paradoxbox

I have seen this problem with other aircraft from Flysimware before - I resolved it by using the shift+1 key and pressing the cold and dark option. This allowed me to get the GPU/Chocks etc.

not sure how p3d handles light reflections but placing an invisible polygon into the model might be worth trying. if p3d shadows and light reflections are accurate the polygon should prevent the light from getting inside the cockpit.

Hi all, I live in Japan and am a former developer for an old simulator. I've been interested in doing scenery work for FSX/P3D for a long time but have never quite figured out the tools people are using, especially to reliably get satellite imagery. I developed a scenery for CAP3 (Sechelt Gibsons) which looked beautiful but the tool necessary to download the sat images was a royal pain in the word not allowed to use, full of bugs, crashes, weird sizing problems etc. If there is anyone who has experience making scenery and would not mind teaching me the basics, I would be willing to do Japanese scenery, especially the water masks and such. I would also be willing to do stuff like sloped runways and proper taxiways if someone could teach me what needs to be done to make that work in P3D. I am afraid I am not much of a 3d modeler though, so I will leave the buildings to someone else. It is really unfortunate that Japan is so neglected - Korea too. The sheer number of mountains, high humidity in summer, and plenty of coastlines make for very interesting VFR flying. Mt. Fuji is beautiful but you wouldn't know it looking at the stock scenery. There needs to be a lot more satellite imagery around Japan.

you guys aren't getting it. if you are really so bent on doing it, why not just hack an addition into your aircraft and see if it still works as intended. you need to realize that it is a simulation that was made to work around internal FSX limitations. the product was completed at that time. adding it in now causes problems that you are not foreseeing because this is not a real aircraft but a simulation built using the SDK and limitations of the sim engine. all of the systems and performance figures in THE SIMULATOR were achieved with its present coding. it does not matter how real aircraft behave in this situation because they designed the SIMULATOR to behave as the real aircraft, WITHOUT the weather radar. that includes aero data but also systems integration, circuitry, etc. PMDG's 737 is a good example. I think that now, it finally has weather radar, but how many months or years did it take them to add it once they had already built it into their other, newer aircraft? PMDG has a way bigger budget than most other developers too. if it took them that long, how long is it going to take for a team of 1-3 guys to do it? how much money is that going to cost? it is not as simple as you guys believe it is. If you really do think it is that simple, why don't you code a replacement DLL yourself and pop it in? I mean, if what I'm saying is absurd, it must be easy enough for you to do yourself, right? anyway, enough with the arguing - I learned to fly turboprops on a B200 back in 2001 and this rendition of the B200 is the best B200 sim product I've ever flown. I also picked up the MU-2 and Conquest II and they are both fantastic. The Mu-2 is a rocket and very challenging to fly at heavy loads and high airports. The B200 is a docile kitten in comparison. Very satisfied with these products. All of them have weather radar installed BTW, including my King Air. Again can't really understand the resistance to just put in an external gauge.

keep in mind i am talking about the sim and not real life here. the developers have to do a lot of weird things to work around the limitations of the FSX engine. I suppose it's getting better with p3d and with things like activesky. but in early 2014/2015 that was not around yet. i strongly doubt that their autopilots are coded to work as the real ones do, and the fuel burn figures probably rely on very specific testing that only works within the CG limits achievable through the aircraft's loading screen. if you throw 10-20lbs to the nose of the aircraft, who knows how that is going to affect the autopilot and fuel consumption since the CG normally never gets that far forward. and this is just one of the things. who knows what other stuff could break. i am sure they have specific reasons for declining to add it at this point. the product seems good enough as it is IMO. i've never seen such a detailed king air, the only one that came close was for the old Fly!II simulator 15 years ago. i do think that simply adding an external gauge is the best solution. i think i bought mine for around $25 or so and I have put it in everything from the FSLabs Concorde to my newly bought king air b200. It works just fine. if you want to simulate the extra weight you can add 10lbs to your pilot's weight.

like i said, just use an external gauge. i use the one by milviz and it works great with activesky. it's easy to install (point and click) and not very expensive and can be used in any aircraft. i use it in a bunch of my older aircraft that did not come with weather radar as the technology was not available during development. it works fine.

it's not that simple guys, if you have never developed an aircraft you should not judge developers for resisting that kind of thing. the aircraft was developed before WX radar was commonly available in aircraft. it's not a big deal to use an external gauge. whether you think it is a lot of work or not, trust me, as a former developer, it is a LOT of work to put something into an already finished product. it's not a simple matter of adding a little weight to the nose. it will likely require a lot of reprogramming to the autoflight system, the fuel consumption computers, sensors etc. it is more complicated than you think it is. anyway, i went ahead with the b200 and i have found it to be a very excellent aircraft. it features icing which was an unexpected but pleasant surprise. the anti icing and deicing systems work nicely as well. very pleased with the b200, it flies as i remember the real one does. the avionics are a lot more modern than what i had, so that's something to get used to. the brakes and taxi behavior are not very good, but other than that it is an awesome aircraft with excellent systems modelling. i was really impressed with how well it flies and stuff like the spool up which most add ons do not get right. since the cessna appears to be on sale as well i might also pick it up too.

