MS flight Simulator and the future of map building

[The Brain]

Anyone tries flying up here?

It saddens me that you can never fly in a real airplane.

[katmai]

Anyone tries flying up here?

It saddens me that you can never fly in a real airplane.

[Caliga]

I put an MSI Geforce RTX 2070 (with 8 Gb of VRAM) in my system over the weekend.  It makes a significant difference in FS, even though my system core is so old now.

[MadBurgerMaker]

I put an MSI Geforce RTX 2070 (with 8 Gb of VRAM) in my system over the weekend.  It makes a significant difference in FS, even though my system core is so old now.

  Did the same thing yesterday.  Pretty great not having to worry about my card nuking itself, and you're not kidding about the improvement.  Now I just need a snazzy 49" widescreen to be able to see everything at once....

[Caliga]

Last night I buzzed my parents' neighborhood in Jersey in an Icon A5.  Since it's amphibious, I also landed in the bay and started to taxi through the tidal creek to their house, but I crashed into a bridge on the way and destroyed the aircraft.   I know the bridge well IRL and I know the A5 would have had sufficient clearance to taxi right under it... oh well.

The only thing the simulator really had wrong on that flight was the ecosystem rendering it did... the tidal creeks are lined simply with sawgrass, but the game engine put a lot of slash pine (which does grow everywhere in that area, away from the marshes) in among the sawgrass in error.  I also saw a few bald cypresses too, which do not grow in Jersey... can't find em any further north than southern Delaware.  So I would imagine the ecosystem rendering groups coastal south Jersey in with North Carolina or something.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Bridges and such don't seem to work right yet.  I tried to fly under a gigantic one in the Grand Canyon and crashed after hitting air when passing under it. 

Also doinked off a parking lot cover at..Taos?...somewhere in Colorado/NM area.  Anyway, instead of trying to go between that stuff and AI planes while taxiing, just clip the parked AI planes with your wing and give the structure a wide berth.  I dunno, maybe it was only there.  It was weird taxiing in a parking lot that has both cars and planes.

[Caliga]

Yeah, I noticed that at an airport in Louisville... there were cars parked in the GA parking area.... I imagine some smaller airports might be cool with planes and cars sharing a parking area though?

[HisMajestyBOB]

I've been practicing navigation using VOR in FSX. Tricky at first, but I think I've gotten the hang of it.

The only thing the simulator really had wrong on that flight was the ecosystem rendering it did... the tidal creeks are lined simply with sawgrass, but the game engine put a lot of slash pine (which does grow everywhere in that area, away from the marshes) in among the sawgrass in error.  I also saw a few bald cypresses too, which do not grow in Jersey... can't find em any further north than southern Delaware.  So I would imagine the ecosystem rendering groups coastal south Jersey in with North Carolina or something.

Still better than the previous version: in my flight in south Florida, all the trees looked like generic northwestern woodland.

[MadBurgerMaker]

Yeah, I noticed that at an airport in Louisville... there were cars parked in the GA parking area.... I imagine some smaller airports might be cool with planes and cars sharing a parking area though?

Squeezing in to the GA parking area with cars on one side and a Caravan on the other definitely spices things up a little, yeah.  I wish I could remember which airport it was. It was one of the hand built ones, I believe.

[Syt]

On the topic of gfx cards, nvidia's 30-series is coming out this and next month.

https://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-amperes-new-flagship-rtx-3080-costs-just-dollar699-launches-september-17/

https://www.pcgamer.com/watch-nvidias-rtx-3080-rip-and-tear-the-2080-ti-at-4k-in-doom-eternal/

Apparently, the 3080 leaves the 2080 far behind - which is confusing, because the 3080 founder edition costs €719 on nvidia's website, compared to the RTX 2080 Ti which costs €1259.
(The 3070 will be €519, the 3090 €1519). The 2nd PC Gamer link has a video comparing frame rates at 4K resolution for Doom Eternal, and the 3080 delivers 30-50% more frames, which is nothing to sneeze at.

My gaming PC is getting on in years - it'll be 4 years in November, and it's still running smoothly like on the first day, quiet, reliable, no hitches, and even though I occasionally checked what new systems would look like, I never felt much pressure to even upgrade my machine (and what I would get for equal money as my PC 4 years ago would not be much of an upgrade). However, with an affordable range of high end gfx cards, I might actually look into at least upgrading my PC and possibly making the jump to 4 K (though I'm quite happy with good ol' 1080p atm).

[MadBurgerMaker]

You can always get one of those new GFX cards and just crush it at 1080 for a while until you're ready to buy new monitors and all that.  You might just be CPU/RAM limited instead of GPU.

E:  "Might."  You would be for most things, I'm p sure, since those 3000 series cards are massive overkill for 1080.  Hell, I'm running in to that with a 2070 Super at 1080 right now, at least with this game.  I haven't actually played anything else since it came out. 

[The Minsky Moment]

My gaming PC is getting on in years - it'll be 4 years in November, and it's still running smoothly like on the first day, quiet, reliable, no hitches, and even though I occasionally checked what new systems would look like, I never felt much pressure to even upgrade my machine (and what I would get for equal money as my PC 4 years ago would not be much of an upgrade). However, with an affordable range of high end gfx cards, I might actually look into at least upgrading my PC and possibly making the jump to 4 K (though I'm quite happy with good ol' 1080p atm).

I signed up for Shadow (Blade) cloud service.  It'll be December before they fill the subscription but I can report on results after that.  I'm not keen on spending on another big plastic box.

[Liep]

I signed up for Shadow (Blade) cloud service.  It'll be December before they fill the subscription but I can report on results after that.  I'm not keen on spending on another big plastic box.

That looks interesting. Also seems almost impossible but I'm in if it works.

[Tamas]

I must re-share this because it is literally what happened to my PC:

https://9gag.com/gag/agA7y1w?ref=android

[celedhring]

My PC is 3 years old. I was planning an upgrade this year, but Covid has put that off. I might now wait until 2021 and try to get one of the new nVidias.