Malaromane

He often does record and you can usually find past streams on his YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/@twotonemurphy

Happened to notice that all versions of MSFS 2020 are 35% off on Steam until 19 Sep 2023. Even though I already purchased the Premium Deluxe version via the MS Store, I'm tempted to convert to the Steam version. Still not quite discounted enough to entice me buy the sim a second time though.

Aerobask's DA50RG is my absolute favourite aircraft to fly in either sim and you've chosen my go-to livery to boot. An excellent series of images Ryan. Thanks for sharing them with us.

Here's a nice comparison video for stock XP12, XP12 w/SimHeaven, XP12 w/ AutoOrtho, and XP12 w/AutoOrtho & Sim Heaven

That's exactly what it is. You install AutoOrtho, install a bit of base scenery for each zone you want (North America, Europe, Africa, etc). and then leave it running while running X-Plane. It then streams Ortho tiles for the area that you're flying in. It's s bit finicky for some but it's working pretty well for me and many others. If you're flying XP11 or XP12, AutoOrtho is definitely worth giving a try. https://github.com/kubilus1/autoortho

It hasn't been tagged as the latest release (it's still tagged as a "pre-release") but here's the changelist: https://github.com/kubilus1/autoortho/releases Important changes include: Using a separate path for the XPlane install dir, separate from the scenery install dir Better doc building Use 'requests' lib to have preserved and more limited number of connections to map providers (with configurable fetch threads) What's Changed Update maptypes by @kubilus1 in #321 Fix log handler being overridden by @kubilus1 in #323 Tiles dict should not be class variable by @kubilus1 in #325 Allow use of requests library. Cleanup a bit by @kubilus1 in #332 Update tests, add diagnostics by @kubilus1 in #334 Add separate setting for XPlane install dir. by @kubilus1 in #337 Reuse build workflow. Do a nightly build. by @kubilus1 in #338 Use 'mike' to build docs by @kubilus1 in #341 Fix syntax by @kubilus1 in #342 Fetch depth by @kubilus1 in #343 So it looks more like under the hood fixes (so-called "tech debt") moreso than adding any new features or bug fixes.

Like other have reported, the initial scan on my system (with X-Plane installed on a fast NVMe drive) takes around 40 seconds. One thing that definitely sped up the scanning process was adding my base X-Plane folder to the exclusions list for MS Defender.

If you're flying GA aircraft, then as @Shack95 mentions above, We Love VFR is a fantastic global scenery add on. There's three regions available (all freeware): Region 1: https://flightsim.to/file/2605/we-love-vfr-region-1 (covering Europe & Africa) Region 2: https://flightsim.to/file/16674/we-love-vfr-region-2 (covering North & South America) Region 3: https://flightsim.to/file/52211/we-love-vfr-region-3 (covering Asia and Oceania) While not "global", if you fly in Southern California then the freeware airport sceneries by @vbazillio are a must-download. You can really see the care and love he puts into each of his creations. You can find all of his offerings at: https://flightsim.to/profile/vbazillio. Every single airport he's published is worth the time to download, install, and discover.

I've got my Tobii mounted to the top of my main instrument panel which puts it about 15 cms in front of my main display and 5 cms higher than the bottom of the display monitor. The eye and head tracking works just fine for me. I've seen other installations like mine with the Tobii mounted to their instrument panel as well.

From the FlightFX Discord:

I had just recently purchased the excellent HotStart TBM900 and was learning to fly it. It was my first real experience with a detailed, in-depth aircraft model in any flight simulator. I was pretty chuffed when I managed to take off from CYKF and get myself established on a course to CYXU. Suddenly I was taken by surprise by the low fuel warning being displayed on the PFD. I couldn't understand why as I knew I had filled the tanks as part of my preflight. As I glanced out the window, I was shocked to discover that my fuel caps were still open and fuel was streaming out of the aircraft at an alarming rate. I managed to get turned around and _just_ barely made it back to CYKF before running out of fuel. That was my first significant lesson in the difference between a "regular" aircraft model and a "high fidelity" one.

And to be fair, you don't even have to remember that if you choose not to. There's a setting in the configuration section of the tablet that lets you switch the landing gear switch to a tradition 2 position switch. Makes it more compatible with my Honeycomb Bravo so I give up the extra realism in favour of ease of use.

I had to map LVARs directly to the switches using SPAD.next to get them to work properly with my Alpha. For the Master Battery switch, I mapped my button on and button off events to "LVAR:BATTERY1SWITCH" (setting it to "1" and "0" as appropriate) For the magneto switch, I mapped the "Both" position to the "MAGNETO_BOTH" event and also set the "LVAR:ENG1_STARTERSWITCH" to "0" to release the starter switch. And the "Start" position, I mapped to set "LVAR:ENG1_STARTERSWITCH" to "1". If you aren't using SPAD.next or Axes & Ohs or somesuch, I believe you could achieve the same thing using the Honeycomb profile editor.

And for those of you who want to switch to a new livery but keep the hours you have on the airframe, A2A posted instructions on how to do that as well (source: https://a2asimulations.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=150&t=75080):

Yes they have. There was a post yesterday on their Discord stating: