rspaans

Thanks so much for your help. RDS

I am flying the Carenado C182T. Just learning the G1000 because I started out with default GA aircraft learning VOR to VOR navigation. The carenado manual for the G1000 is not an effective tutorial. I have loaded an approach to an airprot, and the CDI is tracking the correct direction, The CDI is set to GPS, but when I turn the Autopilot on and engage NAV mode it does not track to the highlighted waypoint. I thought that the NAV mode should track to the CDI whenever it is engaged. I would really appreciate help with this problem, and more generally if someone could direct me to a good tutorial on the G1000 it would be greatly appreciated. RDS P.S., I have emailed Carenado Support a couple of ties, and their responses are brief and incomplete. They have helped me a bit, but for the most part I get the impression that they have no patience for my questions.

I downloaded texture fixes by Andrew McGowin for the default Maule Orion. The exterior looks great, but the interior surfaces, such as the windshield uprights and the lower cockpit by the pedals have some strange textures superimposed on them that look like magnified panel instruments and switches (see attachment). I tried copying the default file "Maule...interior_T.dds back into the texture folders but this did not change the interior textures. Has anyone else seen this, and does anyone know how to fix it? RDS

Three questions, if anyone knows how: 1. Can you change the default airport in the free flight selection pane from "Friday Harbor" to any airport of the user's choosing? How to? 2. When in VC view, if you hit "5" to center the view it defaults to looking straight down at the pilots seat, which is the most useless view in the entire simulator. Is there a way to change the default "center" view in VC mode to eye-level horizontal from the pilots (left-hand seat) vantage point? 3. What key do you hit to take a screenshot? I have searched the index for "screenshot" and "picture" and haven't found the command. Thanks for any help you can give. RDS

Wow! That worked. Thanks Ozzie, your help is much appreciated. Yes, I am sure that it has been a long time since this came up. I am getting into Flight Simulator rather late, and only learned that MS stopped supporting it after I bought it (2 months ago), but the sim community has been great, and I have invested many hours installing freeware addons and configuring the program, so I don't intend to switch to Prepare 3D for a long time. Thanks again for taking the time. I love flying the beaver, and this sure makes it easier on a long flight. RDS

Thank you, but I went into the 2D panel and I still don't see a heading bug on the direction indicator, or a knob to adjust it (only a knob to tune the direction indicator, but nothing for the autopilot direction), so how do I set the autopilot direction in the 2D panel? RDS

Flying the Default De Havilland Beaver, I don't see a heading bug on the bearing indicator, so how do I set the direction for the autopilot? Also, there are 2 Nav coms, but only 1 VOR dial. Is the second Navcom tuned to the ADF below the VOR? Any help would be appreciated. RDS

I installed the Alphasim CF105 Arrow (now freeware) in FSX. As a Canadian, this is part of our heritage. It is a great model, but in the Virtual Cockpit the panel is black. The 2D panel works great. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong in the installation, and how to get a working panel in the VC? RDS

On the Virtavia site they list their C17 for FSX as one of the aircraft they released as freeware, but when I go to the Virtavia/Alphasim freeware download page it is not listed. Is anyone aware if this was an error, or if there is some other link where this can be downloaded? RDS

Thanks for the help. RDS

I've been adding 3rdpsrty scenery and moving the priorities around and suddenly noticed that the "default scenery" layer ended up in the middle of the "base0000...base1107" priority list. I can't remember whether as installed the "default scenery" was above or below the "base...". Can anyone help me out on this? RDS

I found Pablo Diaz' cloud textures for FS2004. Will these work in FSX?

Are there any freeware weather engines available for FSX that are worth the install and improve on the default weather? RDS

Is there a utility to allow you to organize the FSX aircraft selection window into categories rather than alphabetically? For example, lets say I want to organize all of my vintage aircraft or my airliners into groups and select from those groups? RDS

I am flying the HD Redux of the default Grumman Goose out of Victoria Harbor in the Vic+ scenery upgrade. Taxiing at max throttle with the yoke (actually logitec 3D Extreme joystick) pulled all the way back. With aircraft realism settings set to maximum it doesn't taxi for long before I get a SPLASH and the flight resets. I have tried many combinations of throttle and yoke with the same result. I have tried it with and without the wingtip floats lowered. If I reduce the realism to medium then it takes off with ease. Is this an artifact of this plane's config file, or is there something I am missing in the takeoff procedure? Robert Spaans

I read the thread that Hook directed me to, and it is enticing but is lacking in specific direction on how to modify the ground friction. Also, which aircraft are more realistic in this regard? RDS

This thread makes mention of a sliding coefficient and a spreadsheet, but with no specifics. How do I actually implement the changes to ground friction discussed above? RDS

I recently switched from Flight Gear to FSX. The Flight gear community is very passionate about the realism of their flight model, but because it is open source there are numerouse bugs and performance issues, many of which have to be fixed with coding that is tedious and I am not very good at it. Mostly I fly GA aircraft like the Cesna 172. In Flight Gear, if I land too hard the aircraft wil bounce off the runway and nose up making for a very uncontrolled landing, (generally ending up on the nose of the aircraft once I come to a complete stop--often NOT in front of the terminal building!) Therefore, the landing approach has to be nearly perfect to be successful in FG. The contrast in FSX is that even with the realism settings turned all the way up this does not happen. I can land a Cesna 172 a bit too hard and the aircraft just squats down on the runway. Also, taxiing in a crosswind is much easier in FSX than in Flight Gear. I have had the plane pushed around all over the place in a 10 kt crosswind running in Flight Gear, but hardly at all in a 16 kt cross wind running in the FSX environment. Overall, handling a Cesna 172 and landing successfully seems much easier in FSX than in Flight Gear. Can anyone tell me if this is a lack of realism in the FSX model, or is the Flight Gear model over sensitive in an attempt to "prove" their superiority (ie, if only the best can do it successfully then our program must be better than the mass-market program)? RDS

Can anyone tell me what is the best freeware F16 for FSX? Thanks. RDS

I just purchased FSX Gold Edition and have been flying for about a week. I have found many great terrain downloads for USA and Canada down to 10m, both freeware and payware. Before I downloaded any, I discovered that the FSX Scenery configuration window can be adjusted for terrain mesh down to 10m and textures down to 1m resolution! This being the case, what is the need for the downloaded mesh and textures? Are they more accurate than the FSX defaults at maximum resolution? I can certainly see that downloaded scenery, which improves the accuracy of specific structures and runways, is a much-needed improvement, but can anyone comment on the relative accuracy of the default terrain mesh and textures vs. various free and payware downloads? RDS