June 6, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments
Back in the day, long before the GBS YouTube channel…I would blog about my flight sim adventures. It’s really why I started this blog site over 10 years ago. As I began planning the WorldFlight 2018 GBS Tour, I spent a few days kicking around whether I would record any of these flights for YouTube, stream on YT and/or Twitch or just blog about them. I decided to return to my roots of just simply blogging about these adventures. I know as a civilization we’ve somewhat moved away from reading about things. But I figure there may still be a few folks who frequent my blog from years ago that might enjoy this. So with out further adieu, let’s begin.
Just to familiarize yourself with our tour map. I’ll be posting an updated image of this map as we complete the legs of the tour.
I made my way from Denver, Colorado to Sydney, Australia and allowed myself some time to rest from the jetlag of a long, cross the pacific flight. I’ve been hired to operate a world tour, shuttling lucky passengers who have all gathered in Sydney on a luxurious 46 leg, 25+ country world tour. Money appears to be absolutely no object to these people as they certainly seem to have no cares in the world. For the sake of sheer adventure, we will be changing aircraft frequently as we make our way around the globe. Thankfully, as their captain…I’m qualified to operate a variety of Boeing and Airbus aircraft. I’ve partnered with many global airlines to utilize their aircraft for the tour. Funnily enough, they welcome this as we’ll be moving aircraft from one airport to the other on their behalf.
Leg 1 of our world tour kicks off on an early, rainy fall morning in Sydney. Our tour group is a mishmash of all nationalities which is all part of the plan. Think of it as a self-guided tour group. Meaning we have passengers who are familiar with our tour stops and they will spend time sharing information with each other along the tour. Pretty cool concept if you ask me. Plus what better way to check out all the wonderful aspects of these cities, the food, the nightlife etc.
History of City
Cairns was founded in 1876 and named after William Wellington Cairns, Governor of Queensland from 1875 to 1877. It was formed to serve miners heading for the Hodgkinson River Goldfield. Cairns is located on the east coast of far north Queensland. The city is the 5th most populous in Queensland and ranks 14th overall in Australia. Cairns is a popular tourist destination because of its tropical climate and access to the Great Barrier Reef, which is one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
History of Country
As for Australia, officially named the “Commonwealth of Australia” which is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world’s sixth-largest country by total area. Neighboring countries include Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor. Our tour will actually visit both Indonesia in just a few legs and PNG towards the end as we make our way back to Sydney.
History of Airport
The Cairns airport is an international classification airport. Its early history goes back to 1928 when a pilot named Tom McDonald started flying his de Havilland Gipsy Moth off a sand ridge near the present airport. He could only land and take off between high tides. During one emergency, Tom was forced to take off from beer barrels.
Today, the airport has direct flights to 18 international and 30 domestic destinations and many general aviation flights including a number of helicopter operators. Flights are operated to all major Australian cities and tourist destinations, regional communities in Far North Queensland and a number of international destinations in the Asia-Pac region with connections all over the world.
The Cairns airport has one runway measuring 10,354 feet (3,156 meters) in length. The airport you’ll see is a payware add-on airport by Orbx.
History of Airline
Today we are flying for Qantas. Qantas is the flag carrier of Australia and its largest airline by fleet size, international flights and international destinations. It is the third oldest airline in the world, after KLM and Avianca. Qantas was founded in November 1920, it began international passenger flights in May 1935. The name Qantas is actually an acronym for its original name of “Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services. Qantas is nicknamed “The Flying Kangaroo”.
The aircraft we’re flying today is the Boeing 737-800. Qantas currently has 70 of these aircraft in service today which clearly makes it their workhorse aircraft.
The flight today is an actual real-world flight which Qantas operates between Sydney and Cairns in the Boeing 737-800.
Flight Briefing
QFA1066
YSSY – YBCS
Planned Fuel – 11110kg
Planned Altitude – 36,000
Distance – 1062
Flight Time – 2 hrs 55 mins
Route: DEENA7 RIC H76 NBR H105 HACHI Q165 VOMPA Q499 FISHY TOTY4W
Flight Journal
It’s June 2nd, it’s early, it’s wet and it’s cool in Sydney this morning. The ground crew is busy getting our Boeing 737-800 ready to go. Our tour group will soon be arriving by bus. The Sydney airport have granted us permission to board from the tarmac.
Our excited travelers have arrived and boarded the aircraft. Along with luggage and extra cargo, we’ve been granted permission to push, start and taxi to the active runway.
Line up and wait for 16R
Rotate
Note the visual immersion effects around the fan and across the wing as we climb out via the DEENA7 STAR.
Above the clouds as we climb to FL360 (36,000 feet).
Simply beautiful
Time to descend via the TOTY4W arrival.
Making our right turn to join the runway 15 approach.
Gear down, flaps 40
Runway in sight
First leg is in the books. Our tour passengers and their baggage are being offloaded to enjoy their brief say in Cairns, Australia.
Simulator Specifics
Prepar3d v4.2
ActiveSky Weather Engine
ActiveSky Cloud Art
Envtex & Envshade
PMDG 737-800 (Qantas livery)
Orbx Global Texture
Orbx Australia
Orbx Cairns Airport
VATSIM
Route Planning Tools
AivlaSoft PFPX
Navigraph Charts Desktop
FlightAware
FlightRadar24
SkyVector
Google Maps
Computer Hardware Specs
Thank you for taking the time to read this report. Our tourists will spend a little time visiting the sites around Cairns and we’ll be departing soon for Broome.
Until next time…
Happy Flying!
Jerry
June 3, 2018 / admin / 2 Comments
I made a decision a few years ago not to attempt to become a “Breaking News” blog site. I just don’t have time and I’m just one guy. Most of the flight sim related content I write about either has to do with my own involvement in the hobby or news/information about products I own and use in my sim. Sometimes I comment on newsworthy items within my writings as I often have opinions regarding these things. After all, my experience in this hobby goes back a long, long time. The title of this writing is called “FSLabs Making News – Once Again”.
If you search my blog site using FSLabs, you’ll find two articles. You can read article one here, and article two here if you desire. In each of these articles I more or less refer to the news from earlier in the year where FS Labs got caught inserting malware into their Airbus A320 aircraft. This action according to FS Labs was in an effort to catch would be software pirates.
Before I continue any further, allow me just to state that I’m well aware software piracy runs amuck not only in the flight sim community, not only in the gaming community…but is an issue across the board for all software developers. While more needs to be done to stop this behavior and bring those who commit these crimes to justice, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this. The steps FS Labs initially took was very much the wrong way.
About FSLabs
FlightSimLabs (FSLabs for short) is an payware, add-on aircraft developer who has been around for a few years. One of their first products was the Concorde-X. The Concorde-X was developed for Microsoft FSX and was quite popular. Those who have been around for a while may remember the Concorde was a featured, default aircraft in FS9, but removed in FSX. Since the Concorde-X product, FSLabs have been working on developing near study level replicas of the Airbus A320 and A319 aircraft. It’s their A320 product which first got FSLabs into a bit of hot water with the FS Community.
The Malware Debacle
As I mentioned earlier, FSLabs first ruffled some feathers in the FS Community back in the February 2018 timeframe. The story was so big that even bloggers, writers who would never even think to write about flight sim news covered it. Here’s one of those articles. In a nutshell, FSLabs wrote a bit of code which installed a “Chrome Password Dump” which was hidden inside the A320 installer. This bit of malware could extract users personal information which is stored within the Chrome browser including passwords and billing information.
The founder of FSLabs (Lefteris Kalamaras) did apologize for the including such intrusive code in the A320 download and stated “I want to reiterate and reaffirm that we as a company and as flight simmers would never do anything to knowingly violate the trust that you have placed in us by not only buying our products but supporting them and FlightSimLabs”. He further stated “While the majority of our customers understand that the fight against piracy is a difficult and ongoing battle that sometimes requires drastic measures, we realize that a few of you were uncomfortable with this particular method which might be considered a bit heavy handed on our part.”
My Opinion Thus Far
As many others have pointed out in various articles and blog postings, the action taken by FSLabs and its founder Lefteris Kalamaras is disturbing, highly unethical and while I’m not a lawyer, I would even think this action borders on illegal behavior. While much of the flight sim community compares FSLabs and their A320 to the likes of PMDG and their lineup of Boeing study level aircraft, with the right apologies and follow-thru, I personally could have considered giving them a second chance. After all, forgiveness right? But as the weeks and months from the initial news regarding the malware unfolded, it has once again thrust FSLabs into the news and once again it appears they are not doing the things they need to do to win trust within the community.
PR Debacle
One might think if FSLabs were sincere in their apologies they would just ensure everything they did going forward was 100% positive within the flight sim community. They would keep their heads down, develop the finest Airbus products available and provide awesome support to the community. Then hope, pray and beg for the forgiveness from the community. But no…in recent days two additional little bugbears have popped up which have further ruffled feathers in the community.
The first installment of how bad can you run a flight sim add-on company was how FSLabs and their founder have been threatening some folks over in the Reddit community and perhaps other bloggers/writers. The second major mess-up appears to be in how their A320 installer is writing a cmdhost.exe file under the Windows system32\ and SysWOW64 directories.
While I’m not an application developer, I do understand enough about the Windows operating system to know that these directories are no place for third party installers to write anything to. From previously published articles it appears this action was a necessary part of its eSellerate infrastructure and provides communications between the eSellerate servers and the FSLabs installed product in an activation interface scenario.
Final Thoughts on this matter
Again, it’s not my intent to report news. I would much rather spend my time flying and writing about all the wonderful things taking place in the flight sim community. However, as I often receive emails asking for assistance and advice related to various subjects in the hobby, I felt I wanted to at the very least share my thoughts on all this. The very sad part of this entire story is FSLabs have done a remarkable job (from all that I’ve heard) on developing a near study level Airbus A320. I actually would have loved to own this product, but as I previously stated, I will NEVER purchase anything from FlightSimLabs. Of course, I don’t believe my reluctance in purchasing their products will bankrupt them. However, while I will not outright say you should avoid purchasing their products, I will just encourage you to conduct your own research and just be very careful if you do decide to purchase any FSLabs product.
Are you an Airbus Fan?
