Where to post the good things about FSX

My question is after a lot of years is that all I see in the recent past is problems from newbies and others about FSX...and the desire to go to other sims etc.....I have all the sims except XPlane ??? and I just flew from Buenos Aires to Honolulu with PMDG 777(7900 miles) and landed with 1 % fuel left and had no problems along the way...I did use time compression and saved a flight or two along the way...but no crashes, freezes or problems on the flight....I have used the advice of people here on this site and it has made my experience darn good....so I think FSX is still alive if people get a good computer and follow the advice of those on this site....I would like to hear more good stories of flights rather than the problems ....al v In other words,,Where can good things about FSX be posted?

It looks like you are in the right place to do that!

 

Darrell

Congrats on the 7900 nm flight!

 

I just did Orcas I > Anacortes > Concrete Muni > Darrington in good ole FSX-MS/DX10 with all the appropriate Orbx scenery including HD trees. Love the fruit trees in bloom this time of year. I flew my favorite hybrid Skyhawk which is the Carenado external model, the freeware RealAir FS9 flight dynamics, and the default FSX Skyhawk VC. I recently equipped the Skyhawk with Flight1's GTN 650 (on a pop-up) which was cool because I used the OBS function to make myself a pink line to follow right onto the runway at Concrete (it's tough to find down there amongst all those trees, lol). I did the flight in real time (5/1/15 ~18:30-20:30 LCL) with ASN providing the weather which was perfect for an evening sightseeing flight at 1000' AGL or so.

 

Best 2 hrs I've spent in the sim for a long time. Thanks FSX. :)

So delightful when people spend a bit of time actually enjoying the sim and what it does. :)

I agree. When I ready the threads of people having problems, I usually say, whew, I am glad I don't have problem after problem or hardly any problem at all.

About the help on this forum, I concur. I've built three in the past, and without the help I've received on this forum,it would have been nightmares. Thanks to all. I hardly ever have a problem, although my FSX puter is down right now. Think my old Nvidia card went kaput.

 

p.s. Nice to see Darrell still watching over us. He and I have been on this forum like, forever. I believe it was he who had a baby girl some 20 or so years ago and all were congratulating him. He might be a grandpa now.

I haven't done any 7,900 mile sim flights or even all the missions listed in my box set. However FSX has allowed me to radically cut back on my mental meds and be more a part of the real world! My shrink told me a lot of my trouble was guilt over my part in the Vietnam War. He had another patient with the same issue. Although I certainly never felt guilty, I guess he was right. I just kept it pent up.

 

The other patient tried FS and really enjoyed flying over Vietnam seeing the hills green, the buildings intact, etc. This helped him to conquer his issues and move on. So I got FSX and started "flying" again. Even though I couldn't pass the physicals and that's why I had to get out of the Marines in '69.

 

It took me at least a year to work up the courage to fly over Vietnam, Laos, & Cambodia. Where I flew regularly for two "tours" during the war. Now no one shoots at me!! It's amazing how much weight that took off my mind!! I don't think I'll ever have the courage to actually return there except in a sim. But it works anyway! When upset I now either play one of my horns or fly FSX. Or if really tore up, do both.

 

I think that's a pretty good thing about FSX! And I'll bet there are a lot of other old former pilots who can't fly for whatever reason, who depend on FSX or another similar sim for their flying fix too.

Awesome story Rupert, thank you for sharing.

 

I usually play piano while flying (if there's 5 minutes of straight and level), guess horn works just as well! ;)

I salute you Rupert, Sir! al v

There's a thread here about the wonderful fun you can have with FSX, maybe the mods could consider stickying it?-

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?248567-How-do-you-keep-FSX-interesting

Thanks, I will start reading that area, Scatterbrain kid....al v

Yes,

 

I primarily play saxes and brasses.

 

Another neat thing about the techie world we live in, you might not have heard about. I have a whole bunch of "music minus" books which come with a CD. I sometimes go to nursing homes, pre-planned of course, with a horn or two. I can plug the CDs into their pa system and have a back-up orchestra playing everything but my horn part.

 

So I can talk with those even older than me, take requests, and play what they want to hear with "my own orchestra!" I've got a ton of Dorsey, Sinatra, Ellington, stage and movie musical tracks, etc. I just roll my cart in and ask what they want to hear? Plug it in and play along with it. How Cool Is That?

 

And yes, sadly from time to time I go to funerals and at our church for Memorial Day. I play "Taps" on a trumpet as needed.

Thanks for your service Rupert. It must suck to have memories of flying over such a beautiful place ruined by memories of being shot at (among plenty of other bad memories I imagine). Glad to hear that you can enjoy it in the sim now.

