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I'm not sure how that could be used as an example, Longhorn was just a codename for Windows Vista, an OS which obviously did get released.

I grabbed Reno last night along with REXPlane and the Cessna 152. This is the best I’ve seen out of X-Plane so far, as a matter of fact between REX and the Reno scenery it doesn’t even look like X-Plane, lol.

Why not enjoy both Simon? Currently I'm switching back and forth between r-Factor, iRacing and GT5. I'm now seriously considering grabbing that Fanatec 911 GT2 wheel so that finally I'll have XBOX 360, GT5 and the PC covered by a decent racing wheel. For anyone interested there is a video review of GT5 over at racesimcentral. The review really starts at about 13:05 in the video - http://www.racesimcentral.com/news/

I didn't think we'd see this until the next gen XBOX but Forza 4 is already in the works, lol - http://www.racesimcentral.com/news/2010/12/new-forza-motorsport-4-trailer-unveiled/ I purchased Gran Turismo 5 Prologue with my PS3 and also wasn't overly impressed, already being addicted to PC racing sims didn't help matters either. In my opinion the full GT5 isn't really comparable to the much abbreviated Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. It looks like I'm not alone in my assessment - http://www.racesimcentral.com/news/2010/12/just-how-well-has-the-gran-turismo-series-sold/

From what I've read the EZdok Camera add-on relies on simconnect with FSX so I don't know if Ezdok would develop something similar for X-Plane. Maybe with seeing how much interest there is in his plugin, Sandy might develop it further whether it becomes payware or not?

Thanks for the responses, the plugin is available at no charge and I paid $35.00 for EZCA so I'm certainly not complaining. If it can be done for X-Plane I'd be glad to pay Mr. Barbour for a plugin that has all the functionality that the FSX add-on has.

Sounds disappointing compared to what I've seen using EZCA 1.17 with FSX. I would have thought that there would be head latency with all movement. How about when the landing gear finally hit's the runway, what is that like?

Will do. I have been stuck using the Microsoft XBOX 360 racing wheel with Forza 3 so it's hard to compare it to GT5 and how it feels with the Logitech G25. I have seen a lot of positive comments about Forza 3 in various forums from Fanatec wheel users. From a graphics/eye candy point of view I would say that it is every bit as good as GT5. I am amazed at how good the force feed back is considering this is a console game. It's not hard to imagine a racing sim like iRacing becoming available for consoles. Makes you wonder what the next gen XBOX and PS3 are going to be capable of. You might be shocked at how good they are, really. The Historic GT&Touring mod for r-Factor goes down as one the best and that mod is free. Take a look at this video which also shows some of the most well done tracks (also free) for r-Factor from VLM -

I'm glad to see I wasn't alone in my interest in seeing the EZCA camera add-on (or something similar) being developed for X-Plane. The same question was brought up over at X-Plane.org and I received a response from someone who already created a plugin that does something similar - http://www.xpluginsdk.org/pilot_view.htm I haven't had a chance to try it yet and was wondering if anyone here has any experience using this plugin? Lol, I don't know how it would do over at NASA but with the sims/games I run it does a good job. It's actually one of two i7 setups I've been running over the last year. The other one uses a quad and the ATI 5870 (specs below). ASUS Rampage II Extreme (1914 BIOS) Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition w/Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT Mushkin Redline Ascent 6GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (6-7-6-18-1N) Asus/ATI 5870 (Catalyst 10.11) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty WD VelociRaptor 150GB Windows 7 Ultimate 64/SP1 RC WD VelociRaptor 300GB Games/Programs SILVERSTONE 1500Watt SST SILVERSTONE TJ09-B That will propably be my next upgrade for the two i7 setups, SSD's. I've been waiting for the SATA III spec SSD's to be released along with Intel's native SATA III controller.

I was wondering if there has been any talk of possibly getting something similar to the EZdok Camera Add-on developed for X-Plane? The realistic cockpit/cabin motion that EZCA 1.17 provides is really the only reason why I even look at FSX anymore. This add-on or something similar would really be something with X-Plane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOOjmWju8vQ

Same here Simon, I actually purchased a PS3 just for GT5. I also have XBOX 360 and Forza 3 but with the lack of good wheel choices for the XBOX 360 (except the Fanatec) and the fact that I already have a Logitech G25, I hardly look at Forza. I've been into PC racing for a very long time and my current collection includes r-Factor, GTR2, GTL, GTR Evolution, Race, Race On, Ferrari Virtual Racing Academy and my subscription to iRacing. Judging from my time with GT5 so far I feel that it is almost as good as my two PC favorites, r-Factor with the Historic GT&Touring mod and iRacing. What's interesting is how GT5 (and Forza 3 for that matter) have really started to become very close to PC racing as far as the physics are concerned. In addition the graphics are also very good especially considering that the PS3 console cost me less than half of what one of my gaming PC's high end graphics cards cost. The consistently smooth performance of the game is also note worthy considering the specs on the console. It just goes to show you what can be done when a game is properly optimized for a specific hardware spec. It would be nice to have a flight simulator in the future that can provide this level of immersion.

