Elvensmith

Must admit, after my second occurrence of the 747-800 dropping out of APP mode on finals to KEWR, decided to load up XP11 for a change of scenery. The default 747 feels nice and as you taxi out to the runway, really feel you are handling a massive heavy aircraft. Flight plan copied into FMC and I know it will still be there when I reload the flight tomorrow. No drama from the AP or AT, altitude and VS dialled in, rock steady as was the LNAV tracking, no hunting from side to side as with the FS bird. Scenery, okay a bit bland compared but quite passable and let's face it at FL320 you are not looking at a whole lot of ground detail. Also 40+ FPS vs. 20 FPS. I know the XP default aircraft have a few issues when resuming too, but nothing like the tussle FS20 presents. Hopefully if there is a FS20 update tomorrow it will bring some core updates and not just the pretty scenery.

These caught my eye earlier today and are on sale in the FS shop here. Question is, are they any good? Proving hard to find information or reviews outside the developer's own material. Do they fly and sound reasonably like a 10 or are they just generic? With little chance of a 10 in MSFS any time soon and my fleet in FSX long in the tooth, I was looking for something to sate my appetite in the meantime.

Well £100+ (or $100+) is well beyond the limit of what I would pay for a single aircraft add-on - period! I'll be over at the Just Flight check in counter...

Not only that when you look at what PMDG are charging for some of their stuff (three figure sums for certain items) that's not going to appeal to the casual or even semi serious simmer on a budget of maybe £30 or £40 for a single aircraft type. MS are going to want aircraft on the Marketplace that sell quickly and in large quantity. Not sure when PMDG got so expensive, in the past I bought the 737 NG 600/700, 747 Queen and MD11X on disc and don't recall being that expensive - the Queen was maybe £50, can't find it in my Amazon order history ATM.

I believe it's a bug. Some have suggested turning off AI aircraft on the ground as somehow these are interfering with the player aircraft.

It does that sometimes but still on 1.8.30 AFAIK. the next patch is rumoured to hit 29th September, we shall see...

There is a discussion over at Avsim (think it might be the PMDG one) which states Asobo have got the fuel consumption all wrong. Apparently it is linked entirely to throttle position and doesn't differentiate between fuel burn at ground level or altitude. That explains why the GA aircraft are falling out the sky after 200 miles and not 400 miles and now it seems the jets too.

As I said above, just something that works a bit better than the default would be nice. Over the years when I've joined various VA's (usually lasted about a month) I collected some rather nice freeware jets for FS9 and FSX. Some actually quite superb. That might be a source to keep an eye for the next few months.

There's a 7 page thread on this at Avsim… Sadly I take this news as half empty rather than half full when it comes to seeing any complex airliners in FS20. We can only hope PMDG have sat down with Asobo and showing them what a flight sim actually needs to do (as opposed to a scenery simulator). At the moment we still haven't got a fully functional FMC system on the jets and even after the last patch it still doesn't keep the flight plan when you re-load a saved flight. Mind personally I always thought PMDG stuff a bit over-priced, probably get burned at the stake for that comment I know. Their 737 doesn't work very well in FSX-SE, funnily enough the FMC doesn't save the flight plan there either - something which seems to go back quite a few years. I will just be happy to get some Just Flight level jets in there to fly.

The functionality is there, they just didn't assign the keys. I just used Ctrl + and Ctrl - same as FS9/FSX. The only bind is there's no visual indication on screen as to using time acceleration or your chosen rate.

I don't think the update is actually out yet? I read elsewhere 29th September? Good as that will let me finish getting the current mishegas sorted.

Does not appear to mention or acknowledge the file download/looping issue though. Given this will probably be another multi-Gb install, one would have thought it might have been receiving some priority... :)

I have said previously in some areas, even the training ground at Sedona, the graphics look like poster art than photo realistic. This was also apparent on the numerous YT video clips that circulated before release watched on a variety of different monitors and TV screens. Ironically though, it was when the graphics looked bleached and washed out last weekend I realised the 1.8.30 patch had fallen over and corrupted my install (missing shaders possibly) and thus required my reinstall, now in its 5th and hopefully final day.

