I have got several payware packages, but not even one gives complete satisfaction. The Captain Sim C-130 for FSX which I recently reviewed (thanks to David, the FlightSimX.be site admin) is a terrific aircraft. But the frames dropped. The Columbia 400 of Eaglesoft has something strange that causes FSX to crash when switching quickly from exterior view to VC or the 2D panel. And my frames dropped too much…The SkyUnlimited P-38 Lightning is a very, very nice and well-made airplane, but I don’t like the fact they used the stock DC-3 gauges instead of making new ones. 

You know what I’m really satisfied with ? Good freeware. On Sim-Outhouse.com (a site I found when I was still a full-CFS3 user) there are some people who are great at developing small, fine, framerate-friendly aircraft. One of the best examples is the Bristol F.2b Fighter of the Australian Robert Bruce, a.k.a. Robby88. A splendid, easy to install package. Payware quality, IMHO. Just look at the Virtual Cockpit! I love (yeah, I really love a lot of aircraft…) it since I flew the original version on CFS3…

Another nice a/c is the Piasecki/Vertol H-21C/V-44, made by Mick Posch. With a nice 2D panel and a even nicer 3D cockpit. There are two things who have to be changed with this helo:

• you have to put the model file from the ‘beach party color’ version in the New York Airways model, because there’s a window that remains there if you open the front door (he accidently forgot to fix it when he released it).
• you need to adjust the .CFG file so the turbocharger will work ( 9450 ft is the service ceiling of the chopper). With this modification you can get to 15 000 ft without problems.

[piston_engine]

power_scalar = 1                              //Piston power scalar

cylinder_displacement= 90.0                     //Cubic inches per cylinder
compression_ratio= 8.5                          //Compression ratio
number_of_cylinders=4                           //Number of cylinders
max_rated_rpm= 2700                             //Max rated RPM
max_rated_hp= 180                               //Max rated HP
fuel_metering_type= 1                           //0=Fuel Injected, 1=Gravity Carburetor, 2=Aerobatic Carburetor
cooling_type= 0                                 //0=Cooling type Air, 1=Cooling type Liquid
normalized_starter_torque= 0.3                  //Starter torque factor
turbocharged= 1                                 //Is it turbocharged? 0=FALSE, 1=TRUE
max_design_mp= 29                                //Max design manifold pressure, (inHg)
min_design_mp= 12.0                                //Min design manifold pressure, (inHg)
critical_altitude= 9450                            //Altitude to which the turbocharger will provide max design manifold pressure (feet)
emergency_boost_type= 0                         //0=None, 1=Water Injection, 2=Methanol/Water injection, 3=War Emergency Power
emergency_boost_mp_offset= 0                    //Additional manifold pressure supplied by emergency boost
emergency_boost_gain_offset= 0                  //Multiplier on manifold pressure due to emergency boost
fuel_air_auto_mixture= 0                        //Automixture available? 0=FALSE, 1=TRUE
auto_ignition= 0                                //Auto-Ignition available? 0=FALSE, 1=TRUE
max_rpm_mechanical_efficiency_scalar= 0.94       //Scalar on maximum RPM mechanical efficiency
idle_rpm_mechanical_efficiency_scalar= 0.7      //Scalar on idle RPM mechanical efficiency
max_rpm_friction_scalar= 1.0                   //Scalar on maximum RPM friction
idle_rpm_friction_scalar= 1.0                   //Scalar on idle RPM friction
magneto_order_left_right_both = 1  //sets the order of the magneto switch direction

By the way, is there someone who can explain me why the text I’ve typed under Nick’s comment regarding the Cat is smaller and how to get it back to a normal size ?

Going back to payware now, at the moment I’m looking forward to the Catalina Aerosoft is making. On their forum they showed some beta images of it, made by Nick Churchill. I asked him on the Screenshotartist.co.uk forum or Aerosoft is making some progress with it and he replied:

 ”As for the Catalina, with all honesty I think it’s on the backburner for the moment. It’s an external developer and I presume they are busy with other projects. If I hear anything else I’ll be singing to the world as it’s a project that I too am eager to see completed. “

Well, I can’t add much to what he said. It’s clear, the great Catalina, one of the rare WWII classics we would be able to use in FSX, is not really under development. ^sigh^. Now, I’ve got some other things to look at. The Flight1 PC-12 is a great plane too, Nick told us. Somebody else on the forum bought it too and remarked:

“I gave up…I bought it. Awesome airplane!”