The exterior model has nothing to do with the flight model though. He is talking about having to redo performance figures. I take that to mean that they have modeled the aircraft with an empty radome which should provide a decent weight savings and increase in useful load as it is now.

Kendall, does your throttle have slightly sticky/spiky potentiometers? When you move the throttle levers, do they jitter around a lot until you stop touching them? It's possible this could be connected to the problem. My saitek throttle quadrant is slightly spiky after 3 years but not enough to create any difficulty when flying manually.

Thanks for the posts guys. But like I said, the Q400 I already have and it is too big of an aircraft for the fields I want to fly into. BAe 4100 is most likely too big as well. I am going to take a look at the Cessna and Duke. Does anyone have any opinions about either the Carenado or Flight1 Pilatus PC-12? The Flight 1 King Air B200 is really pulling me in.. it looks so good..

Hi all. Looking for a very realistic turboprop aircraft for P3D. I already have the Majestic Dash-8 Q400 and like it very much. But it may be a little big, it can't fit into smaller fields. I am a stickler for realism and do not care much about graphics, but I do care a lot about correct implementation of avionics and things like beta range etc. I can't stand aircraft which do not behave like their real world counterparts, it just drives me nuts. I don't mind if the graphics are poor as long as the simulation is accurate. I do not mind flying aircraft with old avionics. I learned to fly in real life before GPS was very common and my first GPS was an ancient bendix king KLN something or other with a little dot-matrix screen. I have looked at the Flight 1 King Air B200 and it looks very interesting. I do prefer older avionics but the videos are pretty persuasive. But I am also very open to single engined or quad turboprops. My typical turboprop flights vary from short field to medevac to heavy cargo ops.

Might be a corrupted panel state. Try erasing the relevant file in your My Documents folder. Otherwise it does sound like a configuration issue, make sure all hydraulics, IRS etc is set up and active.

Glad to hear you got it sorted. The NO AUTOLAND can be caused by a few things. Make sure your gear and flaps are configured for landing before you're under 2000 feet. There is a hard limit before the autoland disables but I forget, maybe 1500 or 1600 feet, if you are not configured by this radio altitude autoland won't engage. The other thing that can cause it is if there is a frequency or magnetic heading discrepancy. This sounds like it might be your problem since you recently changed or upgraded the database. You can manually input the frequency in the FMC (NAV RAD page) and that should clear the problem. You'll need to know the frequency of the localizer of the runway you're landing on, AND you'll need to know the magnetic heading of the runway. If you have updated the PMDG Nav database, there is a possibility the database heading and the sim heading are different (magnetic pole drift over 10+ years adds up to a significant number in many parts of the world). This may cause a NO AUTOLAND message too. I am not sure if you'll be able to autoland if this is what is causing the problem. The good news is with more database updates (Search for FSX/P3D navigation update) and you should find a very good, easy to install package that updates the entire world navigation database. That should fix the problems and align the PMDG database with the sim's database. Edit: Here is the link to the navaids website: https://www.aero.sors.fr/navaids3.html Out of curiousity what were you developing and in what language?

Autobrakes apply once the wheels are all on the ground. Make sure your spoilers are in the armed position. You should see the aircraft start decelerating quickly if the autobrakes are engaged. Sometimes controller problems cause the brakes not to engage properly, I have experienced this. It can happen if you've loaded the 777 after first loading a non-default aircraft like the trike in FSX. If you need to confirm, set MAX autobrakes and attempt a landing with no reverse thrust. If the aircraft does not come to a stop on the runway quickly, well you can be sure you have a controller settings problem. FSUIPC can also cause this if there's some kind of conflict with the brakes. I have fixed this in the past by removing all brake axes from both the sim and FSUIPC then reassigning them. That usually clears the problem. It is worth doing a full brake check while you do your controls check during taxi to make sure the brakes are applying as you expect them to, but I have experienced weird issues on landing before as well. Again this was usually due to an FSUIPC/controller problem.

Guys, why bother posting if you're going to bash the guy? Everyone has to start somewhere. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all, as parents usually teach their kids.. Richard, I would suggest modifying the route with new waypoints that are near the originals so you can still fly the route. Let me know if you need help doing this. If you don't mind cheating a bit, you can just erase the missing waypoints and fly a slightly more direct route. Especially if you use the dep/arr button you can just choose the sid and star and follow those. Even if the old ones are different, sids and stars are usually fairly long lived, so while sid YVR.3 may no longer exist, there is probably another one like YVR.6 which will be very similar. Again, let me know if you need a hand with this.

