Jim Robinson

Nope, I live in the Idaho Panhandle, Bonners Ferry to be exact. I consider everything from the Rockies westward "my backyard", lol. No sarcasm intended BTW! Be as wordy as you like, that's what I enjoy most about a screenshot thread! :)

Great screenshots Michael, I always learn something from your threads and your knowledge of the world, sometimes even in my own backyard. :)

I highly doubt anyone at Asobo thought the sim was ready for release on Aug 18th. More likely, some stuffed shirts at MS thought they were being "too meticulous" without knowing jack sh** about what's involved, and decided it was time for payday so they gave Asobo a deadline and announced the release date. At that point Asobo most likely had to shift their focus from methodical development to jumping around from here to there trying to polish up some of the rough edges getting it ready for release. After release the screams and cries from the paying public most likely forced them to shift their focus even more in an attempt to appease Joe Customer, and methodical development went completely out the window. I'm sure for Asobo this has become a hair-pulling nightmare thanks to the financial end of MS' lack of knowledge and financial greed. I don't think anyone should be mad at Asobo, they're working for wages, it's like any other big project, whether it's software development or road construction, where those in control ignorantly hinder those that are doing the work with stupid decisions. I've seen it happen a million times in my own career. As for the downloading nightmare I completely agree. I simply can't download it. I have a monthly data cap of 50Gb. As I've detailed elsewhere I can purchase more bandwidth, but if everything goes perfectly I'm looking at around $280 USD just to download the sim and that doesn't include any updates. If I make it to 100 Gb and the connection drops for some reason (which is more likely than not) I just flushed 100 Gb @ roughly $3 USD/Gb down the toilet. I'm not even going to try. Again, it's not Asobo that's playing the game this way, it's the stuffed shirts at MS. The subject of downloading difficulties has come up A LOT since the release but MS just thumbs their nose at those of us that aren't on perfect unlimited 100 mbps fiber connections for $60 bucks a month because we mean nothing more than a piddly $120 sale to them. It's a good thing I'm a white working class American male or I'd probably feel like I've been discriminated against. All they'd have to do is pay some flunkie half a day's wages to split the download up into manageable chunks, maybe 20 gb or so. If it takes three months to get all the pieces then so be it, once I have them all I can install the damn sim. If the connection drops on a 20 Gb download that's not such a big deal, I can re-download it, even if I have to wait till the next month for my data cap to renew. I'm really having a hard time finding something to like about this new sim when I can't even install it and give it a try.

Closest I've ever been to Oklahoma was Amarillo, TX on a trip between Reno and Tallahassee back in my heli firefighting days. Love a good burger though, if I ever make it down that way again before I croak I'll most definitely drop in for a Meersburger! :) Last night I decided to see what I could do with Lake Lawtonka in P3D v4.5. I made some mesh, a photoreal, and generated some autogen with scenProc. Can't match FS2020 I'm afraid, the lighting is so much more realistic. This is actually a fairly high-resolution LOD17 photoreal captured from Google Maps with SbuilderX (LOD17 is what you typically get out of 30cm imagery so not the highest resolution possible, but probably above average). Here's what I came up with: Oddly this morning when I booted up the sim the display got all sparkly for a couple seconds and then the PC locked up. Apparently my graphics card shelled out, lol. I've been cringing for a couple years though thinking it's about time something shelled out with this PC, been running it since 2011. I booted in safe mode and reverted to the onboard VGA chipset for now (can't run the sim). Ordered up another card, supposed to be here a week from Friday. Today just sucked all around! Hope it didn't have anything to do with Oklahoma! :)

It's actually Lake Lawtonka. Coordinates: 34.770592 -98.491058 Heading: 253 Altitude: 1800' Google Earth

Sounds like my kind of place! :)

I just did a flight between Gordon (KGRN) and Ogallala (KOGA) at 7500'. Interesting area, I guess I always though Nebraska was farmland from one end to the other but this is a rather vast area that's not. You can see the dunes in google earth (and photoreal of course) but not so much with landclass type scenery. I'm running OpenLC NA and Vector for that area.

For that matter, move the shortcut into your "Send to" folder and then you can just right click whatever you want to put there and "Send to > Community Folder".

I'd like to see some shots from FS2020 if full offline mode, I understand it reverts to landclass type scenery but I have yet to see a shot of what it looks like.

Driggs to Jackson Hole? Nice shots & flight either way! :)

Not really sure why you quoted me, I didn't ask the question, I provided a useful answer - something I've never actually seen you do. If you don't have anything useful to contribute to the conversation then why make a post? Nobody asked "what's your position on modeled cabins" and I'm sure nobody cares what yours is anyway.

Which B738 are we talking about? Default? I don't think it has the cabin modeled. At any rate if it does, try these keys to move around in the VC view: Ctrl+Shift+Enter: Move right Ctrl+Shift+Backspace: Move left Ctrl+Enter: Move rearward Ctrl+Backspace: Move foreward Shift+Enter: Move up Shift+Backspace: Move down Ctrl+Spacebar: reset view You can set up permanent views in the aircraft.cfg where you can cycle through with "A" and "Shift+A". It takes some work, see here: http://www.fstipsandaddons.com/understanding-cameras-fsx/ ...and also this thread, particularly post #6: https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?273989-How-to-Determine-Camera-Definition-Coordinates-for-Interior-Views&p=1825086 Jim

