check...this forum doesn't appear to get a lot of traffic compared to the main P3D forum. As promised I've continued to work this issue with Kostas at HiFi over the past several weeks. He's been very helpful and came up with several different test scenarios for me to try along the way, which is why it took a while. In fact I could probably write several pages on what we did but I'll try to keep this mercifully brief. As you and I noted that grid pattern is really present in the radar even with ASP4 +ASCA, but it's much more obvious with ASP4+SF. It's related to the overcast model for each product and how it's implemented. Obviously with ASP4 and ASCA both being HiFi products, they've been able to do some additional tweaking to help reduce the 'strength' of the grid pattern for that case. Once of those differences results in a file called ASCAModelDefs.dat in the following location: ...Lockheed Martin\Prepar3Dv4\Weather\Clouds. Whatever this file does, it seems to help attenuate the grid pattern when used with ASP4+ASCA but my testing shows it has the exact opposite effect if it's present in a ASP4+SF config...it actually strengthens the grid-like returns somehow because it's not made to work with the SF overcast model. So while in the ASP4+SF configuration (ASCA clouds disabled), go and see if you have the file noted above in the ...\Weather\Clouds folder; if so make a copy/backup and then delete it (or just move it out of that folder, whichever you want), then restart ASP4, SF and P3D and you should notice that the radar grid-like returns will be more subtle. It won't eliminate them entirely, but they should be reduced. Another thing that I've noticed with all this testing is that at least on my setup, for the same weather conditions in the same location the radar return images under ASP4+SF will almost always indicate stronger storms than with ASP4+ASCA. A dark green patch under ASCA may show up as mostly yellow with SF at the same location, and so on. And this is with the same gain setting on the NGX, 777, etc., radar console in each case. So another thing I'll be doing if I go back to ASP4+SF is to run with slightly lower gain settings on the radar console in the aircraft to see if that matches up better with what I'm used to seeing with ASP4+ASCA. That's pretty much it without boring you further. Unfortunately it doesn't look like there's a 'magic' setting or tweak that will completely eliminate the grid returns in all cases. Which begs the question, why isn't everyone noticing these grid patterns and yelling about them? I can't answer that one; maybe it's a complicated combination of resolution settings, graphical detail settings, etc., across different setups that makes it more obvious in some cases. Let me know if you have any questions. Maybe Kostas will happen by on this thread again and correct any obvious errors in my summary above. Cheers, Kevin

Paul, wow yeah that's tricky because you purchased on the day v2 was released so it just depends on the timing. If it was still Version 1, it will have installed with the old method which uses the Couatl Addon Manager. If you got version 2 it should have installed under Flightbeam's own FB Manager utility, so that's the best way to tell. Even if you happened to get v1, you're still entitled to the free upgrade but you'll have to go through the update process. Cheers, Kevin

LOL, well the textures are actually pretty accurate overall because the 'Great Salt River' is kind of a joke the locals tell to out of towners! It is a natural riverbed however since they put in a series of dams way up river in the mountains in the last century, there's almost never any running water in the riverbed within the metro Phoenix portion. 99.9% of the time it's a dry, rocky depression. The 'river' shown above is Tempe Town Lake, which is completely artificial and had to be filled by pumping water in...not from damming the river because there's no flowing water in that part of town. Yeah, we do some pretty crazy things out here in the desert...must be the heat! Cheers, Kevin

FYI, just saw the announcement that Mir & Co over at Flightbeam have released KPHX v2.0. As before a free update if you have the previous version. This brings the last of their original releases onto the FB Manager platform, along with some other improvements and goodies, a few of which from their news feed: Dynamic Lighting (P3Dv4 Only), Floodlight lamp glows, Native 3D ground poly, Moderate performance improvement in FSX, Moderate to substantial performance improvement in P3D, Numerous v1 bugs eliminated, AFCAD improvements. Great to see one of my old favorites getting a bit of love from Mir & the Gang...and another reason why I will continue to support their work in the future!! Cheers, Kevin

Just a quick update so this doesn't fall off the...radar! The first HiFi tech support guy got back to me in less than a day and asked for some additional info (logs, etc.) and said the issue had been forwarded to the development team (maybe even Kostas from this thread). Anyway I've provided everything I can think of and it sounds like they are looking at it. Btw earlier this evening I was watching a flight sim video on YT that I'd picked almost at random (which I sometimes do because I learn a lot of stuff). I don't remember the channel name but the guy was doing a flight out of CYYZ in the FSL A320X during a snowstorm. Shortly after take-off he switched to a standard VC view that included the radar return on the ND and...there it was a big green grid array pattern on the display just like we've been talking about here. So it is occurring on different systems and with different aircraft that use the AS weather radar interface. I'll come back again with any updates I get from HiFi. Cheers, Kevin

Interesting info, however I don't think the knowledge base issue described above is the same one we are seeing now. The issue above is that if you don't have clouds set to detailed, instead of smooth 'bloobs' on the radar you will get what look like little lego bricks all over the place; sort of looks like a deranged Tetris game! Follow the PMDG link at the bottom of the article and they have a shot of the 'failure' mode. I checked anyway and my P3Dv4.1 settings were Detailed clouds and Maximum density already. Wish I could insert a screenshot here, but what we are seeing is smooth shapes but they somehow are lining up to form grids just like on a street map overview. Very strange. I've opened a support ticket over at HiFi (which was a bit of a chore!!) and attached several screenshots to show them what we are seeing. I'll report back here with anything I learn. Hopefully they will say I'm stupid because it's a simple config issue...I'm okay with that if it gets fixed! Kevin

Erich, Yup as soon as I saw the topic title I knew what you were talking about. I saw this just last night in the NGX at EDDF. There was a solid overcast with light rain falling over a large area, but the radar display looked like a google street map...the green precip returns formed perfect squares on the display and the handful of stronger yellow returns were all embedded in the borders of the squares. Unfortunately I can't really help with the 'why'. I shut everything down including AS/ASCA/SF and restarted at the same location and the radar looked more 'normal' the second time through. All I can do is confirm I've seen the odd radar behavior as well. It was late so I didn't get to test any more scenarios. Kevin

Patricio, I might be able to help because I recall having this issue a long while ago. If you are going to be updating the AIRAC info regularly, you need to go to the Options - Application setup page and make sure that "Use system time for default scenario" is checked. Assuming your PC's system time is correct the scenario will use that and will be within the current AIRAC range. If you don't have that setting checked, when P3D reaches the scenario setup page it will use a default Date & Time setting (including the year) which will be well outside of your updated AIRAC effective dates and that's probably why you are seeing that message. It's the same issue with the dates that the others were referring to up above, but once you've made that setting change you won't have to remember to manually change the scenario Date & Time every time. Hope that helps. Cheers, Kevin

David, Okay thanks makes sense. Yes I saw Gregg's response as well (thanks Gregg!) but it appears he was comparing SF engine/SF textures to AS/ASCA textures, which is also a useful thing to observe, while I think you've stated that you've been testing with AS/SF textures which is the scenario I was interested in from a performance standpoint (against AS/ASCA). But hey, I realize we're all asking for hard evidence and conclusions after a whole ONE DAY of hand-on experience from you guys, which might be a tad unfair... I'm sure a lot of these questions will start getting filled in over the next several weeks. Thanks again for posting your impressions! Cheers, Kevin

David, Thanks for the very informative report on your SF observations. If I can ask...what about your impressions of performance using SF combined with AS or anything else for that matter. Historically any added complexity to cloud structures (# of layers or visual complexity) has resulted in a noticeable impact to fps, although REX states that they've put a lot of effort into optimizing for this in SF. As you've noted that you have experience with most all of the related products, do you have any sense yet of whether performance is better, worse or about the same when utilizing SF in your sim? Btw I've read through all the previous posts but if this was addressed earlier and I missed it, I apologize! Cheers, Kevin

