Classic British Flight Sim

Michael,

I am indeed RN, the Mk.8 (good spot) in the background was my flight cab when I was doing O2 time on PORTLAND in the Caribbean. O2 time is basically nine months as an extra member of aircrew on a flight post wings so you can get an idea of what the job at sea entails, it's fairly unique to the Lynx fleet as pingers etc. deploy as a squadron so there's a grown up around to tell you what to do! Obviously it's called P2 time if you're a pilot.

I'm not sure if FSX phot-real stuff still has autogen or not, I know the FSX Kai Tak has the option of enabling/disabling the autogen trees, but for Europe I went for Ultimate Terrain X which puts all the roads etc. in the right place but still uses default textures. I quite like it because I do most of my low level nav using roads/rivers/power lines as fixes so it's good for checking out a route before flying it.

Actually just realised I used to have some Phot Scenery for the UK but for it to look right you had to turn autogen off other wise you'd have building on top of pictures of buildings, as this lost the powerlines I eventually got rid.

Skippy

Michael, you have a point.. with decent photo scenery it's easy to dispense with the autogen trees and not miss them, as obviously they will have an impact on performance. I don't use photo scenery as a rule and so still have autogen switched on with about average slider settings and performance is good, not startling but good.

I've settled my flying on VC only, mostly test flying and I honestly find FSX to be more real, more immersive than FS9 and for that reason will probably not return to FS9. That said I don't fly FS2002, FS2000 or FS98 anymore either.. all things must pass!

SkippyBing wrote:Michael,

I am indeed RN, the Mk.8 (good spot) in the background was my flight cab when I was doing O2 time on PORTLAND in the Caribbean. O2 time is basically nine months as an extra member of aircrew on a flight post wings so you can get an idea of what the job at sea entails, it's fairly unique to the Lynx fleet as pingers etc. deploy as a squadron so there's a grown up around to tell you what to do! Obviously it's called P2 time if you're a pilot.

I'm not sure if FSX phot-real stuff still has autogen or not, I know the FSX Kai Tak has the option of enabling/disabling the autogen trees, but for Europe I went for Ultimate Terrain X which puts all the roads etc. in the right place but still uses default textures. I quite like it because I do most of my low level nav using roads/rivers/power lines as fixes so it's good for checking out a route before flying it.

Actually just realised I used to have some Phot Scenery for the UK but for it to look right you had to turn autogen off other wise you'd have building on top of pictures of buildings, as this lost the powerlines I eventually got rid.

Skippy

Ahh Type 23 then, shame as I'm looking for Type 22 batch III squibs, but can be swayed to Type 23 if necessary LOL, I thought my job was good but some people have all the fun, I mean, my training is in Wales or Birmingham and you get the Caribbean LOL.

Mk8, seen enough images these past few weeks to spot them in my sleep LOL, though I took a guess at a Mk8 over a HAS3 with dolphin nose , hard to tell from your Avatar which version that actually is.

Photo scenery never really did it for me in FS9, it always looked....over laid...., reasonably good at 5000' AGL but low down rather pixelated, I suppose over time better images helped but FS9 was limited to pixel / meter resolution so even SR71 quality images wouldn't have helped !. Maybe FSx with its better pixel/meter ratios might fair better, but I just have to have trees LOL.

Euro UTX looks interesting, does it alter the land class ?, my local area ( Suffolk coast ) in diabolical in FSx let alone FS9, I'd need a boat to get to and from work LOL.

Best

Michael

I haven't been on a 22 batch III in years, I take it the pointy bit is still called the bow?!?! If you need any help drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.

Of course for true spotter cred can you tell a Mk8.DSP from a Mk.8CMP?

Agree with you on the photo scenery, down low it never looks quite right. I'm pretty sure UTX amends the land class info as the UK appears green, and the coast line is now more accurate. The one thing I found is that the night textures are overly lit up, i.e. the towns etc. are fine but there seems to be too much light in the rural areas, and all the roads appear to have street lights!

SkippyBing wrote:I haven't been on a 22 batch III in years, I take it the pointy bit is still called the bow?!?! If you need any help drop me a line and I'll see what I can do.

Of course for true spotter cred can you tell a Mk8.DSP from a Mk.8CMP?

Agree with you on the photo scenery, down low it never looks quite right. I'm pretty sure UTX amends the land class info as the UK appears green, and the coast line is now more accurate. The one thing I found is that the night textures are overly lit up, i.e. the towns etc. are fine but there seems to be too much light in the rural areas, and all the roads appear to have street lights!

Skippy, I'm afraid true spotter cred is when you can tell a EMD 567C over a 645E at two miles ( irrespective of nationality ), sadly I can LOL, but thats a hobby that has no place here .

I've noticed that a profusion of vents bumps and paraphernalia abound on just even bog standard Mk8 airframes, let alone other variants or sub variants and I will take you up on that offer in the very very near future, just have to run some renders off for you to cast your beady eye over, and yes the pointy bit is still generally called the front. I see them ( boats ) every day at work and they always sail pointy bit first, mind there a bit bigger than what your used too LOL, a lot slower as well, you might call them targets of opportunity, I call them work LOL.

Back OT, well if UTX offers better night lighting then I might swing for it, as quite honestly I found FSx night lighting almost pitch black, that might be down to using a TFT screen, though at £300 it had better not be that which is at fault, I didn't spend all that dosh on a top end graphics quality screen for it to render FSx pitch black at night !, so better night lighting would be an added bonus .

I actually find the default textures ok, many say that there brown and desert like in some seasons...simple fly in the spring all the time .

