John Dow

Unlikely to see anything developed for Melbourne area until a lagging problem in the default is resolved. The problem has come to light in testing. To test for yourself, take a GA flight from say YMEN over the CBD to Moorabbin and a bit further, and then return towards YMEN and YML. We've been getting long lags and pauses, my last flight I had 2-3 second lags down past Moorabbin and up to 8-10 seconds approaching YMEN, in default MSFS scenery.

OK. You can have a play if you like... it might work I have no idea, but... In the Jabiru folder in the Community area wherever you have the aircraft installed, similar to this: M:\MSFS Community\msfs\IRIS Simulations Jabiru J160-J170\Community\iris-aircraft-jab\Missions\IRIS\BushTrips\jab-au1 is a file called AU1.FLT. Open it with notepad and find [DateTimeSeason] which contains the following: [DateTimeSeason] Season=Summer Year=2020 Day=265 Hours=11 Minutes=6 Seconds=56 I'm wondering if altering this field will result in a different start time for you. Can't hurt to try it! I note that in the AU2-D1.FLT there's an added line: [DateTimeSeason] Season=Winter Year=2020 Day=361 Hours=13 Minutes=00 Seconds=0 UseZuluTime=False Once again, playing with this variable might result in something. Let us know if you do have any luck.

No one painted the island white. The imagery that was supplied for the San Fran area would have contained a poor quality overexposed image of the island. Possibly whatever camera was being used compensated for the darker water around it, I do not know. But I do know that when P3D processes its graphics any overexposure in the imagery is amplified. That is probably also a factor as well.

Yes but my post was about MSFS. And as for Alcatraz, it's possible that under the licensing terms for the scenery imagery, that is all that was available to the developers. Freeware developers can just grab whatever imagery they want but Orbx cannot do this. And I know the bridge is not perfect but you're talking about an area hundreds of thousands of square kilometres and no doubt some compromises that to be made and it's possible that the other baybridge model was not available to the developers of True Earth scenery, even though it's within the same umbrella organisation. These aspects of the scenery are not, in my experience, thr result of a don't care attitude, it's more likely to be issues in the commercial environment that we know nothing about.

Quite the opposite. I get better fps at V2 than V1. However you do have to match the texture resolution to your pc setup, I find 2048 x 2048 is as high as I can go normally.

From what I've been able to glean from the testing process for MSFS stuff is that there's an ultra fine line between texture quality and performance. Put a bit too much detail into the textures, you get a slideshow. Put all the effort into smooth performance, you get textures that don't cut the mustard. So you can rest assured the textures you get have been worked over many times looking for the sweet spot, and unfortunately the sweet spot is often at a point where a careful look at the textures finds many faults. For me the secret is to remember it's a flight sim, not an architectural sim, and although building detail is important it shouldn't be the be all and end all of the flying experience.

So what you're saying is all the people who enjoy city packs shouldn't be allowed to drive the market for add-ons because they take developers away from niche and unprofitable projects. Not sure I entirely agree with that as a continuing successful business model!

I tried starting the bush flight last night at 10pm expecting to see night time but no it's set to 10am I think, anyway definitely daytime. So I either don't have the latest bush trip or the trip is set up to deliver an offset from AEST. Can you report if changing the system time works?

I just remembered that they announced in the last update that they were changing the bush trips to Live Weather to make the experience more authentic , so it looks like you're stuck with having to fiddle the time zone... or fly early in the morning!

If you try to build a mission you'll see that many parameters are fixed. Things like weather, ATC availability etc. There must be something in the SDK that allows it, because if you try the Patagonia mission it sets the time of day. Whether Iris deem it important enough to alter their package is up to them, in the meantime I think a quick change of computer time before you start MSFS is your best option.

How well does it sit on the photoreal 'footprint'? That would normally be a guide for the developer.

A quick fix might be to set your computer time ahead 10 hours, that should fool MSFS into thinking you're in the eadtern Australian time zone.

If you search symbolic links you should find a post that will tell you how to do it.

Last I heard YPPH Perth is still in the queue, not sure what priority it has but it is not canned.

Just for the record you are doing well to run Gold Coast Cityscene with FSX! Last time I tried it I only had autogen out to a few miles. FSX is still great sim for cross country flights but if you are going to enter built up areas like GC and want detailed scenery, P3DV5 is where you need to be at, even P3DV4 has limited draw distance. The good news is that an i7 4790k and GTX 1080 like mine will run it at 20+ fps, so if you're budget is limited you could pick up a second hand gaming computer with similar specs for under $1000 (assuming you don't already have a similar rig). Almost all the Ants and OZx scenery seems to display quite well. Finally, you can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free, I put it off for a long time but the upgrade was seamless and has enough advantages to make it worth doing.

I'm running both EGLC and the London City Pack (updated) and it works perfectly.

I believe, with my inside information, and an uncanny knack of predicting these things accurately, that it will be in 2021, that's AD, not BC.

Nick was responding to the post by Alan Smith.

\ Flightsim.to has an Archerfield download, freeware, that you can install while waiting for a payware version.

It will come eventually I'm told, but only as part of other work for a service pack or similar.

Probably important to remember that Orbx is a flight simulation company. Not an architectural or landscape modelling entity. The scenery's purpose is to look as realistic as possible within the constraints of software and hardware, to a variety of pilots flying a variety of aircraft, in normal legal flying operations, whether that is RPT flights or weekend VFR jaunts. Certainly when beta testing our focus is to look at the airport scenery from an aviator's point of view, rather than delving into every corner to see if every last detail has been rendered perfectly.

Not wanting to directly quote the devs but I'd say it's a time of year when many competing priorities are faced, and given the nature of the problem it may not be an easy fix. It's true you can't make a normal landing at the airport at the moment but with a bit of flexibility you can hold off touchdown and still land comfortably. That's what i did when I wanted to land after checking it out last time.

You can set up any of these, sure. I don't know how you'd do ones like the orange tint in the dust storm etc but it'd be in the sdk somewhere. When they say presets beyond the built in system I think they mean beyond the weather presets that ship with MSFS and the cahnges you would normally tweak in them when setting up a flight.

I got that notice too but I just ignored it and launched the app. Is it different for you?

This was definitely not the situation in P3D when the airport was developed so it appears to be something that P3DV5 has introduced. The problem is not there in V4, and as a test I copied the V4 airport over to V5 and the problem surfaced again. These screenshots might make it easier for Greg to track down the problem: