So I got the X-Plane, would you gentlemen have any pro-tips to offer a total noob? Like worthwhile free addons, what paid addons I should be aiming to get, or how to get Track IR to not feel like my head is severed from my body and gliding around on a cushion of air?

I was thinking of getting the Flight Factor 757 v2 Professional, seems to be reputed as one of the highest quality modules available, but I don't really know enough of what I'm doing in XP at all to justify it yet. Like I feel like I should figure out how to use ATC or plan a flight before I go dropping another $50-70 on an aircraft (it's on sale right now for $52).

And is there anything like FSPassengers or some kinda freight company type thing like you guys had going in FSX/P3D? That seemed like a lot of fun.

Lol, pyro, I can't help you with the Track IR side of things.

Regarding add on aircraft, there are two that I am hooked on; the RW Design Twin Otter and the PMDG DC-6. Especially the latter, it is so much fun to "seriously" fly routes old school style with this classic aircraft. As it doesn't cover ridiculous amounts of ground in a short time, like the 757 would, and yet remains highly entertaining, you don't have to fill your drive up with masses of scenery to complete your routes. That said, the 757 looks interesting. As for stock aircraft, the 737 is pretty well modeled.

But this brings me to scenery. It is already pretty good as stock, but further improvements can be made with these meshes;

www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-hd-mesh-scenery-v3/

And / or notch the scenery up a big step to photo-realism with this;

forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/29120-ortho4xp/

Weather engines? There are a couple out there, but I find the stock weather on XP11 is a huge improvement over XP10, and suffices for me.

The built in ATC is much like the one on FSX; its parameters of tolerance and intolerance (ie; deviations, for example) of what you do comes nowhere near what it is actually like. What options there are for something like Vpilot for XP11, I have not really explored.

There is no compatible AirHauler or FSPax that I know of for XP11.

Hopefully we can have a chat on TS sometime when we coincide, about all this.

+1 for Ortho4XP but it is so space intensive. Depending on the resolution you want to go with you are looking at hundreds of gigs for just one state.

Yeah, not to say quite time consuming, too. I came up against that size of tile thing, myself. Just one high resolution tile for Seattle was over 8 GB, and it wasn't the very highest zoom level, either. Fortunately, I got to the bottom of using the detail level by zones, which can get your tile down to at or under 1 GB, without loosing (and in fact, gaining) detail in important areas, like the airports.

Here's KCLE area. I've got the whole tile at base ZL 16, staging up through 17 and 18, to 19 at the airports. They look pretty swell, like that. But even done that way, you're still using a lot of disk space to cover a state or two area.

Well I succumbed to the sale price of that 757-200.. I haven't thought too much about messing with improving the scenery, at this point I'm still calibrated for FSX Steam Edition-level graphics so everything is pretty amazing already in default XP11. I'll also need to pick up some more storage if I'm to have any room for that. Down the road I'm sure I'll give that a shot because it definitely sounds nice.

I found out what everyone uses to fix the default TrackIR camera issues and it's a very nice freeware addon called X-Camera. There's a "pay what you like" paid version but it doesn't seem to add anything I'd consider vital.

Something I hadn't noticed before I made my original post was that I was having an issue where structures at airports wouldn't load in. I'd be somewhere like LAX or LGA where there very obviously should be a 3D model available and all I'd see is open terrain littered with static aircraft and ground support equipment. Took me a while to think to try another classic Steam file integrity verification and that did the trick. Before that I was digging in to the community scenery gateway thing and downloading individual airports to put in the custom scenery, but they were all supposed to already be in X-Plane and they wouldn't show up after my personal intervention either. If anyone else comes across it, don't forget to try the integrity check first and save yourself a lot of headache.

The 757 is amazing. Easily worth $52 and I can't wait to dig in to it deeper. At this point I can just about start it from memory and I'm working on learning the aircraft itself but my big handicap is just general flight planning. No idea how to find a route using VORs or GPS and put it in the FMC. If anyone could walk me through the basics on that I'd be eternally grateful. I've tried to find a good Youtube example of it but it has eluded me so far; every video I've looked at is either confusing and lacking foundational info or the guy doing the tutorial has some crazy German or Eastern European accent that I can't understand, or both.

The old school 737 twinjet caught my eye as well, the DC-6 is cool but the early jetliners grab my attention much better. Something about having to deal in terms of manifold pressures in a commercial passenger aircraft is just a bit of a turn-off. When you've got seating for 100, you oughta be dealing in terms of N1 and EPR. But either way I definitely would like to add some older aircraft to my collection as well, steam gauges just mean more fun.

LOL! You seem to be getting along okay, but if you still think you need some pointers, we could try this...





...which you can then transfer back to your B752. Here I am on my way to KLAX from KSFO, just to see all was okay with scenery and stuff.

Can you put your X-Plane up on your live stream or twitch thing? I don't know much about all of that set up, but it seems a good way to work, short of shared aircraft multiplayer.

Yeah I can stream no problem, the only thing is there may be a minute or two of delay from what's actually happening live.

Shared aircraft multiplayer is something I would like to explore at some point though so I'm plenty curious about that as well.

Same here. I've never tried it, but there is a plugin for X-Plane to do it...

SmartCoPilot

I can't guarantee how "smart" your co-pilot would be, but we could certainly try it sometime!

If I'm piloting, co-pilot intelligence would range somewhere between "smart" to "genius" by comparison. So yeah, that would be fantastic. Count me in.

Was looking at the page, has it been updated for XP11 or is it expected to work anyways despite its XP10 branding?

I just landed my first actual 752 airport-to-aIrport flight from KSAN to KLAX. I loaded way too much fuel because I don't know how to figure how much I actually need, the flight path I loaded in my FMC was basically just plugging in my departure and arrival airports and removing discontinuities (of which there were a few), my left engine (RB.211) quickly started running warm in its oil temps and the EGT was about 100 degrees hotter than the right for equivalent throttle setting so the last half of the flight I had to idle it, I did some ATC through the pop-up window that X-Plane gives you and it was mostly for shit, on my approach in to LAX I was coming in about 80 kts too fast and I almost forgot my landing gear, I over corrected for my overspeed and touched down about 200 feet short of the runway overrun area after a totally botched attempt to TO/GA with my single engine, once I was down on the runway with both engines in idle my left engine went in to the red range on oil temp and within a minute it caught fire, and then I had some issue where my ATC menu ran out of options for me to check in with the ground control and I spent the last few minutes taxiing to a gate with the guy asking "are you with me?" every 30 seconds.

How's that for progress?

Just flew from Long Beach to San Jose, everything was fine.. I think I figured out my engine overheating problem, wasn't cutting in the fuel at the right N2%. Did the whole thing and then on approach in to SJC, Oakland Center decided to vector me straight in to a mountain.

I was at 5,000 ft, they ordered a descent to 2,000 ft and between myself and the airport there was a range of hills that must have topped out at about 2,700 ft and of course I didn't realize quickly enough that I wasn't going to clear them.. In a panic, I yanked the stick back and threw the throttles forward, but the autothrottle was on and I couldn't get them to respond until I disarmed it but I wasn't even close.

And again I took way too much fuel. Loaded 30k lbs, seemed like I only burned 6k-ish.

Yeah, you know I was thinking before it sounded like a hot start damage. This sounds interesting as an add on aircraft. Hmm...

LOL! You need an instictive Auto Throttle disconnect button on your throttle. TOGA would normally over-ride A/THR with your described action (ie; physically fire-walling the thrust levers), so don't know what might have happened there... Look-see if there's a TO/GA button on the levers themselves, in the graphic representation of the cockpit. In Auto throttle mode, pressing it should give you TOGA. Not 100% sure, here. Not that familiar with Boeing. If there is, map it!

Here you go. It is not exactly the right cruise performance chart for the engines you mentioned (RB 211), but it won't be far off at all.



At this stage, plan your fuel like this.

Taxi, Climb and Route fuel + 10% Route fuel + Alternate fuel + 30 minutes Holding Fuel = Minimum Required Fuel

Plus a little more for "other" contingencies, like - you know - spending a little time testing its "corner speed"!

What happened with the throttles was a setting which "blocks" them after A/T disconnect until you actually move them to the point that the A/T had them at to avoid jumping them around and keep a smooth transition. The problem was that I slammed them forward before the disconnect and didn't think to bring them back to reengage with the point they were at in-game until I was only about 6 seconds away from my inevitable demise. I think if I disable that setting it will override the autothrottle, but I'm not sure. I'll have to look if there is an actual TO/GA button because that does seem like the smart thing to have in this case either way.

And if you are considering the 757 v2, I can enthusiastically offer my total noob recommendation. I have no way of knowing how accurate anything really is, but it sure as hell feels accurate. Of all the videos of modules I've looked at for XP11, this one seems like the best of the bunch.

Ah, okay. It is a peripheral (or HID, or whatever they call joysticks now) to simulator issue. Crystal clear, thanks pyro for clearing that up. It bothered me, LOL!

I'm kind of thinking "oh, no, even more FMS and AP, even on my PC sim time". But if it is as well modeled as you say it is, I'm (highly) likely to make the exception, as a case study!

SmartCopilot works for XP11, as far as I understand. Are you willing to give it a go? Let me know when and I'll get it.

Absolutely I'm up for it.

If you wanted to see more of the 757 v2 to make a more informed decision I can stream it for you and focus on something like the FMC or whatever you like. See if it really lives up to the real thing.

Yeah, that's a great idea, I'd love to have a peek, even though I'm most probably going to get it just the same on my next full day off to play around with. Pop me a message whenever you see me on Discord, or conversely, if I pop onto Discord and see you on XPlane 11, I'll bug you. LOL!

And... SmartCopilot is a done thing. I've got it. Just need to try it.

PS:

That 757 is a big old download file, isn't it?

<span class="abbc3_strike" style="text-decoration: line-through">There is, indeed, a SmartCopilot config file for it, though, right here .</span>

EDIT:

Scratch that, it is for V 1.6. Been reading and browsing a bit. This is the right one , if there is to be a chance it works.

Had a bit of fun with this, last night, eh? Least we solved your excess fuel problem!

Hope you get the restriction on your SmartCopilot lifted, and that it solves the issue of not seeing anything electrical switched on your end.

Yep, I got my key early this morning. Apparently the original email got bounced back and the guy resent it.

And another perfect flight in the 757 under the belt. We're really working as a crew! LOL!

Ask Vader...

Or see for yourself..

[BBvideo=560,315][/BBvideo]

[BBvideo=560,315][/BBvideo]

I recommend using the timestamps to jump around and see the highlights.

LOL! Awesome!