Finnerz

I flew this beauty a while back (in sim of course :smile: ) and have just confirmed that it was a paper moving map with stylus (sadly not modelled in sim)! From Wikipedia: I'd read the basic description on David Maltby's site but never thought to look further into it, so I'd never realised quite how cool it was.

I'm not a sufficiently experienced and hardcore X-Plane user to know how/if this can be done with the default X-Plane camera system, but it might be possible with X-Camera - it seems to have a lot of key assignments and that could well be one of them.

Thank you all so much. I went for the EVGA in the end and I'm loving it! I'm being frankly bowelled over by what X-Plane can look like with all the HDR effects turned on, and despite being perpetually CPU limited, it somehow improved my FSX Heathrow framerates. Finlay

HI all, First up, I'm having trouble with the Avsim search and I have tried Google, with limited success, the results not being specific enough or too varied to help much. After a very, very long time I've decided to buy a graphics card, and as it is to be used for X-Plane and non-flight sim games as well as FSX, I'm going for the top of my budget and looking for an air cooled GTX 980 Ti. There seem to be several contenders but due to a 290 mm case restriction, I've narrowed it down to three options: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti SC GAMING ACX 2.0+, Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti G1 Gaming, MSI GeForce GTX 980Ti Gaming. I know there are other similar cards like the Asus Strix but that is too long for my case. From what I can gather from reviews (in particular this one http://techreport.com/review/28685/geforce-gtx-980-ti-cards-compared/7), the EVGA has reliability and warranty but performs worse and is midrange for sound, the Gigabyte is the most powerful, but is loud and could need a few returns to get a fully working one (reports of coil whine, which sounds like a bad thing!), and the MSI is quietest and in the middle for power and reliability. I bought my current graphics card for £30 many years ago so I have absolutely no idea which way to turn, and could do with some advice. For example, is the extra power of the Gigabyte noticeable in games enough to put it over the MSI, which is looking like my favourite at the minute; or is the EVGAs reliability and warranty worth its shortfalls. These are the kind of questions I'd appreciate help with as a complete newbie to graphics cards. (How I wish it was a simple as the CPU days when it was just i5 or i7!) Many, many thanks, Finlay

Yes it is: from the forum announcement "full compatibility with DX10 in FSX SP2, XPack and Steam".

I can also recommend Fly UK. It is UK based so there are a lot of European flights and although there is no A330, there is a recently added X-Plane livery for the JARDesign A320. However the ACARS system requires XPUIPC, which may only work on Windows, I can't remember. Flights can be chosen from a large schedule, which is updated twice a year. Good luck wherever you end up!

Although you can't access betas with it, the steam version is otherwise near-identicle and goes on 33 and 50% off sales a few times throughout the year. Finlay Waller

#Manuals

I bought this over a year ago so things might have changed since but back then you downloaded and installed the product and it would work at all FSDreamTeam airports and at a few specific default airports (maybe with a time limit, probably 5 - 15 minutes if so) without buying a license. Then once you've bought it you enter those details into it and it will work everywhere without a need for reinstalling.

I read in the comments on the developer blog that us Steam users should get beta access when it hits the release candidate stage. I don't know if it will always be this way though.

I have no idea if it is any good at all but I saw a thread about a (I think 3rd party) plugin that lets Radar Contact work with X-Plane.

Steam access only comes when there is a release candidate.

I'm no expert on this but I seem to recall that there's a limit on the number of VC animations you can have in FSX and presumably P3D so if you have realistic rain effects, you can't use a load of animations for switches and things. I expect someone more in the know could give more details on it though. However, if anyone does work out how to get around this limitation at some point, there's a good chance it will be PMDG.

Off topic (sorry!) but this just made my day, thank you.

I have Skymaxx pro v2 and also use (just) the sky textures from Aerosoft's Sky Tools (which are free). It took me a little while to get it working but the Skymaxx interface lets you change themes without a moving files and a sim restart. I quite like it, but I struggle with having a choice of themes to use!