Greetings, To add another reference point for movement I just loaded up a flight at EHAM and went to a high external view to look around and within the first 30 seconds a Delta 767 flight was on the move and about a minute later an Air France Airbus headed out to a different runway. Shortly after that one or two more were taxiing out as well and I also saw several arrivals within the first 5 minutes or so. That may not sound like much action for a busy place like EHAM but I have my traffic limit set to 70% in UTL for performance reasons so that will obviously cut down on the number of movements but EHAM still looked very full and active even at that setting. As a long time MT6 user I have to say that I'm liking UTL so far. The one thing I will say in defense of MT6 is that you get not only commercial and GA aircraft but cargo and military as well, so you have a fully populated world right out of the box. Reading through the forums here and over at Flight1 it looks like the user has to do a lot more work to make that happen for UTL. Ceers, Kevlar

Okay thanks for the replies, Gents! My system was working absolutely fine too up until the latest patch, but since no one else is seeing this issue it does appear to be something specific to my setup. At least now I know. Maybe it was just a corrupted or incomplete update. I'll have to try again when I have a moment. Vortex681 - Thanks for that heads-up on the tool; wasn't aware it was even available. Figures...now we have to download, install and run a special tool to do something that could be done with a single mouse click in previous versions of Windows...that's progress!? Cheers all!

Anyone else had some weird issues pop up after installing one the MS Patch Tuesday updates today? More specifically "Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1709 for x64-based Systems (KB4054517)". After Windows did its thing this evening I noticed that some of my sim apps were suddenly acting up; for example UTLive would crash after 10-15 seconds, and FTX Central wouldn't launch at all. However some apps that share the same drive were working just fine (PMDG Ops Center, ChasePlane, FB Mgr, etc.) so it wasn't like it killed everything. And I know all of this stuff was working fine yesterday. Looking through the update history the one above seemed a likely candidate, and sure enough after I backed it out everything seemed to go back to normal. Could just be something with my installation, although there's nothing particularly unique about it as far as I know. That's why I was wondering if anyone else had observed something similar today, because of course Windows is going to keep pestering me to install it until I do. Wish we still had the option to Hide these things when necessary!! Cheers, Kevin

Robert, I have a PFC Cirrus Saab Yoke USB that I purchased in 2013 and it's working fine with Windows 10 and V4, Maybe I just got lucky somehow but mine did not require any HW updates to work with WIN10, although I did wait to convert over to WIN10 (from WIN7) just this past Spring so maybe the USB driver issues were resolved by then? Don't really know. In fact the only HW 'change' I've had to make to mine is I had to re-solder a broken wire on one of the rocker switches a while back...but I guess I'll have to reluctantly give WIN10 a pass on that issue at least! Kevin

Thanks for the replies gents, Not sure what you mean, Jay, since as I stated above the TD (or Legacy) config tool is exactly what I'm looking at but it doesn't even offer the just installed GTN Complete units as an option like it did in V3. Also FWIW all of the other changes I make via the config tool (graphics, realism, realview, etc.) take effect in the aircraft as expected, so I know the config tool is 'hooked up' to the aircraft file okay even though its in V4. Not sure how you got it to magically work straight off with no config changes at all...but congrats!! ShawnG, thanks also but as noted above the TD and Legacy config tools find the aircraft okay for making other changes so I think the config tool is working with the aircraft okay, although it may be that it doesn't know how to find the F1 GTN program under V4. And as I said I no longer have a V3 version of P3D to install anything into so that's not an option for me. Sounds like I may be struggling with this one for a while. Kevin

Greetings all, Trying to follow the breadcrumbs here but getting a little lost. Has anyone who is only running P3D v4 got the GTN units to show up in either the RA Turbine Duke or Legacy config tools so they can select and install them? Mine both stubbornly continue to show only the default GPS 500 option. My RA aircraft are installed outside of the sim in an addon folder I've created and using the XML method to insert them into the sim. V4 is my only installed sim so I can't 'trick' the F1 config tool by pointing it to other install folders, etc. The puzzling thing is that for v3 the TD and Legacy were already set up to be installed outside of the sim (which I did) and the F1 GTNs installed just fine via the RA config tool; seems like it should be no different for V4. Appreciate any thoughts people might have. FWIW the A2A config tools picked up the new GTN units right away and gave the option to install so at least those worked as expected. Thanks, Kevin