I’ve got to admit that my passion for tubeliners isn’t in the Airbus camp. I’m a Boeing guy. But while I may prefer Boeing to Airbus, I do enjoy from time to time flying the smaller Airbus A318/A319 & the A320/A321 aircraft variants as this opens up a totally new and different world to virtual aviation. It allows me to simulate airline operations for the likes of Frontier, EasyJet and many others who are 100% operating Airbus aircraft. Or it allows me to simulate the Airbus operations for American and British Airways who both operate a mix of Boeing and Airbus aircraft within their fleet. The wait will soon be over as I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Aerosoft A318/A319 & A320/A321 series of aircraft will be released for Prepar3D v4. I owned these for FSX and earlier versions of P3D and have missed them in P3D v4. Aerosoft is a software developer we can trust to not only develop and support a quality aircraft simulation product but do it without playing silly buggers with us in the process. The Aerosoft Airbus series is scheduled to release on 26 June and once I make my purchase, download and install…you can expect a full review here on my blog. Of course, as it’s been over a year since I’ve operated an Airbus aircraft, I’ll need some time to come up to speed on them. But hopefully it’s just like riding a bike.
As always, thanks for reading. Look for my blog report from the first leg of my WorldFlight GBS 2018 tour to drop on Wednesday. It was a fun flight from Sydney to Cairns and as I type this, I’m actually flying leg 2 from Cairns over to the western corner of Australia and the city of Broome. I hope you’ll return to Planes, Trains and Automobiles (and Farming too) to catch up on all the action.
Happy Simming!
Jerry
June 2, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments
The organizers of WorldFlight, have prepared the 2018 version of their world tour to raise money for various charities around the world. Each November, teams from around the globe participate in this annual week long event. Many of these same teams, stream their flights on Twitch & YouTube from one of many full-sized flight simulators around the world which have been setup.
Over my 35+ year history with computer based flight simulation, I’ve circumnavigated the globe many times and in many different aircraft. In 2010, I embarked on an “Around the World” journey in a single engine Mooney Bravo which consisted of 75 individual flight legs, spread out over approx. 45 days. The total trip mileage was 35,816 nm and consisted of 201.5 flight hours. If you are interested, you can view my trip log here.
I’ve flown the Worldflight tour (on my own) many times. Last year (2017) I completed it in the PMDG Boeing 737-800. As it was just a “for fun” flight, I didn’t keep a flight log but it was a lot of fun just the same. For 2018, I’m going to attempt to do a better job with keeping a flight log, showcasing on my blog site. Just like the old days!
As it would be impossible for a single pilot to fly the complete route, during the actual even timeline…I’m planning to start my journey in early to mid June. The general purpose of doing this is to help raise awareness for the official event in November and expose as many of my viewers to this awesome charity event.
Unlike last year where I used the same aircraft type to complete the tour, this year I’ll use a variety of aircraft from my virtual hangar including both Boeing and Airbus aircraft. The Boeing types will include 737, 747, 777 and 787. Airbus will be a A319, A320 and A321 variants. In addition, you can expect to see a variety of airline liveries throughout the journey. As the tour begins in Sydney, Australia…I’ll kick the tour off with Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia.
In some (perhaps most) instances, the two airports which make up each leg may not have real-world flights connecting them to each other. In cases like this, I’ll use my own imagination to determine what airline would make the most sense to operate and which aircraft type. A lot of the decisions driving this will be the availability of aircraft liveries. But I’ll strive to do my best to keep a variety throughout the journey.
The same applies for airport scenery. While I own a lot of different airport sceneries, I don’t own all the airports we’ll be visiting during this tour. If I can find quality freeware airports that won’t break my sim or cause issues, I’ll consider using them. But in some cases, default scenery will just have to be used.
The 2018 WorldFlight Tour begins in Sydney, Australia and travels a westerly direction (see map below). This tour will consist of 46 legs, covering an approx. 36,153 nm while visiting over 25 different countries.
I’m really not sure how long it will take me to complete this tour. Perhaps I’ll try to wrap the last few flight legs around the same time as the actual event is taking place. It might be fun to fly the last leg or two on VATSIM at the same time the actual event is taking place. But only time will tell if this will be possible. You can follow along with my progress visiting my blog site and the 2018 WorldFlight Page I’ve setup.
Thanks for reading and bon voyage.
Jerry
May 30, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments
Before I start this review. Please allow me to get the fine print out of the way.
The product I am reviewing was purchased by me and for my own personal use. I receive absolutely no compensation of any form (cash, credit, discounts, promises) for reviewing this product. I have not contacted, nor have I been contacted by the vendor to provide this product review. The opinions expressed (good or bad) are my own, your mileage may vary.
OK…with the legal disclaimer out of the way, allow me to get started. Like many of you, I purchased the QualityWings 787 for P3D v4 within minutes of it being released. I’ve personally been anxious about this aircraft release from the time I first learned of it. However, I’ve often been critical of QualityWings for their decision to first release this aircraft for FSX and FSX: SE. But I’m also man enough to admit that I’m biased as I’ve not thought much about FSX since the early days of P3D v3.x and certainly have no interest in FSX now that the 64 bit P3D v4 is available and performing so well.
Study Level She’s Not
A question which is popping up just about everywhere has to do with whether or not the QW787 is a study level aircraft similar to any of the PMDG or FSLabs aircraft. For the record, I don’t currently own (nor will I ever) any FSLabs aircraft. The reason for this can be summed up here. But I do own the PMDG Boeing 737, 747 and 777 and enjoy flying each and every one of them. I can certainly confirm the QW787 can’t be compared to the likes of the PMDG Boeing lineup, but she’s still a joy to fly.
Study vs Quality
I make no bones about the fact that I’m NOT a real world pilot. I suppose some might wonder how I can spend over 35 years flying computer based sims, enjoy them passionately and not have any interest in real world aviation. Simply put, when I was younger and had more time, I didn’t have the money. A decade or so ago, I had the money…but just not enough time. Now days…well, as I’m older the cost of learning to fly is much more expensive and I suppose I just have a lot of other interests in my life. At least this is my story and I’m going to stick to it.
While others may see PMDG as a developer of study level aircraft, I see them as developers of quality simulation aircraft. Some folks might not see the difference between these two things…but I certainly do. As an example, I really have no idea if the PMDG 737 performs like the real thing. I believe it does as that’s what others say…but my only real experience comes from riding a few thousand miles a year in one for work related trips. Likewise, I have no idea if the PMDG 747 performs like the real thing. But from my point of view in my nice business class seat, I’ll just order another glass of wine and I’m a happy passenger.
The point I’m making here is while I do enjoy the level of detail and the tasks which must be carried out to be able to simulate flight in a PMDG 737, 747 or 777….I really have nothing to compare that to other than the fact that I appreciate the level of quality which goes into a PMDG aircraft. But I’m starting to digress and this article is reading more like a review of PMDG so let me get back on track. The QualityWings 787 Dreamliner at this point in time, is not study level and it’s also not on the same level of quality as that of the PMDG models I own. But I believe it can be.
Bugs
I honestly can’t remember the last time I purchased a flight sim add-on aircraft which was 100% bug free on day of release. Most likely the reason I can’t remember is because in the history of flight simulation (and I have just about been around the entire time) no aircraft that I’m aware of has ever been released 100% bug free. Yes, the QW787 has a few bugs. Most that I’ve discovered I would classify as minor annoyances, but a few certainly qualify to be labeled and identified as major. Fortunately, I’ve personally not discovered anything I would label as a show-stopper. Here are a few of the bugs I’ve discovered.
ActiveSky and WX Radar CTD – When using both ActiveSky for P3D v4 (ASP4) and using the onboard wx radar features of the QW787, a CTD or Crash to Desktop can occur. While some may identify this as a show-stopper bug, the CTD can be avoided by simply not using the wx radar features. QW’s are aware of this and working on a fix. This is the only bug which has caused me any issues which I couldn’t overcome.
VNAV Issues – Some folks are experiencing various issues related to VNAV mostly during the descent.
LNAV Issues – Consisting of the aircraft attempting turns too early and/or overshooting turns altogether.
Altitude Constraints on SID/STARS – I’ve experienced both while flying the QW787.
If I’m not mistaken, Qualitywings have recognized these issues as bugs and are working on a fix. As of a few days ago, the ETA for the hotfix was in approx. 2 weeks.
Bottom Line
I’m extremely happy with the purchase and I look forward to the hotfix patch which hopefully will resolve all the issues. I’ve spent several hours flying this beautiful aircraft on mostly short hops of no more than 2-3 hours. The QW787 Dreamliner is a new favorite in my hangar. I’ll leave you with a few recent images of this beautiful aircraft from some of my recent flights. I’ll also return with an updated post once the hotfix has been released. But if you are looking to add a Boeing 787 Dreamliner to your fleet for P3D v4, then look no further than the QualityWings version. I believe you’ll be pleased you did.
Until next time…
Happy Dreams
J
May 26, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments
Over the past several weeks I’ve been catching up on the latest information regarding all things Flight Sim. I can’t help but notice so many people are just throwing their hard earned money down the drain. I simply don’t understand it. What am I talking about? I’m talking about my fellow flight simmers who are wasting their money on Prepar3d v4. Allow me to explain.
History Repeating Itself?
Going back to the early days of FSX, we flight simmers spent a lot of time tweaking just about everything we could tweak in an effort to eek out an additional few FPS and also do our level best to avoid the dreaded OOM or Out of Memory error. Those were fun times…NOT!
Initially the process went something like this. Run FSX (same applied for P3D v1, v2 and v3) on a 64 bit OS to take advantage of the full 4GB of VAS (virtual address space). In comparison, a 32 bit OS would only allow you 2GB of VAS. But you still had to pray constantly that your payware departure airport, your payware aircraft and your payware arrival airport (plus all the scenery in between) didn’t produce an OOM on final approach. How frustrating to spend 2, 4, 8 or more hours flying to experience that annoying dinging sound in the final 5-10 minutes of flight then ***POOF*** the OOM error and then CTD.
As more time progressed, additional tweaks were discovered which would gain you a very small percentage of performance. Tweaks to the .cfg file and tweaks using Nvidia Inspector would gain you even more performance. It was all worth it, because even the smallest performance gain could mean the difference between success or failure.
I must give credit to both Dovetail Games and Lockheed Martin. First Dovetail, DTG were successful at improving their FSX: Steam Edition. FSX: SE performed much, much better than the older FSX Boxed Edition. Likewise, with the release of Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3d v3.x, even more performance related changes were made which reduced the OOM’s and CTD’s considerably, unfortunately….not completely.