It hasn't been specifically mentioned yet (at least I haven't seen it) but with the “16” core Mac Pro system the X-Plane 10 development team keeps mentioning only has 8 physical cores. The other eight are only virtual when Hyper-threading is enabled. Anyone with a Hyper-threaded enabled i7 (quad or hex) will have double the amount of virtual cores available. The question is how exactly will X-Plane 10 take advantage of Hyper-threading. I'm currently running two i7 (975X and 980X) based machines which have 8 virtual cores for the quad and 12 virtual cores for the hex i7 when Hyper-threading is enabled. The problem is I don't know of any game/sim out there that has been able to use Hyper-threading and with the heat it generates I've disabled it in BIOS on both machines. What will be interesting also is to see how say a one higher clocked quad i7 will do compared to two lower clocked i7's. I think the Mac Pro system Austin mentioned is using two 2.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” processors which is a pretty low clock speed when you compare them to say the 2.8GHz-3.3GHz quad and hex i7's (Bloomfield and Gulftown) that most PC's are using. Not to mention a lot of enthusiasts out there with i7's are running at 4GHz or higher, something I don't think is possible on a Mac.

Not really, I do more with sims then anything else. A lot of times if it's just a “shoot-em-up” game with a good looking game engine I'll grab it for my PS3 or XBOX360 instead of the PC. As of late I've been mainly using these systems for beta testing with Windows XP, Vista and Win 7. I've also got a mid range system that consists of a Q9650/4GB of 1600MHz RAM, ASUS Rampage Extreme (Intel X48) motherboard and a EVGA GTX 285 so I can see how well the Core 2 architecture stacks up to the i7. Maybe when AMD releases the “bulldozer” architecture I'll give them a try again. ASUS Rampage III Extreme (901 BIOS) Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition w/Corsair H70 Corsair DOMINATOR-GT 6GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) CMT6GX3M3A1600C7 EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked (259.32) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs Corsair AX1200 Watt Corsair 800D w/NoiseBlocker fans ASUS Rampage II Extreme (1802 BIOS) Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition w/Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT Mushkin Redline Ascent 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (6-7-6-18-1N) Asus/ATI 5870 (Catalyst 10.8) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs SILVERSTONE 1500Watt SST SILVERSTONE TJ09-B

Near identical except for the video cards. I've been keeping up two machines one with highest end from ATI and one with the highest end from Nvidia for a while. I play a lot of games/sims and having just one video card from one manufacturer doesn't cut it. Some games/sims run (optimized) better on Nvidia and some run better on ATI, very seldom do they run well on both. ASUS Rampage III Extreme (901 BIOS) Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition w/Corsair H70 Corsair DOMINATOR-GT 6GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) CMT6GX3M3A1600C7 EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked (259.32) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs Corsair AX1200 Watt Corsair 800D w/NoiseBlocker fans ASUS Rampage II Extreme (1802 BIOS) Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition w/Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT Mushkin Redline Ascent 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (6-7-6-18-1N) Asus/ATI 5870 (Catalyst 10.8) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs SILVERSTONE 1500Watt SST SILVERSTONE TJ09-B

Did you get rid of all traces of the ATI drivers before you installed the GTX 460? I'm running a ATI 5870 in one i7 setup and a GTX 480 in another (specs below), the GTX 480 walks all over the 5870 with X-Plane and just about every thing else I run. The biggest problem I have with the 5870 is the usual poor OpenGL support from ATI which with X-Plane is obviously not good. ASUS Rampage III Extreme (901 BIOS) Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition w/Corsair H70 Corsair DOMINATOR-GT 6GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) CMT6GX3M3A1600C7 EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked (259.32) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs Corsair AX1200 Watt Corsair 800D w/NoiseBlocker fans ASUS Rampage II Extreme (1802 BIOS) Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition w/Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT Mushkin Redline Ascent 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) (6-7-6-18-1N) Asus/ATI 5870 (Catalyst 10.8) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty WD VelociRaptor 150GB – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 WD VelociRaptor 300GB – Games/Programs SILVERSTONE 1500Watt SST SILVERSTONE TJ09-B