eslader

So... If we strap an upside-down cat to the bottom of an airplane...

This was my thought too. If the sounds aren't associated with the things that are supposed to be making those sounds, then it's not going to bring the airport alive, it's just going to make the airport feel more fake.

It's explained by conservation of momentum. If you have an isolated system with no external force applied to it, its momentum will not change. If you have an isolated system with an external force applied to it, its momentum will change. But the laws of physics are not applied unfairly because the universe is itself a system. if momentum is conserved in one situation, it needs to be conserved in all situations. So when you shove something with X force, it needs to impart X force back on you so that the overall momentum of the universe is conserved. If this were not the case, the universe would be an unpleasant place with objects accelerating and decelerating for no reason. This would be a very dangerous place in which to exist, if you existed, which you wouldn't because life would have a hard time developing in a universe where planets couldn't consistently form and wouldn't reliably orbit suns even if they did. But I suspect you're diving deeper than that, and at a certain point in science your "why" runs up against "because that's a fundamental way the universe has been observed to behave." At the heart of it, there is no real "why" in science, there's just "how." Science can, with sufficient investigation, explain how something works, and there's always more investigation you can do to get a better understanding of the "how," but you will always eventually slam into a wall if you ask "why" and really mean it. "why does this ball roll away from me when I push it" can be answered with explanations as to how physics works, but "why does physics work that way in the first place" always leads to untestable questions: Did a god set it up that way? Are we in a simulation and the nerd running the computer set the parameters of his simulated universe up that way? (and would it even be possible to tell the difference between a simulation-programming nerd and an actual deity?) Do things not actually work that way but because of the limitations of our perceptions we are fooled into thinking they do? Answering any of these questions would require observations from outside of the observable universe which is by definition impossible.

You'll find the inverse square law interesting. Any point source that radiates a physical quantity will see that effect drop off proportional to the square of the distance you are from it. This is also true of light (of course, since light is a specific frequency range of electromagnetism), nuclear radiation (the farther away you get from the plutonium, the less radiation you are exposed to), etc. The reason this is a thing can be made more obvious by only considering light. Take a light bulb. It emits photons in all directions going in a straight line away from the light bulb. Stand right next to the light bulb and lots of photons hit your face. Get farther away, and the photons which were hitting the edge of your face now don't hit you at all. Get farther away still and even more photons miss you. Picture the emitted light as a series of expanding spheres (very not accurate, but it makes for a good visual model). The closer you are to the source, the higher percentage of the sphere hits your face. Move farther away, and more of the sphere misses your face. The total light energy of the spheres does not change as they expand, which means that the light hitting your face as you move away from the bulb is more dilute the farther you get. Gravity behaves the same way, except that the expanding "sphere" is the pull the gravity well has on you. An object with mass has a finite amount of "gravity" it can exert, which you can also think of as expanding spheres of gravity. The closer you are to the object, the more of the sphere is able to pull on you. Get farther away and you reduce the pull because more of the sphere is missing you. To more directly address your hypothesis, electromagnetic emissions are not a distortion of spacetime themselves, but they do cause a distortion of spacetime. This is where the old favorite, E=mc2 comes in. Energy equals matter times the speed of light squared. Because matter has an impact on spacetime (what we call gravity) it follows that energy must also have the same kind of impact on spacetime. So, whether it's a radio signal, a lightning bolt or even heat, it curves spacetime just like mass does (only to a much lower degree because E=mc2 -- gotta drop the square of the speed of light from the curvature). BTW, that last is another example of why "antigravity" in the "countering the force of gravity" sense is bunk. You would need an insane amount of energy to float a marble because it takes so much more energy to warp spacetime to the degree that matter does. It takes slightly more than 0.05 joules of energy to lift a marble 3 feet if you just pick it up, or the marble is made of metal and you apply a magnetic field that pushes it away. The energy cost is almost nil - you could do it thousands of times with a flashlight battery. To nullify gravity with an energy field enough to do the same work, even if it were possible, would take hundreds of terajoules - we're talking multiple-nuclear-bomb levels of energy just to pick up a marble. The more realistic scenario from a physics perspective would be to use an Alcubierre bubble that warps spacetime around the marble. If you shape the bubble just right, the marble would not experience the pull of gravity and would hover. But even though that is theoretically possible, it would take even more energy - now you're talking about levels on the order of the annual electrical consumption of a first-world country. To lift a marble up to your waist. And these guys are claiming we've done it with a whole airplane. Even if we figured out how to make the physics work, it would be pointless because we could do it at a vastly lower energy cost just by putting a downward-facing ordinary boring engine on it. Heck, it would take less energy and logistics to attach several thousand seagulls to the plane and have them lift it. ;)

