johnost

I agree with you 100%!

All I can tell you is my Steam installed copy (uncompressed) is 31.9 GB - no addons. You can install on the drive of your choice, but an SSD would be preferable. Have fun!

What strikes me about the "good old days" is the nature of the community vs 15-20 years ago. We still have a few of the perpetually disgruntled, (I remember several discussions on this forum with a fellow who thought FS2000 was the ruination of the simulation genre, and that it would never succeed like FS98).

The big difference I see, is the absence of the 35-45 generation currently. When I got started in the hobby, there were many active young designers and artists and creators. I had three or four mentors maybe 10 years my senior, but still under 60. Now it seems almost the entire community is either 70+ or 16-19. In the latter group, the interest appears temporal, just awaiting the next bombastic explosion riddled phenomena. My son's mid 40s generation seems totally absent? Maybe it is the dearth of PCs and the preponderance of tablets and phones, but that group seems completely uninterested? To me, that is a bit disheartening! I can learn to enjoy what ever AP or graphical innovation that comes along, But I have no ability to nurture a whole generation oblivious to this hobby, or simulation in general. I don't have an answer, and that is really perplexing!

 

 

I agree with you, except I don't see any teenagers in the flightsim hobby. That has me a little worried, because that may signal the end of the hobby, as the older generation disappears. To get interested, teens need space adventures, violence and lightly clad females. :)

Interesting and very different opinions. I don't know enough about the differences between the MSFS autopilots and real life autopilots. But even back in FSX I purchased a very fancy 787, which came with a 120-page manual, and the AP required 19 pages to explain. I believe it was hailed as being very close to the real thing. Unfortunately I am not ambitious enough (not to mention lacking sufficient memory skills) to try to master such complexity.

 

Which brings me to a thought that has occurred to me, and will probably result in great disagreement and condemnation. It is my impression (and I may be wrong), that the flight sim community consist largely of mature and older guys like me, who are not aspiring to become as knowledgeable as real world flight captains. Would it not be commercially realistic for add-on airplane designers to provide an A and B version, where A is as close as possible to a fully complex simulation, while a B version would be equally realistic in looks and flight characteristics, but a little simplified concerning AP, FMC, etc. In other words designed for the hobbyists who enjoy flying, but are not requiring a study-sim?

 

I am in no way proposing a degradation in available sim realism for those who want it, just an accommodation for the less ambitious simmers. What do you think?

Today - trying to set up an intercontinental flight in MSFS - I started thinking longingly of the Autopilots in the original FSX tubeliners. You set the desired altitude, heading, speed and rate of climb/descent, AND THAT WAS EXACTLY WHAT YOU GOT - NO MORE - NO LESS. Remember that? The autopilot would not try to outsmart you or do other things on its own.

 

I am an old fuddydut for sure (and not aspiring to become a real pilot), but I don't understand the big push for complex, self-flying/thinking airplanes, self-driving cars, etc. What do we really gain by reducing our required skills and attention trusting computers more than people? Remember the 737 MAX disasters?

 

Sorry! just felt like venting.

2d Panels are dead. Get used to it... Next, we`ll have to get used to the demise of 3d panels.

Time marches on and we have to/must get used to it... Diehards will have to evolve.

 

So what are we getting after the demise of 3D panels?

WOW - that finally worked! Thanks Tim for your good work. The folder was empty, even though I have only one add-on that works just fine, i.e. a scenery enhancement for Washington, DC. I guess this add-on, which auto installed itself, must have integrated itself into the existing Washington scenery file. I have copied and saved the instructions above, so I can install any new add-ons.

Thanks for the reference, that is the one I was looking for. I have not succeeded in finding the Community Folder, however, because when I get to the last .....\LocalCache\Packages\ folder it is empty.

I have seen the answer before, but can't find it now. I have a vanilla installation of MSFS from Steam, but can't find the Community Folder. Can someone educate me please?

I have a curved 32" LG 3440x1440 21:9 monitor that I use for flight simming and all other PC tasks. I love it for FS, and all website/text pages can be reduced to a square format filling only the height of the screen. I think the curve helps readability across the screen,

WOW! It is even longer than I expected - thanks a lot.

Does anybody know of an available, printable keyboard control file?

I have tried that and other suggestions, but I have found nothing that works. Unfortunately that keeps me from intercontinental flights - used to do that at x8 or x16 when over the ocean.

So they say, eventually if not right away. There are two USB ports as standard and it may be possible to plug USB hubs into these for flight controllers. If the sim recognises the controller, the Xbox should too.

 

 

Thanks - I guess we will have to wait and see.

Interesting. Can one use HOTAS controls with X-Box Series X?

Colorado?

Never mind. I was running the display in windowed mode, which made the Save button invisible.

I have just downloaded and installed the latest version of MSFS with no problems. However, trying to manage my controls gives me problems. I am using two different devices for flightstick and throttle in a HOTAS setup. This combination works fine in 7 other civilian and military flightsims. To avoid any interference I have to disable all duplicate control functions EXCEPT throttle control on the separate throttle, as well as disabling throttle control on the flightstick.

 

In MSFS I can't seem to figure out how to do that. In the controls menu I click on a function I want to disable, a screen pops up giving me the following choices: "Select an input", "Clear current input", "Cancel", and "Validate". I click "Clear current input" and then "Validate", but the screen closes, the original control assignment disappears for a second and then comes right back. It seems like I can only change the command assignment, but not delete it! Has anyone found a way to delete an assignment completely?

 

Also - how do you turn off the sim? I have had to go to Task Manager in Windows to turn it off.

Beautiful!!!

As I recall, my keyboard runs directly from the Windows driver. If your present keyboard has a unique driver installed, the loading may be delaying the activation enough to get passed the BIOS access. Just a thought.

That's the one!

I presume the rudder pedals are also calibrated, have you tried rudder and aileron trim?

I have a keyboard that I love. The brand name is AZIO, it is inexpensive, has extra large key symbols that are backlit in selectable colors. I can't see the model number, because it is covered by a glued-on label, but a Google search should find it. It works fine at boot-up.

He may be right! If you download and install a free program called CAM (search internet), it will tell you exactly what is in your computer.

Hi Stanley! Looks to me like you have GPU memory of 8GB and 8GB of system RAM. Total graphics memory available is 16GB - 8GB dedicated GPU memory plus 8GB shared memory (RAM). You will need at least 16GB of RAM for MSFS 2020.

 

 

 

Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.6 GHz; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti 11GB GDDR5X; ASRock Z270 K6 Gaming MB, 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM; 500GB SSD + 2TB HDD; Windows 10 Pro 64-bit; 34" 21:9 curved 4K Monitor