bennyboy75

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?

+1. A good landing is one at the right speed in the touchdown zone. If it's a bit firm then so be it. A dangerous landing is one at 0.00001 fpm halfway down the runway. The passengers will stop clapping once you run off into the grass, believe me! Also the Dash is notoriously hard to land in real life. It has a lot of power, a long fuselage for the wing span and is rather unstable. It is the result of a bit of a hotch potch of old and new so that Bombardier didn't have to certify a whole new plane but could sell it as 'next generation.' The fact that it is tricky to land is entirely true to the real one.

Nice setup Nico. I have a Titan with a 3970X and I've had mixed results. What kind of numbers do you get with the NGX? I'm guessing if you have a full cockpit setup then you're purely running the scenery outside rather than the VC?

Yes but the problem is that handling big jets is a lot harder than a small prop. If you can't land a Cessna then you'll kill yourself trying to land an A340. First you need a joystick. Flying with the keyboard is very tricky and very imprecise. Do some of the basic lessons in FSX and learn to handle takeoff and landing in the default Cessna. Once you've got the hang of that then move up to a jet, but maybe try the NGX or the Aerosoft A320. For all that it might seem a huge jump there are a lot more resources around for getting started in those two than there are for the A340. I'm not sure that the CLS A340 is even particularly detailed when it comes to the autopilot systems. If you're going to learn how to do it properly, you might as well do it in a decent add on.

I read somewhere that Ryanair's NGs go direct from Renton to Dublin. Not sure if that's true but with a full tank of gas and no pax it seems plausible.

You'll hear many different opinions. One namely that acceleration is the most stable of all possible install combos. For what it's worth I left it out on my last reinstall.

A real lost opportunity as the VC was a work of beauty, the modelling was superb and the soundset was awesome. The rest sucked big time. Rob over in the FS9 forum was a big help in getting things working but it was a fickle beast at the best of times and you had to remember not start the APU from the VC or it would CTD, or go direct to in the FMGC, as it would CTD etc etc. It'll never be finished. FS9 is old news. Aerosoft beat them to it with a decent Bus and the FSL version will blow them all into the dirt, hopefully! No developer is going to sink money into an Bus for FS9.

Sorry to hear about Darren from ES. The stuff they make looks amazing as I said (even if I've not actually seen it in my own sim yet!) and for those of us who are UK based these islands are fun, busy flights to and from the mainland. Guernsey is a regular Q400 destination and for us Majestic drivers the runway is short enough to provide a challenge when you get there. The Isle of Man is a very short hop on an Airbus from Liverpool and let's not forget Jersey is the shortest field in BA's network and is a lot of fun in a 737 or a Bus. If a rejig of the online store and download and install process is on the cards, along with some new sceneries then I might count myself back in.

No I got the point. I meant to say at the bottom of my post how good it was that kind hearted souls like you were doing stuff like this for free to improve things that probably should have been done properly by the developer in the first place, but I hit reply before adding it. Itchy posting finger! D'oh! But good work. I'll be adding your creation to my A320 this evening!

I saw the title and was just about to type 'the godawful robot ground crew voice' but you beat me to it. It just seems like they finished the aircraft and on the day of release thought to themselves 'oh crap, we didn't record a ground crew wav', so just cobbled together some text to speech file to chuck in there. For something that you'll hear EVERY FLIGHT this is very poor.

I installed it and had the same problem. My email enquiry to them went unanswered. Guernsey looks amazing in the screenshots but I HATE their installer software and I'm annoyed that I can't get it to work. No more money will be coming from me to ES.

I've only just tried the AXE voices - what's with the robotic pushback voice? The crew voices aren't exactly going to win any awards for authenticity either. It's an odd one as the AXE is very well sorted in many respects now. When you think the LDS 767 gave us pretty authentic crew voices with different accents in 2005 you'd think that a 2013 add-on from Europe's biggest FS publisher could do a bit better.

Plenty of hours in a Piper Tomahawk, a few in a Warrior and the best was an hour in BA's 737-400 full motion simulator at Heathrow. Amazing.

GSX's vehicle sounds are pretty good but the cabin and pushback crew sounds are rather poor. On my to do list is to spend some time replacing them all with some cabin ambience sounds from YouTube and some custom made pushback voices. It's also a shame that they aren't region specific, as AES's voices (sort of) are.

I suspected that might be the case. Thanks.

I use to use Dropbox and yes it's annoying. I now run Navigraph on a second PC along with all my other FSX ancillaries such as EFB, Vroute, etc.

I just got a new rig with two SSDs. Wow. Just wow. I installed the NGX in about 40 seconds. Even a full install of FSX only took about five minutes. From hitting the .exe I'm at the gate in the NGX within 35 seconds. Don't know why I didn't go SSD sooner!

As per the title, chaps. I've already got Aivlasoft's EFB and will be getting AS 2012 up on my networked PC - the only thing left to shift over to it is PFE. But my suspicion is it won't use simconnect and I'll have to shell out for WideFS. Anyone know what the story is?

Well it's arrived. Early days yet and I'm yet to throw the NGX at it but early signs are VERY promising. Rex, Orbx and the NGX go on tomorrow.

I agree. I'm way more likely to fly the A320 than the 777 but I'll be getting both. There is a fair bit of discussion about the FSL version around the forums if you look but I guess it's a case of wait and see. Leferis did indicate last year that it would probably be out by Xmas iirc but of course it hasn't panned out like that. Hopes and expectations for this are sky high. Let's hope it's as good as we think it will be.

You can make your own for the Dash 8 as it comes with announcements that can be overwritten. There's a great app for iOS called 'voice changer plus'. If you select 'gramophone' as the voice effect and hold the phone close when recording you end up with a quite convincing sound. Remember to change the files into the same format and bit rate as the original ones. I've also changed the boarding music to the cheesy jazz as used by North West Airlines back in the day.

No, only way is to minimise the aircraft. Be great if this functionality could be added to the FMC menu.

I'm watching it too. As a real world PPL-er I think that the whole ATC aspect of flight is something sorely under-represented in the simulator community. Vatsim has its fans and rightly so but the quality of both controllers and pilots is variable and the coverage is patchy. Pilot's Edge in the USA has the right idea in that it gives you a near real-world ATC environment but if you like the big iron there's only so many times you can fly from LAX to Vegas or San Diego. Pro ATC X seems to be heading in the right direction but some of its phraseology is off the pace and as I understand it the voices are of variable quality due to the fact that they rely upon volunteers to upload them. If they could find a way to bite the bullet and hire a load of talented voice actors to portray all the various accents then they'd have one hell of a product. Time will tell.

Yup, what they said. NGX is as good as it gets for jets right now. Q400 from Majestic newly released and also VERY good. Airbus X Extended from Aerosoft also hits the spot for many folk now after a false start with the first version. REX for weather textures but the weather engine itself isn't up to much. Active Sky 2012 is the current standard but Opus weather seems to have a growing fanbase. EZDOK is camera software for looking around in FSX. Bit fiddly to set up but can't fly without it now, especially with the head movement and turbulence effects. Opus also has cameras and the same kind of effects but haven't tried it so can't comment. Track IR if you want to take looking around in the flight deck to the next level. Ground textures - well you can go nuts. GEX, UTX, mesh, photo scenery. Or you can just hang on for ORBX Global, which will probably do the job in one package, out in a few weeks. Airports, ditto - anything by Flytampa will be excellent, Orbx if you have a good PC, FS Dreamteam make great airports but one or two are hard on your system. Aerosoft use lots of different developers for airports and mostly they are excellent although there are a handful (Amsterdam Schipol for one) that look nice but run like a bag of old bolts. Ground traffic - AES if you want everything done for you, GSX if you want something a bit newer and has global coverage but it pesters you a bit at the gate. ATC - plenty to choose from. RC unchanged from the FS9 days, PFE for immersion, VOX ATC if you can get past the metal Micky sounds or Pro ATC X is the (pricey) new kid on the block. Charts - Navigraph have everywhere you'd ever want to fly to for a couple of euros each and there's Aivlasoft's EFB which does a lot in one package Welcome back! Hope you've got deep pockets