Hossfly68

I believe it's compatible. I haven't tried any Orbx except the free trial stuff because it put too much of a load on my old computer and I just never got around to trying it on this one. I browsed through their stuff though and none of their areas really jumped out at me as something I NEED. Not saying it wasn't nice to look at, but just not where I fly.

I recently bought Ultimate Terrain X and Ground Environment X on the advice of some guys here. I enjoy flying low and slow and looking at where I am going. Tonight I loaded up in the the Carenado 172n and took off from Gulfport to go up to Tupelo. I used VOR's and I used VFR.Com on my ipad as my sectional chart to double check it with the roads, rivers, and lakes below me. This is a whole new sim experience! This is what it used to be like when I flew my real life airplane. I "filed" a VFR flight plan, asked for flight following and talked to atc the whole way. Not really needed, but it was pretty nice. I've upgraded the Carenado with IFR equipment and a rudimentary autopilot so that it matches my old plane. If I could just perfect my paint skills, I'd be able to fly it again. Maybe one day I will. While on vacation a couple weeks ago, I decided it was time to learn how to build airports that I visit to actually resemble their real life counterparts. Learned how to use ADE for that. They aren't great, but they're getting better. After that, maybe I'll figure out how to build other scenery. It be kind of interesting to build an accurate version of the little town where I grew up.

PS- Now that I look closer, that first pic isn't transparent. It's a full on reflection of surrounding scenery. It's like your alpha channel is completely black. Try a nice gray alpha and I'd be willing to bet that'll fix it. But save the original plane! Copy the texture files to a new folder and name it something memorable so you can add the newly painted textures to an ai plane and make it fly into a podunk little airport with no other traffic to "test fly" it. Try this link to The Painters workshop for a better description: https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?205336-Editing-Alpha-in-PhotoShop

I've had problems like the 2nd pic with the "faded out" look. In my case it turned out to be that the alpha channel was the wrong color when I converted the paintjob to DDS format and it was actually reflective qualities of the surface. I THINK I loaded the alpha into the paint program and lightened it a bit, then merged it back into the texture file. It's been so long that I can't remember and I don't paint em anymore. I wasn't that good at it anyway, but I got lucky with a few. I also seem to recall that I also ran into this problem when I changed over to DX10 and there was a setting somewhere in Steve's DX Fixer program that corrected it. I apologize for not being more help. It's just been a long time since I did any painting on anything other than styrene plastic models. Nowadays the bane of my existence is yellow acrylic paint. That's a problem on 1930's US Navy planes! Yellow everywhere!

I took the plunge and bought UTX. Haven't checked the night lighting part of it yet but I'm here to tell ya, them roads is ACCURATE! In real life I'm a FedEx guy, so maps and roads are my life. I put it to the test. Took off from Mobile Downtown, caught I65 north. The Dolly Parton bridge isn't correct, but small worries there. Counted my exits and noted what was at each. Got to Hwy 113 at exit 69 and followed it south to Foshee road, then hung a left on Hwy 31 and flew into Brewton Alabama. Followed Douglas Ave up to the north part pf town. Followed Belleville Ave back down and crossed the tracks into East Brewton (which is actually south of town for some reason, even in real life). Flew down Forrest Ave until it became Florida Street and then Hwy 41 where I hung a right onto final approach for runway 24 at Brewton (12j).. I'm impressed! Even the Georgia Pacific papermill is in the right place, but it is a bit simpler than real life.

Combine UTX with GEX? What are the differences between the two? From what I read, it seems as if GEX alters autogen and some other textures and UTX basically changes the ground textures to better replicate the actual terrain and match the map? Am I close? Looked at ORBX.. it's beautiful but doesn't really cover anywhere I'd fly unless I install the world coverage.

Thanks Larry, I tried Orbx a long time ago and their stuff is beautiful but it does bring my rig to it's knees. Actually, that was my old computer. I might give it another try on this one. Most of my flying is done in the area between Memphis, New Orleans, Florida, and up as far as North Carolina. From time to time I may take a tour through the Caribbean just for fun and to virtually pick up a bottle of John Watling's rum in Nassau.

I only fly general aviation planes, and unless the weather turns bad during the flight, only VFR. I used to fly in real life and was IFR rated before I had to give it up. I would like to experience those early days again in a bit more detail than default FsX-Se offers. What I'm looking for is accurate interstate, road, stream and river placement. Accurate landmarks like factories or shopping malls would be a bonus. For example, here in Mobile we used to call in and report "over the cement plant" as we call up KBFM tower for pattern entry instructions. I've read the literature on several products and Ultimate Terrain X seems like it might offer the best results but I'd like to hear opinions and options from those who own it. I've surfed darn near 100 search results looking for answers but everything is a comparison to other stuff, not an outright description of UTX. Can you guys tell me what you think about it? I'm guessing my computer should be able to handle it. Most all of my sliders are set pretty high except for traffic and light bloom and I get smooth frames.

I'll save you some time and frustration before you get much further with FSX... Check the sticky posts at the top of the forum. Here's the one that about 50 other guys are about to point you to... https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?262601-Microsoft-Weather In short, Microsoft doesn't support the weather download anymore. You are now forced to download third party weather interfeaces. "Aw hell!", I hear you say, but fear not! They actually work better than the built in system. And they're no big deal to get installed and working. You will need FSUIPC first.... download it and install it anyway. You'll need it for other stuff too. I won't say which program is best, but I can't remember exactly (cause I just hit the icon now), but I think I use FXrealWx. It's freeware, and there are others you may prefer more. There is also payware. Snoop around and check out what you find. Use the forum search function to pull up different ideas, options, and results. Happy flying! John

Look at Delta State in Cleveland MS.. my nephews went there. One became a lawyer and one became a pilot. He flew puddle jumpers for a while and has been at Delta for several years now.

