DaveB wrote:Nice shots Ian ;-) My challenge, given those shots, would be to run that many buildings without grinding to a halt
Dave - the FlightSoft Hong Kong 2004 doesn't seem to be that frame rate hungry, in fact my old 1.4 Ghz Athlon ran it bearably (just!). The scenery seems to be self-contained and doesn't thin out when you move the sliders (sorry - don't know all the technical terms here

). The downside is that the bits of Hong Kong that aren't buildings are pretty crap, but as that's only about ten percent of it, it doesn't bother me too much

I'm only concerned with the checkerboard approach over Kowloon and I'm happy as a chinaman with that! My new laptop is a T7300 core 2 duo 2Ghz, 2Gb RAM and an Nvidia 8600M GT graphics card. I have most sliders at 'high' and the FPS set at 25 and the lowest FPS during that sequence was 19.
Believe me, the real challenge is flying the 742 properly. RFP have modelled 95% of the systems and a cold dark start requires the full airline operational sequence of checklists. The buggers have even disabled CTRL+E so you can't cheat. There are
four manuals. One for the simulation - 98 pages, two for the 747-200 operation -135 and 72 pages and an appendix of 21 pages. I haven't read any of it yet so it's pure luck that I stayed airborne with all engines running long enough for the screenshots. I'll have to take another six month sabbatical to read the manuals! In between refresher courses on DM's fab four :prayer:
Leif - you are right about my longevity (you say it as though you don't suffer from it!) so yes, I've been in to Kai Tak more times than you can shake a chopstick at. I had to chuckle when you said you would stand behind the E/O. Talk about the most sought after place in the world - I've seen two people standing in the flight deck on commercial flights for that approach and most Captains were willing to turn a blind eye. I sometimes had to fight my way into the flight deck to give the cabin landing checks! Despite it being as attractive as a cup final seat, I had plenty of opportunities to sit in the jump seat for landings on VC10s, 707 freighters, 747 classics and of course 400s. You couldn't get near it coming in from London but we used to do shuttles to and from India, Tokyo, Taipei or Manila and there wasn't a heavy crew on those so there was often room for two cabin crew on the jump seats. It seems incredible now but we were so blase that sometimes nobody could be bothered :o
Funny story - 747-400 SFO's landing. SFO's 8 year old daughter in first observer's seat. 2000 feet, intense concentration approaching checkerboard. 'Daddy?' 'Not now darling - don't talk to daddy now, please.' 700 feet, middle marker, commencing turn. 'Daddy?' Captain and SFO in unison at the tops of their voices 'SHUT UP!!!' Daughter bursts into tears and inconsolable sobbing all the way to the shops where Daddy had to buy her a very expensive toy and do some difficult explaining to Mummy
Ian
