kaosfere

Still enjoying the DC-3, this time flying around Cape Cod in a cold winter rain.

Doing some in-flight testing of the livery I've cooked up for DC-3 Airways.

Vintage KORD - KDTW.

Oh holy cow, you're right. Awesome, thanks for pointing that out. I'll have to give it another go now.

I impulse splurged on the Alabeo Staggerwing, after seeing it on sale at the .org store. For a total change of pace from the airliner flying I've been doing with my VA recently I decided to take the biplane for a spin. Since I was already in the Bay Area after landing at SFO, I figured I'd fly it out of OAK and take a tour of the bay, including some nice low and slow just over the water. Then, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a famous landmark! And of course, this being a sim and with no one to answer to, well... might as well. Wouldn't you? It went perfectly, too... flaps down a notch, skimming the surface of the water just above 80. Then I hit some sort of invisible barrier under the bridge and everything went haywire. It would have worked, if it hadn't been for you meddling physics engines... That plane flies wonderfully, btw.

A damp afternoon at CYVR... (After I took this I realized I'd gotten distracted by photography, forgot to arm the glide slope, and was coming in way too high... tried to lose some altitude, went overspeed for flaps 35, tore one off, and spiraled into the sea. Oops... )

Misty morning flying out of KORD in my shiny new 757.

And back out of Orlando, on my way to KCVG.

Late afternoon flight into KMCO in the A320Neo. This is the first Airbus I've flown -- feels so different from a Boeing. Liking it, though.

Sometimes this thing takes my damn breath away. On a red-eye flight from KSEA to KMSO in the Dash 8 this is what greeted me as I broke through the clouds on my approach. And, just for good measure, from a little bit earlier:

I've been trying to get a feel for the EADT 737-800 and x737FMC, flew KMDW - KDEN today. Through the clouds and into sunshine over western Illinois. And then blasting through the sky at FL380 over Nebraska.

Might as well add a little SkyMaxx 2 porn of my own. These are from what became a very eventful flight between CYBD and CYXY when UltraWX got stuck with an old METAR and I flew into unexpected icing. I had to dive for the earth, blow off my planned approach, and finish my flight going VFR through the valleys on the way into Whitehorse trying to stay below a very low cloud deck. It was one of those I was very glad when I hit the tarmac that I didn't "cheat" and correct the weather in the simulator, but found a way to fly through and survive. This was where stuff started getting rough. Trying to get as low as I safely can. Cloud shadows! Gorgeous cloud shadows! How low can you go?

Went up north today, and did BGKK to BGSF in AeroPedro's recent update to his free Twin Otter. Nothing but featureless glacier for most of the flight, but both the climb and the descent were scenic. I do miss the HD mesh and photo scenery at these latitudes, though...

Is there packaged Tahiti scenery or did you generate that yourself?

Not to extend the discussion -- or dispute the point, which is a good one in general -- but since I'm kind of an anal IT nerd who's worked with such things in his career in the past: I believe that on any modern browser you wouldn't have a double download, at least if the images are on the same page. (I don't care enough to open the debug console in Chrome and trace it while I'm at work. ) Even if they're spread across pages, if you load one, and then the next, as long as the web server presenting the data handles last-modified times correctly, your browser should send its request with an "If-Modified-Since" HTTP header and be told by the remote server with a response code 304 that the file hasn't changed and it should use its local cache. But enough of that... back to the airplane porn! Edit: OK, I lied. I opened Chrome's developer console and tested both cases. Reloading the page with my original post and the quoted post only showed one request to imgur for each picture, and each time I properly got a 304 Not Modified response. With a cleared cache and another reload, there was a request with no modification time and a 200 response, but again no second request -- the browser properly presented the same resource both times without redownloading. Regardless, those are just technical details. I'll stop being a nerd now. Sorry!

Oh hey, I thought I had that in my signature here, but I guess I didn't. I've added that. But to reply directly, I'm running an i7-3770k overclocked to 4.4GHz (water-cooled), a factory-overclocked 4GB GTX 770 (I don't recall the overclock factor, but it's not all that much), and 16GB of nothing fancy RAM. X-Plane data is stored on an SSD; I just upgraded to a 512GB Crucial MX100. I have two monitors, but I only run X-Plane on one, with the other reserved for EFASS full-screen. I'd like to increase my monitor count, but I like my pretties more than I need the additional real-estate, and I can't afford to upgrade to the monster card it would take to run the simulator across multiple panels with that level of detail.

Back in the Jetstream, flying over the Alps from LSMD to LIME on a variably cloudy day.

Hey, you can see my house from there! Well, not quite, but you appear to be flying right over the building in which I work.

Still flying around low in Switzerland. This time in a C90, from LSMD to LSZC via LSME from late afternoon to dusk.

VFR into LSMD in JRollon's JS32. Running with SimHeaven's ortho scenery and World2Xplane data, UltraWX and SkyMaxx (not that it matters too much for these beyond the pretty haze layers), and alpilotx's dense forest and treelines and farms packages. X-Plane is looking better every day.

I tried doing a resave in PlaneMaker last night, but to no effect. It's really interesting that Panman wasn't able to duplicate it. I suppose it could be something odd with my video drivers... I'm using a 6970 with the latest Catalyst drivers. (Going to be upgrading to a 770 when I get my bonus next month). Panman, do you have a version from X-Hangar direct, or the .org store? Are you using 64 bit on Windows?

I'm having an interesting issue. Last night I bought X-Hangar's Twin Otter, and ran in to issues with the cockpit not showing up properly. After dorking around with my plugins today, I've determined that it's directly related to the presence of the SilverLining plugin. With only that plugin removed from my installation everything works. With ONLY that plugin in my installation, the plane's broken. I've attached a screenshot of each situation, along with logs both with and without SilverLining loaded, but I see zero in the way of substantive difference between them. Any ideas? I've not run into this with any other aircraft. On edit: After poking at a few of the default aircraft, I noticed this problem also happens with the C130, although only in 3D cockpit mode -- 2D is fine. With the DHC6, neither works. But this might give you a readily available aircraft to test with. Log With SilverLining.txt Log Without SilverLining.txt