A Brand New Day
About a year ago, I wrote a piece titled “The Last OOM?” The very next day I followed that article up with another piece titled “Flight Simulator 11 is finally here”. Both articles were focused on the much anticipated release of Prepar3D v4. P3D v4 was the first 64 bit flight sim platform based on the ESP platform and we all held our breath as we installed it, loaded it up with our add-ons and took the skies.
Bad Habits are hard to break
Unfortunately, they really are. I’ve mentioned many times about the large investment I’ve made over the years in my flight simulation hobby. During the time between the release of FSX, P3D v2 and P3D v3…I had accumulated a great deal of 3rd party add-ons for the platform. I’ve been extremely fortunate, that so much of my investment (especially with airport scenery) I made in the early days have been able to carry forward into the 64 bit world with no need to repurchase anything. A few aircraft (PMDG, A2A) I’ve repurchased due to the change in license agreements…but I’ve gladly done this because I really enjoy this hobby. But I made a decision the day I spent my $199 for the professional version of P3D v4, that only…AND I MEAN ONLY…add-ons 100% compatible with v4 would be installed into the sim. Anything else is truly a waste of money.
Don’t Waste Money
This sort of ties back into the title of this blog posting. This morning I was perusing through a few Facebook groups and saw multiple discussions regarding problems some folks are having with Prepar3D v4.x. Everything I read could be summed up into one category and that would be “self-inflicted stupidity”. Perhaps I’ve just coined a brand new term, but I doubt it as I often group some folks in my real world IT day job into that category. Just stop the madness.
If you’ve spent your hard earned money to purchase Prepar3D v4, and you want the very best performance….just download it, install it and pretty much leave it alone. You don’t need to spend a lot of time tweaking it and you most certainly don’t need Nvidia Inspector. Install add-ons which are P3D v4 compatible, wait patiently (along with the rest of us) for others to be updated and made compatible and by all means, stop trying to hack old FS9 and early FSX add-ons into v4. Just stop it!
Final Thoughts
Prepar3D v4 (currently v4.5) has been out almost one year. During the past twelve months, dozens of 3rd party add-ons have been made v4 compatible with many more on the way (including the Aerosoft Airbus). If you are a fan of the Microsoft ESP platform (like me), then P3D v4 is absolutely worth the cost and it will give you hours and hours and hours of rock solid performance with no OOM’s, CTD’s or other annoying issues which make you want to pull your hair out. And it will do all this without spending hours, and hours and even more hours tweaking.
Until next time….
More flying….less tweaking!
Jerry
May 24, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments
Ladies, Gentlemen and Children of all ages who absolutely love everything avgeek, the wait is over. Yes, QualityWings released their Prepar3d v4 version of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner on Wednesday. Earlier in the week, news broke that QW had lifted the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with their beta test team and images, videos and discussions began appearing all over the interwebz. The assumption was the QW787 release was imminent.
It’s been a long and winding road
According to my blog site search engine, the first mention of the QW 787 Dreamliner in any of my writings was back on 22 June 2017. Later in 2017 from a hotel room in Orlando, I followed up with my comments regarding the fact QW opted to release the 787 for FSX (boxed) and FSX: Steam Edition before any version of Prepar3D. This was somewhat of a head scratcher for me especially since P3D v4 had been out for about 5 months at this point and other aircraft developers (PMDG, A2A and others) had managed to release their aircraft which were originally developed for FSX and older versions of P3D with P3D v4 installers. But oh well…we would just have to be patient.
The Un-official Race
I’ll admit that over the years I’ve been slightly critical of QualityWings. I’m not the only one that has wondered “what the heck are these guys thinking” when it comes to the decisions they’ve made. I often speculated just how long it would take them to release their 787 for P3D v4 and even felt it would be well after Aerosoft released their Airbus A318/A319 & A320/A321 product for v4. I guess it’s a good thing that I didn’t actually wager any money against this bet, as I would have lost. The guys at QualityWings have beat Aerosoft by country mile. As I recently discussed, the Aerosoft busses won’t be released until 26 June. So congratulations QW.
Not a First Impressions Article
I’m going to wait a few days before I write my official “first impressions” piece. I feel I need some more time in the aircraft before I’m able to write a fair and balanced piece. But I’ll certainly share two screenshots and a bit of commentary from my inaugural flight last evening. I plan to spend some of this upcoming long, holiday weekend in the Dreamliner and will have a much better sense of just how good (or bad) this aircraft is. But I can tell you this much. My initial impression of this is QualityWings have lived up to using the word “Quality” in their brand. I’m impressed.
Cruising at FL360 enroute from KDFW to KDEN. As I’ve discussed before, I really don’t have the time to fly a lot of long-haul flights. So while the Dreamliner truly was designed for long-haul and even ultra long-haul flights, most of my use will most likely be fictional flights of no more than 2-3 hours in length.
The “Sporty” style of the B787 Flight Deck is impressive. While this aircraft shouldn’t be compared to a study level PMDG aircraft, it truly isn’t bad. There’s still enough work that needs to be done to ready this aircraft for flight to keep me 100% interested. I’m fairly confident, the QW 787 Dreamliner will get used often.
