Alpine Scenery

On 1/15/2024 at 9:59 PM, B777ER said:

One of the higher up’s at iniBuilds said in Discord a month or so ago now that they will not be doing KATL (or KMIA) due to the ortho in the area. 

Some of the best ortho in the US is around Northern Georgia lakes region, Hiawassee to Blairsville to Blue Ridge. Love flying that area, though it's sparsely populated so not many airports in the mountains themselves, just a couple. Not that far from Atlanta unless you are flying a slow aircraft. Great weather there too, best weather in the SE US anyhow.

Haven't flown that area in a while, going to do a flight there now (off to flying).

Take off from KDZJ, fly East, and then loop back around, awesome flight.

It's not going to hurt anything to delete it, just like you could get a random file in your downloads that doesn't open properly even though it passed a CRC check, so it's possible to get a bad cache file triggering an error handler ignoring said file slowing down performance. It's not so much that it would load the file and it's unlikely to crash a game these days, but it could slow stuff down. It probably fairly unlikely and won't help to be honest, but placebos can be good for flight sim.

19 hours ago, JYW said:

the KS is still one of the weakest in the sim. 

What does KS stand for?

I'd rather crash in MSFS than grease it in Xplane is where I'm at. Due to various factors beyond my control, it's less and less likely I'll ever get a real pilot's license unless I decide to try ultralights or gliders, and both of them scare the living daylights out of me, as I have a fear of heights. In a regular plane, the height thing isn't so bad, though I haven't been in that many small planes, but an ultralight I can only imagine. So for now, MSFS is where it's at bruthas.

Good info, haven't cleaned anything in ages, probably should be doing this at least once every 3 months.

You are again confusing complexity and dealing with a lot of information. Sometimes dealing with a lot of information can make things complex, but in this case, it's all basic conditionals and relatively simple logic.It also depends how perfect someone needs it, if you want an exact duplicate of ATC speaking back and forth that comes OOTB as having every potential response exactly like ATC would respond in real-life, then yah that's a bit of an AI problem there, but it could be a performance issue too in that case. However, even if they made it this way, there would always be "naysayers" saying ATC would never say that. I've heard ATC make some weird jokes before. I mean even that problem is somewhat easily solvable with an AI bot, but it will degrade performance. Also, I've listened to real ATC on Youtube channels, and increasing the number of conditions does not greatly increase complexity, because the logic remains simple. Again, it's the difference between being complex and tedious.

People using it as a training tool have very different wants and desires compared to people using it for entertainment. I just use it for entertainment, so visual improvements would be nice, but I also realize how hard it would be to further optimize the land detail or to post-process the aerial imagery. I just think they are probably compressing the aerial imagery too much. Using Bing at full res looks better than using Bing in MSFS (not always but at times and in certain places, not sure why but maybe the compression).

They probably want someone that has interacted with real ATC before. People often confuse complexity with tedious or having specialty knowledge. I mean entering a thousand values into a database is tedious, but it's not complex. Designing the most efficient math equation for some obscure optimization issue, that is extremely complex, even though it isn't tedious.

Agree... I'm probably not like the type of programmer that would want complex optimization work, but I would take a job designing ATC, very simple comparatively to the rest of the Asobo code base. MSFS continually impresses me, and YES, a lot of stuff is extremely complicated, ATC just isn't.

Are you always this pleasant?

It's really not, sorry this seems to mentally disturb you. It's a lot of work, but complex compared to other parts of MSFS, absolutely not. It is more difficult for a third-party because of the tricky integration work and lack of exposed data you need, but it's not very difficult for the creators of the original code, especially when you have direct support from the team that wrote the code base, one programmer doesn't need to know EVERYTHING in this case. When it comes to optimization issues, one programmer does pretty much need to know everything. Designing a plane from scratch with decent physics - difficult. Dealing with LOD and GPU optimization in C++ - difficult. Designing ATC - not THAT difficult. Having worked in software for many years and managed other programmers, this is something I would assign the JR or less-skilled programmers, any average programmer can do it because it's easy to revise the code and get support from others.

I'm amazed they don't do ATC, it's not a complex programming problem. The reason sims don't do a good ATC is because they've gotten away with it all these years so they just look at as an unnecessary expense. I mean they also are going to figure if you are using the sim for REAL training, then people will just use VatSim and nothing can come close to a real person, so in that sense they figure it's probably not useful.

I wouldn't mind a better ATC, but it's pretty low on my list of things to address to be frank. I would rather they address extra gaming functionality and land detail and improved aerial. That would help keep the SIM alive for pretty much ever.
 

9 hours ago, Paul K said:

Download speed is glacial here ( geddit ? ).

Went straight over my head, I must have brain freeze.

I am flying it now, does the auto-pilot support ILS, and if so, can someone give me a quick checklist of things for an ILS landing?

I have some parts of the auto-pilot working but not others.

FYI, so far so good, I don't regret the purchase at all, but I agree needs a new cockpit skin, hopefully someone will upload mods to Flightsim.to.

I mean even having been in a commercial jet and landed so many times, I can tell the ground physics still need work. Though they also needed work in the other games as well, in different ways. A real plane has a much springier absorption to the downward momentum on the landing, it's like planes in this game are using metal tires. Sure, there is a hard landing in real life many times, but not nearly as many times as this game. You have to grease the landing in some planes to prevent a bounce, not realistic.

I have been kind of half out of the game for 3-6 months.

Just wondering what's good for newer airports and planes that came out?

That way I don't have to dig through threads for a week to figure it out.

1) Agree on better ground handling and fix default physics in general (doesn't have to be perfect, but at least bring them to Carenado levels).

2) Fix the twitchy landings. Test the top 5 most popular controllers and offer a default profile that is actually decent. 

--- I have watched numerous videos on Youtube from pilots comparing the real flight of a plane to the MSFS version, and most of them agree the problem is the response physics are way too twitchy. One guy tried 4 different controllers and 100 different settings for over a week, and he said it only offered mild improvement. Specific complaints were ridiculous amount of vertical surge after barely adjusting elevator trim, stuck rudder trim not responding to controls at times in several planes, unrealistic landing bounces at an angle and speed that would never cause a bounce. This mainly applies to the default planes.

3) Fix the CACHE engine and offer better Aerial imagery (stop overly compressing the imagery, when all that really needs to be done is to fix the cache). The rolling cache does not work correctly to say the least, everyone turns it off. If they fixed the rolling cache, they could increase the effective perceptible resolution of the aerial imagery by reducing the compression used. MSFS has one of the worst bandwidth wasting designs I've ever seen, instead of properly caching they just ignored the bugs and kept increasing the compression to compensate.

On 7/22/2023 at 3:01 PM, Dermot McClusky said:

I just flew Logan, UT to Idaho Falls, ID and had a very bumpy flight. As I descended into my final approach things definitely smoothed out quite a bit.

I guess no one has done Idaho Falls yet (freeware or payware). MSFS Scenery Builders did Pocatello (it's not too bad actually), and there is some good freeware in the general area like u78 (Soda Springs) is one of the better ones. I also did a few in the area, like u10 American Falls, but since I was doing multiple airports, mine are just kind of "close renditions" rather than exact realistic copies. Anyhow, I enjoy flying the area, hopefully someone will do Idaho Falls eventually.

I am trying out the Commanche shortly, but I'm afraid it might be too slow for my spread out flying to use as a regular.

Usually look at FPS low benchmark numbers instead of VRAM usage or AVG fps. If Vram is too full and the caching engine is having to swap memory too much between the PC and the GPU, then it will usually result in much worse FPS low performance, or at least cause some stuttering if not. Only if the degradation is significant or if there are stutters is more VRAM likely to help. It will help in some airports and bigger cities, it's not going to matter as much in an average place. 12 GB would be my minimum though, and 16-24 is much better. Used 3090 from Ebay with 24 GB might be an option if the 4080 and 4090 are too expensive.

Those 3 extra buttons can probably be mapped on PC too I assume, so you also get 3 extra buttons it appears. That could actually come in handy.

Several of us have been waiting on this one for a long time. Installing it now, grabbed it from the site. Surprise there isn't more chatter here about this release.

I've taken a break away from MSFS for a couple months, but going to grab this one and try it out. A2A was one of the kings of realism, if not the absolute best even. I have way too many planes I never use, but in this case, there is enough of a chance I will use it that I have to buy it 🙂

Just now finally took a look at the new Flightsim.TO page, wow what a disaster, really awkward design.

I am not sure if there are any changes to the internal functionality of the motion, but SOME of the newer models and the blue airbus version have colors on the buttons, which might help if you forget which button does what (sometimes easy to do).

Other than that, it appears they have a tiny USB hub and a headphones jack built-in as side ports. You might check the company's literature to see if they are making any claims about motion or smoothness on the different versions, but I assume they are the same.

43 minutes ago, 737_800 said:

On the webpage of Thrustmaster the sidestick looks different. Is there a Xbox and PC Version? Since I have seen streamers using the xbox version on pc, is there a difference expect that the buttons have symbols on it?

When it supports XBOX, it appears there is a switch on these to change between XBOX and PC mode, see the image below.

It seems doubtful any of these new models would be lacking the switch and be XBOX only, as more likely without the switch it would be PC only and not support Xbox. Just get one with a switch if you need dual support. Wrong forum category btw, this belongs in hardware.

I have the older Thrustmaster T.16000M, and it's pretty good. I had several of the cheaper Logitech ones, and they are ok, but the rudder control was too loose. I bought a $250 Gladiator and did not like it at all, it just didn't fit my hands comfortably. I think the Gladiator's grip is a bit large compared to most others.

The ones I would like to try next are the Turtle Beach or maybe one of the higher end Logitechs (though some claim there are reliability issues). There is always the Warthog which I've never tried, but I'm really likely to try the Turtle Beach next (it seems the most promising for it's size and comfort).

If they add drones with windshield wipers, then it will have all been worth it.

When you think about it, everything in business is eventually a betrayal, just enough to not totally disillusion everyone.

I think it's fine, but it's wait and see, as always...

My main issue with this being a SIM vs. GAME would be the landings and flaps on certain planes, but I'm not sure how much of that is Asobo's difficult to use API or how much of it is 3PD's fault. Second to that is the ground physics after landing, feels too much like glass. 

The flaps issue is annoying though, on some planes when you engage flaps the plane almost immediately slows down to near stall speed. So much so that it is safer taking off with NO flaps or at least immediately disabling the flaps as soon as you hit the air. I know flaps are supposed to slow down planes, but it also provides more lift, and you often SINK in planes too much in MSFS or the nose just goes straight up and your fighting the nose the entire way back down to a level angle.

Of course graphics improvements would be right up there as well, for weather I am less interested because I'm not a real pilot, but I hope they do improve the weather for others sakes (or if I ever go get my pilot's license - doubtful). I don't bother with real flying because I have back issues sitting still for long periods of time, and it's so expensive, for me not much point.