mtrainer

That fellow commenting on the Commodore 64 w/ the 8-bit 6502 1 MHZ processor had it right, but I'll add this - flying at 2 FPS made you think WAY ahead! When I got FS for the Amiga 2000 I was blown away, and that was a 7 MHZ processor with 512K of RAM. For those of us who have been at it from the start, we appreciate where we are. I used to think all the Forum Whiners lived out of their parent's basements, but sadly I know a fellow programmer whom I used to work with who now works in Silicon Valley deliberately leaves comments on a wide range of forums (news forums, social forums, etc.) just to stir the pot, heck he doesn't even believe most of what he writes - he gets his jollies on getting everyone else riled up. Sad. The anonymous nature of the Internet has seen a real decline of on-line civility. Only write things you would be willing to say to someone to their face over a cup of tea. Mark

Yeah, I reviewed the last change log with a microscope and didn't see anything in there that would have made my life different, so skipped it (which actually isn't like me- usually all over this stuff regardless). I'll get this next one though. +1 hoping for performance updates. I'm with the fella who predicted the 26th - releasing just before a weekend (and it's already after 5:00 P.M. central time Wednesday in the U.S.) would probably mean everyone would have to work through the weekend doing support, monitoring servers, monitoring forums, keeping lists of bugs reported, etc. Mark

I actually laughed out loud at this thread! It's great! And I actually learned a new "rule"! Mark

You can invest in the past or in the future. Vendor support for 32 bit products is going to drop fast. 64 bit is here, it's the product going forward that will continue to get all the new improvements. If it helps, simply move to Preapar3D 64 bit and at first concentrate on learning in detail the few 64--bit planes you can afford. In time, add the others. It doesn't have to be an all out conversion, do it incrementally. I did it this way and found there were some pay ware airplanes that I didn't even care to reinstall. I tend to like bring really good at a few specific airplanes than running around the skies winging it in everything from P-51 mustangs to 747s. Mark

If someone left a plane down in Antarctica, I'd fly it out of there. I once took the 737 as far south as I possibly could; it was pretty cool. Flew it all the way back to North America over the next couple of weeks, in mostly small hops. I couldn't take much more of the whiner posts, so I skipped from page 9 to 15.... Folks, software development is hard, I've been at it since 1983, and professionally since 1988. PMDG reach out to me via my email on file and let me know the date, time, your favorite pizza place, the number of pizzas and toppings and where to have them delivered. It's on me. Mark Trainer

I was wrong! It's not a PDMG brand of beer. For those flailing their arms, settle down, give it time, and let's see what this thing is really all about. From what I've read here so far a whole lot simply isn't known yet. Mark Trainer

The tutorial is a big help, I'll redo it every 4-6 months and I'm still learning new things from it (I have around 18 months or so on the product). I also own the 747 but I really want to master the 737 before moving on to the 747...although the 747 is a joy to hand fly. Mark Trainer

If it did Kevin, I missed it. I know I should have reviewed the FMC, or at least taken a look at the aircraft from an outside perspective, but if I recall I was loading up a saved flight and forgot the doors were all open. If there is an alarm that was supposed to go off, I didn't get it. Kyle pointed out in another thread that in real life you'd certainly hear the wind noise from such a thing (at some point), but it isn't modeled. On the PIC 767 it was nice to hear the cabin crew call up saying it was either to hot or to cold in the cabin. Kind of made me feel like I wasn't completely alone in the plane. It would be interesting to take it to the next level.... "Captain, you word not allowed, the doors are all still open!" "Captain, that was the scariest landing I've experienced in 20 years!" "Captain, everyone that ordered the fish is sick!" I started to investigate FSPassengers a while back, but for 2018 I'm deliberately trying to keep the number of add-ons to a minimum (ORBX stuff, Chaseplane, Active Sky, REX, PDMG not withstanding...I consider each of those critical). Mark Trainer

When I took off with the doors open (yes, yes, stupid I know) it would have been nice if the cabin staff started to beat on the door or call the cockpit to mention this.....also another time (OK, I guess it's a good thing I'm not a real pilot) the cabin pressure dropped to the point I think I would have killed the passengers....or another time where I believe I let them all freeze to death.....I'll stop here... But from a realism perspective, the eyes in the cabin are priceless for when things don't go right. Lastly, given the number of folks that seem to go beserk on airplanes lately, getting a cabin call for an unruly passenger every great once in a while could be interesting...."Yes, Captain, another fool who seems to think they can get the door open...we have him taped to the chair but we should likely divert...." Mark Trainer