I buried Cortana in the back yard.. don't tell anybody. I'm about as locked down and private as I can be and still be on the web.

Wait until you see a Sidestep ILS approach! I never saw one when I was learning IFR, but experienced it on a Southern Airways Dc-9 when I was around 8 years old. Riding the beam down through the overcast, the ground came into view, and then a STEEP bank to the adjacent runway, followed kinda quickly by the landing. Luckily my Dad was holding my hand the whole way down and explaining the procedure to me. It's good to be an airline pilot's kid! I think we were flying into Eglin or Ft Walton airport. I also asked him during the flight if it was normal for the wings to be flapping up and down in a 15-20 foot arc. To this day I don't know whether it comforted me or scared the hell out of me when he said, "Yup, If they didn't relieve the stress by flexing like that, they'd just break." WTF Dad? I just wet my britches again!!!!

I found that some scenery packages include AI traffic and it's loaded into the add on scenery folder. I had AI ships in Fs9 format that screwed up my FSX AI traffic ONLY whenI added the scenery that included the ships. That threw me off until I found and converted those files into FSx format also. I hope that made sense. In essence, look in other folders (or in the main FSX folder and ALL sub folders) when converting files. That's just the problem I've run into... not saying that's THE problem.

Now THAT could come in handy!

Thanks Bill! Clears it up a bit. I don't know if it's because I'm a fan of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica or if it's because I'm an old school cro-magnon, but I just don't trust computers. Even when I was flying in real life, I'd figure everything out on paper and then see what the computer had to say about my figures. I got pretty good after getting disoriented (never lost!) on my first cross country flight. By the time I did my last one, I flew it well enough to be off by only 45 seconds at touchdown. Picked up a minor tailwind for a bit. I may try LittleNavMap. Tried Plan G and it was okay, but nothing spectacular. If I can ever find the box all my old maps are packed in, I'll be happy. May switch over to all photo realistic scenery just so I can do some real VFR by landmarks.

Between real life and the flight sim I've used numerous flight planners, both on paper and computer. I've tried several for FS2004 and FSX, but always just settle for the built in planner for simplicity's sake. I only fly GA (mostly VFR) and usually trips of 3 hours or less in a session. My current favorite plane is the Carenado 172N since it flies very similar to the 1967 C-172 I used to own. Mine did have an autopilot. It wasn't functional though and would send the plane in a tight spiraling turn to the right. I had to learn to trim it out perfectly if I wanted a decently relaxing cross country flight. What are the benefits of something like PlanG and other flight planners? What am I missing? I tried PlanG and a few others a while back, but never understood the problems with the built in default planner. To be honest, the dream for me would be to find all of my old VFR sectional charts from pre-2007 and use those for planning my flights on paper with my E6b and a calculator. Are most of the planners intended for airliner flights?

Don't think I've seen that one. Searching now. Thanks Jorgen!

It's been confirmed. I'm a moron.. look for a file called Customgatraffic.zip.. I did a search for general aviation under the fsx ai flightplans section. It was the only one to pop up.

You can rename you original Traffic.bgl to Traffic.bak and that'll do it. The problem is that it kills general aviation traffic also. But fear not! There is a way. Look in the files section here (or at other sim sites) until you find a GeneralAviation traffic file. Can't remember what it's called or exactly where it is though and I apologize. The one I'm thinking of has several files in it that will set GA to either fly mostly during the day and/or to avoid high density airports. I'll do some searching in a minute and see if I can find you a file name.

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?262601-Microsoft-Weather

I use Steve’s DX10 Fixer. Well worth the price, runs smoother and the cockpit and cloud shadows add a lot to the immersion factor.

Found my waves. They just weren't very prominent. Thanks for the instructions to find the waves though. Somebody will eventually need them (maybe even me!) and they'll be here for posterity. I found FSWC Lite somewhere last night, but didn't think it would work so I bypassed it. Time to backtrack for a bit and explore some more.

I have the water slider turned all the way up and all other sliders that should affect water animation, but I'm not seeing wave movements. I'm flying FSX-SE with Steve's DX-10 fixer. Just wondering if that was from FS9 or am I just in the right place to see waves or what? It's a fresh install after a Windows error wiped me out and I can't remember now if it was there before or not. It's not a big thing, but since I primarily fly around the Gulf Coast, I'd like to see waves from time to time. Also, is there a freeware set of water textures that makes them look better? Water Configurator doesn't work with DX10 and I loved that.

Complete reinstall of WinBlows 10... God I miss Win98se! Spent two days reloading all of my addons and figuring out how to redownload payware. Then organizing and backing up everything I reinstalled. This weekend will be spent trying to get the smoothness and performance I was getting before The Great Crash of 2019.. According to the Geek Squad, the recent Win10 update didn't install correctly causing a cascade of problems. It seems that pilot error brought the final downfall when I tried to reload Windows from the backup file, and it just further screwed things up and failed to fully install. So the lesson learned is: Get the damned thing running right, then leave it alone! It just pestered me about the update until I said "what the hell" and hit the button.

PS- Tex, you'll be asking soon in the forums why your weather isn't working. Go ahead and look up and read about the various weather "injection" programs like FSRealWX. You'll also want to look for FSUIPC and EditVoicePack. Also World of AI for more and newer AI traffic.. That should get ya started for the weekend.