One Small Issue
Ok…well, perhaps it really isn’t that small. Especially considering I did experience a CTD (crash to desktop) on my inaugural flight. One flight, one CTD…I guess one could say it might be a bigger issue. But after reaching cruise altitude, I was messing about with the weather radar features and while doing so experienced the CTD. This was the first CTD I’ve ever experienced in P3D v4 and certainly the first CTD on the new Beast v5 gaming machine. But I see absolutely no reason to panic. I’m fairly certain this product will be like most others….there will be a few quirks that will get resolved in an update patch/fix soon.
The good news, I run auto-save via FSUIPC. FSUIPC performs an auto-save of my flight, complete with all aircraft configuration settings every 15 minutes. I was able to re-launch P3D and resume my flight (just like nothing ever happened) from the latest save.
OK…well I must get to work now. I quickly wrote this piece while easing into my Thursday morning in the office. The coffee is gone and I must go find more or today will be a long and difficult day.
Until next time….I’ll be dreaming of my next Dreamliner flight.
Jerry
May 15, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments
Aerosoft Airbus for Prepar3D v4 Release Date Announced
Ladies and Gentlemen…the wait is almost over. Earlier today, there was a not-so-public announcement regarding the date which we could expect the highly anticipated release of the Aerosoft Airbus A318/A319/A320 & A321 series for Prepar3d version 4.x.
The announcement was posted in the Aerosoft forums by Mathijs Kok (see below)
What? You didn’t see the release date? OK…hang on, let me try this again……
Is this any better?
LOL Yes, it was hidden in white text and one needed to simply highlight the area to see the special hidden message. But just in case you still can’t see it, the target date for release of the Aerosoft Airbus A3xx series for P3D v4 is 26 June.
This is really great news for the flight sim community. Especially those who have made the move to P3D v4. It feels like a mini-lifetime since I’ve flown the Airbus. I’m mostly a Boeing guy, but I did purchase the Aerosoft Airbus series for FSX and used it in P3D up to version 3.x. I must admit that I was never that proficient in the Airbus and I’ll certainly be starting over from scratch at learning her once again. But I’m really excited for this release for a few reasons.
First, while I’m mainly a Boeing fan, I do enjoy flying a variety of aircraft and truly enjoy simulating many different airlines both in the US as well as in the UK and Europe.
Second, I’ve been following the progress of the Aerosoft Airbus for P3D v4.x from day one of the release of the sim platform. While others managed to get their older 32 bit versions of their aircraft converted to 64 bit compatibility, Aerosoft took the approach of practically rewriting the entire aircraft series (or much of it) and states that many aspects of the Aerosoft Airbus A3xx Series will be the most advanced you’ll see.
Third, and this is the most important. Upon installing the Aerosoft Airbus A3xx series we won’t have to worry about any malware being hidden inside the installer. The same can’t be said of the FSLabs version as reported here.
Fourth, while pricing information hasn’t been made public just yet. Mathijs Kok has stated multiple times that Aerosoft does not charge twice for the same code. In other words, if you purchased the Aerosoft Airbus for FSX, you’ll only be charged for the code which has been modified to ensure it’s compatibility for P3D v4. This is extremely fair.
So 26 June is a Tuesday. I’ve already marked my calendar to remind me a day or two before. Between now and then I’ll re-watch some of the older procedure videos and be ready to purchase, download and install both packages (A318/A319 & A320/A321) into my sim.
I can’t wait…
Until next time…
JT
May 1, 2018 / admin / 2 Comments
At the end of the day, are we to blame? Did we, the flight simulation community play a role in the demise of Dovetail Games Flight Sim World? For the record, while I only spent about 12-15 hours in Flight Sim World and most of these hours were spent playing back in the June/July 2017 timeframe…I have made every effort to keep my eyes and ears open to the news regarding updates, future plans etc. From much of the information I read prior to the announcement FSW would be cancelled, I found both the progress and the direction the game was headed to be mostly favorable. While I personally don’t mind owning early access game titles, I never saw FSW (in its current state) as a viable replacement to Prepar3D which is my flight simulator of choice. But this certainly doesn’t mean it couldn’t at some point became a replacement for P3D.
A Brief History of Flight Simulation
For me to truly do this article justice and hopefully communicate my thoughts appropriately, especially considering the title of this blog post. I would like to briefly share the history of this wonderful hobby. I promise it will be brief…
Really it all goes back to the late 1970’s and early 1980’s and a game developer called subLOGIC founded by Bruce Artwick. The first generation subLOGIC Flight Simulator was originally offered for the Apple II (1979) and TRS-80 (1980) computers. The second generation came about in December 1983 (again for the Apple II) and eventually for the Commodore 64 in June of 1984. This was my first experience AND when the passion of flight simulation hit me as a teenager.
In the early 80’s (81-82), Microsoft obtained the license to port the subLOGIC Flight Simulator to IBM compatible PC’s. This would be called Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 and was released in November 1982. I’ve often heard this was at the direction of Bill Gates and this is an important fact to remember as I’ll reference this again later in this article.
Between the release of MSFS 1.0 (1982) and the year 1995, Microsoft released versions 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and 5.1. Between the years of 1996 and 2012, Microsoft released Flight Simulator 95 (mid 1996), Flight Simulator 98 (mid 1997), Flight Simulator 2000 (late 1999), Flight Simulator 2002 (October 2001), Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight (FS9) (July 2003), Flight Simulator X (FSX) (October 2006) and finally Microsoft Flight (February 2012).
