SouthPawPaul

If you look at the axis in Windows (so removing FSX and FSUIPC all together) joystick properties, do they respond appropriately?

I can't see mention of which version of FSUIPC you installed? Was it the latest? v4.937.

I've just completed my first flight (CYVR > KORD) in the new upgraded A320 and all I can say is wow. They've really nailed this one down. Light reflects at night time off the ground (whilst on the ground) and the flight model feels much more fluid. I'm not a real pilot so I have no frame of reference, it just feels better. I also really really like that it now rolls under idle throttle. It used to annoy the hell out me that it didn't do that (small things eh ) A big +1 from me!

I've never had any rain depiction issues in X-Plane, with or without SkyMaxx. Rain isn't anywhere near as obvious as it is in FSX when you're stationary. However, when you're flying it can get quite intense. AFAIK, SkyMaxx shouldn't have any effect on the rain, all it is is a cloud replacement application and nothing more.

I think asking "How close is X to the real thing" in a simulator forum isn't going to get you your desired answer. There are far too many self proclaimed experts out there than can wax lyrical about how "realistic" an aircraft is, but the reality is, they've never been near the real thing or even a level D sim. I certainly haven't so I'll not offer an opinion on how realistic it is. I'll just say it's good fun to fly in the sim.

Brilliant. Not sure how I missed that thanks. Looking forward to this latest release and of course thanked with a donation

I'm always intrigued how you get such thick forest coverage. Even at high settings, all I ever seem to manage is a smattering of flat trees, not nice bushy ones as seen in your preview. What's your secret?

Wow. they look great!

Speedlink Black Widow Joystick. For the price it really can't be beaten. Good number of buttons and excellent throttle with built in rudder control. http://www.speedlink.com/?p=2&cat=414&pid=21606&paus=1

My advice. Don't change. Use both. Heck use as many sims as your HDD allows. X-Plane is far from perfect either (in case you're wondering, I love X-Plane!). I'd also advise downloading the demo and flying the heck out of it.

Have you downloaded the demo yet and flown the heck out of it? Great thing about the demo is it's only time/location limited. You can install any addon into it and test the water without spending a dime.

Early morning departure - WBKK

Have you downloaded and flown the heck out of the demo to make sure it's to your taste. Addons (freeware/payware) can be installed into the demo. you're just restricted on time and location.

Turbulence definitely exists in X-plane. Use SkyVector and turn on Sigmets to find turbulent (TURB) or Thunderstorm (TS) areas and load up the sim there. Should give some interesting results.

I believe what you're almost exclusively seeing is photo real scenery. It's relatively easy (and free) to do in X-Plane, but I'm not sure about the FSX/P3D process it may well be the same, but I have no idea.

By default keys "3" & "4" will decrement/increment the spoilers by one position at a time. When the spoilers are at "disarm", if you press "3" again it will arm the spoilers effectively putting the spoilers in a -1 mode position.

I used to use it, and was happy with it, but (and I'm not entirely sure why) it started looking to me to be more and more unrealistic, so for now, I've uninstalled it. It may be in part to my increasing consumption of real cockpit videos on YouTube and unconsciously tuning into what looks real from certain altitudes. I'm not a real pilot so frankly I have no idea of what looks real or not (first hand experience) YMMV.

I'm not seeing this squashing going on, so I downloaded both comparison shots and used my favourite image editor to draw some "perfect" circles around the gauges and honestly I still can't see any squashing. The zoom levels are different, but apart from that, they both look fine. http://www.fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2014/09/04/u9pXz.jpg http://www.fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2014/09/04/nS8sG.jpg

My fairly uneducated two pence worth is this: FSX seems to want a very powerful CPU and doesn't really care much for the GPU whereas P3D v2.3 is more inclined toward a good GPU and can work with a lower horsepower CPU. I base this purely on my own experience as I run P3D with no FPS issues at all with many great addons and an old i5 750 CPU but a GTX 770 4mb. To say P3D is tweak free isn't entirely true. Yes you'll still have to mess with the setting provided within the user interface, but you won't spend time messing around with undocumented cfg file tweaks. Also make sure that all your addons are P3D compatible as this is a well known killer of frames.

I believe that from 2.3 P3D now sets the CPU affinity to all cores by default, unless of course you've manually edited the config file to specify a different affinity mask.

I love photoscenery and it's one (of many) of the reasons I like X-plane. In X-Plane, the photo scenery is free and with World2XPlane (also free) you get OSM buildings on the photo scenery too. In places it does get the scenery objects wrong and it can look a little silly. Also, colour matching is non existent between tiles in some regions, but IMHO photo scenery in any sim simply can't be beaten. I was flying IFR over photo scenery alps last night and was blown away by the views. It is not my intention to start (yet another) X-Plane/FSX/P3D war here. Just sharing my love of photo scenery

Look at that, his frames hardly drop at all going through those clouds!

I couldn't tell you about the satellite imagery in A-EFB, but there is a 30 day fully functional trial. Why don't you download it and give it a punt? I do like aspects of EFASS, but I don't like how buggy it is and given that I run on an old i5 750 where spare CPU horses are rare, I don't like that it regularly uses 30% CPU to just display a moving map. Most times, I use it as a planner and shut it down.

What do you want out of a product? If you're mostly GA then I'd recommend free and truly superb Plan-G3. I have EFASS and there are issues that were being worked on until the lead developer/support guy was taken seriously ill, so I'm unsure as to the future of the project. It is however significantly cheaper than Aivlasoft EFB. I played with A-EFB in the past and I LOVE what it does, but it's expensive and doesn't work with my current favorite sim.

I started to write this up but this X-Plane Developer blog post from 2012 explains it better than I. http://developer.x-plane.com/2012/07/the-views-updates-to-a-very-important-system/ Make sure you're in 3D cockpit mode. It's Shift+9 IIRC.