If it wasn't for add-ons, there would be a lot fewer people asking for help. FSX actually does what it claims out of the box.

I've been on these forums since way back in the FS98 days, and a moderator for just about as long! While I do not have any blood daughters, I do have 3 sons and 2 step-daughters. And yes, I am a grandpa with 10 grandkids.

 

Darrell

Yes! FSX from the box is most of what I use.

For Darrell. Mea Culpa. Guess I had you mixed up with the other gentleman who was a moderator back when. Yeah man, we go back to the days of Simon whatshizname and Capt. Slarty.

Bud, he may not have had a daughter, but he was definitely around and moderating during the days of Simon (FS98 and 2000, as I recall).

For many years I concentrated on combat sims even going back to the days of Retaliator F4 & then followed by all of the Janes sims ( I was extremely disappointed when they dropped A-10) Then came Falcon, IL2, WW2 Fighters, MS Combat FS3 & a number of space combat too many to recall. I was quite happy with the combat sims & even though MS FlightSim came on the scene I was not interested in flying "civilian" a/c.

 

How things change when you get to my age (71). I "discovered" FSX a couple of years ago when my son gave me a disc as a gift which he picked up as a special for $18 (AUS). Did I get hooked? Yes. Until I played the sim I had not realized just how good it was particularly because of all those people out there who go to the trouble of creating add ons.

 

Now I am struggling with a laptop that replaced another that died. The old one was a dual core whilst the current one is a quad. What I should have checked was the GHz and not get sucked in by the "quad" tag. At 1.5 it's a dog & obviously restricts the sliders to the basics. Fortunately even though money is too tight to mention I will shortly be getting a hand me down from my son with a lot more grunt, and will be back to flying more legs.

..My shrink told me a lot of my trouble was guilt over my part in the Vietnam War. He had another patient with the same issue. Although I certainly never felt guilty, I guess he was right. I just kept it pent up..

 

i don't think any serviceman need feel guilty; the bottom line is that America and other nations stepped up to the plate to stop the south being overun by the commie north..:)

Hey mate, you're a musician, what do you think about all this "remastered" stuff that's on sale nowadays by the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys etc?

Personally I don't like the old classics being messed about like that.

My Dad was a C-47 Captain for Ethiopian Air Lines in 1954-1957 under a training contract arrangement with TWA. I got to ride along on several of his flights, and came to love everything about the old Dakotas- sight, sound, smell, vibration... there's just nothing else like flying unpressurized, low and slow, with twin Pratts singing their astoundingly seductive song.

 

Here's "the real McCoy" circa 1957 at Addis Ababa:

http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u484/Hoggy_Dog/EAL-AAQ_1963.jpg

 

Dad passed away about 30 years ago, but I have his logbooks, so I've been flying Manfred Jahn's amazing C-47 V2 and duplicating some of Dad's flights, including a few that I actually rode along on. I can't find a 1957 Ethiopian Air Lines livery for this airplane, and so far my requests for someone with the skills to make that paint haven't borne fruit, so I'm flying a plain bare-metal airplane (inappropriately registered N90079 :( ) while I wait for it.

 

I'm also using this Twin Radial Sound Package and it's amazing how well it replicates the glorious sound I remember, plus MJ's model incorporates the slow-startup typical of all radials... you know, crack the throttle, hold the starter, prime 3 blades, count 6 more blades, mags to both, keep holding starter and prime as required, until finally ... <...> the old girl reluctantly shudders to life, seemingly one cylinder at a time, while white smoke billows all around the nacelle and a ground crew guy 10 feet from the engine holding a fire extinguisher watches apprehensively... this model does that if you do the manual startup. Pure joy!

 

There's one flight of his I can't duplicate- about an hour into a 2-hour flight from Dire Dawa to Addis Ababa, he and his copilot smelled something burning. After checking everything in the cockpit and finding nothing amiss, he told the copilot to take the airplane and he walked back into the cabin... where a group of the passengers had built a small fire on the deck, slaughtered one of the live goats they had brought on board (yes, in the cabin- it was a C-47 with canvas-seat benches down each side, not a DC-3) and were just beginning to roast the goat, which they had skewered fore & aft with two of their spears. Yes, many passengers from the outlying areas carried spears and/or long walking staffs, including when they travelled. Dad was laughing about it when he told us about it that night at dinner, but he admitted that he didn't find it humorous at the time, especially when the passengers became belligerent when he put out their fire and told them in no uncertain terms not to slaughter anything else or start another fire. You can't make stuff like this up. :cool: This is one of the few scenarios I haven't been able to duplicate in FSX... Does anyone know where I can get a Goat Roasting addon for FSX:SE? :D

 

So that's the joy and satisfaction I'm getting from FSX. It's the only flying I can do any more, since cancer cost me my medical several years ago, and even if I could still legally fly, I'm pretty sure I couldn't still fly C-47's sporting 1957 EAL liveries all over Ethiopia and to Cairo, Khartoum, Nairobi and Aden... only through FSX could I possibly do these things now, and feel my Dad in the jumpseat critiquing my technique. :pilot:

Hey mate, you're a musician, what do you think about all this "remastered" stuff that's on sale nowadays by the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys etc?

