First, my apologies for being a bit quiet this week. Work and family have been a priority.
That said, readers know I’m a big fan of REX Studios, and use their Texture Direct and Soft Cloud products every time I fly. So I think it’s good news that they have a large 50% off sale running until July 5. Get ’em while they’re hot.
I’m a big fan of Chris Bell’s fantastic Night Environment add-on for P3D, which brings realistic “to the horizon” night lighting environments to the simulator. You can see a video of me flying in his Pennsylvania package here.
So it’s natural that I’m excited about Chris’s latest project, Black Marble, which will bring highly detailed vector-level road lighting to the entire planet. Given that night lighting has always been a weakness for P3D, this could be transformative add-on for the simulator. You can learn more about it here, and here are some recent shots released by Chris. I’ll be downloading this immediately upon availability.
And here’s a before/after comparison …
Before:
After:
The remarkable Tom Tsui at FSX Times has updated his C 172 gauges for the Saitek FIPs. Can’t wait to install them this weekend.
If you use Saitek Flight Information Panels, you really can’t beat Tom’s rapidly growing collection of instruments, and his service is excellent. I’m a huge fan. Thanks for your work, Tom!
REX/Milviz have collaborated to bring a new weather radar instrument to the sim community, the REX/Milviz WX Advantage. Here’s a quick and dirty first look video. Initial impressions? It’s great, especially for how snappy and responsive it is.Yet another reason I need to buy the folks at REX a drink. A more detailed review will probably follow.
I noticed when linking over to the REX website today that they and Milviz have released a new weather radar add on for P3D and FSX. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. Active Sky Next has a radar screen, but I wanted an instrument that I can run on the touchscreen (instead of the GPS, and perhaps finding a way to easily switch between the two). So I think I’ll download this and give it a go, and will post a review here when I can.
Here are some screen grabs from their site …
A few weeks ago I did a PilotEdge flight from Grand Canyon to Laughlin. To pass the time along the way I took some screen captures. They really show how great the REX-4 Direct environmental sky textures, clouds, and haze can look.
For the past week or two there has been an active thread in the AVSIM P3D forums about a modification one of the members there developed that increases the brightness of Prepare3d scenery, adds more realistic (and darker) shaders for cloud and scenery shadows, and creates a more realistic horizon haze in the far distance. That thread turned into a new thread in which the user, Pe11e, has put up a little app that gives you some configuration options and creates the ability to restore the original shaders if you like.
Note that this modification is for P3D v3 ONLY. I installed it over the weekend, and it really is a marvelous modification. My flights have never looked so realistic, almost amazingly so. A few folks have reported problems with the installation, so be sure to read the entire thread and to back up your ShaderHLSL folder (which is in the P3D folder structure) before you start.
Best of all, the app is free, although Pe11e does have a donation button on the app which I think is well worth using. These more realistic shaders nearly transform the look of the sim, as you will notice the first time you sit on the ramp and watch cloud shadows so realistically passing over the field (as I captured in the screen shots below).
I love A2A’s aircraft, and have three: the Cessna 172 Skyhawk trainer, the Cessna 182 Skylane, and the Piper 180 Cherokee. Of these, the 182 is my favorite and aircraft of choice. The A2A simulation, especially with its Accu-Sim component, makes this aircraft as realistic as I can imagine it could be for a simulator. This includes knowing how to start the sucker, which can be a challenge unless you’re into flooding the engine, fouling the plugs, and possibly running down the battery. (But this is why we have checklists, and if you follow the real one for the 182, you’ll be just fine.) The sound of the engine, the flight mechanics (today I was flying and noticed a constant bank to the right, and sure enough that fuel tank was about twice as full as the other), the sound of the brakes and the creaks of the airplane … everything about the A2A aircraft is first rate and terribly realistic.
But I haven’t flown them much over the past month or two, instead sticking with the very nice Carenado 182T. Now don’t get me wrong — the Carenado is a great simulation aircraft. Compared to everything else out there, it’s first rate. But it’s not the same as the A2A. The A2A just feels and flies and sounds terribly real compared to anything else. It’s absolutely about the texture and immersion of the sim, and the A2A wins that hands down. But I’ve foregone it for one reason: it hasn’t played well with the myriad Saitek panels and avionics I have running in the sim.
This problem is well-documented. Still, I haven’t found a good solution, and it’s boiled down to three things: getting the master battery and alternator switches to work correctly, getting the fuel and engine gauges on Tom Tsui’s great integrated fuel gauge to read correctly, and getting the RPM also on Tom’s RPM gauge to read correctly. There’s a fix for the battery / alternator issue, and at times the engine gauges would mostly reflect what the A2A would show on the virtual cockpit panel, but the RPM gauge as always very far off from reality (also well-documented).
Well, today I finally found the fix. It was a roundabout way of getting there, but get there I did. And now the A2A is absolutely perfect, and I can’t wait to fly these aircraft for many years to come. Here’s what worked: First, I deleted all Saitek software and drivers, including the folders in Programs and Programs 86, and only installed the Flight Information Panel drivers (NOT the FIP software) consistent with the guidance near the end of this thread. Then I installed the registered version of SPAD.neXt, activated its LVAR option, and activated SPAD’s A2A 182 profile. Then I changed this line in the .XML file of Tom’s 172 RPM gauge:
< Value Minimum=”0″ Maximum=”35″>(A:General eng1 rpm,RPM) 100 /</Value>
… to this line:
< Value Minimum=”0″ Maximum=”35″>(L:ENG1_RPM,RPM) 100 /</Value>
(Thanks, Tom, for that fix!) After that I played with the A2A 182 profile in SPAD.neXt a bit. I had to change the fuel pump switch snippet to just be a simple fuel pump on/off command. I programmed the BIP panel. And I still run some things via FUSIPC, like controlling the transponder Ident and Alt-C settings with the buttons on the throttle quadrant. But the rest of the setup was straightforward. The swtiches and controls did as they should, and the FIPs ran great … and most important the engine and RPM gauges were accurate. After you get through its (somewhat steep) learning curve, SPAD.neXt really is a great tool, and I’m looking forward to getting the most out of it in the coming weeks.
Now, into the (virtual) air in the A2A 182!
After reading so many good reviews of it over at AVSIM, tonight I decided to download the Night Environment scenery for Pennsylvania. I don’t know if I got the install quite right, and it took a minute to figure out that I should turn off the default autogen scenery (which also makes lights), and I probably should have turned off the Ultimate Terrain scenery, too … but even with all that, it looks REALLY great. Lights from horizon to horizon. I had good frame rates with this – 30 fps or so – but it took a huge chunk out of my working memory. I know with some tuning (and turning off other stuff I don’t need to see at night) memory won’t be an issue, and the lights will look even more like the real thing.
I took some screen captures during the flight. Can’t wait to do more.
Having upgraded the sim to Prepar3d 3.2, last Friday night I downloaded the most recent Active Sky Next patch to keep everything current. I don’t know that this was necessary, as my ASN was working fine post-3.2, but I wanted to have the latest code running. After the install, two things happened:
I believe the complicating factor is that I had uninstalled FSX Steam Edition just prior to the ASN upgrade, and I’m guessing the sim is searching for a Simconnect client that it can’t find. But while I can see how that might result in no visible weather, I don’t know that it would create a massive memory leak.
I’m away from the sim for a bit so I won’t be able to try to tinker to a solution for a while, but when I get it I’ll post it here.