FlyGeordie

As others have said, it's ancient, and it shows! But at $14 it may be worth it. but if you expect it to be anything like the RealAir Duke, or any modern day add-on, you'll be disappointed. Think "$14" and you might enjoy it!

1. PMDG NGX 2. PMDG MD-11 3. Carenado Cessna 340 II (mainly due to personal exp. with the real life a/c). --------------------------------------------- 4. feelThere Airbus Series 1 (tweaked & improved, especially sound) 5. Carenado C208B 6. MilViz C310 7. Flight 1 C510 Citation Mustang About RealAir....... (I'll be in the minority here, I know) :smile: :- Absolutely love their work, but not the aircraft choices for me personally... American Aircraft Scout/Decathlon, Beech Duke, Lancair Legacy ...... for me, all obscure aircraft, where I hold no interest in the real life counterparts, so although I own them all, and hugely respect their quality and innovation, I very rarely fly them. :(

Ha ha.... I remember you saying that about the Bay Tower Vans R7. :lol:

Yep....... that stands out like a sore thumb to me too. :wink: Some people on this thread are just plain old haters...... Some really pathetic comments getting made too. Like the one about the baby incubators; some people have absolutely no perspective in life. Just acting like spoilt children. There are some people on this thread that I would quite happily ban from my forum too, with the way they go on. It;'s not like FTX ENG is the worst product ever released for god's sake.... it's not perfect but it's bloody good. Jay's right ......... Just plain old -----> Haters......... haters........ haters.

Aussie X.

- Wilco CRJ Next Gen. (just terrible. Totally flawed AP that cannot hold VS or Speed). - Aerosoft Airbus X (the most fundamentally flawed Aerosoft product I've ever bought). - CLS .... I've fallen for nice screenshots so many times only to find the product is really sub-par... and they never use key bindings, which is frustrating. - Captain Sim 757 / 767 ........ Done with CS now after those too. .........but these 'regrets' represent about 0.5% of total addons I've bought, so overall ...... I'm happy! :smile:

Of course, I can see my house too in Gen-X, 18 miles down the coast from you, in Easington Village. :smile: .... but photoscenery has good things and bad things about it. .....and FTX ENG isn't photoscenery. The perception of 'height' while flying over FTX ENG is much better than with Gen-X in my opinion. But I absolutely agree that the reason that perhaps I am very happy with the product is probably because I never ever fly VFR, with reference to ground. Even in a (suitably equipped) Archer II, I am still flying IFR, mainly between VORs and NDBs. So for me, FTX ENG looks great, and it 'works' for what I need.

The best things I have found are :- - Being fortunate enough to have a decent rig in the first place. - Stopping your AV software while simming, (I use Avast Free), especially if it's a resource hog. - Stopping unnecessary processes before starting FSX (I use Razer Game Booster) - Being sensible with your settings, and making sure they are comensurate with your rig.

/\ /\ /\ Good post. As someone who lives in the FTX ENG area, I feel I knew what I was buying (eg... that my house wouldn't be in it, and that it is essentially a landclass-based product), and I absolutely love it. And that's not a*ss kissing to Mr Venema as I too find some of his decisions and 'strategy' perplexing. But I buy FTX products for ....... the products. :smile:

I done the unparked cores about 6 months ago, and did see a small performance improvement in FSX. I am already doing all of the other tweaks (inc. Bojote tweaks which gives better results for me - and maybe other ATI users - than Word Not Allowed's guide did). I've not tried the priority increase so will give it a pop!

+1 Stopped flying the Orbx Lancair about 2 days after buying it, because of the very bad VC view, and really bad VC shimmering of textures. To be totally honest, the RealAir Lancair is in an entirely different league to the Orbx one.

@Quraisy........I have a similar system to yours (2500k but mine is a i7), and FTX regions and airports run beautifully for me, especially if you're flying GA aircraft, as they tend to be a lot lighter than the complex airliners. One thing you haven't said though is what Graphics Card you have at the moment? .......... If you are using onboard graphics, that will be a huge bottleneck / achilles heel to your system, and performance may be slow, as FTX uses really high quality, high definition textures. With a i7 2500k, 8GB DDR3 RAM, and ATI 5770, I easily get 30 FPS throughout all of FTX PNW, ENG, etc, in a Carenado, RealAir or A2A type GA aircraft ...... if I am near a large conurbation like Seattle, London, etc, then it will drop to as low as 20 FPS ..... I don't think I ever see lower than that. 20 FPS is my own personal 'minimum' benchmark. But with any half good GPU you will be fine ... Go for it! FTX ENG and FTX PNW are my favourite packages.

