Paul Lange tells us a lot about carrier ops in the upcoming FSX Acceleration, a long awaited capability in MSFS. It seems there should be enough info to allow third parties to develop working carriers (defined as moving, with catapults, lights and arresting cables).
Peter Dowson has released FSUIPC4 version 4.152 for FSX. This interface module is used by many addons, and the payware version has many nifty features.
The word has been out for a long time, and seems well understood by consumers: if you don’t have a newer computer (preferably dual core), with lots of RAM (1.5Gb+) and a good video card (256Mb+), best to stick with FS9 until you can upgrade. And lots of folks with specs that can run FSX ok still spend a lot of time in FS9 and appreciate the smooth performance and high frame rates. At the request of a customer, for people that are running both FS9 and FSX who have purchased Vancouver+ for FSX, you can now purchase Vancouver+ for FS9 and receive a 20% discount.
Previously the discount only applied if you purchased the FS9 version first. Thanks for the suggestion, Walt!
Despite my distrust in the value of anything branded Apple, we bought an iPod Shuffle for my step-daughters birthday. At least at the low price, I felt we submitting to the marketing hype for the overpriced products was not too painful.
I cleaned out our Music library, as iTunes indexed 10,000 items, 8,000 of which were irrlevant video game sound bites, etc. Unfortunately that also appears to have wiped out the three songs I did purchase long ago (I don’t remember what they are!). I assume I can recover those from the store. If I could access it. Any attempt to search for music in the store (which is still the most pathetically slow interface) results in the cheery message:
“We could not complete your iTunes Store request. An unknown error occured (-50).
There was an error in the iTunes Store. Please try again later.”
Now having wasted many hours on the phone with Apple in the past, only to discover that iTunes is a completely unsupported product, I’m not too keen on putting more effort in this. But I will this time, and I’m sure I’ll get her up and running eventually.
However, I will continue to advise folks to steer clear of anything Apple, unless they are confident that they are buying a supported product, and are aware of the bloated cost of the products. In certain focused application areas, I understand Apple is the way to go, but for the vast majority of the public, caveat emptor.
And yes Apple adds insult to injury by repeatedly spamming me, despite many attempts to request it to stop.
EDIT: so i recovered most of my purchased songs from my backup drive, and learned that in the iTunes store, if searched repeatedly, sometimes I didn’t get error -50. The painfully slow search engine occasionally functioned, enough for me to purchase some songs. Attempts to write to the device weren’t so successful. First pass worked fine, with a test set of songs. But after that all attempts to write a full slate of songs resulted in a “Cannot sync” error, after a long period of lock-up of the iTunes application. The device then disappeared from the window. Unplugging and plugging it back in resulted in a “Your iPod needs to be restored” message requiring reformatting. I did this several times.
To add a sense of fun to this, the write speed to the device was incredibly slow, taking many seconds to write each song. It would probably have taken 30 minutes to write 200 songs, if it actually ever got that for. It usually choked after 70 or so.
So it’s back to the store for an exchange, and a committment to ensure I don’t buy Apple again. I’m only exchanging it because of the monopoly iTunes has established for songs. If another site had a such a comprehensive list, I’d jump there in a sec. Let me know!
Another interesting learning bit: despite Apple’s offering of DRM-free capability (courageous and innoviate), very few artists are taking advantage of this. Ten years from now we’ll be laughing at the restrictions that hamper honest people, while having no effect on the universal no-cost availability of ripped DRM-free music.
UPDATE: 29-Jul-2007: I took the device back to Future Shop and they replaced it, and were willing to change the colour from blue to pink (girls are unpredictable, I guess). This one so far seems to work fine.
I also called AppleCare and they said the slow search speed and site access I experience is unusual. We used msconfig to turn off most everything, turned off firewalls, etc., but the problem persisted. No solution on that one.
Sneakers Computers in Victoria has a great setup of the magic box that drives 3 monitors at a time. They’ve got it set up with FSX and Vancouver+. Very impressive!
I also installed a beta version of Don Grovestine’s latest CYYJ for FSX. He’s added a bunch of AI that really spruces the facility up. I’ll post a link when it’s ready.
The expansion pack for FSX has been rebranded, “Acceleration” (was Adrenaline).
Here’s some screenshots on gamespot. Here’s a trailer. (Be patient through the ad!)
UPDATE: Paul Lange gives us more details here.
I haven’t got many links from the non-English boards, so if you have one, please send it along!
