tarere

People have been complaining about FSX not being updated since 2006, now we have a plateform upgrading every 3 months and they complain further more. It's been a few years I did not check a flightsim forum, I forgot about that whole fun part. Wait, let me check if people still wine about PMDG pricing in 2016.

Yes logged to download and install v3.1 as I'm still running v2.5 then I saw "download unavailable please come back", 30 mins later saw v3.2, I was not aware of an upcoming release, wanted to share with you guys. No announcement whatsoever on the website, no idea of what compatibility break it may induces.

At least logged to http://prepar3d.com/purchased_downloads/ it shows Prepar3D_v3_Academic_3.2.2.16659.zip No official annoucement on website. Any brave one to download and install ?

Hey I'm here. Majority of posters missed my point. I dont't blame anybody. I see the MS / LM contract as a broken deal which is now as a fact counterproductive to Flight Simulation evolution. But MS could not think of it when it sold the licence, it has to get some money from a dead project and it was a great way out for them. Eventually LM might not even think of selling a somewhat licence for personal use, they just see it afterward when they felt the FS crowd pushing at the door : "shut up and take my money" ! Still we're stuck. Fact. 3rd party developper are on a closed non evolution loop tied to FSX, some way they are ok with it because they work on still technology which might lower their cost of production compared to moving forward every 2 or 3 years. I was relating with the unbelievable speed of evolution in web developpement tools and plateforms for those who knows it. Since a few years we've seen litterally thousands of open source project that are moving the web forward at a speed unknown before, to a point it is becoming difficult for webdeveloper to keep up with innovation. Smaller, faster, easier, less code, more feature, frameworks, libraries, all you can code style. Free, open source. I know I may be comparing apples and oranges. But I do stand my position that we lost 8 years of progress and what is frightening is there is no credible light ahead. FSX survived because it was such the major and almost only player since twenty years of franchise, and because it has such an enthousiastic community behind. What I regret is that this very active and dedicated community work on a dead software, that is the very point of my post. Where do this work go indeed for the years to come ? Imagine if that community had access to the core of the simulation instead of a 2006 closed SDK ? What if FSX code had been open sourced, where would we be now ? Certainly far ahead. And in a way some have raised a valid point, maybe the whole community should work toward FlightGear, I'm sure in one years the gap would be inverted. But this involve a collective will, not gonna happen of course. Just a thought.

So I was thinking, here we are all, spring 2014, using an exe program from 2006. The ten years mark is not far ahead. I heard some people get excited here because a military company has ended eventually releasing a patched version of FSX with partial support for cloud shadows or something. Oh, great, eight years later, seems we are on a speed track for evolution ! I mean, i see games on dumb smartphones thats look to handle more 3D on a fluid pattern than my FSX running an i-stopped-counting number of overcloked cores i7 whatever coming along with a state of the art GPU and all the stuff in a massive tower PC. Woah, let's tweak the number of trees to lower value to gain one FPS ! Yeah baby, see that DX10 fixer ? Yes that's it, almost cockpit shadows, and steady one more FPS than DX 9, paradigm shift man, go get it only 20 bucks ! Ok, this is 3rd party addon company talking, listen guys we have great news for you, we made a rear camera view for our massive airliner but we warn you nobody will be able to use it because you'll kill your eight cores super computer. Yeah baby, feel the reality. I actually remember playing a game called F-29 retaliator on Atari ST in 1990 or something where you had in the cockpit an in-screen 3D camera view of the missile you lauched to the target. We want the 90's back guys. At BUILD 2014 Microsoft announced a fair amount of proprietary project going Open Source, a trend they go on since a few years. Yes, you get it, if MS has ditched FS i'm not sure they still make relevant revenue from it, and sure this is not going to grow in the years to come. Should they chose to make it Open Source I guess they would be in a way still leading the legacy and possibly they could have figured a way to monetize a plateform as a service around the open sourced product, the same as they do with Azure with great success and constant dollars flow (asp.net is open source, Azure host tons of it). But the deal is there, FSX is stuck by legal contracts. FSX is a dead horse beatten by a military company. Choices that were made since 2006 we're all wrong, counting the closed scheme of Flight!, sure the ecosystems exists and some companies make moneys on this dead horse, but the result is we are now 8 years late on technolgy for Flight Simulation. Not to offense the small players like X-Plane but a bunch of developper can't keep up especially without market pressure (only two player in the market, you can be sure seeing no real innovation). I was wondering what the IT Crowd would have done in 8 years with an open sourced FSX. MS, release the FSX code on Codeplex, and see the magic happens.