When I built it it it was an airplane just like any other and you needed a PPL to fly it. Not an ultralight but it looks like it fits into the Sportsman class today according to the empty weight and speed. Back then there wasn't a Sportsman class but it also wasn't so nearly impossible to get a PPL. It was a model IV and it's empty weight was 614 lbs IIRC with a Rotax 912, and to be an ultralight you had to come in under 254 lbs last I checked, so it missed even "fat ultralight" by quite a bit. I built it for a successful contractor that was into politics, he wanted to throw his hat in the ring for Lieutenant governor of Idaho so we painted the airplane up like the Idaho license plate and flew it all over Idaho for about 4 months on the campaign trail, he washed out in the primaries but it was a helluva a ride nonetheless. Most people liked the airplane better than the candidate :) . I wasn't checked out in it and therefore not insured so I didn't get to solo it but I got quite a bit of stick time, most memorable was a couple hour flight around Twin Falls which was spectacular (we even checked out Evel Knievel's Snake River jump ramp). Here's a pic, it wasn't even close to finished at this point, they had a public unveiling thingy at the Idaho Forest Industries hangar in Coeur 'd' Alene (KCOE) and I put it together and dummied up as much stuff as I could to make it look like it was ready to go, lol:

Wow, that's an amazing sim! Great shots and post, never been there myself so it's like a trip to Disney World without actually packing bags (and spending $$), lol. I actually built one of those in the RW back in '94 (the Kitfox I mean).

A couple of my favorite Glenn Copeland gauges were the com gold radio and the Super Timer 2 gauge: http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?do=search&fname=comgold.zip http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?do=search&fname=stimer2.zip Also he did the gauge graphics tutorials which introduced me to Xara Xtreme: http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?do=search&fname=tutgg_p*.zip In Xara Xtreme I made this AHI: Those were the days, lol.

Thanks Tim, yeah I thought about that but it's a bit of a PIA and my relatives are too, my buddies are all dead :) . There's another provider in town with fiber (they can't reach me where I live though, already tried that), I know the guy that owns it, I was thinking about asking him what he'd charge me to bring the PC to his office and set it up long enough to download the new sim. I worked for his Dad years ago in an aviation-related job so he might be receptive to letting me do that - especially if I let him fly it, lol. I think I might wait for a couple patches from Asobo first though so maybe I won't need to update again the minute I get home with it. Also I'm still puzzling over whether I should attempt to run FS2020 on ole' Bessie here or build a whole new machine for it. Be really nice to be able to try it out first and see how it does, ahem... :rolleyes:

Hans, press "U" for the fuzzy select tool. On the left there's a box for "threshold", set that to about 30, click the water area and see if it does what you want it to do. I'm not a Gimp expert by any stretch of the imagination. I've been using my old CS2 version of PhotoShop since 2005 and TBH it drives me nuts to try to do anything with Gimp because I try to use PhotoShop keyboard shortcuts and Gimp gives me a completely unexpected result every time! :) I know it's a good program though, I've been amazed at some things my friends have done with Gimp. I don't want to spend much time with it myself because I'm afraid if I get familiar with Gimp it'll confuse me when I return to PhotoShop, lol. I'm glad you found the program useful. :)

Seems to me this question has come up enough times that MS should be doing something about it, or at least considering it. The download is what's stopping me from having this sim. I've checked every angle and it's just not possible for me to download it. Had every MS flight simulator since FS2002 and three iterations of P3D, but I can't have FS2020. Speed test shows 25 mbps, although maybe not ideal, speed isn't the problem, the data cap is. I checked into upgrading my plan (satellite), the best they do is 50 Gb during the off-peak and another 50 Gb on-peak, so 100 Gb/month and the price tag on that is $130 USD. I can buy more data, they'll sell me an additional 25 Gb for $75 USD. Supposedly the entire installation requires about 150 Gb, so assuming I can downgrade my service plan again after the download, and assuming it all goes off without a hitch (which it won't - I'll guarantee you that), I'm looking at $280 USD just to download this damn sim. I'm not paying it, no way in h*ll. There's no cell service where I live, no fiber, I'm still waiting for friggin' DSL through the phone line circa 2005, lol. Satellite's the only option. Been here 30 years - Al Gore was just inventing the internet when I bought the place, I'm not going anywhere over an internet connection or a sim. It would be so simple for MS to split this download up into 10-20 Gb chunks, I could work on it for three months if I have to and when I have all the pieces I could install the damn thing. LM does this, why is MS so daft about it? FFS, they could at least make it so I could take a USB drive to the library or something, download it, bring it home, and install it - but you can't do that either from what I understand! How about selling it on a USB stick or an SSD? I just bought a Tb SSD for around $100 bucks and it wasn't the cheapest one I could find either. I'd gladly buy another one with the sim loaded on it if it were available, the $100 bucks is dirt cheap compared to what it'd cost me to download it and I'd gain so drive space for addons. I just don't get the thought process behind this, maybe there wasn't one.

That's a killer set of screenshots right there! :)

Interesting post David, great comments on the photos, I never knew any of that about Iceland. Nice work on the photoreal BTW! :)

There's a tool in Gimp called the "fuzzy select tool" that might make selecting and filling those water areas a lot easier. (Comparable to the magic wand tool in PhotoShop). It selects by color, and there's an adjustable range/tolerance. If you could get that setting right you could probably select all the water areas with just one click, then fill, etc.

Problem is it won't have anything to do with optimism among the users, those users have already spent the money and they won't be spending enough from this point forward to keep it going, it will only have to do with return on investment and as soon as sales wane on the xbox version (that's probably being pushed hard at this moment) MS will axe this project just like they axed FSX and Flight!, more than likely long before all the bugs have been worked out of either the PC or the xbox version. We've seen that happen already twice, and once again with DTG's FSW. It's just economics, scrape the gravy off the top and f**k everything else. That's what happens after 20 yrs of "every kid gets a trophy" unfortunately. They're all "my forums", I've been here helping people with their FS problems since FS2002 when the forums were still text-based and you could use HTML in your posts, don't give me this horsesh*t about "your forum vs my forum". You're the newcomer here.