Wow. At the time of my writing this a little over 46% of folks are between 50-70. I don't need to point out that is nearly 1/2, although one needs to keep in mind not all simmers stay on top of the forums. Most folks 30-40 are working hard in the workforce and have a young family they may be trying to support, and as such extremely pressed for time. All the questionnaire really answers is the age distribution of the folks who read the Prepar3D AVSIM forum. I started my interest in Flight Simulation in 1983 with Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator II for the Commodore 64 (8 bit CPU, 1 MHZ, 64K system RAM). Kept taking a few buck to the K-Mart layaway until I had the $200.00 computer paid off. Mom and dad looked at it as if it were just some new toy, but I went on to get my B.S. in Computer Science and have been working as a software engineer ever since. My son, who just graduated from college, could take or leave Flight Simulation from the very start (early age)...even though at my urging he's done a couple if ILS approaches and he's really quite good at it. It's just far to boring compared to blowing things up I suppose. If the remaining industry players in the field eventually peter-out in 15-20 years, I'll just freeze my setup in time so I'll always have the sims and add-ons I paid for. Unplug it from the Internet to make sure it doesn't try to update anything that might break something else. Mark (almost 55)

Hi Matthew, with regard to not having time to do the classic big-boy-Boeing routes: I also don't have all the time I'd like to do realistic 737 routes.....But....since we're all sitting in front of a PC pretending we're really flying, how hard of a mental leap is it to take it one step further? I fly from Chicago to St. Louis, or Chicago to Milwaukee, and they are both just a bit more than 1 hour flights. If you must, just pretend you came from somewhere much farther. Just remember not to fill the tanks up anymore than necessary and you'll enjoy the "busy" phases of flight in that one hour, the takeoff/climb phase and the descent/landing phase. That's where all the action is anyhow. Even when I fly across the country I break it up into 1-2 hour segments (hops). You get to experience more regional airports (I consider 6,000 ft. runways a minimum though for the 737 (although I can get 'er done in less) and it's more enjoyable than being at 39,000 ft. for 4-5 hours watching the clouds and fields roll by. Take lots of pictures of the kids, they grow up fast and you can't have to many pics. Also back them up to another PC or an external drive- can't tell you how many folks I've heard of losing everything because of one drive failure. Mark Trainer

Agreed, not just a new plane. It sounds like something more. I suggested in one of the countless posts on this topic it will be a PDMG Brewed Beer, a natural supplement to add a special challenge to those ILS landings you thought you had mastered. I didn't vote because none of the listed options sounded viable. I simply have no idea. But waiting for the reveal is exciting and I am looking forward to hearing all about it, even if circumstances this year prevent me from the usual Las Vegas Debauchery I've become accustomed to. Mark Trainer

Different strokes for different folks. Hey, it's a good time to be a flight simulation enthusiast. Try landing at Meigs Airport on a Commodore 64 running at 1 MHZ with 64K of RAM in 1984 (Sublogic II) with 2 frames a second and 4 colors total. Those of us living that era were diehards...and when the PC AT came out, with an Intel 80286 processor, all the mom and pop stores were showing off how fast the new hardware could run the latest version of Flight Simulator. It was also a strong sign of compatibility as some of the early IBM knock-offs couldn't technically handle the code. I've owned most everything since, hardware wise from a CPU perspective and 3D perspective (Sierra Screamin 3D...anyone remember that graphics accelerator? You still needed a regular video card in addition to it) and mostly software wise (and certainly every version of MSFS they ever invented, as well as a lot of stuff FS related that sold in fancy carboard boxes that were no good...). No mom and pop computer stores anymore; they went bye-bye. I've tried both platforms argued here, but as someone who works a lot, has a long commute, etc. I just don't have the bandwidth to support multiple sims. In my opinion, the only opinions that count here are from the folks who have tried both, and the reason I put up with these endless debate threads is that there doesn't seem much else to discuss in the forums until we find out what the Las Vegas Reveal will be. At times I need to take my own advice, like right now....less time reading/writing about FS, more time flying it! Enjoy the Memorial Day Weekend, for those of us in the U.S. it is a time to remember our Veterans and to fire up the grill and burn some meat. Call your mom and dad. And of course, get some flying done! Go somewhere exotic. Explore! Mark Trainer

The Valu-Jet DC-9 that went down in the Florida Everglades had a cockpit/cabin that immediately filled up with smoke due to improperly stored Oxygen Canisters in the cargo hold. The co-pilot, initials RH was a close friend of our family. Sadly, no one on call sign Critter 592 survived but the last sound heard on the cockpit recorder was someone cracking the cockpit window in an attempt to clear enough of the smoke to see the instruments. So, while it might have had value in this instance in another Universe, sadly the fire spread so fast that there wasn't anything to be done regardless of being able to crack the cockpit windows. They dug that plane out of 5 feet of submerged muck but since went down vertically there wasn't much to recover bigger than a coffee can. It was such a horrible event they changed the name of the entire airline to ATA. The CVR recording used to be online but these things are not posted anymore due to respect for the families. Mark Trainer

When it hit the streets (747-8), it will be awesome. In software development, the last 10% can take 90% of the time (if you're doing it right). Like everyone else here, really looking forward to it. Anyhow Andres Berman, I liked your old pic better- that thing-a-ma-bob with the oversize eyes and screaming mouth....I downloaded that icon and am considering using it on our JIRA page at work to represent me -- we use that tool to track our "stories" (in the old days we called them algorithms or projects but somewhere along the line software development language got stupid aka "Agile Methodology" so that the "business" could understand). Mark Trainer