bennyboy75

Same here. An SSD is the single best thing I have ever bought for FSX. Well, along with an Nvidia Titan and a o/c'd 3970X

EFB shows you where you are on moving map. Might be worth a look if you get lost a lot and contains a huge amount else besides. Remember very few airports actually use follow me cars, so you might want to swot up on the ground chart before you land/depart. Unless it's somewhere like CDG, where I get hopelessly lost within 500 m of the runway.

EFB is superb. For one, it helps make sense of SIDS and STARS at complicated airports. No longer do you have to spend ages pouring over charts to try to figure out which ones fit best with your flightplan. You simply hit 'select SID/STAR' and it'll show you the preferential runway for the wind, the procedure that fits best with your arrival or departure and the respective transitions. Plus ground charts, parking, frequencies, en route maps and more. By comparison I find FS Build clunky and difficult to use.

Lovely pics. I've done LCA-BEY in real life (not MEA but CY) and it's a really short hop. Literally up and down. The only thing I don't like is OLBA X's ground textures as it looks like something from FS2002, but for freeware you can't complain!

Blackbox do an A330. Some folk like it but it doesn't look too great to my eyes. Aerosoft will do one next year and if their A320 is anything to go by it will be a good un. I think FSL said they will be doing both an A330 and an A340. I think with the Bus as the systems are similar and the flight decks virtually identical (not so with the A380 and the A350) once you've done one it isn't a mammoth task to do the others as the biggest job is presumably the exterior model.

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/411549-questions-about-airbus-extended/ All your answers here. As Rich says - for the money it's excellent. I initially turned off the copilot and checklist feature but actually it's pretty good - although you may need the add on voice set which you can find in the library here, along with the replacement pushback voices, as the original for some crazy reason sounds like Steven Hawking. It's missing a few things from the real one - the 'hockey stick' level off indicator would make descents easier and according to those in the know some of the autopilot modes are a bit screwy but for regular everyday flying you'll have no problems. All in all, a very solid effort from Aerosoft.

To be fair the displays don't have the detail or the 'sheen' that the NGX has. Little things like the light glinting off the PFD as you move round the cockpit, fingerprint marks, dust in the crevices etc. The NGX has a multitude of lighting options too whereas the AXE is on or off. There's an aura of realism to the NGX VC that the AXE doesn't have, although that's not to say it's bad in any way!

Sat in a D Box seat (the £6500 one mentioned up thread) last night when I saw Man of Steel. The film was ok but I kept thinking how amazing it would be to have one for FSX. Lots of motion and would be fantastic for turbulence and takeoffs and landing.

I presume you mean Active Sky, which has an option to refresh the AI. It should refresh when you load up the sim but it's a good idea to let the weather inject and then refresh the AI so they use the right runway for takeoff. You shouldn't have to refresh the AI for subsequent weather updates.

Depends on the size of the aircraft. On a 737/A320 wait until you're just a little bit beyond the line and make the turn. Try to carry just a little bit of speed into the turn to keep your momentum. Once you're lining up you want to be at no more than 2-3 knots and gentle corrections either side. Easy on the gas. And ignore GSX, it's pretty harsh!

Actually does the AXE call you a retard? I don't think the latest buses do....

Thanks both. Here's to many happy landings in the Bus, after being called a retard three times!

Thanks chap. I'll have a look.

Sigh. The poor old LDS 767. A revolution at the time - who can forget the hosties that would yell at you if the packs were too hot or cold in the back? Imagine a 767 done with NGX quality, with super sharp textures and lovely fingerprints on the displays. You'd never get me out of it. All that power!

Its pretty good on frames - interested to know how you turn the logging off @@jetsflier? The VC is nicely modelled - not up there with the NGX or the Q400 but it's perfectly decent. Sounds are good, systems are modelled for 'PF' so the opposite PFD displays whatever you're looking at on the Captain's side. Displays don't undock which is my biggest gripe, along with no 'hockey stick' which is the arrow that tells you where you will level off given a particular ROD or climb, like the green banana you get in the NGX. Now models full 'managed' descents. A doddle to hand fly as Airbus SOP is to leave the speed managed when AP off. Set it up on the ILS, point it at the runway and you can just leave it there, very satisfying. Can quickly load states so dead quick to set up at the gate and now full STARS/SID integration. Checklists and virtual FO capability but the German accents are a bit sharp for me. Thankfully replacement sets now available. GPWS sounds are amateurish, as is the default pushback voice - both easily replaced. Ground behaviour nice and smooth, plenty of working animations on the VC, opening windows (with wind noise!), folding jumpseat, cockpit door video monitor a nice touch etc. Loads of liveries, A320/21, Neo modelled currently, A318/19 on the way with new features and A330 next year. Worth a place in anyone's hangar for the price, certainly.

There are plenty, FRAPS, Bandicam, DXtory etc. Some are cheaper than others but all of them will hurt your frame rate in the game. The processing power needed to burn those huge raw video files to your hard drive pulls a good 10fps off FSX on my system and I'm running a Core i7 3970X at 4.8ghz with a 6gb Titan, so a lesser system will be hit even harder. It can make the difference between 30FPS at a complex airport in the NGX and frames in the high teens which feels a bit yucky. There are other ways to capture video with external modules that do all the processing outside windows so there's no FPS impact but they all cost a lot more than the software options. A common trick is to run the game at a slow rate and then speed it up at the editing stage to smooth it out or edit scenes with popping scenery and flashes. That's why you see such a huge difference in films from the top guys on YouTube and people who just fly and run tape over the whole thing.

Alan AKA Chock (where is the these days?) posted his thoughts about Pro ATC X on here in a thread that grew to a zillion posts. I thought I'd share some of my first impressions, having done a few flights with it now. The thing is, we NEED ATC in FSX. In the real world, you don't move an inch without ATC. Pretty much the whole job is about interacting with, anticipating and processing the instructions from ATC. We still don't have an ATC program that replicates the real world very well. I was keen to see how this newest (and the only one currently being developed, apart from VOX ATC perhaps?) add on got on. I've had RC4 and PFE. I looked at Vox ATC but I knew I'd never get on with the metal mickey voices and even the 'getting started' instruction manual hurt my brain so I left it there. RC4 is, hmm, ok. The fact that it nags you if you don't commence a descent or a turn within 3 nanoseconds of acknowledging the instruction annoys me, there aren't really enough voices and you can't separate them into regions. Nothing for me kills the immersion more than that bloke with a broad Yorkshire (a place in North of England, for our foreign readers) accent giving you descent instructions into Munich airport, or that woman from the Deep South of the USA giving it a bit of dixie on the radio as you take off from London Heathrow. PFE does it better, in some ways. There are lots of voices, the AI talks with proper airline callsigns and the right accents (Lufty pilots are German, Emirates pilots are Arabic - good) and there are enough voices to give you German controllers coming out of Berlin, Dutch crossing the Netherlands and then UK controllers when crossing the channel. You can put in SIDS and STARS and when it works, it works nicely. But short flights are impossible because it drops all the waypoints in between, if you ask for a higher or lower flight level en route your descent clearance will never come, you need to do smart alec AFCAD things with runways in use or you'll likely end up face to face with AI, often it goes bonkers on arrival and leaves you too high or too low, vectors you to Mars or forgets about you altogether. Frustrating. Pro ATC X then. It looks simple - just choose a departure, arrival and alternate airport, choose a flight level and then either let it calculate you a route or plug one in that you got from an external planner. Boom, you can see the SID, the enroute portion and the STAR. Of course, that's the EXPECTED SID and STAR - the real one might be different as it does it on the fly depending on runway use and the weather. OK, looks good, let's go fly - Liverpool to London Stansted in an A320. MUCH simpler than PFE. Choose some voices - hmm, not a lot of choice, perhaps 6 or 7 different controllers in all. Some of them are pretty decent, some of them are barely comprehensible as there's so much processing on the voices to make them 'sound' like ATC. Only two Brit controllers, the rest are Euro or Yanks. Hmm, looks like we're going to be hearing some odd voices en route to London today. In the flight deck you can pull up a transparent menu just like the default ATC and ask for clearance. I can't get it to read the ATIS to me, no matter what I prod and push. Doesn't matter, the controller will tell me which runway we need with the taxi clearance, I've planned for both. Clearance comes, NANTI2V, climb and maintain 6000 feet. The chart says 4000 feet at NANTI but he's the controller so we'll do what he says. Ask for startup - all good, get taxi clearance with the correct taxiways to 09 for takeoff. The only problem with this is that the AI are using 27. Refresh AI. Still taxying to 27. The wind was 100 so the AI is wrong and PROATC/X is right, but that doesn't help me when I'm being faced down by an angry Ryanair 737 NG. Hmm. I reset the AI and scoot before any of them can taxy out again. Ask for clearance and told to line up 09. Given clearance for takeoff and 'maintain runway heading and climb and maintain 6000 feet'. Er, I thought we were on a NANTI2V? Oh well, he's the boss. Off we go. Once in the I air contact departure and am 'cleared for the NANTI2V departure, climb and maintain 6000 feet.' Make your mind up! Anyhow randomly I'm cleared along the airway (never heard that in the real world - do pilots even know what airway they're on at any given moment?) and given a few climbs up to cruise. Relax. Handed off to Manchester, then to London. So far, so good. TCAS alert over BHX - nothing from ATC. Reach the last waypoint in the flightplan, no word from ATC. Thankfully I've had a peek in the 'flight plan information' menu section and plugged it in, an ASKEY 5A to Rwy 04. Really you should be given the STAR before you get to the last waypoint. Make the first couple of turns of the STAR and given a couple of reasonable descent clearances along with the STAR (that I'm already on, but never mind), handed off to approach and then given a few odd instructions, such as 'cleared to the LUT NDB?, turn left 180'....Eh? LUT NDB? That's the Luton NDB, nothing to do with the approach to Stansted? Then a small while later I'm cleared to 'ISED66' for the ILS, given the ILS frequency (which is unusual) and told to contact tower at the marker. Whilst scratching my head wondering what ISED66 is I realise that ISED is the identifier for the RWY 04 ILS and that 66 must be the FAF at 6.6 DME, which it is. Very odd way to clear a flight for the localiser. Was given descent to 3000 on the local QNH (bit high, the FAF is 2500 feet but we made it) and intercepted at around 9 DME, which was a little tight for comfort. Cleared for landing, got down and was handed off to ground after taxying a fair distance from the active. The gate I'd plugged in at the planning stages was given, along with the correct taxiways. So my thoughts? Well it's got potential, although it's a bit of a mixed bag. SIDs and STARs given on the fly leaps it above the competition, but to work it needs to leave you be to fly the SID and not give you odd clearances or change its mind and change it back again like this. It needs to stop with the weird clearances to intersections, airways, NDBs not on the flightplan or cryptic FMC-only waypoints on the localiser. I barely flew the STAR at Stansted before being vectored in a rather odd way, although to be fair I did end up lined up (just about) with the runway. The taxi instructions were accurate. Setup is simple. You can assign voices to particular regions, although there aren't enough currently to make it worth doing. Your co pilot can not only handle the radios but the gear, the flaps, the autopilot, call V speeds and do checklists, although the included ones are woefully inaccurate for the A320. You can edit them, although some of the real world checklist challenges for the A320 were missing from the drop down menu of items. Cabin crew calls are also included and play automatically. So it's a game of two halves as it stands. The 'added value' stuff like the copilot, checklists, cabin crew calls etc is pretty good and if you can live without the autopilot and panel specific capability of something like FS2Crew gives you a good sense of immersion of a team working together on the aircraft. The ATC side is getting there but still does odd things. I need to test more, but first impressions are mixed. If they could lick the ATC quirks and someone made a massive voice set covering the whole world, so you had PFE like coverage in terms of regional accents and talking AI (apparently planned for the next update) then this might just be it. Maybe.

Nothing tricky about going from the iFly to the NGX. The iFly is about as good as it gets for FS9 but the NGX is a step ahead as far as FSX is concerned.

I was taught once visual with the field use the picture outside for left/right guidance then once a bit lower use the papis for up/down guidance. Every once in a while glance inside to check speed and rate of descent. At very low heights chasing the localiser and glideslope needles is a sure fire way to end up with a roller coaster ride. Big deflections can occur even if you're only a matter of a 10 feet or so high/low/off centre.

The future probably is something like X Plane. It's not in the mainstream yet but the breakthrough will come and when it does it'll probably be when PMDG start releasing stuff for it. Despite John Venema's verdict on X Plane thus far he will soon change his tune if and when the big switch comes. Remember FSX only appeared in 2006 and really only got into its stride a couple of years later in terms of aircraft and sceneries. Once the rush for the exit comes to take advantage of being able to fly the 777X or the FSL A320 in X Plane with Orbx sceneries and 64bit support, FSX's demise will come quickly.

I use GSX most of the time these days, but I do miss from AES the fact that it greets you in Spanish, French, or Italian when landing in airports in those countries. Does anyone cleverer than me know how the AES voices know which voice set to trigger? Does it read the airport AFCAD file somehow?

It's also a well known fact that people like to buy the kind of aeroplanes that they travel on in real life and the ones they see at airports near them. This was the reason the PMDG MD11 faired poorly according to Robert Randazzo, as it was quite a rare sight by the time it came to market for FS. It'll be a good few years before any of us have made regular journeys on an A350.

That Doha scenery looks a bit rubbish. It even says there are shimmery and flashing textures in the scenery! That's poor. It's a shame the Middle East is a bit unrepresented in FS. Flytampa Dubai rebooted is an absolutely superb scenery but the only airports that are reachable from it within an hour or so are that rubbish Doha, the rather poor Oryxsim Muscat and an equally uninspiring Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. More ME airports please, developers!

Thanks all. Might give pro ATC a bash.

Gents, I've been using Lee Swordy's AFCAD editor very successfully in FS9 to close runways for use with Pro Flight Emulator. This prevents constant runway changes when on approach and makes flight planning easier when everyone's landing on the same runway. I understand AFCAD doesn't work in FSX. Is there a nice *simple* method to open and close runways to AI in FSX?