mtrainer

It's those massive Canadian Downdrafts! All kidding aside, I've never had an issue w/ this product- installing it or tail spinning into it. Mark Trainer

I have looked into this and have drooled over the websites for these MCPs, but for PC desk users, where do you put it? My desk is full of monitors, a keyboard, mouse, joystick, throttles, etc. as it is. Mark

Yes, V4.3 is the way to go. If LM follows their typical release schedule, you may want to do the math just to see if it is cheaper to license it on a month to month basis until V5.0 comes out, or buy it outright. Life is short though; just go get it. Every time I agonize about buying something my girlfriend calls it "Mental M*asturbation". I hate it when she says that because there isn't any real fun in stressing out about making a wise purchasing decision! Mark

A little short on info was given here in this initial post, but if you're new to Prepar3D and the joystick, I'd start as simple as possible and begin by removing FSUIPC from the equation. I own the payware version of this product but on a oath of diminished complexity I decided that 2018 would be void of as many external products as possible and thus removed it (and a lot of other stuff) - and as a result it seems life has become better, since I spend more time flying and less time fiddling around with the settings of 10-15 interacting products. The hardware interface menu of Prepar3D is a bit non-intuitive, but you have to steer clear of two horrible but somewhat related "'gotchas", first that multiple devices can be mapped to the same functions, and secondly that you have to check the "axis" settings on every device in the device drop down menu to see what might be controlling your inputs. There can't be any overlap there either or your life will result in much unnecessary sadness, and then eventually medications that are tough to stop, and worst of all will then lead to making your night landings twice as hard to complete without causing all the toddlers on board to burst into tears (hallmark of a bad pilot). Hopefully someone with specific experience with the TM16000M will chime in here and provide more info. Edit: You mentioned simconnect - that program also had me over a barrel and quite frustrated - for the life of me it was only by installing all of them oldest to newest (yeah, it makes no sense) that I finally restored order. As always, what worked for me may not work for you, because at the end of the day I don't understand how simconnect got so convoluted or what really fixed the issue. But reinstalling them all (the ones in the Prepar3d folder) worked for me- good luck bro. Mark

I was referring to a backgound task that can be completely CPU consuming, thus providing the perceived slowness of the simulator. Over-clockers often use a program called GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search) to stress a CPU to see how far it will overclock and still remain stable. Others use it to actually participate in a science project to find the largest "Mersenne Prime" number ever found. Just google "GIMPS", it should be the first link that pops up. A prime number is a number that can only be divided by 1 and itself, evenly. A Mersenne prime is a special category of prime numbers - it is 2, raised to the power of a prime, minus 1, that results in a prime. The record, last set in December of 2017, is a number that had over 23 million digits in it. Lots of cool facts about prime numbers, I won't get started here. Regarding your last question, I've always purchased some of the higher-end PC hardware and was glad for it, if only for the reason that it will ultimately have more utility for a longer period of time. Mark

It takes some discipline, but just stick to what Prepar3D defaults to once you install it- it scans your hardware and pretty much makes a reasonable setting configuration. Resist the urge to keep bumping things to the right. It may be fine in some areas/weather, but you'll eventually run into a situation where you're wondering if you've got a background program looking for the next largest Mersenne Prime. Mark

Yikes, can't argue with that example. And I can't recall any software engineer nearly going to jail for a division by zero mistake! Mark

For me, with PMDG planes, saving the scenario is indeed saving the panel state and FMC state. It's the whole ball of wax. I do restart the sim between each flight, every time. In fact, I usually reboot the entire PC just to make sure I'm starting with a perfectly clean slate - who wants to spend 3 hours flying just to have the sim crash due to all the other programs you were using earlier that day? Nope, something starts getting "carried forward" with 15+ scenarios in a row saved/loaded and minor odd things start happening, from stutters to the inability to use certain aspects of the Autopilot. When it happens, I just consider it a good reason to hand-fly the rest of the journey, and then manually recreate the flight at the destination from scratch. For me, it's small potatoes issue. Mark

If it makes anyone feel better, our IT department at a U.S. Fortune 50 firm misses its own internal deadlines quite often. It seems the human condition is overly optimistic when asked to give predictions on how long something will take. I've also seen developers try to give an honest answer regarding timelines and get promptly berated by management. We all want to give an answer based on the "Happy Path", meaning everything will go perfectly...and to please management...all while forgetting about mandatory training, routine meetings, holidays, and "keeping the lights on", i.e. support. An article for a newspaper can be pushed out the door with a few mistakes or omissions or grammar errors, but software....it only takes one division by zero calculation to bring it all to its knees. Mark

