mtrainer

Yeah it's a software model some companies are starting to explore. I wonder though if software written like this would somehow be easier for the hackers to steal for full-time use. I'm an IT guy but the cyber stuff is moving quicker than I can keep up with. I've got a self-imposed mortarium on buying any new airports until I visit the ones I've already purchased! Mark

I don't use the in-game ATC at all. I do have Active Sky for P3Dv4, and I do tune into ATIS and get the wind direction info and land accordingly. I also have AI traffic set very low...I, like others, wish LM would get around to fixing some of the basics with the sim. Some of it is low hanging fruit. Mark

Yep I saw that dreamteam post on their forum regarding the fact they can't give any updates and also assumed there were some legal issues behind it. I'm looking forward to it though. As far as the upcoming Drzewiecki Design version this also looks promising as one of the early screen snapshots showed the building I actually work at in downtown Chicago. And it's pretty spot-on. To model a city in that level of detail though....it's gonna take a while! Hope they include DuPage Airport in West Chicago- always surprised no scenery makers picked this one up over the years- its main runway is long enough to handle 737s, although I don't ever recall seeing one there. Mark

Ahh the memories, yes you must build all you can with your daughter and wife. My son and I enjoyed many hobbies together, and alas, now he is a college graduate and lives 940 miles South of me. When living in the moment life seems to crawl by, but when looking backward, you realize it is racing by. Pat on the head, given. I suspect you'll do just fine regardless of the details. Mark

Dang! I must have this! Excellent work indeed. Not often a freebie comes along that can add so much.... Mark

Agreed Captain Kevin, I do this sometimes too. It's a great way to learn the true feel of the airplane, and can even be quite rewarding. I'm also an old school fan of using VOR to VOR station navigation. And even if I'm using full automation on the 747 my hops are usually 1 to 2 hours, no more. That way you get to experience the busiest aspects of the flight, the take offs and landings. Mark Trainer

Well that is good news Peter, it must have been over a year ago then, because I clearly remember feeling bummed out when the Internet was down and CP wasn't coming up as available. Mark Trainer

Thinking outside the box a bit, you could consider the MilViz DHC-2 Beaver, it has wheels and floats and in conjunction with ORBX Pacific Northwest and a few of their beautiful airports for that region, you could have a blast flying around mountains and landing at some really cool, remote, airports. Mark

I purchased EZDOK two years ago and last year purchased Chase Plane. I too, like others above, like the Interface of CP, it seems as if EZDOK took up a lot of buttons on the numeric keypad....CP is highly customizable. Even as a 30 year IT programmer my blood pressure always went up w/ creating new camera positions within EZDOK. But they are coming out with a new version that is supposed to address some of these issues. There is also a current discussion on the PMDG general forum you can read through that is essentially addresses the same topic. Mark

I've had EZDOC and Chaseplane. Chaseplane had, for me, a more intuitive interface. Getting CP views defined does take some time, but you can "overload" a button on the joystick, such as the hat switch so every time you click "back" for example, you move to a new section of the cockpit displays so I can cycle through all the main components of the cockpit quickly using the one same button. Every time I hit left hat, it looks first 45 degree left, then if I press left hat again I get a full 90 left. Because it doesn't "snap" to these views it is like looking left in real life, it "swings around" to the new position. Same set for the right hat (looks right w/ 2 views). I also have it setup that by pressing the hat forward, it takes me back to the default pilot view no matter what I was looking at previously. A hat switch on my throttle steps through various outside views, which is a lot of fun on those segments of flight where not much is going on. When I want to pop back into the cockpit pilot view, as stated I just press the forward hat on the joystick (HOTAS Warthog w/ extension). Takes some setup time, but in the end it's quite customizable and allows one to come up with a configuration that makes sense to them. The key is to experiment since you're probably not going to get it perfect on the first try. I did loose my Internet connection for a few hours one weekend, and I couldn't enjoy flying without CP, so I'll second the idea that allowing it work in a local mode would be ideal. Mark Trainer

The main argument for going to 32 GB of RAM would be longevity. PCs just aren't making the major performance strides they used to and you might find there is no reason to update for a long time to come- however memory requirements have been on the rise for years now. I do suggest though that you fill all your memory slots to take advantage of the triple (on my system, which has three 8 GB RAM sticks for a total of 24 GB) or quad channel memory bandwidth. And although Prepar3D may not often require much over 5 GB of RAM, if you're like me with multiple monitors you're likely running lots of FS related applications on the other monitor, as well as FS related web sites with airport maps, diagrams, etc. It all adds up. Last year I was going to build an all new rig this year, but decided to hold out a little longer so I went from 6 GB to 24 GB for about $150 (my system is getting old so memory was cheap), and then added a SSD drive as well to hold Prepar3D, the aircraft, and scenery. Also upgraded the vide card to a 1070. Getting a lot of life out of this system. I am on the fence about building a new system early next year since I still get good framerates on this rig ("She ain't much to look at kid, but she's got it where it counts"). Although many of you would probably frown at my sliders....let's just say nothing is maxed out....but I read these forums where folks are putting together top of the line rigs and still complaining about performance issues...I personally suspect they are just slamming everything to the right slider-wise and expecting the hardware to handle it. FSX was the first FS program that upon release it was clearly stated they had future-proofed the product by allowing for settings that the hardware at the time couldn't handle. I suspect Prepr3D is somewhat like that too - not quite setup to allow all sliders to the right with the current generation of hardware. I've been reading CPU reviews since 1987, and for a long time it was exciting times. Today's CPUs are not making the large generational performance gains they once were, and I'm now thinking of waiting to see what Intel's new architecture will be (we've been stuck on the same basic design for many years now), and hopefully they will finally be able to get their die process down to something smaller than 10 nm. My vote would be, if you're building an all new rig, I'd go for 32 GB. Not because you need it TODAY, but you might need more than 16 GB in a few years. And with 4 memory slots, there isn't anything you can do between 16 and 32 GB without losing bandwidth on the memory channel. Sorry for the long post. Thanks, Mark

Reviewed the whole thread - my bad - it says this: "Then, at the end of 2014 other runways changed, and at the end of 2015 there were other changes and in 2018 a new taxiway opened and the airport is changing again while we speak. We decided to "froze" it at the March 2018 situation, otherwise we'll never be able to release it..." Mark

Give me a few months to analyze those logs and I'll get back to you.... Mark

Yes a real KORD pilot in their forum described it as "one continuous construction project". Not a reason to ignore it through, in a way the whole world is a moving target. I think it was even mentioned on their forums they are shooting for the look it had in 2015, which may upset some folks but it's better than just throwing up ones hands and saying I give up. Furthermore they'd go broke if they kept working on one airport full time to keep up with the yearly changes. Like the plan to build the original 747, the design must be frozen and stuck to. Software engineering is the worst at scope creep, as there is always some new API or framework that comes out while something is in development. They young developers don't get it - you can't keep rewriting stuff every time a new flavor of ice cream comes out. I was on a project about 15 years ago at very large firm that fell into this trap, it took over 7 years for their new system to come online, all the meanwhile the old one was supporting the firm just fine using IBM 370 assembly language. Mark

Hmmm......no PTA or TomotoeShade used here and it seems just fine all straight out of the box, with ChasePlane views inside and out. Maybe you accidently borked something up by fiddling with the default nature of the beast? Baseline- uninstall the after-effect shaders, delete the Prepa3D share file so it gets rebuilt upon next startup of Prepar3D and see how things look. Don't forget to check your monitor settings - if you've got little ones in the house they'll press any button as long and often as they see fit. Mark