Strap yourselves in ...

[ZK-MAT]

With a nice shiny Dick Smith birthday voucher I bought FSX. Have downloaded the service packs and about to start the install. I am prepared to be underwhelmed by the default scenery but have topo, scenery, mesh, landclass etc from FS9 ... now the fun begins. I'd appreciate any tried and true tips, links to help etc, and will post up questions as I come across them. Sheesh I've been FS free for two years now, going to be hard to fly without reaching for the trigger!

[Ian Warren]

Matt , you obviously would have a Mic , Teamspeak.. 202.125.37.130:8136 , Im normally there , if not just give me a nudge and id be there directly , honestly quite a bit has changed

[ZK-MAT]

Will do that Ian!! Well so far I am impressed. Installed sweet, loaded the two service packs, knocked down some visual settings (my PC is only a 2.6 AMD) and loaded up at Tauranga. OMG Mt Maunganui shows up. Took a Cessna up and went smooth as silk.

Now to get some of these airports to look like they should

[leow5263]

great! looking forward to seeing you in the skies

[ZK-MAT]

Installed NZLC from Christian's site and ohhh lovely green I seem to have hills etc - do I actually need a mesh?

[Chairman]

Stop it, you're making me look sideways at the copy of FSX gathering dust on my shelf !


gary

[Ian Warren]

Well with Matt,s history off WWII and his liken , we have to get thing rolling , Gary , not sure you can land your 747 on a Illustrious Class yet

[Chairman]

Give me a couple of minutes to set up the weather and I can land a 747 on a rooftop helipad !


Gary

[Ian Warren]

QUOTE (Chairman @ Jan 2 2010, 04:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Give me a couple of minutes to set up the weather and I can land a 747 on a rooftop helipad !


Gary

NO SLEWING ... that,s how the kids cheat! again get on to TS .. teamspeak

[ZK-MAT]

So far so good, put a mesh on and looks sweet. Need to get some company airliners on it (do FS9 planes work or need diggerydoing?). Will try and installing my Tauranga, Auckland and Wellington Real NZ airports later on and see what happens. Off down the coast to do spot of surfcasting tonight but will look at getting on TS one night this week See ya there Gary!!

[ZK-MAT]

Slowly getting there... two more q's:

Scenery
Is it best to add scenery to the "Add On Scenery" folder then activate separately within FSX, or leave Add On Scenery empty and put additional scenery folders elsewhere. I've read conflicting views on this, (in FS9 I had my additional scenery separate to the Add On folder).

Navigation
I'm missing not having FS Navigator in FSX. I've read about a program called Super Flight Planner (but download links are mostly dead), and wondered if there are any other alternatives? I don't really want to venture onto Vatsim without knowing where I am and where airways are... and speaking of that ... does FSX have a map? Probably a dumb question but can't seem to bring it up! I've never been a fan of the GPS but may have to be lol.

Thanks

[toprob]

QUOTE (ZK-MAT @ Jan 5 2010, 10:08 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Slowly getting there... two more q's:

Scenery
Is it best to add scenery to the "Add On Scenery" folder then activate separately within FSX, or leave Add On Scenery empty and put additional scenery folders elsewhere. I've read conflicting views on this, (in FS9 I had my additional scenery separate to the Add On folder).

Honestly, whatever makes sense to you. If you have a separate physical drive, then it may make sense to put scenery on that, but apart from that it makes no difference to FSX. I keep away from Addon Scenery, for three reasons. First, I'm an oldie, going back to before addons existed. When the pre-activated Addon Scenery folder showed up, it make a lot of sense -- just drop scenery BGLs into it, and they were already activated. However after a while there were far too many files in there, which made it impossible to keep track of it, so it stopped being useful. But that's what Addon Scenery meant a home for BGL and texture files which didn't require their own folder.

The second reason is more to do with my tidy mind. A folder which contains scenery and textures is like a house, with two rooms -- the Scenery room, and the Texture room. The files inside those rooms are the furniture. Putting another scenery folder inside Addon Scenery is like building a house inside your house. So this happens:

Knock knock. Hi, is Bob home? Come on in -- his is the first house down the corridor.
Knock knock. Hi, is Bob home? Come on in -- I'll check his room.

See, does that make sense? Of course other people don't have my perception of things...

The last reason is to do with my customers who have to manually activate my scenery. When you access the Scenery Library, the default location is the main FSX folder. Having to say 'navigate to Addon Scenery...' all the time is a completely unnecessary and complex step for new users, so I just don't do it.

QUOTE

Navigation
I'm missing not having FS Navigator in FSX. I've read about a program called Super Flight Planner (but download links are mostly dead), and wondered if there are any other alternatives? I don't really want to venture onto Vatsim without knowing where I am and where airways are... and speaking of that ... does FSX have a map? Probably a dumb question but can't seem to bring it up! I've never been a fan of the GPS but may have to be lol.

Thanks [/quote]

The Map is accessed via the World menu -- Alt-W, M. If it doesn't show up, try windowed mode.

[Ian Warren]

Scenery - I do put all scenery into the addon scenery folder bar the self extracting , example Robin,s RealNZ scenery's

Navigation - Only brought again yesterday was flight maps , I have a file at flightsim.com , designed to be printed on A4 and placed in a clear file only 8 so pages including VOR/NDB s

[ZK-MAT]

Thanks Robin and Ian for the info. I personally go along with Robins' file structure ideas, it seems to me that putting scenery into the Add On Scenery folder, then adding that scenery from inside there, along with the Add On Scenery folder itself is "doing things twice". Right or wrong it makes me feel there's some organisation happening there

I'm looking for some good FSX ANZ planes, particularly a 733, if anyone can help.

I'll look for your flight map file Ian ... file number or link?

Finally, I spent a bit of time today with the space shuttle. It had me giggling away...

[Ian Warren]

File at flightsim.com http://www.flightsim.com/file.php Name: nzmap.zip Size: 5,333,965 Date: 07-01-2007 The 737s possibly ProjectSky would be the best .

http://www.projectopensky.com/

[leow5263]

if you want New Zealand paints for default aircraft, Flightsim.co.nz is the place to go