mtrainer

I saw the responses to your questions, but let me give you the shortest and most direct answer: Leave your previous ORBX installs as is, and simply add the extra adds ons as necessary, with ORBX you can't go wrong! The installers organize it as required. Mark Trainer

Thanks guys- Yeah I quit second guessing the forum algorithms for moving things to different forums. At any rate I do have the A2A 182, a great product other than I seem to have to have the motor factory rebuilt after each flight. Although I may be a bad pilot, it's hard to believe I'm destroying the motor each flight. Can it possibly be that sensitive? Mark Trainer

Hello Captains, I recently purchased ORBX Pacific North West Scenery, and in an effort to take a break from the high-flying PDMG tube-liners and long hauls I'm looking to swing the other direction- that is a high quality simulation of an Aircraft that is something much smaller and lighter, something I can use to explore this new region and get into and out of the smaller airports. Airplanes with floats will be equally considered w/ other General Aviation Aircraft. It's all good! Given my current stable of high-quality add-ons, I'm curious as what is available in this segment. Thanks, Mark Trainer

I would like to add that, the reason the IAS is so prominently displayed is because of its critical importance- as the IAS (Indicated Air Speed) approaches your aircraft stall speed, you will enter a stall and begin a rapid decent. From a pilot's perspective, the IAS is one of the most important numbers in the entire cockpit- it dictates when you have enough air molecules flowing over the wing to takeoff, and when you've flown so high that the air is so thin that your IAS is approaching your stall speed. Your IAS is what keeps you alive. If for some reason you were flying 150 IAS and you got hit with a tail wind of 50 knots, your IAS would fall to 100.....and you'd fall out of the sky like a lead balloon. But if your eyes were merely focused on (GS) Ground Speed alone, you'd slam into the ground wondering how you could have a ground speed well above stall, and yet still falling. Just wanted to explain why IAS is such an important number - air over the wings is a critical component to measure and it varies by temperature and altitude. Mark Trainer

Thanks Chris! I look forward to pulling this down this evening! Mark

Does anyone know of a livery in the AVSIM library that would work on the PMDG 737NGX 600/700/800/900 - something that looks like it's been through the wringer and back. Used hard and put away wet. Practically abused. I'll probably take some heat for this, but I need something beat up looking to complement my pristine fleet. Mark Trainer

Well, if you're willing to fly far enough, you can reach KFJK flying West from KORD....it's called the scenic route! Mark Trainer

Those that have seen the night sky with young eyes from the deep country will never forget it. Mark

Huh....what are the odds...was browsing the hifisimtech site and the main page went offline for about a min....refreshed and now they have AS16 for Prepar3D V4. Fantastic timing for me as I was going to the site to see where things stood with V4! Enjoy! Mark

"Future Proofing" is the way I roll when building new PCs. Just because today's software isn't as good as it should be with high core counts, it will rapidly get better in the next couple of years and having extra cores is going to mean a lot. The OS should also improve over the next 2 years and start doing a better job of managing multiple cores as the specific application forks new threads. Use Prime95 for finding out the stable/unstable point of an overclocked CPU- it pushes a core HARD. If you can get through 24 hours of Prime95 iterations on a warm day, you're good. Mark

Some day, probably after I'm long dead, there will be a flight simulator for the home user that will be, first and foremost, an EARTH SIMULATOR with an aircraft moving about in it. Realistic traffic, people, weather, air traffic control, physics, you name it....it would look so good visually you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the simulation and real film. The passenger load would always be different and the people in the cabin would have real personalities you could interact with. Maybe even a "disruption" slider you could adjust so you could have the privilege of occasionally returning to the base airport as some drunktard gets duck taped to his seat....the possibilities are endless. We'll know we're there when the toilets in the plane swirl in the opposite direction South of the Equator. The order of things that get modeled as we try to get there....is what we're really talking about. For now, I'd say keeping frame rates high during landings is one of the most important aspects to me personally. Mark Trainer (Started on the Commodore 64 SubLogic II Simulator ~ 2 Frames Per Second)

I like that paint job! Mark Trainer

This is what I would do - go ahead and let it install like it wants to - who knows what version you'll get but it should fix the messed up installation you're currently dealing with. Once done, come back and try to right click in add/remove and see if you have an uninstall option. While it might not fix your issue, it can't hurt. Good luck. Mark Trainer

You'll notice on the PMDG forum everyone signs their full name at the bottom of each post, as per the PMDG forum rules. There is a sticky on the subject on the general thread. I suspect the reasoning behind it is so that they don't spend time supporting folks who have illegally obtained copies of the software. Mark Trainer

Go into add/remove programs like you did but this time RIGHT CLICK on that entry, and select "UNINSTALL". Mark Trainer