Hi, Don't see the point of a "bip" here, nobody will use that except you. I can't understand how people DON'T use time compression knowing how boring cruise might be for line pilots themselves, I also especialy wonder what they do in their freetime, but anyway... I don't have time to fly much, but I try to do one long haul flight a week since the T7 is out. And I have a precise windows of 2 hours per flight per week to do it. So the answer to your question is in fact very easy, should you use time compression you can stay in front of your computer during the whole flight, and watch for failures and monitor flight at 16x level. That's what I do, work great, and I also check fuel prediction passing waypoint, check wind against predicted weather on PFPX flight plan and so on. Basically the magic of time compression, especially at 16x, is that you CAN monitor from A to Z a complete long haul flight of 8-10 hours, even without leaving your desk once. 1 hour is less than 4 minutes in 16x, think about the time you gain. You can also revert to 1x passing each waypoint, going through your waypoint crossing checklist (fuel, track, weather, divert update, ETOPS, etc) and go to 16x when done till next. I also noticed that Auto Cruise was a bit too conservative and reverting too easy to normal time. I found it one of the best feature of T7 but progressively reverting to "manual" 16x time with complete monitoring of flight, if it goes weird i can revert to 1x, correct track and go on 16x. I heard some people takeoff, go to sleep and land the next morning in real time. I'm sorry guys, WHERE THE HELL IS REALISM in here ?! I mean, shoul youd you have a failure a 3:00 AM when you're just dreaming of your next holidays, what is going to happen to your flight ? I had a complete engine failure in cruise on a flight. I was monitoring, at 16x, but monitoring, I was able to react immediately and had great fun going through abnormal CL and finding a divert. So real time long hauler do not use failure I guess. Accelerate time and monitor your flight from takeoff to landing, you have my answer here. Win fun, win TIME, win realism, total winner, and you also get that beautiful scenic sunrise / sunset over the ocean leaving or arriving your destination. Jerome Tarere

Several good points here. Yes as pointed by some I do have three main contraints to revert to single PC. - Time - Conveniance, the cockpit was a 7 minutes setup but still this makes you lazy to set it up - Wife (so not able to keep the cockpit in permanent operation) But the concept is pretty clever, the non fixed base was indeed a prerequisite from design, as it folds well and extended it is a full single captain side 737 with MCP, FMC, front panel, pedestal, semi enclosed but no overhead. Driven by Project Magenta and a stripped down external view only PMDG 737NGX. "To make things often worse, one sits down at these contraptions to see in front a facsimile of half complete banks of gauges but then you look up and see the entire lovingly designed original virtual cockpit and aircraft superimposed in front of the chaotic hardware and then the eventual view of the outside world." Yes, totally agree. Full home cockpit or VC only for me. But this is personnal view again. Yes having used a projector for some times, noting beat large wide screen LCD resolution. Ended with 3 LCDs and matrox 3go for external view. Z06z33, no i'm not planning to sell parts, it would be a waste of money as you would not buy them what it cost me or even half, I'm planning to arrange my cockpit in fixed base one day if we move to a bigger house and i negociate a personal use room from wife

This is actually intended toward NGX flying because I don't do a lot of GA in FSX except for reviewing a real world flight before doing it (FSX is unvaluable for that). Cockpit prep is done inside the VC, it does not anymore involve harware and software setup. From cold and dark to push I got 15 minutes. I never do flight longer than 1 hour enroute, no time to sadly and kind of boring too. Add maybe 20 minutes for flight planning (where do I go, from where, charts, etc). When short of time (always !) I'll use standard known routes for quick flights, same gate dep / arr, route stored in CDU, etc. I use FS Kneeboard for ipad so charts are on demand no time lost at all. Interestingly I also dropped Radar Contact because it added sometimes unwanted time to flight (vectoring, erratic altitude clearance, etc) so I use FSX ATC which in fact is great if you use it for departure and arrival and which will assure you clearance regarding to AI something addons don't do. You see I've been pushing the less is more far and it works for me, flying more !

Hi, I wanted to share a strange experience with simmers strungling to actually fly FSX because of setting up their cockpit of even tweaking. I have flown a rather complete 737 home cockpit for the past 6 years and I figured recently that I was flying no more than one flight a month due to the time needed for seting up the beast. I have to say that the homecockpit was very cool but could not be leaved flyable, I had to assemble / dissassemble part for using it (woman acceptance factor anyone ?). Not saying also about the tweaking part, hardware, software networking, and all stuff you may enjoy but without actually flying. Set up, fly, fold it. Lesson 1 : Too much time to set up = not willing to set it up and no time to do it = no flying ! So I tried to revert to single PC and virtual cockpit operation with a fellow NGX. I do have to mention I bought a new haswell PC for stopping loosing time in tweaking and have totally fluid VC operation on complex aircraft (in my home cockpit I used only external view so it was really cool on framerate). First with a saitek yoke and thrust stand plus Track IR. It was "kind of OK". I did not actually fly more so I figured the yoke and rudder was a pain to install each time (again desktop must be clean when non flying). Got rid of the yoke and rudder and used a left handed sidestick TM16000 (the absolutely most loved joystick I ever used, unmatched precision, the absolute no brainer for Airbus FBW operation, but I actually did use it as a left captain sidestick for the NGX). Then figured TrackIR was hurting my neck, It is not so easy to use. Got rid of Track IR, using space + mouse for head movement and zoom. Very precise. One thing less in the cockpit. Then figured I couldn not use the joystick as a left sidestick and control engine power (the thrust lever is on the joystick, try it, see ?). Plus I had to put the sidestick on a sidechair and it was set up work, even if it took 30 seconds to do it was a barrier in a way. So I did remove the sidestick and tried myself to the MOUSE AS YOKE. Let me tell you something about MOUSE AS YOKE. I'm a PPL and fly C150, 172 and P28. Nothing beat the mouse as yoke feeling for controlling precisely the aircraft in the special case of the C172 in VC view. You have to see the VC yoke move to get feedback and it does work great. Especially, I'm sorry to say that Saitek Yoke is kind of crappy to the least regarding precision and smooth control, this is my opinion don't take it for general. Anyway just give it a try. So mouse as yoke was a new discovery for me, using Autorudder and the mouse wheel for throttle just give you total control of the aircraft, especially with advanced mouse with more buttons and DPI control on demand. So now my setup is : - A fast single PC, 2013 hardware, stop tweaking time is more money than a new PC - A large 27" single monitor, I just advance it in front of me to have maximum immersion by almost filling my angle of vision with it - A illuminated keyboard (for night flying) under the monitor - A good mouse (like Logitech G500) Cocpkpit preparation : - Enter the room - Launch FSX - Advance monitor (3 seconds) - Fly End of flight : - Stop flying - Exit FSX - Push back monitor (3 sec) - Leave the room I now enjoy flying a few times a week in my NGX VC comparing to once a month at best. I think such a move is also possible now due to higly immersive VC cockipt and affordable very large monitors. This is not intented to persuase you to switch your habbit, this is a way to operate I wish I had tested before as it works great and which may help simmer struggling with free time and uneeded complication. Less Is More does apply to FSX !

Wow, do you REALLY thinks that ? I never used GPS during my PPL training, specificly our training aircraft have no GPS and my instructor would forbid it during training. I do have my phone GPS for emergency situation, as the 12V battery plug of the plane is not working I have a small amount of battery time on iphone IF NEEDED in case everything turns wrong. In normal procedure it is shut down, i use navlog and clock, and of course visual recogn. That's why I say FSX is great for cross country, pick up a PA28, real weather and your navlog and clock, and fly, there is basically no difference with the real things as far as things stay related to navigation. Who cares of flight physics in cruise flight ? Again, not the point. "About VFR route practice before an actual flight: What for?" I tell you. If you plan to make a flight with your family to an unknown airport, via an unknown route, maybe in another country by the way, you do want the maximum level of security for your flight. Added to a very precise flight planning, being familiar with the area and having made the actual flight in the sims by the number (should take me X minutes to be here, etc) IS UNVALUABLE HELP. I would say make in the sim first any cross country flight you're planning, and you will level up security one notch. You can also train to divert to alternates, great utility should the unexpected happens. I personnaly value security above all in real flight, especially when not flying alone, any tip to increase safety, i take.

I'm a private pilot. I just can't believe there is still people saying personal flight sim like FSX are not suitable for real life training. This is totally crazy, long time simmers are way ahead on learning curve when jumping to private licence training. Pick the random guy in the street and put it in an aircraft for first lesson, now take a simmer and just compare. Sure you'll never get the "feeling" of GA, but THIS IS NOT THE POINT, the point is first you know every instrument and how to check it, second you know the basics of flight physics and aircraft behaviour (if you sim correctly). You may also know in advance R/T phraseo, check list use, procedures, etc. Where Flight Sims and specially FSX totally shine is navigation, cross country training. Clock and rule, maps, VOR, ADF, even G1000 programming now, fuel management, etc. Get the aircraft you're learnin in real life to FSX, get a photoreal scenery of your place, prepare your flight, print your navlog, grab a watch and you'll practice cross country as real as it gets. First solo cross country and PPL test was so easy thanks to FSX. Use it, it is almost free compared to real cross country practice, regular GA travel is pricey, staying sharp on this with FSX can save your life. If FSX is very good for PPL as i experimented, it is even better for IFR training. Just go get it you'll judge by yourself.

Sorry Busterbvi, not sure about your hardware but what i'm sure is that I had your problems and solved it by reducing mesh elevation and complexity. I have an i7 so I don't think an older QX quad will do the trick to max out. Anyway, just reduce and enjoy, you even won't see much difference in the mesh as the best large region mesh you will find will generally be around 4.5 m.

Hi, I'm happy to be able to help you on this. I had it, knows exactly what it does : aircraft "jump" or "bounce", AI traffic and also moving vehicules in the airport. Don't mess up with "contact points", this is not the problem, your problem is related to elevation data. Your graphic settings are too high and your CPU can't catch up, especially regarding elevation points, so it recalculates randomly and make aircraft bounces because height is recalculated. If I remember correctly, you would have to play with Mesh complexity and Mesh Elevation settings, lower indeed. Don't put 100% on mesh complexity especially, try lower settings, see if it solves, see at what point it bounces again. Good flight ! Jerome