Unfortunately, no. That's why I had to do the Steam verify which then triggered the FS/Asobo full reinstall of the program. Even assuming they sort the file looping at any decent download speed issue, that's still a very inefficient way of fixing a damaged installation.

You will find many threads on this looping issue on the Steam forum and one or two at Avsim. Many people are experiencing it, including myself. It only started with the 1.8.30 patch which kept doing it, then suddenly aborted and let me in the game. Unfortunately quite apparent from the greyed out menu items and FS5 looking graphics there was major file corruption as a result. I'm on the Steam version and while Steam will verify its own files related to the game, the only way to repair/replace damaged core files is to download the whole thing again from the FS/Asobo server(which doing the Steam cache verify triggers). Unfortunately this is also prone to the same file looping issue except this time there is 100+Gb worth of files to download. The only workable solution people have found is to use a speed throttle such as Net Limiter and set it so FS20 downloads at no more than 500KB/s. That makes it a long slow process my friend, roughly 1.8Gb an hour and I've still got 60+Gb worth of files to download. can't see me flying before the weekend (I'm not leaving the PC on all night). Unfortunately MS and Asobos seem to be having a hard time acknowledging the fault is at their end or in the code. A report to Zendesk simply generated the reply they were sending out previously about slow downloads, flushing DNS etc. - but none of this works.

The program should detect if it needs patching on startup and go to the Update screen. However be aware many of us are currently having issues with the Asobo server looping on files and not downloading, you may need to use a utility called Net Limiter to throttle your FS download speed to a maximum of 500KB/s.

Just to confirm, turned out the patcher had aborted leaving me with a corrupted install. This has necessitated a complete reinstall of the game as there appears no mechanism to repair/replace just the damaged or missing files. However the download looping is there with a vengeance, the only solution has been to use Net Limiter to cap the speed at 500KB/s (roughly 56 hours to download the whole 102Gb install again). This has got some of the files downloaded but it's not a practical solution for the big files as I'm not leaving the PC on overnight. Numerous posts on the Steam FS forum and the official FS forum, but no-one from Asobo or MS is talking or even acknowledging the bug. Total nightmare and completely unworthy of a company like Microsoft to put their name to this mess.

Definitely a possibility. My patcher was having trouble if you recall and definitely hadn't finished but suddenly the game would load. However Marketplace was greyed out and the graphics didn't look right - too bright, as if some shaders were missing or corrupted. So on a hunch I did a Steam file verify which has now triggered FS20 itself into running a 102Gb download!

Looks like my install got corrupted after the patch which as you recall got stuck then suddenly I could get in the game. I did a Steam file verify and on starting FS20 it is now downloading 100+ Gb worth of files! I thought something was up as the Marketplace was greyed out so likely some of the shaders were missing or corrupted. Feet up, wait for it to finish and hopefully get flying later on.

I believe you *have* to use the mouse to adjust any input settings. Easier said than done when the aircraft is bouncing around in moderate air!

One thing I've noticed now the patch is up and running, without adjusting any of my previous graphics settings, flying over the USA it's like someone turned the sun up to double strength. Everything looks too bright and bleached. Any suggestions as to what I can tweak to tone this down a bit? Also flying over Midwest USA just fields sweet fanny adams else, checked my frame rate to see the sim running at all of 13 FPS (though it didn't seem jerky) so guess I'm going to have to play around with settings. Running an I7 4770 @3.5Ghz, GTX 1650 with 2Gb Vram and 24Gb of system RAM.

Personally I wold go for broke and jump straight in the 747! It's a nice aircraft and grows on me the more I fly with it. Lovely engine sound and as you head across the terminator into night very easy to lose yourself in the situation.

Yes it's all good. Bit of a white knuckle at KIDA as VR speed played chicken with the runway end but now happily cruising at 32,000 feet.

Couldn't agree more Tim, could never bring myself to utter the "white lie" to get hold of it and stood my ground with FSX and latterly XP11, until FS20 came along. Looking forward to getting back in this evening, now the patch seems to have completed, see if I can get the 747 "orf" at Idaho Falls and head across to Newark (New Jersey, not Northgate :) ). Then emulate the old Continental red eye from Newark to Gatwick, first time myself and the missus had a 747.

OP could also start with the basic training missions.