A little simulator nostalgia

As most folks are aware, Holger plans to come out with an updated version of his Glacier Bay scenery, with many designers contributing bits and pieces.  My little corner is re-creating a few buildings and bridges around Carcross, in the Southern Yukon.  I lived there for a time, and so will have my little cabin at Spirit Lake.   If you’ve got a favourite structure in that area, let me know!

Speaking to FSX performance

Adrian Woods in this blog post provides some perspective on FSX performance from a Microsoft point-of-view.  Is there a hint there about future plans for a patch?  Hard to say …

What else do I do?

I frequently get asked, “Do you work on flight simulation full-time?”  Indeed the FS world is a vortex that can absorb as much time as I want (especially with FSX here!), but it’s not a full-time gig for me.  In the real world (aka “the RW”), I provide consulting and coaching services to companies and individuals.  It’s an outgrowth of my executive and management experience, primarily in high-technology; which itself evolved from my Electrical Engineering/Computer Engineering background.  I have a corporate website which has lots more info on what I offer.  Recently I’ve begun to market my services beyond Victoria and to Vancouver and Seattle.

I  have a personal site too with some miscellaneous stuff.  Oddly that’s where I host my flightsim page.  I also maintain the webpage for the local activities of the ManKind Project service organization.  For them, I organize men’s groups, administer some email lists and provide other support.

As well I carve pumpkins, drive kids to the pool, wash the occasional dish and am on the Finance Committee for our housing complex.

Dealing with the desert

Unfortunately the textures used by FSX for the US Pacific Northwest and Western Canada make the area look like a wasteland, in my opinion and a few others as discussed here.  In that thread (this post) Holger Sandmann kindly puts some perspective on the issue.  Caution: AVSIM does little to discourage non-constructive posting, so you may have to do some wading through their threads for the useful content.

For the adventuresome, here’s a link to a thread with an interesting temporary fix for this issue in British Columbia, Alaska and Alberta.  As for any fix that plays with default files, caution: (a) back up first, and (b) be prepared to reinstall later.

They’re working on it . . .

Paul Lange lets us know that the ACES are aware of and looking at performance issues.  More FSX tweak advice is on its way soon apparently to FSInsider.com, and of course many people want to know if there will be a patch.  No word on that, but it seems to make sense that at least in the Vista/DX10 release they would address significant issues, hopefully for the XP/DX9 market as well.

And Nick Whittome has advice for those who are hot-under-the-collar.

Support for men on Vancouver Island

Working with the ManKind Project we are often approached by men looking for support, and although we can usually help to some degree, we sometimes refer men and women to other resources.  For men (males 16 or older) in Victoria, Canada, who have experienced emotional, physical or sexual trauma the Men’s Trauma Centre offers Victim Support Services & Group and Individual Counselling.  Clients may have suffered from abuse as a child, be a victim of crime, have been abused in relationship, or experienced some other traumatic event or events.  Support staff have many years of experience in this field.  They can contacted at (250) 381-6367 (general info or counselling) or (250) 381-0493 (Victim Services), or via email.

A little further up the Island, the Nanaimo Men’s Resource Centre offers a variety of services for men and women, to:

• provide support and referrals for men 
• promote connections with partners and families
• promote community awareness regarding men and men’s issues
• help men with family court/divorce, seperation, custody and access issues
• support men in learning to communicate and enrich existing relationships.

The Nanaimo Men’s Resource Centre, as I posted about earlier, is also starting up the Dad’s Make a Difference program, working with families immediately after the birth of the children to instill connection and responsibility in both partners.  This program is inspired by Gardner Wiseheart’s very successful program at Healthy Families San Angelo, begun about 12 years ago, which is now in many areas. 

For men in the Cowichan Valley, the Cowichan Men’s Resource Centre in Duncan provides a place where men can connect with each other, find assistance in crisis, and access community resources.  They can be reached at (250) 732-1471 or emailed for support or to volunteer.

I support these initiatives because they emphasize personal responsibility, healing, and fostering relationships rather than confrontation and blame.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X support link

Mike Gilbert points out this link to support issues for Microsoft FSX.  Includes FAQ, troubleshooting tips and how-to articles.

