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[City Builder]

Wow, holy hell that bird is more expensive than the game itself.  Ouch.  I'll give it a thought but that just pains me right in the.... well... wallet.

I like the idea of using AP on the big planes although for some really odd reason I feel as if Im cheating in some way when I know I really shouldn't feel that way.

I'm going to spend a couple hours this morning (midnight to 8am) trying to find a good big jet to play around with, I hope that there is a free or lower cost alternative that is a quality machine out there, as I think for me a person that only dabbles in my flight sim, $55.99 is just too much to spend at this point.  Hopefully by morning I will have found an acceptable substitute that is a really nice bird to fly.

Thanks for all the information, what multiplayer channel do you usually fly at?

[City Builder]

crowebird:  Have you any experience with X-Plane?  I've been fighting with FSX for almost a day now trying to make it visually very appealing and it's just not working, even on ultra high settings some VC's are looking absolutely horrid.  Then I remembered that I purchased Xplane 9 a while back so I'm in the process of reinstalling it, probably a good 2 hour process since it's about 6 DVD's to install it all (80GB of disk space) but was wondering if you have any experience with Xplane and or any addons for Xplane 9.

[crowebird]

no, I have thought about xplane, but never decided to make the switch... I know xplane handles physics as far as flying goes, but for the overall experience fsx is the way to go.  I think I tried a demo once, and it just was not enough to make me want to switch.  As far as VC goes, the default aircraft the microsoft provides have crap VC, thats where you need to go to other developers for.

As far as freeware goes, there is good freeware out there but I can't give any advice... i'v usually stuck with payware just becuase I wanted the quality and realism.  (And yea they are expensive, which does suck big time).  Idk if there is still POSKY which had good freeware jumbo jets, but I can't comment on the quality of the VC, I played with them a long time ago in fs9 and they worked until I wanted to see what else there was (but I don't remember to much about them to say more).

As far as using AP as cheating, this is not the case.  On long flight AP helps keep things under control (and on a simulator gives you a chance to read the paper, or a book, or do homework :P).  But it is a helper, if you are just in a cessna, it is probably better to learn to get control of the craft w/out autopilot.  But it all comes with the experience.  All my real world flying is done w/out autopilot, and one of my longest flights was probably from KPTK to KMCD (Oakland Ct Int to Macinac Island) in a cessna 152, once everything is trimmed out the aircraft stays where you want it to

[City Builder]

Thanks again for the info.

Just something to look at... This is Xplane 9 cockpit, if I could get FSX to look this clean I'd surely stick with FSX.  I'm also struggling with user created planes in FSX, many of which don't even have a VC, so it's just the pilot sitting above the ground with nothing around, kind of a bummer really.




I guess it's 'put out some serious money" if I want to make FSX look and fly as best as it can, or save up for that thing that you have over there, that clips onto your hat so that you can look around with your head instead of a hat switch. Gotta love that, i just saw a video of somebody using it on youtube and thought, yeah THAT's expensive but seems so worth it.

[crowebird]

[Picture does not work]

but anyway, I have heard of some freeware planes that have great VC, but never looked for them, I guess that will just be a research project.  But VC looks great for me.

As far as track ir goes, you know im going to recommend it There is now track ir 5, which I would upgrade to, but mine works great, so really no point.

[City Builder]

ok, here the screenshot is

[crowebird]

Pic looks good but I probably won't look at xplane until the next iteration comes out and see what people have to say... anyway here is a good article on the differences:
http://theflightsimmer.blogspot.com/2008/01/x-plane-vs-fsx.html
--
here is another good article which shows the xplane physics arn't really better in flight dynamic sense, or the way an aircraft should behave:
http://www.simpilotnet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=9

Let me say that slideslipping is a technique that really really does not work in FSX, whenever I try it the plane does not behave at all like it should (as nailed in the review) -> I wish it would becuase sometimes I botch my approach and I don't get the quick descent with a straight approach... as said, bank takes over rudder, and it is dissapointing.

[City Builder]

I'm pretty sure that FSX is done.  Didn't Microsoft close down the studio and more importantly say that FSX would no longer be developed?  If so, then we'll all have to look to other products as FSX starts to feel too old on our computers after x months, years, decades, whatever.

Xplane is constantly puttting out beta patches for the past year or so that I've owned it, I don't know when they are going to get to X-plane 10 or 11 at this point, it seems they are still crunching out the patches for 9.  Plus if I'm not mistaken, it's a one man show for Xplane which really is what is holding him back in my opinion.  Something about a guy named Austin that does everything for Xplane.  If he had a good sized crew (and maybe he does and the rumours are wrong) he could probably crack out the versions in much lesser time.
One of the big problems (to me) with Xplane are that there are far and few between any airports that are high detailed airports.

They're all pretty much just a runway, and one has to find and download a free full airport if that's what we want to see in the game, which I do want to see that, it really breaks the game to me to land in LAX and find that it's nothing more than a runway out in the middle of nowhere.

One would thing that after installing 85GB of data from the 6 DVD's that all the airports would be in full detail but as most Xplaners say "it's not about the airports, it's about flying", which to me is a great excuse to say, somebody couldn't be bothered to build the airports and make a 7th DVD to included with the game/sim.

[crowebird]

Lol, ya.. but a lot about flying includes the immersion... when flying I enjoy the scenery, and being able to taxi to a gate when im done, etc.  It is impressive what one man did for flight simulator though, but he needs a team to nail everything down.

As far as the microsft team closing down, I heard that too, but I also heard that group composing the microsoft team is probably going to continue the franchise on their own (this could be good or bad news... only time will tell).

I just bought Real Environment Xtreme (www.realenvironmentxtreme.com).  I saw some of the pictures and videos, and for the price knew I had to get this... and loving it so far... my next step would be to invest in global scenery... but I think I am going to put the credit card away for now (the winter heating bill I got sucked pretty hard, and the work I have time to do pretty much just cancels out the cost of electric/comcast, lol... which to say the least comcast runs a money stealing operation, but in a college town, I don't have much choice).

[City Builder]

Good purchase, I've seen a lot of people rave about how great REX is.  I've seen screenshots from other places than the REX website (as we know they're going to crank the video up to an unplayable level to get the absolute best screenshot as possible)  and they all almost look the same, which is a great environmental experience.

I'd probably make that purchase myself, but I'm afraid my credit card will likely puke if I try to stuff anything else on it this year.

I think it would be a good thing if they continued the franchise, I hope theres a word of truth in the rumours, I've  personally not come across any written rumors of this situation myself so don't have any kind of knowledge of it.

I wish for the day when all ground scenery including all buildings can be rendered by our computers in full detail and we can fly over that and REALLY enjoy extreme environments.  Maybe another 10 years or so and the computers CPU will be up to such a thing.  As it is now I just usually turn off the extra buildings and trees because as filler stuff it looks pretty bad to see some buildings and trees occasionally stick up from the ground, airports should be high detail as I like it, but cities can't power enough the cpu to put up high detail and full buildings at this time unfortunately.