Future IF (revisited)

[Steve Waite]

Yes I think you are right. The big airports are the issue with too many facets. These are simply not built within the spec of FSX and in my opinion are faulty. If you get two big airports in the "reality bubble" then watch out. I just enable the airports I'm travelling between if i'm using hi-def airport addons (which is rare).

The fp throughput of the i5 is around 2/3 of the 3960 at the same frequency.

I've just been through the setup of FSX again and in my opinion what counts is pre-rendered frames and a default config. If I go to the GPU control panel and choose 1 max pre rendered frame, then try 2, then try 3, and depending on the memory available, try 4. I just did that and while fps comes down, the steadiness on the eye improves. FSX looks like FLIGHT now whereby I can focus on buildings and count windows. On 1 pre rendered frame it is unsteady.

[flyforever]

You're right about pre rendered frames. I had forgotten about that. I'll try a default cfg and let you know.
tc

[Steve Waite]

Good show tc!

I think upgrading GPUs or memory or CPUs is no good on their own, you need the whole lot improved across the board. I went from a i7 960 triple channel RAM mobo to a i7 3960 quad channel RAM mobo, and at the same time went from a GTX480 to a GTX680. This gave me an improvement I could see. I've always got the best spec PC I can as soon as the cost falls after the initial introduction of new hardware.

[Steve Waite]

I've posted here as a better explanation for a Q presented to me over on the codelegend page, I've linked back to here.

All the major AIRAC cycle planes are being one to one supported by IF soon. In the meantime we have to take an IF plan and convert it to a PMDG .rte (whatever) file with FSC or some similar program. Or use a manual planner loaded with the same AIRAC cycle as the plane and make plans from that. We drop the FSX .xml plan onto IF and the flight is built for it. We export the .rte file created by the manual planner to our PMDG\FLIGHTPLANS folder, and run the flight and load the .rte from the co route page. With next version [sf], I'm working on the route builder right now, we can choose an AIRAC Cycle from the front Start page of IF, and a new index is built. Then we select a plane suitable for the AIRAC Cycle chosen. We can choose the "AIRAC Common Subset"; those airports only appearing in the sim and in the cycle. Then we can start making flights between those airports, and the .rte file, .fltplan, or whatever FMC file we want is automatically exported to the co route folder. We can run the flight, choose the co route and get going. There's even more unique NavData functions coming in [sf], more later. [sg] sees the expansion of the IF runway picker dialog. Introduction of departure/approach, and SID/STAR selection, and again more unique features to enrich these capabilities.

[henri5]

When there is an ILS at the destination airport, the approach shoud use that runway.

[Steve Waite]

But this depends on wind speeds and directions forecast. If you set up an airport with specific wind speeds and directions, (and also many things like time of day, and terrain height), you will find that at certain vector components of the crosswind or aft wind component the FSX ATC will switch runways, using an heuristic algorithm. IF uses the exact same data structures and predicts the runway before the sim is run.

IF you go into the Tower view and see the ATC is using a certain runway, you can go into the IF Flight Gen page and use the Edit Plan runway picker tool. IF and FSX is far too complicated to jump to conclusions.

[Steve Waite]

...FSX ATC even considers your parking location before choosing a runway for you to depart from. ATC calculates the time it takes you to get to the runway from your parking bay. But then some other situation in the sky may make ATC send you to a farther runway than the closest, when you have L, R, and C runways especially.

[Steve Waite]

Here I am selecting the navdata set for the Level-D 767, I select the directory location of the AIRAC data that installed with the aircraft, then allow the re-indexing process, next I created an "export item" for the LD767, the idea being the IF.rte file is exported to the LD767 flightplan or "co route" folder, I load up a 767 locate myself at a filtered out airport and press the next flight arrow icon, then run the flight with the Fly! button, at the FMC I enter "IF" and press "co route", and there we have the route loaded, now I complete the FMC set up and fly. I also ensured my dll.xml had the correct LD767 entry before running the flight.

[mcfrosch79]

I don´t know if this has come up yet, but I noticed that the weather generator seems not to care if I choose "VFR" as the type of flight. I tried to fly from Dortmund to Hamburg yesterday, and IF generated weather that made VFR virtually impossible (heavy fog with almost zero visibility). So maybe that could be adressed in a future version?

Regards,

Fabian

[Steve Waite]

Improve visibility for VFR flights - good idea.

In the meantime you could fly at a time of day when there is no fog or improve the weather in the weather page.