My current wishlist (all FSX)
Aerosoft Catalina (which hasn’t been released yet…they have been working on it since March 2007 or so…)
Aerosoft Twin Otter
Aerosoft Beaver X
Aerosoft Dornier Do-27
Real Air Scout package 2007

I’m 17 now (my anniversary is the 14th of February by the way) and I can tell you one thing: it’s horrible to have pain in your back! I feel like somebody who’s ninety years old or so, in a wheelchair….frustrating ? You bet!

Now I’ve kept myself calm and layed a bit on the sofa, and it’s a bit better. I hope to go back to school tomorrow, but if it isn’t better tomorrow morning the doctor advised me to go the eh…(good grief, I’ve got to take the dictionary to look up the word…don’t know it in English…)…’fysiotherapist’.

Now, wait and see the ‘Rosbifs’ (French nickname for English and or British people) say, so…

While I’m writing this I still wonder which screenshot I’m going to enter for the April FlightSimX.be screenshot contest. In case you want to help choosing one (the theme is military, so it’s either a Tornado or a Bristol Fighter screenshot)…you may always post a comment and give me the name of the file (just copy the link, that’s the easiest way…) you like the most .

You can watch two slideshows of my best shots of both a/c, it’s more handy instead of watching page per page (my album there contains 400 + screenshots…).
My Photobucket album

One of my favorite YouTube videos!

There’s one user I check regularly, and that’s Lotus/Ramasurinen: www.youtube.com/user/Ramasurinen.
He makes great videos with Flight Simulator X and has some pritty planes in his hangar…

The model of that one – the A400M – was quite good, but my framerate dropped from 30 to about 9 to 15. It’s very tricky to fly with 15 frames per second, cause you can’t make these fine corrections you’ve got to make while doing the flare. And the panel and Virtual Cockpit were both horrible…

With the C-130 the frames are reasonably better, but I seem to experience some sort of ‘lag’ while flying the plane. I guess we’ll have to wait for an update which may fix these issues a bit.

Yesterday I really didn’t have any inspiration about where and what to fly, and eventually I found myself flying around the Caribbean with a bare-metal Douglas DC-3. It also gave me the opportunity to take some screenshots, which you can view by clicking on the thumbnails here under.

Though the Virtual/3D cockpit isn’t really what I should be, the 2D panel is a lot better and nice to look at.

And the plane lands on short runways, I landed without head or tailwind at MYZ1 (the runway length is 2800 ft) and I still had a lot of runway to go when I came to a stop. Flies well, this Douglas Commercial.

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Tags: Douglas, DC-3, Douglas, Commercial, FSX, FS, Flight, Sim, Simulator, 10, X, Deluxe

Well, that sounds good. All I need to do is convincing my parents (they didn’t knew what to give me for my 17th birthday, last Thursday) of using their credit card to buy the  and the Real Air Simulations SF.260 and their Scout Package (a friend of me, a Dutchman, has both and highly recommends it, so…and it looks terrific!). I really love to see these two aircraft and can’t wait to fly them!

I’ve checked it and though the Twotter X is slightly more expensive at the FSPilotShop, the Real Air plane is a bit cheaper. It was about 0,50 euro difference between buying them separately via the publisher’s website and the FSPS (the latter being the cheapest option).

Yesterday afternoon I was reading Robert Bruce’s blog (of which I am a regular visitor by the way), and found this:

“What is a true FSX aircraft?

Now that FSX Acceleration and SP2 have been released, along with their respective SDK’s, there appears to be some confusion in the FS communities as to exactly what constitutes a FSX aircraft. A quick look around various payware vendors’ sites sees such terminology as FSX ready, FSX compatible, FSX compliant, FSX model, true FSX aircraft, FSX/FS2004 etc.

Firstly before looking at this terminology, it might be useful to have a bit of a look at the background of all this. Also, before continuing, I would like to mention that it is not the intention of this article to criticise MS Aces or any third party developers, or indeed to debate the wisdom of backward compatibility within MS Flight Simulator. These can be addressed in future blog posts if need be.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) was a significant upgrade over previous versions of the simulation, and in many ways quite ambitious. I think even the Aces team themselves, were surprised at the amount of work involved in developing FSX compared to previous versions of the simulation. Much of the 3d engine was re-written. New shader technology was introduced along with a new GPU based animation system. Much of the world/terrain engine was re-written. FSX now has a round earth and we can zoom out into space if we want to. (No space physics though …… yet) I am currently not a scenery designer, but I would imagine all these changes and advances would impact scenery designers too.