I have also experienced this issue and I am 100% certain it was not my error. It has occurred in both climb and in cruise (I have more than 1,000 hours in the PMDG 744 at this point). I have seen this issue maybe 6 or 7 times. I have seen it happen in all the 744 engine types. I suspect it is related to activesky weather changes. The issue is most likely happening at weather transitions in the activesky weather world. I have seen it happen when I entered light-moderate turbulence at cruise altitude. Time acceleration may also exacerbate the problem. I have also seen it happen when performing step climbs (no time acceleration when it happened). I generally fly the 744 at near maximum payload but with medium to light fuel loads, my typical flights are in east Asia and take less than 3 hours from clock on to clock off. My throttle override setting is set to off, my throttles and yoke are disabled during autopilot flight.

As a few others have mentioned, go with the 777 rather than the 737. The 777 is simpler to fly because of all the automation and simplification of systems. It's a bigger plane but easier to learn the systems on a basic level.

Interesting investigation Robert. I would also like to know the reasoning behind the missing fuel capacity in those tanks. I'm always for more fuel tanks capacity..!

i think that pilotedge is actually very good to get started with ATC. they have a training program and it forces you to learn the basics quickly. the controllers may chew you out from time to time if your training is not up to snuff, so it's a good motivator - just don't take it personally if it happens to you. if you listen to their audio samples you can usually hear some beginner hogging the frequency for minutes at a time and subsequently getting an earful from control..! vatsim is alright but the audio quality is just ridiculous (has it changed in 15 years? when i was a teenager in the early 2000's i remember it sounded just as bad). you can't even hear what controllers are saying because they use such awful encoding. for serious atc pilotedge is the way to go.

you guys might be interested in polynesian navigation. very different from european navigation. does not require any tools or sextants or anything like that. i have used it very successfully for flights around the pacific in the lockheed constellation and b377. it becomes markedly more easy when you have radio nav aids to assist you in making landfall, but it is extremely accurate whether or not you have radio navaids. i frequently fly from tokyo to minor islands in the south pacific - very hard targets to hit, but i've never missed. fantastic navigation system really. i'd be happy to describe it more if enough people have interest, or maybe do a livestream flight demonstrating the prep and techniques. really the best thing about it is that it requires no tools and can be used in any simulation that has an accurate night sky and round earth.

sometimes weird behaviors remain in the sim though. i turn off gyro precession when flying jets because frankly it's not necessary. but for example, i have found that in FSX there is a general aviation fuel pump in EVERY aircraft that can be turned on if you have a saitek switch panel. even if you've deleted all the key mappings for fuel pumps, flick the switch and the little cessna fuel pump noise comes on. who knows what is going on there, but you can do it even while flying a PMDG jet. have not tried with p3d. who knows why there is a GenAv fuel pump in there. i'd leave it turned off and only turn it on if you're flying an aircraft like the constellation or b377 or some GA aircraft. but even then, looking at the mag compass in the sim is a lot harder than it is in real life - it's quite difficult to read the numbers accurately in the sim so i tend to just use the "D" key or leave precession off completely.

IIRC topcat has a landing performance calculator which can be used to plan runway stopping distance if you use the autobraking figures from the FCOM you can plan your landing using the minimum level of autobrake which will significantly reduce brake temperatures. don't forget reverse thrust of course. i see many people completely disengage reverse thrust at 80 knots but you can keep it in idle reverse until lower speeds which aids in deceleration without needing to use stronger braking. get into the habit of landing in the proper area of the runway too - if you try too hard to get -50fpm touchdowns you're going to have a lot of floaty landings which will necessitate strong braking especially if you are trying to make a specific turnoff at the request of ATC.

i don't use ezdok. i am certain it is a controller thing because the problem can be immediately rectified by adjusting the pmdg nullzone, and reintroducing it by reverting the settings. i don't pretend to know why, but i do know that this fixes the problem. it may be good to set up a small null zone in your basic FSX or fsuipc controls as well. perhaps it is not a bug, but it is an unwanted behavior and it is definitely caused by the controller sending tiny inputs while engaging autoflight or while it's already engaged. seeing as there are almost no controllers in the consumer world that don't have some center slop or noise, and considering pmdg even put a null zone tool in the software, i think it's fair to say this is part of the aircraft behavior with consumer hardware, and there are tools provided with the aircraft to stop it.

I think I remember what is causing this problem. Slight null zone issues in your controls set up will cause this. I can't say for certain but I think that the PMDG code controlling null zone / autothrottle behavior changed in some update. Settings that worked previously may cause the porpoising behavior in both lateral and vertical autopilot modes in the updated version. Changing the sliders in the PMDG menu may solve this, as will changing your controller null zones in FSUIPC or the sim itself should fix this as well.

It depends on the parts availability and the market you're serving. As RonnieDuck mentions, if you're serving an area which can't be served in the same manner with another type of aircraft, it would seem that the DC-6 can be profitable. I think the DC-6 could be substituted with a twin otter in many cases more profitably though.