Same here. When I got my first PMDG (747, FSX) the FMS was the most intimidating part. My big regret these days is that I'm so busy IRL that I don't have time to sit on the ground setting them up anymore if I actually want to get in the air, so I have to let Simbrief populate them for me.

Which means that either general relativity is wrong or anti-gravity doesn't exist, and further calls this video's claims into question. The physics definition of anti-gravity got trashed once it was determined that gravity has the same impact on anti-matter as it does on matter. Once that was known, anti-gravity as previously defined by physics was deemed to be impossible, because the hypothetical force you refer to relied on gravity repelling anti-matter. The other problem with defining antigravity as a force is that it requires defining gravity as a force when in reality it's not. It's considered to be a force in purely classical physics because it's a model that works. In reality, gravity is not a force, it's the end result of warping space time with objects that have mass. If you put your car in neutral and coast down a hill, you don't claim that the force of hill accelerated you. Same thing with gravity. Objects with mass create dimples in spacetime, and other objects get pulled toward those objects because they're going "downhill." "Anti-gravity" from a physics standpoint would require neutralizing the warping of spacetime by the massive object that's currently causing gravitational effects on you, which requires something to be on the other side of spacetime exerting an equal effect in the opposite direction. Like putting a bowling ball on a stretched bed sheet and then putting something under the bed sheet that pushes up on the bowling ball. But spacetime doesn't have sides, so that's a non-starter too. In short, any time someone claims something is anti-gravity, they're either lying about how physics works, or they're using the more common parlance, which is that something overcame the (classical-physics) force of gravity. Under the former definition, nothing qualifies. Under the latter, anything that causes you to stop falling as fast as you should be falling without it qualifies, whether that's wings, rotors, rocket engines, or a bungee cord.

I did watch the video. So many suspicious claims in it. The name. Aurora. We were talking about the CIA's supposed Aurora aircraft back when I was in middle school. Aurora is the Loch Ness Monster of made-up military aircraft. TR-3B name. The AI that wrote this messed up, because the TR-3B is another conspiracy theory triangle aircraft that is supposedly a stealth spy plane, not a multiplatform weapons system, and its nickname is "Black Manta," not "Aurora." An F22 pilot sees one of these things flying at Area 51 and then goes around telling the world what he saw, but he's not in a black-site prison forever? No. "It can do all of this while remaining completely invisible to detection systems." Then why are you using so many videos as evidence that it exists? The invisibility shield must suck? The laser weapon system. 450kw, 20km range. Obviously, whoever wrote this malarkey has never heard of thermal bloom, which you can mitigate by going really fast, but then when you go really fast you have shockwaves around the aircraft that screw with the laser and you're still hosed.

All aircraft are anti-gravity...

Demo's free. I messed with it. In some ways it's better than other ship sims out there (most of which are awful). I think this one has potential. The controls for all vessels, whether it's a little pilot boat or a big freighter, are identical in the cockpit. Same switch panel, radar screen, etc. That'll probably change as they continue working on it. Different vessels do have different actual systems. Some have bow/stern thrusters, some have azipods, etc. Like other ship sims, this one gets the azipods wrong. They're almost always configured as pullers on real vessels, but in the game they're pushers like normal screws are, which made me crash the tugboat into the dock the first time I tried it. The graphics are nothing to write home about, but maybe they'll get better as development continues. My main complaint right now is that you can't walk around the boat. It's just camera views, which are moveable, but it really should be a FPS-style movement when you aren't at the helm. No time acceleration that I could find, but you also only get an hour to bob around in the demo and you can only donk around in harbors and very close to shore so it would be kind of silly at this point.

I was getting fairly decent framerates on my Reverb G2 on a 1080Ti at about mid-tier graphics slider settings, so I can see it. Then everything got better when I got a 3070Ti, until I got a Crystal Light thinking the G2 would be nerfed by M$ soon. That headset absolutely murdered my card. What headset you use will have a huge impact on whether or not you can get away with an older card.

