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How do you keep FSX interesting?


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Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport is interesting because not only does the single runway stick out into the bay, but there's also this range of hills and buildings smack on the approach, it was closed in 1998 but is still in FSX, as "Hong Kong Intnl (old) VHHX"-

 

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/KTak1.gif

 

 

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/KTak2.gif

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GLIDER TOW

Choose a glider (this is a freeware Slingsby T-21), and sit it on the airfield, then hit 'CTRL SHFT Y' to make a Maule towplane appear. A few seconds later it begins towing you up; hit 'SHFT Y' to release the cable any time you like and glide back for a landing.

Noob tip- it can be hard staying behind the towplane without wildly yo-yoing up and down (the cable will snap) so try popping out your gliders spoilers (key /) to damp down the sensitivity while you're under tow.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-tug-ghe.gif

 

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CARRIERS

This one is always permanently moored stationary a few miles southwest of the Golden Gate.

Select any plane and slew it with key 'Y' to a couple of miles behind the carrier and slew up a bit (key F4) to give yourself some height.

Set your wind from 67 degrees (blowing straight down the angled flight deck) at a speed of around 30kts.

'Save' the flight as something like 'Carrier' so you can keep coming back to it in future.

Noob tips- train up on a slow kite such as a Cessna 172, then select faster kites later. You could also set the wind speed to 60 kts or more to help slow you down, especially with fast jets.

Fast jets are hardest of course, this below is the standard FSX Hornet, drop your hook and flaps, pop your airbrake and try to land at less than 120 kts, flying straight into the wires without flaring (trying to flare can mess you up, I think some navies court-martial any pilots who try to flare), stand on the brakes before touchdown and hold them on til you stop.

(You won't see any graphics of the hook catching the wires, it's abstracted so don't panic)

 

"Where do we get such men? They leave this ship and they do their job. Then they must find this speck lost somewhere on the sea. When they find it, they have to land on its pitching deck. Where do we get such men?"- Rear Admiral Tarrant: The Bridges at Toko-Ri

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-carrier-pfs.gif

 

PS- there are other carriers in FSX, they move according to a schedule, but you have to spend time fiddling with your ingame clock time and date to rendezvous with them, this thread explains it-

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?249165-fsx-acceleration-aircraft-carriers-aren-t-working&highlight=carriers

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I quite enjoy multiplayer. It's fun to fly with others that aren't poorly animated AI traffic!

 

By the way, sorry about the bad quality pictures, they lose quality when I convert them in order to post them.

 

One of my favourite flights in Alaska - here we are at Cold Bay after an early morning flight from Dutch Harbour, it was great fun landing!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]127400[/ATTACH]

 

...and the next flight to Anchorage

[ATTACH=CONFIG]127399[/ATTACH]

 

Ahh... the fun of Multiplayer!! :)

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The sim cam can get boring... if all you do is take off and land. So you might take it to the next level and try landing ILS etc. This is much more challenging. Since I'm pretty much bored with "flight"... I decided to take the plunge and buy the photo scenery from Sim-Savy. The thought of being able to fly anywhere in the USA and see scenery that's realistic really appeals to me.

 

I can safely say that most of us have been waiting for photo scenery for a long time. This is how I'm going to enhance my flying experience with FSX....

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I always have fun exploring the vast regions of the world! I always enjoy a good flight in Alaska or Canada, despite the fact I have never visited either of them!

 

It's always good fun to land on some tiny airstrip in the middle of nowhere :pilot:

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...By the way, sorry about the bad quality pictures, they lose quality when I convert them in order to post them..

 

Saving screenshots in JPEG/JPG format often results in poor quality because some colours tend to blur, so convert them to GIF format before posting them, which is much crisper.

I use the free 'Irfanview' imaging programme to convert them, and you can also use the tools in it to brighten/darken/sharpen/enlarge/shrink the pics before posting them.

 

Irfanview- http://www.irfanview.com/

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FSX Does not accurately simulate carrier landings? All aircraft landing on a aircraft carrier deck will immediately go to full throttle when it hits the deck. There should be no apply brakes - the wire will stop the plane on its own.
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I always get new stuff from flightsim.com and also fly around to just find another place needing some brush up.

So this never gets boring. But actually I fly way too little. :pilot:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]127413[/ATTACH]

3hhsav-4.png
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FSX Does not accurately simulate carrier landings? All aircraft landing on a aircraft carrier deck will immediately go to full throttle when it hits the deck. There should be no apply brakes - the wire will stop the plane on its own.

 

You can do so with FSX Acceleration.

Look here. I didn't brake, put throttle all forward and the plane stops. It was not my best landing ever though :rolleyes:

 

 

Want to try yourself? Download my carrier track for a try

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?106-Search-Results&cm=LISTFILES

3hhsav-4.png
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A .gif by definition can only contain 256 colors, a .jpeg can use up to 16 million colors. That advice is flawed.

 

As Oinkey said: "sorry about the bad quality pictures", and as we can see in his first screenshot, the red labels above each airliner are blurred and hard to read.

That's because he saved them in JPEG format, which is why I advised him and everybody else to save in GIF format which is much crisper.

However if your computer system/op system can display JPEG's okay, stick with JPEG's if you want, as my advice was aimed at people whose computers prefer GIF's (like mine does).

