History of Flight Sim

http://fshistory.simflight.com/fsvault/msfs3.htm

Very interesting site for those who used to play with flight
simulators.

For those who just interested to know about how your fathers played
with PCs you can view the old programs. To be honest, I thought it was
already the state of the art when I spent RM5000 for a PC with only a
16-bit processor and graphics with only 16 colours. I was actually
excited about it.

Imagine what will happen in the next 20 years, when FS20 were to come
out. Full HD will a thing of the past. If only I can live that long.

FSX problem with NVIDIA 8600GT Card solved

I had bought the Forsa NVIDIA 8600GT Display card with 256Mbyte GDDR3,
for RM175 from Micron, at Kompleks Karamunsing, Kota Kinabalu.

Initially the card was faulty because I cannot install the driver in
full.

The replacement card was tested by Micron for the night and when I
installed in my PC, the driver can be installed but I still cannot
play FSX although I can play FS9 and Xplane9 at amazing frame refresh
speed, more than 30 frames/second even in the higest quality setting.

Luckily this tip came:

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=26165196

It is just that FSX cannot play when NVIDIA driver is in the Dual
Monitor mode. There is no such problem with AMD/ATI driver(HD3450
card).

My NVIDIA driver is the latest one dated Dec 2008.

When autogen were set to high, the frame speed dropped to less than 10
frame/second. With everything else set to ultra high except the
autogen being switched off, the frame rate increases to slightly more
than 20.

Although I salivate for the HD4670 with 512Mbyte DDR3 RAM, I believe
the price of RM300 does not warrant the quality increase for FSX. I
don't like autogenerated scenery or texture anyway. Whenever there is
a frame rate problem, I shall sacrifice autogen first. I would rather
that Flgiht Simulators use low resolution photosceneries for textures,
than autogenerated high resolution sceneries that are so artificial,
but the AI traffic is interesting but not essential.

State of the art Flight Sim(2008)

http://www.avsim.com/pages/1208/Orbx/Coffs.htm

It uses FSX 30cm/pixel aerial photography but it is extracted from a
22.5cm/pixel original database.

Hopefully FSX or any other FSIM should be upgraded to 22.5cm/pixel and
instead of a scenery of a 70,000 Coffs Harbour, the scenery should be
in large cities such as London.

Even with the Coffs Scenery, it requires 8800 gpu at a less than Ultra
High quality setting. My HD3450 will be too slow but so far it is
useable.

I'm using Tileproxy beta 8 in building, hopefully 1.1m/pixel ,
sceneries extracted from Microsoft Live map. Google is no longer
supported but it was not allowed.

This is done in my Vista 64. Initially I thought I cannot run tile
proxy but it turned out, I just need to disable the device signature
during boot by pressing F8 key for booting options.

http://groups.google.com.my/group/rec.aviation.piloting/browse_thread/thread/4ed14a277c8fdbc3?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=flight+simulator#eef61df3d41deb74

The above discussion group shows that flight simulators can be used
for Pilot Time provided instructors are available but this is in USA.

http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/regulatory/faa_8700-10.pdf
The above is the detailed document but it is better to read the group
discussion.

The approved FSIM that has the fastest site is ATC as shown by this
information:

http://www.atcflightsim.com/products/710/

It looks very interesting and does not appear to be very expensive
because it does not require any tilting mechanism. It duplicates a
Cesna instrument panel quite well.

It would be nice if this machine is available at Kota Kinabalu Air
Club. We can play around with it safely.

Flight Simulators for Pilot Training

This is a good review comparing FSX with Xplane9.
http://jaguarusf.blogspot.com/2008/05/x-plane-9-review.html

Xplane9 maybe good for experienced pilots and designers but FSX is
better for beginning pilots or novices.

Professional pilots may look down on fsim as a training tool, but its
tutorials and ATC prompts are useful for me to get a grip on the
essentials of piloting an aircraft. It only increases my interest in
getting a pilot's license as well as mastering some of the jargons
used by pilots, while having fun. I don't like to be pressured while
learning.

Playing FSX is fun and instructive. I suspect it is much more
difficult flying in FSX because of its limited vision and feedback,
but at least it is the safest and most comfortable way of learing the
essentials especially the terms, operating the instruments, ATC as
well as rules. I also like to memorise the checklists just in case.

Re: Flight Simulator Flying Using Google Earth

An excellent site for tileproxy and the settings required to maximise
the usability for tileproxy for different regions and areas.

Mr. Ed Truthan had tried all the 4 possible map services.

http://edtruthan.com/tileproxy/tutorial/

Flight Simulator Flying Using Google Earth

You can use Google Earth texture, with FSX terrains in order to get
good 3D views with photorealistic textures from Google Earth's
satellite photos.

I've not managed to download any Malaysian site yet because it may
take a long time. Once I've done it, I shall try to upload its video.

Youtube demo:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ApyCZyinqRg&feature=related

Tampa bay
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zFzwXcHrN7k&feature=related

San Francisco
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MGfozDZDSI8&feature=related

How to download tileproxy:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tileproxy/

How to setup:
http://edtruthan.com/tileproxy/ini/ProxyUser.INI
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=74929

seamax

Seamax is an ultralight amphibious plane.

It weighs around 300kg empty.

The best simulation for seamax is from Cloud9 in their Fly the Lakes (FTL) scenery package. It may be copy protected but the seamax files are useable when Cloud9 is uninstalled.

The seamax files can be used in FSX, as well as FS2002.

I've also finished modelling seamax based on pictures taken from websites for x-plane 8. It is useful in finding out about its aerodynamic characteristics but not as good as those done by Cloud9.

I shall transfer the characteristics of seamax as denined in FS into x-plane 8 model.

seamax is certainly the plane that I'd like to own and fly around Tanjung Aru, Kota Kinabalu. Please refer to my other blogspots.

Unfortunately I can't seem to be able to contact its manufacturer in Brazil.