My dad worked on the B-58 Hustler when he was in the Air Force, that plane spent a lot of time being serviced for every hour it flew. A beautiful, powerful plane that the mechanics loathed. I read a book on this plane a couple years ago (loaned it to my dad....I gotta get that book back) and at the time, only some of the very best pilots in the Air Force were selected for B-58 training. The only thing I might add, is that saving a P3D scenario w/ PMDG and loading it up for the next leg works just fine for me, but....after about 15 or so continued save/restores, things start to get a little "weird" and I have to re-create the scenario to get rid of the anomalies. Mark

Austin Powers: And Ivana Toilet-Seat-Made-Out-Of-Solid-Gold, but its just not in the cards now, is it? :) Kidding aside, if PMDG made one, I'd buy. Mark Trainer

13,300 ft. above sea level? Hope it has a long runway! Personal admission: I die more often landing over 6,000 ft. high than anywhere else.... I have the ORB South American landclass too- spent about a month zig zagging my way down to Antarctica and back just for giggles. ORBX's Telluride has given me fits trying to bring the 737 in there. Not sure that airport was even meant for a plane that size but for those of you who like a challenge I recommend buying it and trying to land the 737 there (and getting it stopped before the end of the runway,,,,kind of a big deal, that one). It's like an airport carved out of the side of a mountain in a deep valley with a river down below running through it. I spoke to my ex-wife's brother about that airport, he flies business jets in and out of there, and he said the approach can appear misleading for those not accustomed to it. Mark Trainer (Currently flying from ORBX KTVL Lake Tahoe to ORBX's new KIDA Idaho Falls)

What's offered here is the best of both worlds. Keep your fleet of personally operated aircraft to yourself, and manage it via Spreadsheets as I do, or yet have a couple on the GFO network. Humans are happiest when they have options- the more the better, even if they don't always exercise them. Mark Trainer

Yep, I still have the Fly and Fly2 boxes in a big box in the garage, I've managed to part with lots of ancient (and I might add, at the time expensive) software, but for now I've decided to keep the flight sim stuff. I keep here at my primary FS desk, on the overhead, the original Flight Simulator II by Sublogic box, with the manual in it. Lost the disk eons ago (loaned it out, like most of my DVDs this stuff never comes back) unfortunately, not that I could do much with it anymore as my Commodore 64 was sold in the 80s to buy the Commodore 128, which turned out to be a bit of a waste of money as it didn't really offer much more. The Amiga 2000 though, rocked. For all the advances over the years in Flight Simulation, the biggest was going from FS II Sublogic C64 to Microsoft's version for the Commodore Amiga which at the time introduced graphics as a ground breaking and forevermore built-in aspect of the PC, and also introduced a true multiprocessing/multithreaded environment in a operating system I believe was called Intuition. Stopping here before I go down the historical road any further. Mark Trainer

Part of the news mentioned in the article quoted indicated it was released to Beta in August. Not sure how long LM spent in beta in past releases, but I'm hoping it comes out in the October timeframe. I'm hoping, among other things, they will fix the time issue and the time zone issue (both of which have downloadable payware fixes). A company that makes everything from planes to rockets, must have someone they can tap into for the proper calculations. It's fundamentals such as these that need to be addressed before eye-candy. Mark

That's awesome! 20 years ago I wouldn't have expected system modeling would ever reach this level of detail. One of the best things about PMDG is that they have forced other aircraft sims to "up their game". Mark Trainer

Thanks Everyone, Some real good nuggets of info here that I really appreciate. I gottta google up the airport at the top of the mountain, that sounds insane! Hi Marc - Regarding the South American scenery, Orbx did release a SA Region that you may like. The airports it comes with though are often not much more than a concrete runway in a clearing in a forest. Hi Richard - I did indeed download ORBX freeware NA pack and installed it, but I wasn't aware any of the airports were longer that 7,000 ft. I got the impression that they were all small GA airports. Short of looking each one up online, is there any way to systematically tell which airports are longer than 7,000 feet? I may write a program that digs through sim data and pull out the 7,000 ft.+ ones, hopefully it will include latitude / longitude info in there as well, and then grind it through one of the freeware Traveling Salesman algorithms (although, as the Wiki article points out, humans somehow have a pretty intuitive knack for getting it pretty close). I'll check out some of your videos, thanks. Thanks, Mark Trainer "Of course Bucky would rather be there with you. Of course it isn't only physical. I deeply respect you as a human being. Someday I'm gonna make you Mrs. Buck Turgidson." - Dr. Strangelove

Since I started keeping spreadsheets on 1/30/2017, I've accumulated 135 flights in the PMDG 737. Wish I had started keeping the spreadsheets back in 1984...w/ Flight Simulator II by Sublogic…then again I might stroke out seeing the number of hours spent simming….. Here is where my modest fleet of 6 PDMG 737s are now and where they are going next (sorry the formatting got ruined in the copy/paste), the forum doesn't understand tabs: 1/30/2017 to 8/31/2018: Where the planes are currently - # Flights - Last Flight Date - Next Stop(s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UAL 737 - Chicago Based: In Boston, MA - 21 flights, last was 8/10/2018 - CYUL (new scenery), then CYYZ, KMKE, KDPA Delta 737 - Denver Based: In Lake Tahoe, NV - 17 flights, last was 8/25/2018 - To KIDA (new scenery) BBJ 737 - PNW Based: In Pago Pago, - 21 flights, last was 8/11/2018 - Explore Pago Pago Islands, then to NZAA, New Zealand (New Scenery) - headed around the world Alaska 737 - Alaska Based: In Monterey, CA - 18 flights, last was 8/31/2018 - Next stop KSTS, eventually back to Alaska I think, PAGS (New Scenery) Caribbean 737 - Trinidad Based: In Santiago Cuba - 40 flights, last was 8/31/2018 - Next stop TMCN, KTPA, KBOS, etc...PAKT all my payware sceneries visited in Traveling Salesman Fashion Jamaican 737 - Kingston Based: In Grand Cayman - 18 flights, last was 7/08/2018 - Next stop Unknown Total 737 Flights since early 2017: 135 I suppose it's pretty obvious I picked up some ORBX titles with the sale they just had, I have several new places to go check out. I quit "zapping" my planes to new scenery and always take the aircraft there one hop at a time. For those not familiar with the Traveling Salesman Algorithm, highly recommend googling the Wiki Article on it. It is about finding the shortest route between a list of cities and visiting each one exactly once. Anyone have any particular destinations they plan to knock out this long weekend? I like to always mix up the FROM-TO destinations, rarely have any of the planes above made the exact same run twice. The Caribbean Aircraft has even touched Antarctica via way of ORBX South America. My main goal this weekend (among other things) is to try to visit some of the newly purchased sceneries. Mark Trainer

Agreed you have to be very careful about what axis are assigned to what, and they only way to know for sure is to go into controls for every input device listed in the drop-down, and make sure there are no redundancies, and if found, remove the unnecessary ones. I'd like to see a future version of Prepar3D revamp their hardware interface, in a graphical way that also reports any redundant axis settings explicitly. I've also wrestled with plenty of redundant settings not just related to axis, but also control assignments. Good luck. Mark Trainer

Done. Just like 'ol yeller, taken out behind the woodshed. Mark Trainer

As someone who has scribbled out software since the mid 80s, the last 10% of the coding effort is the hardest (and often most time consuming). Usually it's only when you finish a piece of software, stand back, take a good look, that it then becomes clear how you actually should have written it. Even though it isn't out yet (the -8), can it not be said that sometimes the longing for a thing can be almost as pleasant as having the thing? I actually enjoy looking forward to this product, in a day and age where there doesn't seem to be much "good" to look forward to. Mark Trainer -Dragged to a casino late last night, turned $100 into $800 at blackjack in about 1 hour...life is good sometimes.

I didn't notice the blurries before, nor after so I can't really say. But taking off and landing in the 737 I'm usually concentrating on the instruments and the runway. But keep in mind I have only a few landings at the original KSAN, and only two since the update to V2. Maybe I'll take a GA plane or a helicopter up and look around in more detail this evening - I can stay up a bit later tonight as I'm working from home tomorrow (yeaaaa!). The only thing I had noticed was that the Jetway didn't quite match the aircraft door, and I originally chalked it up to me not pulling into a 737 spot, but it appears others have noticed it too. I have experimented with payware Photo Scenery, and although I realize it's the Cat's Pajamas for some, it looks best to me only at an altitude of 4K-8K feet or so. When you're low, it is indeed blurry and flat, and as a result I ultimately gave up on it, even though my very own neighborhood could, if you squinted your eyes just right, be identified as proper. Mark

Update: The toddler is fine and the lawsuit dropped with the promise that I'll delete the original KSAN V1.0 first, and then re-download V2.0 which is in progress. That mom was mad! Mark

I went to the websites and read the history; one would think Lockheed would put these two issues pretty high on their bug-fix list. It's been wrong for over a decade, and it seems so fundamental to the sim so why require 3rd party tools to correct this? Mark

Yes my BBJ aircraft, and hence my personal corporation, is now reviewing a newly issued lawsuit filed right on the outskirts of KSAN where an unfortunate toddler's leg got caught between the crack of the "IK" Jetway and the aircraft, providing for an unnecessary and stressful situation for both the family and myself who happened to be the captain of that flight. Apparently, my profuse apologies fell upon deaf ears. Mark