I've been posting screenshots in forums for 10 years and quickly learnt GIF is the only way to go if I want crisp pics, as JPEG's were impossible to work with.

Nearly all my screenshots here in FlightSim.com are GIF's and they look fine to me..;)

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FSX Does not accurately simulate carrier landings? All aircraft landing on a aircraft carrier deck will immediately go to full throttle when it hits the deck. There should be no apply brakes - the wire will stop the plane on its own.

 

Yes at a civilised speed, but in one FSX landing I seemed to hook the wires going too fast like a bat out of hades (bad flying I know) and the wires didn't slow me in time and i went into the drink, maybe the wires or hook abstractly broke under the stress.

So I habitually stand on the brakes from now on for insurance..:)

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If a JPEG is blurry, it is because of the quality it was saved in, not the format. If JPEGs were as bad as indicated, it wouldn't be the standard format for digital cameras.

 

Yes formats are funny things, for example on my system photos save fine in JPEG, but screenshots are blurry!

No doubt people's different types of video cards and setups etc play a part.

The moral is- 'if it ain't broke don't fix it', so if we're happy with the quality of our pics, don't change anything..:)

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If your screenshots are blurry, the problem will be with the program you are using to create them. Video cards or any other differences between systems shouldn't matter. Blurry images with color banding are a good sign the jpeg is being created with low quality settings. At high quality, a jpeg file should easily look better than a gif one.

 

By all means stick with what works for you though!

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Saving screenshots in JPEG/JPG format often results in poor quality because some colours tend to blur, so convert them to GIF format before posting them, which is much crisper.

I use the free 'Irfanview' imaging programme to convert them, and you can also use the tools in it to brighten/darken/sharpen/enlarge/shrink the pics before posting them.

 

Irfanview- http://www.irfanview.com/

I prefer.png

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

 

Asus X550V

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I prefer.png

 

Yes it's supposed to be the best, but I've tried it and there's no noticeable difference between it and GIF as far as i can see.

Also, PNG file size is bigger than GIF so it's slow to display in some forums, especially if the pic is large size, so GIF gives us a better solution because it combines good pic quality and is quicker to display, at least that's been my experience of posting hundreds of pics in forums over the past 10 years.

 

Incidentally I'm WinXP Home and take game screenshots by simply hitting the Printscreen key, then pasting them into Irfanview and tweak them if necessary to (brighten/darken/sharpen/upsize/downsize etc) and Save As GIFs, then upload them to Photobucket, then pick up the Pbucket link and post it in forums.

The procedure works fine for me and gives excellent GIF pics, but if i've overlooked anything and could do better than that please let me know..:)

 

PS- as we know, an alternative way of capturing FSX screenshots is to hit the 'V' key, it works the same as hitting the Printscreen key.

PS again- if you plan on drawing on the screenshots or photos, I find that firstly saving them in PNG format is best, then draw on them and save as PNG again when you've finished, then convert them to GIF with Irfanview. (Groan this is all getting complicated but like i say, it works fine for me.)

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Ever since I was a kid (born in 1935) I loved airplanes. A childhood accident at age 6 put out my left eye so that pretty much sealed my dreams of flying.

 

A friend of mine only had one eye... he flew lear jets for a living. I flew with him a few times in his Cessna and had a blast. I think his plane was a 210 (the kind where the wheels fold up... we were returning from San Diego (at night) and he rolled the plane.... LOL... talk about a rush!

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Also... I'm not that great at ILS landings, so this is something that I try and practice. I give myself zero visibility which really makes it hard.

 

Most recently (today actually) I purchased, "Sim-Savy's" USA photo scenery. I'm SO excited about getting it! For a flight simulator, how much better can it get than photo scenery!

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UNUSUAL GLIDER

This freeware FS2004 Rehberg glider flies fine in FSX but you might experience vertigo at not being comfortably tucked into a cockpit comfort zone-

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-Rehberg.gif

Rehberg VC

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-Rehberg2.gif

 

 

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THE DOLE AIR RACE 1927

Here's a good challenge: fly 2,400 miles from Oakland (California) to Hawaii with little or no nav aids, surely we can't miss the whole Hawaiian island chain?..;)

Historically the race was a disaster, 8 aircraft took off but only 2 arrived, 1st placed won 25,000 dollars prize money (26 hours 19 minutes), and 2nd placed won 10,000 dollars (28 hours 16 minutes)

2 planes were lost at sea with a total of 5 souls aboard and never seen again.

2 aborted and returned to California with mechanical problems, and 2 crashed on takeoff without serious casualties.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/FSX-dole.gif

 

The winner, a Travel Air 5000 'Woolaroc' after landing at Wheeler Field, Hawaii

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/CMSF/TravelAir5000_winner_Dole_Race1927-at-Hawaii_zps90baefbd.jpg~original

 

WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dole_Air_Race

http://hiavps.com/Dole%20Air%20Race.htm

 

http://hawaii.gov/hawaiiaviation/hawaii-aviation-pioneers/arthur-c-goebel-1/photos-of-arthur-c-goebel-in-the-dole-derby

 

PS- 7 years later in 1934 the highly-experienced Charles Ulm and his 2-man crew vanished attempting a flight from Oakland to Hawaii, it's believed an unexpected 35-knot wind from the south-southeast and bad weather caused them to fly past the islands in the dark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ulm

 

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