The year 2006 is an important year to focus on during our little history lesson. Not only was Microsoft FSX released in 2006, but it was also the same year Bill Gates announced he would transition from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time.
Each of these official Microsoft releases, spanning over 30 years, continued building on the progress from what subLOGIC released in 1979. We can argue that really FSX was the final true simulator Microsoft released….but that is a discussion for another time. The key point I am wanting to make here is between MSFS 1.0 and MS Flight, 30 years of development, 30 years of improvements and simply…30 years of enjoyment passed by.
Remember… THIRTY YEARS!
Before we depart from our walk down memory lane, let me just throw out a few additional dates. In 2009, we learned that Lockheed Martin purchased the IP and source code for Microsoft ESP (commercial use of FSX) and in 2014 we learned that Dovetail Games had a license agreement to distribute FSX Steam Edition and develop further products based on Microsoft’s technology (spanning 30 years) for the entertainment market.
Now Prepare Yourself
When Lockheed Martin released P3D version 1.0, it pretty much was a rebranded FSX. While we can assume LM may have applied some fixes which hadn’t been addressed in the FSX SP2 update, very little was done to the core application. Actually, almost the same can be said for P3D versions 2.x (2013) and even to some extent version 3.x (2015). The major shift didn’t really occur until 2017 when LM released the 64bit version of Prepar3D version 4.x. But let’s now add another 5 years to our original MSFS timeline and we get a total of 35 Years.
Remember… THIRTY-FIVE YEARS!
Born Yesterday?
While we’re still somewhat in our history lesson, let me just remind everyone that X-Plane wasn’t born yesterday or even the day before. Interestingly enough, when researching information for this article, I have found it somewhat difficult to nail down exactly when the first version of X-Plane was released. Even Wikipedia fails to provide any exact dates. I did find one fan created website which identifies X-Plane version 1 with a release date of 1994. X-Plane v2 released in 1996 with v3, v4 and v5 releasing in 1997, 1998 and 1999. X-Plane v6 through versions 10 released between 2001 and 2011.
Even most die-hard X-Plane fans admit that it wasn’t until the current release of X-Plane 11 (May 2017) when X-Plane really began to shine. So if we calculate the amount of time in years for X-Plane we have 23 years between X-Plane v1 and the current version 11. 23 Years!
Are we responsible?
Yes, I believe so and here’s why. I’ve just spelled out 35 years of blood, sweat and tears which have passed by from MSFS version 1.0 and Prepar3D version 4.x. Everything that is wonderful about P3D v4.x is tied back to MSFS 1.0, actually further…but for the sake of this article we’ll start with 1.0. All the goodness, all the beauty, all the awesomeness is THIRTY FIVE YEARS in the making. As I just pointed out, even X-Plane’s development spans over 20 years.
So Dovetail Games comes along and announces they are developing a next generation flight simulator, it’s released (early access) in May of 2017 and less than 1 year later the project is mothballed. Why did this happen? How could this happen?
Some will tell you it was because Dovetail Games refused to listen to the flight simulation community. Not true! There is evidence (lots of it actually) that this couldn’t be further from the truth. We the community asked Dovetail Games to include missions. Dovetail Games did just that. We the community asked DTG to include jetliners and DTG was working on adding jetliners. We the community asked DTG to include helicopters and DTG was also working on adding helicopters. Many more examples of DTG actually listening to the community.
In addition, some in the community were led to believe that DTG were forcing 3rd party developers to market their add-ons exclusively through Steam. This has also been proven to be false. At the time I wrote this piece, I could purchase add-ons for FSW directly from any of my preferred online retail stores. For the sake of full disclosure, I checked both JustFlight and The FlightSim Store. Both online retail stores have add-ons available to purchase for FSW.
In the end I believe that we the flight sim community killed Flight Sim World and that my friends is a bad, bad thing. The reality of it all is we have two major players now representing the flight sim community. There are a few other titles which have been around for a number of years but I don’t see a lot of 3rd party development support available at the present time. I think AeroflyFS is gaining some momentum. Orbx has a few add-on airports for the platform and I believe a few add-on aircraft have been developed by Just Flight.
Controversial
I know this blog post will be viewed by some as controversial. Many will agree with me and many will not. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together. We all share a passion for flight simulation and we’re all striving to have a platform that will not only be around for many years to come, but also striving for a platform that can help introduce this wonderful hobby to the next generation of virtual pilots. Unfortunately, with Flight Sim World ending the way it has….we’ve potentially shut the door on some of the newcomers and to me this is the saddest part of this story.
Until next time…
Jerry
April 23, 2018 / admin / 2 Comments
Earlier today, Dovetail Games announced “with great sadness” the closure of Flight Sim World (FSW). It’s been slightly less than one year since I first discussed FSW on my blog site and in late May of last year I wrote about my first impressions after having spent a little bit of time exploring the simulator. I recorded a few YouTube videos which you can find on my channel. During the initial few weeks after release of FSW I did manage to spend several hours flying and I must admit I enjoyed my time and felt like FSW had some promise. After all, Dovetail Games was finally fulfilling their commitment to bring their flight sim to market albeit a few years late.