One good FPs saver is to drop your visibility down to 30 or even 20 miles, that gives a good FPS boost, though very annoyingly FSx ties in the aircraft shadow density directly to weather visibility range, so much so that at 20 miles your shadow is very washed out, I did bug this with the beta system but got told quite bluntly, it isn't an issue...go figure, maybe they have different weather lighting in Redwood ?. Right now viz on the coast here is about 25 miles and I can tell you shadows are crisp, solid and full, yet FSx is much too washed out, FS9 was better as it was full shadows with only 5 miles viz, mind that would realistically too, but something between FS9 and FSx would be better.

Speaking of weather, where is the wind ?, stand outside at 30knts and you can hear it in the trees, in your ears, all around, yet in FS....silence ?, there is a vast range of sounds missing from the environment, little sounds we all take for granted yet are missing, birds or traffic, audibly FS are sterile, granted the thing we all go there for ( planes ) are very good internally and externally but they must exist in a believable environment IMHO.

Of course at sea then FPS isn't an issue, the FS9 Essex models at 250,000 polys still bang in at 60FPS, just have to get them into FSx some day...ohh and finish them LOL.

Best

Michael

Best

Michael

[quote="Dyl Roberts"]Of you have moved onto FSX?

I'm curious to find out how popular it is now amongst the membership, as initially it wasn't well received.
-SNIP-
Cheers[/quote]

I still have FS9 installed however I don't think I've fired that version up since I got my
TrackIR4 setup. I now fly FSX exclusively and only those aircraft with decent VC's.

Fortunately many of my CBFS favorites imported into FSX with minimal fuss.

It took some doing ( and a new system ) to get FSX running at a level that was
acceptable to me, 25 FPS most of the time, but it was worth it. I can't imagine
'flying' with a 2D cockpit anymore nor not having moving aircraft carriers to land
on when I 'feel the need for speed'.

I have both Alphasim's and Razbam's A6 packages and I just added the brand new 'old'
A2A B377 yesterday. Now that bird is a challenge to fly but being someone who
relishes in the sound of radials it was a 'must have' for me and I get to use all
4 of my Saitek Pro throttles to boot

The graphic quality of FSX, once you get your system 'tweaked', is far superior to
FS9 IMO. I only wish ACES hadn't 'abandoned' FSX so soon before fixing some of the
remaining problems.

Paul ( FSX with Acceleration on a XP platform )

Michael,

The Mk.8CMP should make all the 8s look the same (for about two weeks) as it standardises all the upgrades to give a new baseline.

As for targets of opportunity, we generally ask for outside assistance for anything bigger than a couple of thousand tons!

Interestingly I first noticed sound effects on the Ark, one of the effects I added gives the noise of waves etc. when parked on deck (turn the engines off) which I hadn't been expecting, Certainly adds to the immersion, although I agree a 30 kt wind should add some sort of noise to an airfield.

From what I've seen of the Essex at sim outhouse it looks awesome, certainly sets a new level for carrier add ons.

SkippyBing wrote:Michael,

The Mk.8CMP should make all the 8s look the same (for about two weeks) as it standardises all the upgrades to give a new baseline.

As for targets of opportunity, we generally ask for outside assistance for anything bigger than a couple of thousand tons!

Interestingly I first noticed sound effects on the Ark, one of the effects I added gives the noise of waves etc. when parked on deck (turn the engines off) which I hadn't been expecting, Certainly adds to the immersion, although I agree a 30 kt wind should add some sort of noise to an airfield.

From what I've seen of the Essex at sim outhouse it looks awesome, certainly sets a new level for carrier add ons.

I'll have to look through all mm images and see what set up I have the most reference for, I just know them all as Mk8 so sub variants are going to be a hand full.

Yup there bigger than a few thousand tons LOL but remarkably resilient to damage as can be seen here http://www.cargolaw.com/2006nightmare_hyundai_for3.html whilst not weapons damage the fire has caused significant structural damage, probably far more than a weapon could, though the hull has remained intact below the water line so that did help.

I'll have to look at this Ark people keep talking about, I haven't really explored much of FSx just yet so getting moving ships back will be like going back to CFS2 days , your right we do need more sounds, ships are incredibly noisy, not just the wave and general sea noise but wind, pumps, engines...I'm assuming these COGOG vessels makes some sort of exhaust noise...fans and general ventilation, let alone the PA system.

Best

Michael

I still haven't figured out the difference between SP2 and Acceleration. I gather that you don't need both, but I'm not sure which is more desirable. Any help?

Ok in simple terms, SP2 is a patch to make FSx run better, DX10 / Vista enabled etc etc and all that malarky, it also removes a bit more backward compatibility with FS9 port over models, if you run a lot of port overs then SP2 is going to undo quite a few of them. SP2 is a free download from MS to enhance the basic platform.

Acceleration is an offical Microsoft addon pack that includes new planes and missions but also ships SP2 as well. additionally Acceleration adds more features to FSx that SP2 does not, specifically sling loads for helicopters, flight deck ops and associated animations, as far as I know these are not shipped with SP2, this is why its so hard to pitch your models, do you aim for standard FSx with SP2 and loose the Acceleration extra features, or aim for the Acceleration + SP2 features and upset the previous crowd who cannot use the extra features. Users should not really have to pay for an addon pack to get there basic game code updated to include the extra features...some of which were left out from previous versions anyway. Acceleration isnt free.

Hope that helps

Michael

Addendum, I'm still checking to see if slingloads, multi player benifits and carrier ops / animations are in SP2, there are two SDKs, SP2 and Accel/SP2 and each note different functions and animation tags, bit of a mess really.