En-route and Arriving Innsbruck

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Some shots I took on the way to Innsbruck from Dusseldorf.

This first one I've never experience before. This 737 turned onto the airway about five miles in front of me at a VOR. I kept gaining on him and at about 2 miles he moved over to let me pass. That's the longest I've ever been in contact with an FS aircraft and the closest I've ever been to one.

Might be hard to read, but he's at 1.4 miles and a thousand feet below me.



More en-route:










And, just setting the brakes on the stand in these shots:














Looking out the FO's window, I got her to snap a shot looking down the west ramp:





The new computer is working very well. No frame lag and the colors look much better than on the other computer. Probably helps too, that the sliders are much farther right than on the old system. When the video card gets here I should about be able to max out the sliders.

I have IVAO working on re-activating my membership so I can download the software to the Dell to try this out on the network.

[ian@737ng.co.uk]

     Great Stuff Mikey........
one of my favourite approaches down the valley into LOWI.   very challenging, especially if the weather is not on your side.     circle to land 08 anyone ?    looks real good micheal, home from home.
rgds ... ian

[XOrionFE]

Looks like it is working out great Michael.    That is one nice thing about FS9 being able to utilize those lower cost PCs.    The visuals look great also.    Your proximity to the other traffic reminded me of a flight I was doing (real life) around the bottom of Lake Michigan to the south of Midway and under flight following.    I was flying just below the outer layer of the ORD Class B and had a 737 fly right over my little 172 at about 1500 ft seperation (I was VFR) as he was approaching Midway.   Talk about getting that feeling in the seat of your pants looking out your left window and seeing one of those suckers coming right at you!   When the controller called traffic off my 9 o'clock he wasnt kidding!

Nice job on the monitor setup.   I hope to come down and see it one day. 

Scott

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Thanks!

The biggest problem that I have with Wideview is that it never seems to be the same way twice. Even if I save the flights on each computer and use that as the startup flight, things don't ever quite look as good the next flight without adjusting the views.

Pretty frustrating sometimes. I'm going to have to dig into the Wideview manual a little more and see if I'm missing something. I thought when a flight was saved (and then reloaded at a later time) everything including the view settings were saved. I might be wrong.

[Trevor Hale]

Hey Mike. 

I understand that can be frustrating.  Do you save the flight on all the Wideview machines? and load the same flight on all the machines?  I understand Wideview slews to your current aircraft position.  In order to maintain all the same visuals, especially eyepoints I was under the impression you need to have the same aircraft loaded in all the wideview instances.  Is this the way your setup?

I am sure you have told us before, but are your 3 front views on a tripple head 2 go? and then the rest are wideview machines? 

Everytime I see pictures of your setup, I get so motivated.  Looks awesome.

Trev

[Bob Reed]

Thanks!

The biggest problem that I have with Wideview is that it never seems to be the same way twice. Even if I save the flights on each computer and use that as the startup flight, things don't ever quite look as good the next flight without adjusting the views.

Pretty frustrating sometimes. I'm going to have to dig into the Wideview manual a little more and see if I'm missing something. I thought when a flight was saved (and then reloaded at a later time) everything including the view settings were saved. I might be wrong.

I too ran into this. The only way I could seem to get it to keep my settings was delete the config in WideView every time I had to make adjustments. It never seemed to keep the setting if I tried to make corrections and save it, to a previous cfg file.

[Boeing Skunk Works]

A calculator utility would really be nice for use with different monitor sizes so all relative distances are exactly the same regardless of zoom factor, and then eyepoint could be refined in the config file and saved.

The only problem I see is having a common distance refrence from which to work with such as a building, sign, or other reference. 

[andarlite]

Looking good Mike ..... question about Wideview.... I know you need a version of FS9/X on each computer, but does that include all scenery and aircraft add-ons too?

BTW, are you using the Aerosoft Innsbruck scenery?


Regards,
Henry

[Trevor Hale]

Hi Henry,

Finally a wideview question I can answer.  Yes, if you want all the scenery to look the same, you would have to install all the scenery on all the machines.  Otherwise a building from your main scenery would go past your front window, and may not continue on to the side window.

Trev

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Yeah, it's not much fun to sit and load software for three to four hours, but it sure looks good when finished...if I get them aligned correctly.

Looking good Mike ..... question about Wideview.... I know you need a version of FS9/X on each computer, but does that include all scenery and aircraft add-ons too?

BTW, are you using the Aerosoft Innsbruck scenery?


Regards,
Henry

Yes, that's German Airports 1 for FS9. The bonus for that pack is Innsbruck. Stuttgart and Munich look really good too. Stuttgart actually looks better than Munich or Innsbruck. I also have Fly Tampa Vienna, Aerosoft Koln/Bonn, Mega-Heathrow, Mega-Frankfurt, and Ultimate Terrain Europe.

Just like you were there!

I'm going to be getting Aerosoft's Hamburg and maybe one or two others in Germany or Austria.

[andarlite]

Hmmm, could get kinda expensive getting multiple copies of everything then.

OK, another question, if your computers are powerful enough, could you run multiple monitors off each computer with Wideview or does it only allow one monitor per computer?

I'm starting to do more flying in Europe lately ..... just got GEX Europe yesterday (I'm on FSX now) ...... wow, talk about awesome..... can't wait for the Aerosoft Innsbruck to be released for FSX , should be any day now.

Regards,
Henry

[Boeing Skunk Works]

If it is a fast enough processor and a good video card you can run two monitors. One of my systems (the Celeron 2Ghz machine) is running the forward left and right views. The settings are turned down just a bit lower than the others, but I can live with it. All of the scenery, buildings and ground vehicles show up. It's not really enough to notice unless you're paying close attention.

Wideview gives you the option of running the two monitors specifying the view angle of each. The only detail you have to be aware of is that the primary monitor must always be to the left of the secondary.

The scenery can be downloaded multiple times from SimMarket.de as they store your downloads and your keys for you in your account. The only exception is Fly-Tampa. I have to contact them to get Vienna on the two newest systems.

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Hey Mike. 

I understand that can be frustrating.  Do you save the flight on all the Wideview machines? and load the same flight on all the machines?  I understand Wideview slews to your current aircraft position.  In order to maintain all the same visuals, especially eyepoints I was under the impression you need to have the same aircraft loaded in all the wideview instances.  Is this the way your setup?

I am sure you have told us before, but are your 3 front views on a tripple head 2 go? and then the rest are wideview machines? 

Everytime I see pictures of your setup, I get so motivated.  Looks awesome.

Trev

Yes, the flights are saved on each computer when arriving at the gate, but it doesn't seem to matter. I use them for the start-up flights too, so no slewing is required, though you're right, it will do that once they are introduced to the network. (This is why I think the IVAO software should run just fine on a client Wideview system)

All monitors are on Wideview. I wouldn't be able to run the Tripple Head to Go on the main FS computer as it's already running two other monitors for the instrument panel. I'm afraid it doesn't have enough power for that. I know the computer is not supposed to know that the TH2G is running three monitors, but I've read that running additional monitors or cards doesn't always work or play well together using it.

[XOrionFE]

Mike,

Just as an FYI, I have a triplehead2go and with it was actually running 6 monitors at one point using just 2 8800gt cards.   The three 22" LCDs for outside visuals ran off the TH2Go and i had the other 3 monitors off of their own DVI ports.    Ran great.   Now of course, I also had this setup on a Dual Core AMD64x2 and later ran it on an i7 920 but consider that I was also running FSX, UTX, GEX, FEX and FLight1 Cessna Mustang and running without stutters, I would think FS9 would be easy for a lighter weight system.    I have never noted any performance hit to running TH2GO.    Maybe something to try out at least in your case.   You could use it on the main PC for your server and outside visuals.  Use your other PCs for network based guages, etc. 

Also, my system is down for a while as I build my new Pit.  Probably another good month before I reach a point of setting up my monitors again.  If you would like, I could ship my TH2GO unit down to you so you could try it out on your setup to see if it would impact you.    We live so close shipping would be cheap enough and it would get to you in a day or two going ground.  You would have a few weeks to mess around with it.   

Scott

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Thanks for the kind offer Scott but I really don't want to mess with the server. The FS server is running great right now and I don't want to change anything for fear of screwing up something I can't fix.

[XOrionFE]

Haha,

I understand and hear you.   Once you have these things working it is hard to make changes for fear of spending countless hours chasing issues.   In fact, I always image backup my main server machine to another usb drive just in case.   

FYI - Nick ran into an issue getting the columns for me because the guy that was going to supply them is in the hospital.    This gave me the incentive to try making a custom yoke mount again and I made progress over the weekend.   If I can get this worked out I will still need to get a second yoke from Nick which of course he has plenty of so I will likely go up to his place again soon and will let you know when I do.

Regards,
Scott

[Boeing Skunk Works]

Sounds good. Like I said, no hurry.