From what I have read in various forums and blogs, FSX was designed primarily to work on DirectX 9.0 and Windows XP. I am not sure if Windows Vista was around or in early beta stages when FSX was specced & designed. There were certainly no DirectX 10 video cards around when FSX was developed. (DirectX 10 requires Windows Vista and a DX10 video card to function). Prior to the release of FSX RTM, MS/Aces stated their intention to add DirectX 10 compatibility to Flight Simulator X after its release, via a downloadable patch. Though what this would actually involve was not known at the time. Amidst all this change Aces attempted to maintain backward compatibilty with earlier versions of the simulation.

When FSX RTM was released, the sim looked great (at least on my PC) but performance was a significant issue on many peoples’ machines. To address this MS/Aces undertook to develop a patch to address performance and other issues . This arrived in the form of SP1 accompanied by a SP1a SDK release. The necessity of SP1 pushed the development and release of the DX10 patch back by several months. Add to the mix FSX/Acceleration, complete with new aircraft and additional functionality. The DX10 upgrade arrived in the form of service pack 2 (SP2), which also included further performance enhancements. However the DX10 upgrade was not a full DX10 upgrade and was called a DX10 preview. I have read various accounts as to why this occurred. The main reason I understand to be, was that a significant code re-write would have been required, which would have further broken backward compatibility and additionally there was not enough time within the life cycle of FSX to fully develop this. FS11 is under development and Aces have other products being developed too. They have to move ahead. Both SP2 and Acceleration have respective SDKs also.

For aircraft designers the most significant DX10 preview feature is self shadowing in aircraft virtual cockpits.

The FSX SDK is now part of the Deluxe version of the product and is included on the DVD. This version of the SDK is required to be installed before installing the SDK service packs. Previous SDKs were available as free downloads. I would assume making the FSX SDK part of the Deluxe version product would enable MS/Aces to fund the development of the SDK. The FSX SDK has its own development team and all this costs money. The SDK is considerably improved over earlier versions of the SDK (IMHO at least ) .

As one can guess all this means considerable change in the way aircraft are created and much variability in functionality and features of aircraft created with different versions of the FS SDK.

Returning to the topic of what exactly is a True FSX aircraft, I will quote from one of my own posts at Sim-Outhouse.

“1. FSX Hybrid/Ports = usually compiled with FS2004 SDK tools, materials textures & gauges adjusted to work in FSX. These aircraft usually have issues with prop/rotor disk alpha transparency interacting with autogen and clouds. These aircraft otherwise function correctly in all versions of FSX. However the fps of FS2004 SDK compiled are not as good as native FSX aircraft.

2. FSX RTM SDK Aircraft = Aircraft compiled with the original FSX RTM SDK. These aircraft work in all versions of FSX. However significant changes were made to the SDK tools between RTM & SP1 SDK which reduce mdl size and increase fps performance. Perf is the only real difference bewteen RTM & SP1 sdks, and these are true FSX aircraft.

3. FSX SDK SP1 Aircraft = FSX compliant, but with significant perf increase over RTM.

4. FSX SDK SP2 Aircraft = FSX compliant. Further perf gains over SP1, if the aircraft’s 3D modeling gives consideration to draw calls. (My own aircraft compiled with Accel/SP2 SDK appear to work in FSX SP1 but this might not happen for all aircraft.)

5. FSX SDK SP2 Aircraft/DX10 Cockpit Shadows enabled = As per 4. SP2 and Xpack SDKs also provide the modeler with an option to enable a shadow map in the virtual cockpit. Cockpit shadows on enabled aircraft will only work in DX10 preview mode. Designers also have to apply special design considerations in constructing their cockpit models otherwise unpredictable results will occur.

6. FSX SDK Acceleration Aircraft = as per 4 & 5 above, but with support for extra features in Acceleration as in the F/A-18, EH-101 and P-51 e.g. Winches, carrier functionality, P-51 ADS etc.

The bottom line is yes, there are two main categories – those compiled with FS9 SDK tools and made to work in FSX & those compiled with the various FSX SDKs. The various FSX SDKs mainly differ in terms of perf & added functionality.”

As I mention in my Sim-Outhouse post now that the SP2 SDK has been released (and most likely no future SPs), it is important, from now on, for developers, payware & freeware to state which SDK has been used to compile the aircraft.

[Edit: I should have perhaps added that much additional broken aircraft functionality in DX10 preview mode is caused by aircraft, perhaps originally developed using tools earlier than FS9 SDKs (eg FS2002 to FS9 conversions). Though some aircraft have texture problems that I believe can be fixed. I have yet to move to a Vista/DX10 system myself.]