New NVidia 91.47 driver test with FSX

I tried out the new NVidia driver from a few days ago.  It’s still numbered 91.47, which I don’t understand, but now has an FSX suggested set of settings.  I ignored that and ran some benchmarks.  All use the same settings (saved as benchmark reference), and saved flight scenarios.  I wish I understood what has changed here.  The “17-Oct-2006″ 91.47 driver is still dated 11-Aug-2006. I set AF=16, and AA to 4, Texture Filtering to High Quality.  Here’s the results, using average frame rates.  All scenarios are in slew mode, hovering over or near the airport, included some airports in day, some at night, all with no traffic.  Sept and Oct refer to the 91.47 version.  Can anybody confirm these findings?

                        Sept        Oct

KLAX             9.8          10.2      Improvement – not significant

KORD             6.2          9.1        Improvement 2.9fps = 47%

KPMD             31.5        40.6      Improvement 9.1fps = 29%

EDDF              9.5          12.4      Improvement 2.9 fps = 31%

CYKA             19.0        27.2      Improvement 9.2 fps = 43%

 

So there appears to be a significant performance increase in FSX. Incidentally, here’s the chunk of FSX.cfg settings that allow viewing of min/average/max framerates.

EDIT: Thanks Doug for the correction.

[TextInfo.1]
Latitude=1,1
Longitude=1,2
Altitude=1,3
Heading=1,4
AirSpeed=1,5
WindDirectionAndSpeed=1,6

[TextInfo.2]
FrameRate=1,1
LockedFrameRate=1,2
GForce=1,3
FuelPercentage=1,4
AverageFrameRate=1,5 //Added [TextInfo.3]
Latitude=1,1
Longitude=1,2
Altitude=1,3
Heading=1,4
AirSpeed=1,5
WindDirectionAndSpeed=1,6
FrameRate=2,1
LockedFrameRate=2,2
GForce=2,3
FuelPercentage=2,4
AverageFrameRate=2,5 //Added

[SlewTextInfo.1]
Latitude=1,1
Longitude=1,2
Altitude=1,3
Heading=1,4
AirSpeed=1,5

[SlewTextInfo.2]
FrameRate=1,1
LockedFrameRate=1,2
AverageFrameRate=1,3 //Added

[SlewTextInfo.3]
Latitude=1,1
Longitude=1,2
Altitude=1,3
Heading=1,4
AirSpeed=1,5
FrameRate=2,1
LockedFrameRate=2,2
AverageFrameRate=2,3 //Added 

Another FSX Tweak Guide

Those of you visiting Matt Fox’s site and his summary of tweaks to improve FSX performance will have seen the link to this guide: Microsoft Flight Simulator X Tips, Tweaks and Config Guide (Adobe Acrobat Reader required), put together by Greg Germanoski.

Comments/feedback may be posted in this thread at AVSIM.

AVSIM also has Flight Simulator Tips and Tricks forum.

The usual cautions apply: back up any files first, and there’s always the possibility of needing to reinstall FSX.

Vancouver+ update getting close!

The first Release Candidate for Vancouver+ V1.1 has just been released to the beta team for weekend testing.  If it shakes out well, we will be able to release to the public as soon as the ecommerce process has been updated.

This upgrade will be free for Version 1.0 owners, and for those who have not yet purchased, V1.0 is available here. 

Hot news from Adrian Woods – gmax SDK next week

Adrian Woods, a member of the MS flightsim team, has posted on FSDeveloper.com that the gmax SDK (software development kit) and tools are due out next week.  Thanks for the tip, Nick!

This package will allow developers to make FSX compatible aircraft and objects.

Caution with using IE7 as a newsreader

The good news is that IE7, just released, can now read RSS newsfeeds.  The bad news is that it does not use the original format, stripping out the look and feel, but more importantly not providing all the info available in a more functional newsreader.  So, the links you see at the right-hand side of this page do not appear in IE7. 

So, I suggest you continue to use (or start to use) a fully-functional feedreader, such as RssReader, which I use.

Old-timer finds new home

Veteran flight simulation developer Bill Womack has moved his blog to WordPress.  Bill has contributed to such major titles as Tongass Fjords and Freight Dogs.  And of course Bill is the lead for the upcoming CYVR for FSX.

Welcome to WordPress, Bill. Now you show your wife your stats. Then she’ll say,”Oh, Bill I didn’t realize! Please spend more time on the computer!”

What tipped the move for Bill I think was the stats WordPress provides.  It allows me to see referring sites, so I can see what the forum chatter is and better respond here.   So for example today I can see:

gamespot.com/pc/sim/microsoftflightsi…	74
wordpress.com/tag/fsx	51
wordpress.com/tag/flightsim	13
gamespot.com/pc/sim/microsoftflightsi…	12
msmvps.com/blogs/thenakedmvp/archive/…	5
uk.gamespot.com/pc/sim/microsoftfligh…	5

see which posts folks are interested in:

FSX settings – early thoughts	221
Should you buy FSX now?	161
Another view on FSX settings	21
FSUIPC4 for FSX released	12
Active ACES blogs	7
For those who are trying out their FS9 s	4

and what search engine terms are leading folks to the site:

FSX.CFG	18
fsx patch	7
FSX tweak	4
fsx performance	4
FSX airports	3
FAX changing fsx.cfg	3

And I can look in more depth at any of these.  Of course I get a pretty graph of views.

FSX videos

This video shows FSX vs. a real-world landing in split-screen at Princess Juliana International.

You can find more FSX videos on youtube here.

Active ACES blogs

Lots of folks recommend dropping by the flights simulator development team (ACES) member blogs, but I know some are more active than others. Most don’t actively blog. The first step of course is to get yourself a newsreader, and subscribe to their RSS feeds. Then you won’t have to be checking back as you’ll get automatic notification.  And if you’re still into browsing to the ACES blogs the most active recently have been Mike Gilbert (link RSS feed) and Paul Lange (link RSS feed).  Thanks for keeping us up to date, Mike and Paul.

And of course you can subscribe to my RSS feed as well.

FSUIPC4 for FSX released

Pete Dowson has released his FSUIPC4 for FSX in freeware and payware versions. The freeware version allows provides an interface to a variety of third party applications.  The payware version (€24.00) provides joystick calibration, key assignment capabilities, button programming, greater flexibility for flight folder placement, weather filtering, autosave options, GPSout capability, and support.  Avaibable from simflight.

Trying FSX

I see on the forums a lot of folks reading my review and others that caution on performance, and making a decision not to buy FSX until the tweaks are refined, or there is a patch, or they get a new machine.  My recommendation was (and is) that if you’re unsure you download the trial version and give it a shot.  Performance varies a lot from machine to machine (and I think even the ACES aren’t quite sure why the variation yet), and you might be able to adjust settings to make it enjoyable.  Keep in mind that the demo areas are not as detailed as major urban areas, and your performance may vary.

And to the request by many for MS to provide a patch: they are already committed to a new Vista/DX10 version next year, and hopefully that will include some bug fixes as well.

Don’t forget to check the blogroll . . . and the “Microsoft Flightsim Team” links.

Lots of folks from the Microsoft Flight Simulator team and the community are publishing useful info on FSX.  There are a number of useful links on the sidebar to those blogs and other resources.

CYVR Building Fix for FSX

I neglected to mention here that last weekend I published a simple exclusion for the large non-existent building that MS placed at CYVR.  You can download it here from AVSIM.  MS mistook a black area on the tarmac, surrounded by white edge, as a building.  This was really an area of pre-load fill, covered by a black tarp, with white blocks around the edge to hold it down.  It’s since been removed.  To further confuse things there is construction near that area which is listed in an airport technical database.  Here’s what was placed in FSX:

And here’s a shot of what this looks like from the air.  Look in the middle left of the photo, and you can see a large black “L”.

http://www.globalairphotos.com/large/BC/Richmond/Airport/2006/211/2

In this photo, it really does look like a building, doesn’t it?  Lower right corner.

http://www.globalairphotos.com/large/BC/Richmond/Airport/2006/207/2

Overall MS has vastly improved CYVR in FSX over what we saw in FS9.

FSX Tweak summary

Matt Fox has kindly put together a summary of some of the FSX tweaks coming out.  To re-iterate Matt’s cautions: back up any files first!  When I install FS9 or FSX (in these days of cheap disk drives), I copy the entire folder to a backup location, so I have ALL defaults easily accessible.

Many of these tweaks are experimental and may have negative results on your system, and will likely be refined over the next little while.  So unless you’re eager to get tweaking and willing to risk problems, you can sit back and wait a bit.  There will probably be better versions later on as these developers find the sweet spot.