Personally I don't like the old classics being messed about like that.

 

I agree!! Though it doesn't affect me personally since I'm retired. I'm more concerned about the lack of live music performed locally pretty much all across the world. We including those in the bands you mentioned grew up with playing in garages, bars, parties, and sock hops.

 

It seems everyone is busy remastering, iPading, etc., or hiring disc jockeys today. Therefore they don't even think to listen to anything not already recorded. Beginning talent is pretty well locked out of an audience unless they follow an already paved highway and copy the ideas of "hits" already out there!

 

Other than a few musicians who are classical trained, where are the new musicians going to come from? All of us oldies are dieing off.

Great Story Hogg E.! Thanks for sharing!

 

I flew CH-34s for awhile. So I can certainly relate to the radial startup sounds and smells! Not to mention all the oil leaks!

 

And yes, a CH-34 was a pretty good example of low and slow as well!

alverthein,

I too have used the advice of the many great people here when it comes to trying to make FSX truly "as real as it gets."

For the past few years, getting FSX to run and look the way it finally does (I hope writing that doesn't jinx me!) was an obsession for me. The journey was difficult due to the amount of addons (read eye-candy) that I "needed" to get FSX to run as I expected (which right there may have been a clue to the amount of frustration that was, I admit, self-induced, due to possibly unrealistic expectations), and look how I wanted.

Out of the box, FSX worked great - excellent FPS, smooth, no crashes or problems. But, bone-stock FSX leaves a lot to be desired if it's supposed to live up the the, again, "as real as it gets" slogan.

My current list of working addons include: TrackIR, EZCA, a couple of Orbx regions and airports, Active Sky Next (which was one of those real game-changers for me - beautiful!), REX Essentials/OD, Shade, Steve's free DX10 fixer files, FSDT KIAH and GEX Services (the detail in that airport is unreal - it has ruined most other airports, except the Orbx ones, for me), UTX, GEX, FS Genesis USA, Tacpack, A2A Accufeel, etc.

All these addons are finally working together (in DX10 too - no more OOMs!) and I am finally able to just fly! No tinkering, no editing of .cfgs, etc. I am finally able to just enjoy all the eye-candy and watch it come together!

 

I think I may be going through a withdrawal of sorts because I don't have to tweak FSX (at this time). All of this is actually working great in Win8.1... I can finally concentrate on actually learning how to fly (and land) instead of how to tweak!

 

Here was the problem with FSX for me - the potential for it's performance and appearance was so great, and during my "obsessive time" with FSX, it would occasionally give me glimpses of what was waiting - if I was able to get it set up just right.

So, my expectations, I know, would cost me $$$.

My advice now for anyone wanting such a realistic amount of eye-candy in FSX:

Save enough money to acquire the right computing hardware the first time, or expect to make compromises. Read, read, and read these forums for gems of advice, examples, and potential fixes. Chances are if you're experiencing a problem, others here have too, and most likely will know of a fix.

 

When FSX is set up just right, it really is breathtakingly beautiful! Even my wife will occasionally stop by my "cockpit" and comment how real the view looks, and how gorgeous that sunset appears.

 

Thanks for starting this thread!

 

E-Buzz :pilot:

I would like to hear more good stories of flights rather than the problems ....al v In other words,,Where can good things about FSX be posted?

Well, I don't think there's any place here on the forums where the mods have it purposely set up and intended for people to troll, hate, and cast aspersions. That just kind of happens haphazardly on an unpredictable basis, and is part of human nature.

 

So I would agree with the 2nd person who posted below you who said this is as good a place as any. Maybe you can be the person who helps outweigh the bad comments with the good ones. And for once, I'd like to see more people have things positive to say about all the flight sim platforms without feeling the need to bash one in order to compare it to another. Our niche is so narrow to begin with (compared to the rest of the world as a whole who could care less about what we do)-- that there's no need to make the fractioning/partitioning in the hobby any more starkly contrast.

 

-- John