Slow more than low is what's impacting your experience. Whatever your LOD radius is, that's how far out it's loading in detailed scenery. The faster your airplane, the faster it has to load in new scenery. You can see this effect in other games too. Pretty much any 3d-world game has fairly restrictive speed limits on how fast you can move across the map. The supercars in Grand Theft Auto actually move at around 40mph or so, and the F-16 does maybe 100mph if that, because if it went any faster most computers wouldn't be able to load in the scenery in time. Back in the day when all computers were slow relative to the powerhouses we have now, in some games it was possible to get going so fast that it couldn't load the graphics in before you got to what the graphics represented, which was a problem if the object was a building. The hitbox would be there, but the visual would not, and you wouldn't know the building was there until you slammed into it. As far as altitude goes, actually you'd do even better if you could fly high and slow. Think, U2. That's because the high-res LOD isn't a factor when you're a few miles up. It's not loading every tree, car and building detail, so now you're loading stuff that's much easier on the graphics card, slower than you do in a jet. The complexity of the aircraft is also a factor. A jetliner with 5-7 PFD/MFDs is going to be tougher on your system than a Cub with a few analog gauges. That's why some developers allow you to turn off the copilot's displays, to give the GPU a break on stuff you're probably not looking at much anyway. But again, that complexity is mainly hitting your system from the "graphically render the stuff in the cockpit" standpoint and not quite as much from the "compute what the systems are doing" standpoint.

Yes, which is why I perfunctorily click the chocks, the pitot covers and the static port if equipped and much prefer the addons that give me the option to make them disappear forever. That's a tiny part of a real preflight. No matter how many times I check the tires, they will always be brand new. Controls will always be rigged properly. The fuel will always be perfect. There will never be a nick in the prop. All those things have click points, and because the underlying condition is static, clicking on them is pointless.

Randomized failures can be fun, but only if they're done well. Same with maintenance. It needs to have an impact to be enjoyable. I've seen planes with "maintenance" requirements, and if you don't do them nothing happens. At that point it's like the MSFS walkaround - dumb because nothing you do regarding it will have any impact whatsoever on the flight.

I usually go every year. Skipped this year because I've got too much on my plate this summer, but it's fun to watch the streams. If you've never been, it's definitely worth the trip. If you want to see everything, you need to go for the whole week. About halfway through the week the whole static lineup in the main display area changes over, so if you only go for a weekend you will miss some good stuff. The show takes over the whole airport - you will definitely get your steps in, but you'll see some truly amazing aircraft. The air shows themselves are hours long, and the night shows should not be missed. You'll also often see brand new aircraft or ones not even in production. I got to watch the Hondajet prototype fly (and do aerobatics) one year, and Bally's Bomber makes an appearance frequently and is just awesome. Even my wife, who really doesn't care about aviation, enjoys going to EAA with me. The show's gotten more simmer-friendly over the years too. They don't look down on simmers anymore, and even hold workshops on using flight sims to improve real-world proficiency. They also banned Dan Gryder for life, so that's a plus in their favor too. ;)

True, but framerate performance if we moved to the Crystal Super would still give us smooth video. Point being, yes we can have great visuals on high-res equipment.

I get pretty close... But yeah, my FPS drops into the 50s from time to time, and if I'm doing something like LAX in a thunderstorm might even drop to the high 40s. Which is still pretty freaking awesome. But I think some historical context is valuable too. Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been released years before the computer that can run it perfectly exists. Even back in the SubLogic days, when it was just a CGA line-art 2d cockpit in a tiny wireframe world with no weather, a grid for the ground, and some triangles on the edges for mountains, the framerate would frequently be a slideshow. The closest I ever came before now to having enough horsepower to run Flight Sim completely smoothly at full graphics settings was in FS4 on a 486, which isn't too surprising because it was basically FS3 with additions like dynamic scenery (on rails, basically sprites that required almost no computing power), which allowed computer tech to close the gap. That I can have graphical and physical fidelity at the level of 2024 while running a 16.5 million pixel VR display and it almost never drops framerates to the point where there's even slightly noticeable stuttering is astonishing.