As we move forward I would think that SDK SP2, would be the advisable development standard. If DX10 preview cockpit shadow mapping has been enabled, this should be stated. (I use the term cockpit ‘shadow map enabled’, rather than DX10 compliant as any FSX SDK compiled aircraft should otherwise be DX10 compliant, save for this feature). Likewise if an aircraft or helicopter uses additional functionality found only in Acceleration, this should be stated also, as any purchaser or downloader would require Acceleration to run the aircraft add-on. I should also have suggested that developers should also state what versions of FSX the aircraft has been tested in. I am not a scenery developer but as a purchaser I would like to know similar information, i.e. what SDK was used to develop the scenery and configurations it has been tested on.

This article is much longer than intended. I hope it clarifies rather than confuses.”

As Rob mentions, there are several ‘classes’ in FSX aircraft. Especially the oldest class, the FS9-to-FSX patched aircraft, would have decreased performance when compared to the newest aircraft which are made with an up-to-date Self Development Kit or SDK. I think the best thing you can do is see or there are older versions of the aircraft (e.g. the Pilatus PC-12 of Flight1) and look or there are similar liveries and try to read as much reviews about the payware plane you’re planning to buy.

Another interesting blog is Aerosoft’s blog which I found accidently yesterday evening. It’s interesting to know what’s going on in the FS add-on developers world. Especially the newest post is interesting since it’s about the framerates of add-ons.

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Tags: AerosoftTwin Otter Twotter Real Air Simulations Sim FSX FS Flight Simulator 10 FPS framerates frame-rates blogs SIAI Marchetti SF.260 FS Pilot Shop

Tomorrow: school report. Let’s hope it’s better then I expect…

greetings

Joris.

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The airplane is Robert Bruce’s fantastic freeware Bristol F.2b Fighter and the shots are taken around and above respectively Saint-Barthelemy, St.-Martin (TFFG if I remember well). Feel free to comment. If you notice a mistake in the text’s here on my blog I’d appreciate it a lot that you make me aware of the mistake. Thanks in advance.

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Now I’ve got to learn for Economy. Elasticity of prices. A manufacturer lowers his price from 105 euro per unit to 95 euro per unit. When selling his goods for 105 euro per unit, he sold 900 units and estimates his demand to be at 1,100 units. Is this a good decision ?

Before the decrease in price we had this situation:

105 EUR x 900 units = 94500 EUR.

After the decrease in price we had this situation:

95 EUR x 1,100 units = 10,4500 EUR.

Seems like it was a good decision.

Why did the demand increased ?

We see it this way in Economy:

p0 (the original price) : 105
p1 (the current price): 95
Average of these two: 100.
Difference: -10 (105-95 = 10 and it’s minus 10 because it decreased – at least I think it was this way our teacher explained it…:D)
The price declined with -10/100 = -0.10 or 10 %.

q0 (the original quantity): 900
q1 (the current quantity): 1100
Average of these two: 1000.
Difference: + 200 (1100-900 = 200 and plus because it increased).
The quantity increased with 200/1000 = +0.20 or 20 %.

The change of the demanded quantity has risen stronger than the change of price, so we can say the change was worth it.

Thursday: school report. Forecast (lol): good for languages, normal for maths, but less good for economics and accountancy (I’m not really brilliant at it, unfortunelaty)…hope I can gain some points tomorrow for economics…

see you, chaps and have a nice flight !

Joris

P.S.: check out my new FS screenshots at my Photobucket album! And Robert Bruce, the fantastic artist that made that Bristol F.2b Fighter, is working on a Sopwith Snipe! I can’t wait to fly that beauty (I haven’t seen it, but I’m sure it will be a splendid package as well as his Bristol Fighter with it’s marvellous Virtual/3D Cockpit)…

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Tags: pricequantity economy economics school elasticity

Yesterday, I did a flight from Stornoway to Barra, over the Hebrides. I once had read some things about it in a book of W.E. Johns. It was somewhat described (and drawn, it was in fact a comic, based on the book) as a group of small islands, lots of cold, dark water, and few people. Since I decided to fly around a bit and didn’t wanted to go far away from my homebase RAF Leuchars (most of my flights in FS are carried out with Leuchars as home base, when I’m flyin’ around the UK. Dublin is one of my personal favorites too, because of it’s nice location. Perfect for autumn screenshots! I flew, flew and flew…and then I decided to let the engines do what their best at: pushing the Tornado to mach 1.35 at low altitude, screaming over the dark seas. I took quite some screenshots and edited some them. And, some loops, rolls, barrel rolls, zoom climbing to 32000 ft,…almost everything I would do if I had my good old CFS 3 P-38L Lightning.