While I must admit I haven’t followed the progress of FSW in the past 6+ months, I’m actually surprised it took Dovetail Games this long to realize this was never going to get off the ground and compete with Prepar3d and XPlane. Especially knowing how Dovetail planned to limit 3rd party developers. As with many of the simulation based games I enjoy playing, 3rd party developers, modders etc. are the lifeblood of these types of games. When you begin to restrict what they can do and how they do it, you’re going to suffer and I guess they finally realized the writing was on the wall.
While I have many additional thoughts/opinions regarding this news, I’m going to keep those to myself for now. It appears Steam will continue to sell Flight Sim World through May 24th. After May 24th the game and all DLC will be removed from Steam, but will still be available in the player/owner’s Steam Library.
Future of Flight Simulation
The future of flight simulation is extremely strong. Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D (P3D) version 4.x and Laminar Research’s X-Plane will continue to serve as the flagship titles to support this wonderful hobby. Both titles have a strong following and both enjoy excellent support from the best 3rd party add-on developers. After all, we know the saying….two is company and three’s a crowd.
Until next time…
Jerry
November 15, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments
I’ve often commented on how much I enjoy the Steam gaming platform update process. Of the Steam games I enjoy (Farm Sim, Truck Sim etc.) when a patch or update becomes available, the Steam client seamlessly (for the most part) installs that update and I don’t need to worry about anything. Likewise, both ATS and ETS2 have even simplified a portion of their mod update abilities via the Stream Workshop. While some gamers might not understand just how wonderful this concept is (for Steam games), it’s only recently made it’s way into the flight sim world.
Historically speaking, anytime we’ve needed to update something in the flight sim arena (FSX and early versions of P3D) it’s been somewhat of an arduous task. Many times applying a service pack or updating scenery would/could lead to issues downstream. I would often forgo taking updates until such time I felt I really either had no choice or perhaps it was time to do a complete and full re-install of everything including Microsoft Windows. But as the title suggests, things have become much, much easier with regards to updating certain elements within Prepar3D v4 and yes….it’s the way it should be.
Prepar3D v4
The P3D update process really couldn’t be any easier than how Lockheed Martin have made it for us. Unless you are absolutely brand new to P3D and only purchased v4 AFTER the latest update (4.1) became available then you probably already know just how easy it is to apply updates. By the way, this same update process existed within v3 (perhaps earlier but I just can’t remember). Essentially you can update P3D by uninstalling only the component you desire to update, then simply install the new updated component. Typically this would be the “Client” component. Complete and easy to follow instructions are available on the P3D website and YouTube also offers dozens (if not more) tutorials on how to safely update the P3D platform.
How we did things yesterday, is not always how we’ll do things tomorrow
Change can be a really good thing! And this is really why I decided to write this article. Upon initial release of P3D v4 some folks began to lose their mind regarding how developers began to change the way add-ons would get installed. Since the dawn of time (as it relates to flight sim) add-ons would get installed in the same directory structure of the sim. This concept worked fine (I suppose), but did present its own set of challenges when it came time to applying updates to the sim. Starting with P3D v4, add-on developers began to utilize the “Documents” method of installing add-ons.
For years the philosophy behind how to build the perfect sim PC consisted of at the very least two hard drives. One HDD which contained the Windows operating system and other applications not related to flight sim. Then a second HDD (preferably SSD) for the sim software. The idea behind this was one could get away with a smaller HDD for Windows and invest their money on a larger/faster and preferably SSD drive to contain the sim and all things related to the sim (scenery, aircraft etc.)
When I built my current gaming machine, I took it one step further and even included a third SSD drive for my Steam games to run on so I could truly keep flight sim separate on its own SSD drive. But with more and more developers moving to the “Documents” method of installing software, things started to get a little tight on my main HDD. Thankfully, if you are also experiencing (or starting to experience) congestion on your main HDD due to more and more add-ons being installed into the “Documents” folder, there is hope for you. You can simply relocate the Documents folder to another drive. As I’m a fan of giving credit where credit is due, I’ll just simply direct you to an already existing YouTube Video which discusses just how to safely accomplish this task.
Now back to the update process discussion….
But it truly gets better…
Oh yes it does! I can’t remember who did it first…perhaps it was PMDG or perhaps it was Orbx, but these were the first two I noticed including a control panel update process for installing incremental updates to their products. Since that time, other developers such as FSDreamTeam and FlightBeam have also moved to this concept and it’s truly amazing.
Specifically speaking about Orbx, I own a lot of Orbx scenery. When I say a lot, I mean….A LOT! Thankfully, Orbx has never charged a fee to upgrade any of their scenery from FSX up to P3D (including P3D v4). Because Orbx has a really large catalog of wonderful scenery, it was somewhat of a daunting task to constantly venture out to their forum site to check when a particular scenery title had made its way to being updated. But through their updated FTX Central client, it knows every piece of Orbx software I own and tells me when that particular title has been updated for V4 or includes an incremental update. As you might have guessed, it really is just as simple as point and click to install scenery or scenery updates.
As I mentioned, both FSDreamTeam and FlightBeam have also developed a similar control panel and it couldn’t be easier to keep everything updated. Thank you to all who have moved to this process.
One can only hope…
that others will follow. I’d love to see developers like Carenado, FlyTampa and others follow suit. Maybe they will….maybe they won’t, but I do feel the developers who have moved in this direction have set the bar which others will be measured against.
Until next time…
Happy Simming!
J