By banning them from selling their products in the US until they make restitution. But as you pointed out, restitution is rarely actually punitive and ends up being more just a cost of doing business. I think that's pretty much the entirety of the problem. After a certain framerate, higher framerates are just bragging rights. It reminds me of the stereo competitions that used to be really popular in the 90s. The really serious guys would show up towing a minivan that was filled with speakers and amplifiers, all tuned to be as loud as possible at one specific frequency. They'd seal the car up and make sure no one got inside it because the volume would melt their eardrums. It would make this stupid-loud sound for about half a second before the amps fried or the speakers blew, and whoever managed to make the loudest noise won. Totally stupid, definitely no longer about actual audio, and purely for bragging rights. Just like the framerate chase.

This is really going to depend on the hardware you're using. I never have a problem with default sensitivity settings with my yoke, but it's a long-throw Fulcrum One. When I use a joystick, default settings are way too twitchy.

It's a little confusing whether Xbox is losing money, or Xbox is losing money. This is why MS should not have named their games division "Xbox." It would not at all surprise me if the console side is losing money overall. Consoles kind of suck. You pay $650 for a console that's a walled garden, and unlike consoles of old that used instant-load cartridges, modern consoles have load times on par with, or slower than, PCs. If they break, you're often just screwed whereas when a PC breaks, you just replace whatever component died and get on with your life. And generally if you compare a console game to its PC port, the PC one has better graphics because it's not limited by whatever hardware the console comes with. Beyond that, MS is still the new kid on the block in the console world. Nintendo and Sony have been making consoles much longer than the Xbox has been around, and Xbox just doesn't have compelling games that you can only play if you have an Xbox. In fact, it's so bad that they list as "exclusives" games like Forza, Redfall and, yes, even MSFS before it launched on PS5 as Xbox exclusives even though you can get them on PC. Not very exclusive. Back in the day, you bought a Nintendo because you had to have one if you wanted to play Super Mario Brothers. You could not play it on PC and in fact you still can't unless you want to move into illegal emulation territory. There's no such reason to bother buying an Xbox. For MSFS specifically, I'm not making a disparaging distinction between casual and hardcore simmers here, but in general you're not going to find hardcore simmers on console. That's not to say that casual simmers are "less-than," but it is to say that hardcore simmers are much more likely to be ready to drop a truly stupid amount of money on the hobby, and that points directly at marketplace sales.

You also forgot the Xtreme Prototypes Lear25. It can be a real handful to fly, just like the real thing. And it even comes with an 8-track player (also designed by Bill Lear) to get those 70s grooves on. :D

Dunno how it works for you, but I get an update Navigraph popup, click OK and like 30 seconds later it's done. No effort on my part and I haven't even had time to start loading the sim.

At least on my rig, it will work whether I start Pimax Play before the sim or I forget and don't start it until after the sim is already loaded in. This is 2024, though, and I wasn't using a Pimax when I was still on 2020 so your mileage may vary. You won't break anything experimenting with this, so go ahead and see what works.

It's not uncommon if you live in a decently populated place that there will be a VR arcade somewhere near you. You pay an hourly fee to play VR games. That would be a great way to get a quick test to see if VR could work for you without committing to buying expensive hardware.

That represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how AI works. Real humans understand that a question is being asked and that the goal of the asker is to get a correct answer. AI doesn't understand any of that. It doesn't even know that it's having a conversation because its name is a lie; it's not intelligent. Even if you ask a liar a question and get a fake answer, at least you haven't caused the human to suck down enough power to run a microwave to generate the answer. ;)

No, that's what a search engine does. AIs try to interpret what they find online, and they aren't capable of properly vetting the answers they get. They're also designed to come up with answers even if they can't find any. A great example of that is that a whole bunch of lawyers have gotten in trouble over the past couple of years by using AI to write briefs that they then submitted to the court. The problem is that AI likes to cite cases that don't exist, which judges catch and then the lawyer gets nailed. Here's one recent example of that. So when you ask an AI a question, you know that it's going to give you an answer no matter what. "I don't know" is not within its repertoire, so when it doesn't find an answer, it's going to tell you a lie. Even if it finds an answer, it's not terribly good at figuring out if the answer that it found is accurate. All that boils down to, when you run an AI search, you can't rely on the answer and you have to go and verify everything yourself, which kind of eliminates the advantages of having the computer do your work for you.