Simflight
Vancouver FSX released!!!
http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=63248
Which scenery?
http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=63245
Squamish delivery (Vancouver+ FSX)
http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=63327
Happy 4th of July. Langley has Mooney
http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=63295
Lights! City! Action!
http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=63334
exploring Vancouver+ (FSX)
http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=63410
Circuits at Chilliwack
http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=63429
Avsim
Heads up – Vancouver FSX released
http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=121&topic_id=407099&mode=full
A very good team
http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=147&topic_id=260432&mode=full
Buck fever
http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=147&topic_id=260361&mode=full
Downtown Vancouver
http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=147&topic_id=260423&mode=full
VANCOUVER + pour FSX
http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=270&topic_id=1009&mesg_id=1009
Flightsimworld
- Good Morning Vancouver -
http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=120272&st=0&gopid=1478740&#entry1478740
Sim-Outhouse
Vancouver+ for FSX Released
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=46407&highlight=vancouver
Vancouver for FSX, Comparison shot
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=46653&highlight=vancouver
Flightsim.com
A little tour over to Whistler
http://forums.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=10&topic_id=475561&mesg_id=475561
Go or No Go?
http://forums.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=10&topic_id=475279&mesg_id=475279
It is live, or is it…?
http://forums.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=10&topic_id=475276&mesg_id=475276
Early Morning to Langley
http://forums.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=10&topic_id=475224&mesg_id=475224
Just one of Vancouver+
http://forums.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=10&topic_id=475134&mesg_id=475134
Vancouver+
http://forums.flightsim.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=10&topic_id=475033&mesg_id=475033
Canadian Pilots
Vancouver+ FSX
http://z8.invisionfree.com/Canadian_Pilots/index.php?showtopic=8136
Flight Xtra’s
A Splashing Time
http://www.fsfx.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=2474
Friendly Flusi
Holger Sandmanns : Vancouver+
http://flusi.movie2digital.de/thread.php?threadid=4220
FlightSim.no
Bushflyvning på et helt annet nivå.
http://www.flightsim.no/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=348743&page=0&fpart=1
Jadair.com
fsx Vancouver+
http://www.jadeair.com.tw/modules/ipboard/index.php?showtopic=12908
The product has been out there for 4 days now, and our product support is transparent for everyone to see, and so far, considering the number of sales (and yes, they are exceeding expectations!) I’m pleased at how well the product is working. FSX is a strange platform to piggyback on, with its own share of unresolved issues, which can just get compounded by addons. Of course we contribute our own little glitches as well… ;)
A couple of users are experiencing a mysterious sudden drop in performance near CYVR/downtown (down to 0 fps!), which is quite interesting considering they have good systems and great performance elsewhere. We’ll work with them to understand this better.
Meantime, we’ve got a great team, and we’ve got great customers who are patient and cooperative when it comes to fixing things up. Thanks, all!
Some collected installation and performance tips on FSX SP1 can now be found in one FSInsider article. Scroll a fair ways down (like 75% of the way through) to get to the tips; the first part covers upgrading to SP1, change list for SP1 and notes about performance.
Tips covered there:
[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=n
[TERRAIN]
SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT=<number_of_frames>
[DISPLAY]
ForceFullScreenVSync, default is TRUE
ForceVSync, default is FALSE
[GRAPHICS]
DAY_THRESHOLD
NIGHT_THRESHOLD
[GRAPHICS]
DirtyRegionUpdateLimit=<integer>
[GRAPHICS]
MergeDirtyRegionUpdates=<0/1>
[SCENERY]
SmallPartRejectRadius=<pixels>
For some reason the article does not mention these tweaks:
[DISPLAY]
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=nand
[BUFFERPOOLS]
Poolsize=n
… nor does it refer t0 the mental spaghetti junction that is process address space allocation. You’ll also want to get a handle on water slider usage and implications.
Phil also suggests taking a look at Tom’s Hardware, where they run some graphics hardware benchmarks for FSX. I’d look at these with caution, they measure frame rates only: stutters/smoothness and scenery refresh are more important. My 7900GT ranks a close second on the chart to the 8800GTX but in the reality the performance is world’s apart. You’ll get a much better experience from the 8800GTX, with smooth flight, ground texture resolution will keep up better, etc. I think if you’re serious about upgrading, you should get an 8800GTS as a minimum. It has 15 times the shader ops of the 7900GT, but has that critical extra video RAM which will reduce the probability of graphics overload blurries. If you drop to 256Mb RAm in the 8xxx series, you can save a bundle, and if that’s important you may want to wait a while until the prices become more reasonable. In Canada you’ll pay $450 for the 8800GTS (640 or 320Mb), while the tempting 8600GT (256Mb) is only $164. If you really want to impress your friends and go broke, the 8800 Ultra is close to $900. Ouch.
It will now be released to the e-commerce folks. Anticipate that it’ll take a couple of days there to ensure all is well, before it’s available for purchase. Many thanks to the huge number of people that made this possible!
Here’s a shot of the configuration screen, where options can be chosen to optimize personal preferences and performance.
We found that when tested with FSGenesis mesh, the US fields on the southern edge of the Vancouver+ FSX coverage area showed some odd terrain contours. The FSG mesh is processed differently from ours, and currently will override ours in the US area, regardless of scenery priority. So we created some custom contours (LWM2 and LWM3 polys, for the technically minded) around those airfields that will work with either mesh.
This didn’t impact our testing period though, and we have less than 3 hours left for the testers to find any show-stoppers.