Let me show you the screenshots, I guess you’re glad to see some after this piece of boring advertising for the Hebrides .

In case you’d like a full-size screenshot of one in my ‘collection’, you can mail me of course, and you’ll get a high-resolution copy in .PNG format, so you don’t have quality loss (by the way, I always set quality at 100 % in Paint.NET). I had to decrease the size of the shots so they’d fit in the blog, you can always view them at 800×600 pixels on my Photobucket album.

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Tags: TornadoF.3 ADV Air Defence Variant FSX FS 10 Flight Simulator X Iris Simulations Hebrides flight sim

About a week ago it was the first time I heard of the Columbia 400. It immediately attracted my attention. And now I love it…

Read the story of a Flight Simulator X pilot with no G1000 experience at all who is going to become a glass cockpit fan in the end…

Sunday, 9th of september.

This afternoon, I downloaded the Eaglesoft DG Columbia 400 from their website. The download was quick and easy. It looks like the EDG guys have paid for a fast download server. Good for those of us who prefer downloading instead of ordering a CD-ROM online.

After download, I unzipped the compressed folder and started the installation. Entered my user data, my creditcard number,…and went on. No problems with the installation.

Once it was installed, I started FS X. I was curious to find out how my first downloaded payware aircraft for FS X would look like. Yes, I want to trust those gauges. No, normally they don’t damage your operating system. Damned Windows Vista. It may look good and has some very handy features, but the security is really overkill…

Wow! Now that’s one goodlookin’ GA (General Aviation) aircraft!

Flight report

Now, I loaded the aircraft into the simulator. Location: MYZ1, Hog Cay Exuma, The Bahamas.

First look in one word: terrific! I haven’t seen much aircraft with such a nice, sharp, paint. The FS X version gives you 8 different paints. Now, this pilot was used to an ‘old’ cockpit in the 172 and 208B…what a difference, even compared to the CRJ-700 and 738!

Screenshot edited with Paint.NET.

When you’re at the airport and are starting up everything, you’ll have to wait so the avionics can do their AHRS start-up and alignment. Dont’ worry, after about thirty seconds, you can taxi already, but don’t have the full functionality of the aircraft and it’s systems. And one more thing: RTFM. Read The Fucking Manual!

You’ll have a steep learning curve when you aren’t used to such systems in such an aircraft. The best thing you can do is first reading all the manuals (and when I say all the manuals, I mean ALL of them – there are about seven or eight manuals, one for the PFD, one for the MFD, one for the A/P, for the two Garmins, for the aircraft itself,…), and then take-off for a flight into the unknown…

The first couple of times the simulator crashed (it’s a very detailed airplane, and it’s possible you lose quite some FPS if you have a weak computer), but after an e-mail to the support staff of Eaglesoft that issue was solved.

Thanks to the superchargers, the Columbia 400 can get out of the bad weather where other aircraft would have to stay on the ramp and sit there…

Don’t try to fly it in a snow storm over large water areas; you’ll experience exactly the same when flying the Goose with carb heat off in the same weather circumstances. You’ll lose manifold pressure, and will go down due to ice in the carburetor. Bad weather, okay, but don’t fly i in a snow storm…with the Goose you might try it since it’s an amphibian, but with this one…nah.

Feel free to explore with the Columbia 400…but don’t go into a snowstorm…As well as in simulation as in real-life, the anti-icing is an option. Though, it has some anti-icing equipment…

The aircraft works fine, and it has some nice features: oxygen, the animated pilot, the pilot’s sunglasses, the traffic alerter, very handy avionics,…

Thanks to the superchargers on the engine you can take-off and get out of the turbulence and weather. At 70 % throttle (and 2405 rpm for the prop) it gives an true airspeed of 199 kts (at an altitude of 18,000 ft).

Highly recommended for every very serious General Aviation pilot.

Though, I’d like to state two things.

First, the sheer data that is processed through the Avidyne units causes the Simulator to crash when you’re doing to much things at the same time. So, do not open any other application during the use of the ’400′.

Second, it’s ok to put the overall quality of the aircraft to “medium high” or maybe even medium low, since this doesn’t has any noticeable effect on the outside and inside on the aircraft. Thus, it will render a bit faster.

Third, don’t give up too soon. First read the manuals, and read it again and again until you completely got how the system works.

Note: the screenshots are only intended for comparison between different products. If you consider buying this aircraft and want to see a full-size screenshot, without quality loss, please feel free to contact me; joris@warbirds.be.