Any aspect of Flight Sim in general it appears, contributes to world unrest Steve! :lol: ..... We're a funny old bunch..... Flight Simmer 1: "Flight Sim isn't a matter of life and death you know..." Flight Simmer 2: "Of course not..... it's far more important than that!" :lol:

SteveW, on 22 November 2012 - 06:43 PM, said: .....I can go to the loo and make a cup of tea. Posted Today, 09:00 PM Ron Attwood, on 22 November 2012 - 07:44 PM, said: You make tea in the loo? :blink: ...you don't have a kettle in the loo Ron? ...... How uncivilized. :lol: We're Brits - there's no place unsuitable for tea! :smile:

The default FSX C172 is one of the better stock VCs, texture-wise. And since installing the Alexander Metzger FDE for it I now fly it more than the Carenado C172N, as I prefer newer 172 variants, due to flying them in the real world (never flew any 172 older than a 'R' model).

Yes, good suggestion. I'm down to 2 evenings per week, and find I look forward to and enjoy it more. Being retired, I could sim day and night (my wife may not agree! :lol:), but you do get bored with too much of anything good - even Golf! 2 evenings a week, and I never get bored. :smile:

No problem, :smile: but with all due respect, you're not the OP. My suggestion was aimed at the OP who seemed to bear some weighting on good quality chatter ambience. Not to be picky but there is no such language as "West Indian". (or did you mean accent?). The official language of Antigua is English, so PFE is getting it right language-wise ....... but clearly not accent-wise! :lol:

If it's just the chatter aspect, I use Enviro32! that Jim mentioned, (free), along with a huuuuuge batch of sound files I bought for $5. http://realatc.net/RealATC.htm (Don't be put off by the ugly website - the files are superb; ATIS, Ground, Clearance, Tower, Approach, the lot!)

I have found that there is no one guide that can apply to everyone's individual hardware/software/installation. On my last PC (Core2Quad), Word Not Allowed's guide worked to the letter for me, and gave me 10 FPS more than the Bojote tweak site. Since I got an i7 and switched to an ATI card (This is no offence to Word Not Allowed and I'm sure he knows this!), Word Not Allowed's guide gives me 18 FPS, in a FSX scenario with the NGX and OPUS, where Bojote's tweaks gives me 30 FPS. :smile: Yesterday, I was reading a thread where Rockliffe and others were saying they got much higher FPS by putting the AF to "application controlled" in their GPU panel settings, and turning it on in FSX. I had previously had my GPU control overridding FSX for AF, so tried the above - and immediately saw a FPS reduction of 50%! .......... :lol: So it is just horses for courses, I believe. With my i7 2500k, I have found that no [AffinityMask] setting works well at all for me. I have tried all the suggested values and all lead to a decrease in FPS, versus not having an [AffinityMask] setting. I think most guides are more biased towards nVidia users (probably fair as a lot more people use nVidia than ATI it seems). But a lot of tweaks (such as the above AF example) respond very differently between ATI and nVidia cards. Bojote's tweaks give me by far the highest performance gain against 'stock' as a i7 2500, ATI 5770 HD, Win 7 64bit user. But for others, (like myself when I had my Core2Quad and an nVidia 8800GTX), Word Not Allowed's recommendations delivered the best results.

You're quite right. Call it senility. :wink: ... anyway for the purpose of helping the guy above, I don't have any obvious issues flying from FTX ENG to UTX/GEX Europe. I have FTX ENG up near the top of the scenery library, the only things above it being UK2000 Xtreme airports.

I am using FTX ENG, with UTX Europe and GEX Europe enabled, and have no problems as far as I can see, except that maybe some UTX roads are overlaid on top of FTX ENG ...... but if that's the case, I can't really tell! I have FTX ENG above UTX and GEX in the Scenery library. I have flown many flights between ENG and Europe already with no issues (apart from the scenery in Europe doesn't look so great, once you're used to ENG!).

...yes it does seem strange that you'd be penalized for the effect of wind on the aircraft. Can't see the rationale in that (unless you're expected to have planned to only be flying in winds calm!).

I'm absolutely with you Dave ...... I reduced the power scalar on the Cherokee and Archer to 0.85 to give a better reflection of the 140-160hp PA28 models I've flown in real life, and their sluggishness! The Arrow is a different beast. :smile:

I don't like the "FTX Central" ethos, and having to select areas. But I must admit, I thought it was a necessary evil. It's interesting to read Andy and others' posts stating that with a different approach (appending) it would not be necessary. If this is the case, Orbx need to make it a part of their strategy for their regions to move away from the 'area selection' ethos, and deliver something better. But Mr Venema may dig his heels in here, and if people get banned for just suggesting and pushing to make the products better, well ........... you may as well forget it! ...Shame the ego always gets in the way of things like this in life. I've never been too bothered about changing FTX areas midflight until now .... But as SteveW said, ENG is a small country, and a LOT of people will be wanting to hop to other countries. (I fly ENG - NORWAY a lot)..... still, it does sound like Europe is one zone, so maybe not an issue, apart from long-haul, cross continent, atlantic etc. I agree with this completely.

Be sure to report back and let us know how you get on pilot! :smile: