REX/Milviz WX Advantage

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.

The Amazing Realism Shader Pack for Prepar3d V3

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).

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Review: iFixit 54 Bit Driver Kit

Review: iFixit 54 Bit Driver Kit

One of the things a person has to do when building (and constantly tinkering with) a flight simulator is get into, update, repair, change, deconstruct, and reconstruct lots of different devices. Nearly all of these have screws and fasteners, and most of those screws and fasteners are some weird head design you’ve never seen before, and they’ve been designed that way precisely to make you less likely to get into, update, repair, change, deconstruct, and reconstruct that particular device.

Photo Apr 10, 7 57 57 AM
Need to go small? Sure …

Over and over again in this process I’ve been very thankful for the iFixit 54 bit driver kit that I picked up from iFixit last year. The kit costs $24,95, but between you and me, it’s probably only worth three times that.Photo Apr 10, 8 00 42 AM

As the name suggests, the kit has 54 bits. They cover every type of screw head I’ve so far had to deal with. The kit also has a flexible neck attachment (which, incidentally, I used to tighten the door handle on our freezer yesterday), other bit attachments, and an extender.

Build quality is spectacular, as is fit and finish. You can read more about the details at their site, but if you were to ask me which three things you should have sitting around to help build a basement flight simulator I’d say, in no particular order, (1) a circular saw, (2) velcro tape, and (3) the iFixit 54 bit driver kit.