I am planning to build an all new rig next spring, so I'm just going to keep this one limping along until then, updates or not. Don't let me discourage you, use google all you can to see if you can find a personalized solution that works for you. For me, I had such a wide range of issues that I couldn't even start a DOS prompt or read the font on many windows bars, and control panel wasn't displaying all of the normal options. Mark

Did you list your specs properly? A 100 watt power supply and 128 GB of RAM? Neither one of those makes sense.... Mark Trainer

If the saved flights came from a Prepar3D V3 version of a PDMG product, PMDG have stated they simply won't work in Prepar3D V4. They did indicate they may include a fix in a future patch. Mark Trainer

It is confusing since most folks are used to separate installers for different product versions, they went a slightly different route but here you go: Go to PMDG's website, home page. Upper right hand corner, click "Register | Login". Log in using your email account and password that you used for your initial purchase and download. Click CONTINUUE. Click "View Previous Orders" On the Order # link, choose your product you'd like to download. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll have your own personal download link Click on that "Download URL" Save it some where on your hard drive Once done, navigate to that folder, right click on the file to unzip it to the same folder Once done double click on the .exe that now exists. It will ask if you want to install the product for V3 or V4, with the option of installing to both. Good Luck! Mark Trainer

Last time I looked (yesterday I believe) EZDOC and AS16 were in open beta. It may work, but I'm willing to wait for the final debugged versions. Also AS16 isn't going to do a whole lot for me until REX4 w/ Soft Clouds gets their product out for V4. Mark

Now that PMDG has the 737 NGX out for Prepar3D V4, I'm pretty much converted over, but until I see a final version of REX4 w/ soft clouds, AS16, EZDOK, ORBX Vectors and ORBX Airports, Prepar3D V4 won't feel complete. It would be a real blessing if the original authors of the Turbine Duke would return and make it V4 compatible. I'd even buy it again. Mark

The Windows Creators Update fried my system in all sorts of ways that seemed totally unrelated....after some research I found out that this update doesn't play nicely with motherboards over about 6 years old. Some hhave had luck flashing their motherboards with the latest BIOS. At any rate, I used the system restore to roll back the update. Thankfully this update creates a system restore point before trashing your computer. Good Luck, Mark

Agreed with some here - go to crucial and download the app that will scan your system, it will recommend various offerings. I went from 6 GB to 24 GB and added a secondary 256 GB SSD drive. Now, I know many will consider this a pretty small drive (256 GB - their smallest) but I have most stuff on the old rotational platter (1 TB, about 80% full lately), and all I use the new SSD for is FS stuff and I have Prepar3D V4, PDMG 737, 747, ORBX several regions, and some FlyTampa airports, and other minor stuff too installed on just the new SSD; and it works beautifully and I'm only at the 50% occupancy mark, and I'm only $100.00 into this SSD thing. I'm trying to stretch this system until next year's tax refund, when I plan on building a new system from the ground up. These tweaks, combined with the V4 version of PDMG aircraft, are serving me well! Oh and to the poster above, yes you're on the right track for a build done today - Intel 7700K, GTX 1080ti, all the SSD you can swing. Hoping for new offerings from all by next spring. We'll see. Mark Trainer

Well a month later it's confirmed that it is no problem to get the joystick and all buttons on the joystick set up properly and what I would consider logically, but the throttle switches are still mostly useless; I'm not sweating it to hard though as I plan on getting DCS World sometime this year, and when in the real warthog (in that game) it is supposedly set up to instantly understand all those assignments. If I figure out something that makes sense for the throttle in PDMG 737 I'll post back. Meanwhile I know that some folks have programmed reverse thrusters the to motion of "pull up and back" functionality of the Warthog Throttle, I found it easier (to keep the entire assembly coming off the desk when performing the "pull up and back" maneuver) to use the grey button just under the thumb throttle hat switch on the right throttle control for this- set it up so that when pressed from its neutral position into the forward position it will click and stay there, causing reverse thrusters to come on full (program to decrease thrust- it will go negative and become reverse thrust). Then when below 60 kts, use your left thumb to pull that same switch back past the neutral into the back-most position, which is spring loaded to pop back into the neutral position once released (set it up so that the backmost position sets the throttles to neutral), and then let the switch snap back to the middle position which does nothing more- you're at zero thrust. This switch is perfect for this. Think of pushing this button forward for reverse thrust as blowing air forward which is exactly the real world operation of the reverser. So - touch-down, throttles to neutral, thumb pushes top grey button forward and remains engaged there as reversers ramp up, hit 60 kts, use your thumb to pull it back 2 stops, where it spring loads back to neutral all on its own for 0% thrust. If I make any other advances I'll post here, still getting Prepar3D V4 acquainted! Thanks, Mark Trainer

Extremely well put Dave. Mark Trainer