Ross – I’m glad you understood what he was writing!

OR – if you REALLY want to go nuts – try Aces High II – online combat flying at it’s wildest. You haven’t lived until you duke it out in a Hurri I against an A6M5 at wavetop level….. Then again, blast that boasting peacock in the Lala (La-9) with your Spit 1, and watch him cry foul!

Or, if you’re like me, do a full power dive from 20K, …. only to realize that you’ve compressed and become a beautiful lawn dart… 🙂

While you are limited to the St. Maarten area (now, don’t go flying about the clothing optional beaches to check out whether it really is “as real as it gets”), you can add your favorite FS9 models and check them out.

It appears that when the demo was compiled, an essential texture was left out. Remember to copy the envmap.bmp from you fs9texture to the fsxtexture folder in order to have reflections working correctly. Initially, models with alpha channel reflections were instead appearing transparent.

Apparently, on SOME systems, it’s causing crashes to desktop. I haven’t experienced that. My system is an older (2-3 years) 1.64GHz Pentium, ATI Radeon 9000 (64M video Ram) and runs FS-X demo at about 15fps. MAxing out the sliders for high quality graphics producing a whopping 6fps…. maybe.

There are some graphics issues with my setup because while most of the time I’m seeing low resolution scenery and blurry aircraft textures, there are flashes of beautiful detail…

Overall, the FS-X demo appears to have a few bugs still, but the final code is not locked in, so there will be tweaks. I understand that there already have been some issues that weren’t caught in the closed beta, and the ACES team are attending to them.

I think this one will finally knock FS2000 and FS2002 from my computer, unless I can surreptitiously install FS-X onto my wife’s new computer… :diablo:

Id like to mention the following files get deleted out of my FS Aircraft folder because I cant stand to see them: Curtiss Jenny, DeHavilland Comet, Lockheed Vega, Spirit of StLouis, Wright Flyer, Vickers Vimy, Ford Trimotor.

BE VERY CAREFUL of deleting the default Flightsim airplanes!!!! Many 3rd party downloads *may* alias sounds, etc., to the default planes, so by your deleting them, you may come across a model that will not load because the sound, etc., doesn’t appear.

Also, these airplanes contain “period” gauges that some 3rd party builders can reference.

If you don’t like the default planes, don’t use them, but DON’T DELETE THEM!

AI and eye candy are nice – I want to see mixed engine types in one model, and up to 12 engines (at least) available… (example – a B-36 with six turning and four burning..)

To add to adwebber’s reply, fiddling around with the aircraft.cfg (and *.air) files is something to be done carefully.

Most parameters can be tweaked in the aircraft.cfg file, but there are still some details in the *.air file that affect the performance.

Depending on what specific model you’re looking at, there are some very good flight dynamics tweakers that can help you. Check the main design forums at flightsim.com, simviation.com, avsim.com and (blatant plug) the flight dynamics forum at http://www.freeflightdesign.com (aka FFDS).

http://www.avhistory.org is the place for the “1%” flight dynamics discussions and tools.

but this takes a BMP image of the wings does it not? so you cannot see working flaps, spoilers etc

That’s correct.

Basically, íf your model doesn’t have a VC setup, then “what you see is what you draw”

IN the case where the VC is modelled, then I would not create the various bitmaps for those views.

If a VC is modelled, then the developer will create a VC using those bits and pieces that are actually seen from the “pilot’s view” Example – If I create a DH 114 Heron where I will NOT be able to see the tail fin and rudder from the pilot’s position, then I would normally not include those bits in the “VC” model, nor would I include the undercarriage, etc.

Caveat: being that there are ways to force-pan “outside” the normal pilot’s position, then a modeller could include those parts.

The major sites – flightsim.com, avsim.com, simviation.com – have many good quality freeware military planes.