Skywatcher

Sorry, scenery does not use extra cores as it's a limitation of FSX. Anything that is running through FSX uses a single core be it scenery, an aircraft or anything else.

Think you are a little confused. They are both single core games and you will get far worse performance in FSX than you will in FS9.

@JetCat, You know why retro gaming is so popular? Because people have come to the realization new does not mean better or more enjoyable. I have nothing stopping me from using MSFS other than I don't like it over FS9. There is more to enjoyment than graphics. The biggest plus is no new bugs and no continual updates fixing them. I can't imagine anything worse than sitting down to fly and you are told no because first you have to download gigabytes of data and install it. This is STILL the state of affairs right? No game is worth that. Some of us have a life and time is limited.

Agree. Some of us have settled on FS for life for no other reason than we prefer it! Regarding the Ariane or even the PMDG 737, I think the iFly 737 is far superior to both. I wouldn't recommend a new sim for people but switching 737's to the iFly is very much worth the investment.

I just tried to fly to Tivat twice and had a CTD both times on approach. Windows error log shows as being D3D.dll but I'm wondering if mipmaps could possibly cause this CTD. Anyone with suggestions for the best program to fix mipmaps? I flew to Belgrade a while ago, that one gave no problems.

Dijvid, Might be able to come to a conclusion pretty quickly on this one! Just did a flight, used Active Sky Evolution, forecast was for scattered clouds. Scattered clouds is what FS showed me through the duration of the flight. Here is where it gets interesting and quite logical. Cumulus cloud density appeared a little thicker than normal. Hard to really tell and be certain because they were just scattered clouds so no rock solid conclusion could really be drawn. However, cirrus clouds looked like nothing I had ever seen before! There were many patches of them throughout the sky. I've never seen anything like it in real life or in FS before. I'll do another flight with the same settings to really confirm but it certainly appears by bumping up the cloud number from 8 to 12 not only do you increase cumulus density (a good thing) you also increase cirrus density to unnatural levels. It is quite logical and likely how it works. Anyhow, I'll give it another flight and pay particular attention to the cirrus clouds but this is how things appear from my one flight unfortunately. Like many FS tweaks and tweaks in other games, sometimes there are reasons the developers leave the numbers where they are. Let me know if you find anything different.

Excellent! Ok, I'll give it a try as well.

Dijvid, Don't abandon your search, hopefully someone opens this thread with some knowledge and jumps in. I know I did a search a while ago looking for ways to improve the clouds, kinda like you're doing now. I don't expect there is a miracle solution or it would be common FS knowledge. However, I do know people have definitely done some tweaking with cfg settings. Unfortunately when I searched what looked like a couple of decent web pages that may contain some useful info were dead links. There is some info out there regarding your question. Might be some members here who can share some knowledge even if it only improves the clouds a little.

I think the FS weather regardless of what you use is not perfect, clouds are just one of the factors. The most annoying thing regarding the clouds is that they pop in and out at times and you virtually never get a perfectly clear sky just like you never get a heavily clouded coverage without breaks. I'm using AS and constantly doubt certain weather info but I'm not going to cross reference what it tells me every time to see if it is correct. I'm accepting weather for what it is in the current flight sims. I'm hoping the next gen flight sims will make weather what it should be.

There are a bunch of sites out there that can tell you if a site is down for everyone or just you. One example: http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/avsim.net.html

Finding my way through curing scenery problems a lack of an alpha certainly appears to be the most common issue. Great tool! Thanks Peter!

I won't post about anything else you stated because we will be here all day! lol Think we both made our points now. I did want to quote the above. EVERYTHING is having problems with Win 10! The older PMDG products are working just as well today on other operating systems. May be working on Win 10 too I don't know? You are outlining an OS that is a problem factor with many things, you are not outlining the FS2004 PMDG product as a problem. Considerable difference in argument.

PMDG's current capabilities and enhancements over the FS2004 line can be understood via current screenshots and product write ups. I'm sure people are intelligent enough to understand the FS2004 offering would not be the same as the current product offerings. The old products however allow people to appreciate how good these products were for their time, how much was incorporated into one of their aircraft from so long ago. As for issues regarding OS etc. As far as I can tell they still work very well or we'd all be reading many more posts with problems. No. 10% of the market would become the regular users of the product. How many FSX/P3D users have FS2004? I think quite a few would load the old girl up to have a very good play with the PMDG releases. Once satisfied, they'd be itching to try a modern up to date PMDG version on their current flight sim of choice. Edit: I should also say, the trick with marketing is just to get into people's heads. The sales work often gets done on it's own with whatever logic works best in that particular persons mind if people can understand what I am trying to say? To just release a bunch of freeware in itself I believe would be enough to have a few people scrambling for current PMDG products without even trying the free releases. The free releases would be out there, they would be talked about, "the seed is in everyone's head."

Yes! MD-11 for me too! This is the point, sooner or later I'll have to run to iFly if I want a decent 747 for FS2004. Once I buy the iFly 747, then brand loyalty will be with iFly and when I move to FSX/P3D guess who's products I'll buy! If the PMDG 747 was freeware, would I consider it worthwhile spending all that money on the iFly 747 for FS2004??? Who would I be loyal too in the future??? Exactly!

Just curious if anyone knows of any reason given by PMDG why they would not release their FS2004 products as freeware? Yes, I would like to get a couple of freebies, I don't deny this but as far as I can see it would make sense for them to do so. Here is a chance to literally put out some fully functional 'demo' aircraft for people to try which could get them hooked on the PMDG brand. With strong competition coming from iFly in future sales I don't see why they would not look to use all avenues to control as much of the FSX/P3D market as possible. Their FS2004 aircraft are simply in the hangar doing nothing when they could be making PMDG future sales and pleasing a wealth of FS2004 users. Ok, people did pay for them and some might not like to see what they paid for go for free but after this amount of time, I personally don't think the argument carries any weight. Anyhow, just my thoughts. Doesn't make sense to me to simply make such great aircraft unavailable. If I was PMDG, I know what I would be doing!